Toronto Community Mobilization Network Condemns Bill Blair’s Public Relations campaign

Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair's press conference on Tuesday June 29th is a continuation of the police department's public relations campaign to silence and criminalize the work of those speaking out against the G20 and the Toronto Community Mobilization Network.  His attempt to demonize protesters is an attempt to divert attention away from the way police brutalized people and ignored basic human rights during the mass mobilizations of tens of thousands of people last week. As writer Naomi Klein said last night at a jail solidarity rally to the police chief; “Stop playing politics and public relations with our friends’ lives and let them go.”
 Thousands of people in Toronto and from other communities came together in the streets because they are angry and frustrated about the G8/G20 policies that inflict violence upon millions of people here and around the world.  The G20 and their institutional partners the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have created and implemented harmful economic measures that favour the profit of the rich over the lives of the poor and marginalized.  Chief Bill Blair’s labeling of the Toronto Community Mobilization Network as a violent organization cannot hide the way that the Toronto Police Service and their partners in the Integrated Security Unit displayed a gross abuse of power and incompetency.
 What the people in Toronto and the people all over the world saw on Saturday and Sunday was unfocused brutality in combination with targeted intimidation at the hands of the police. But this treatment and these tactics will not stop people from speaking out against injustice, whether it is perpetuated by G8/G20 policies or by local police.
 
The TCMN is a network made up of many people, many of whom are community organizers working with youth, poor, and marginalized communities every day.  These people are angry that G8/G20 policies are creating social injustice and environmental destruction in their communities and elsewhere. As a diverse network, the Toronto Community Mobilization Network acknowledges that people have autonomy and will decide for themselves how they show and communicate this frustration.
 The police have done everything in their power to criminalize lawful dissent and are engaging in willful misrepresentation of protesters.  The Toronto Community Mobilization Network demands that those facing charges must be treated as human beings with the right to due process and released.