August 23, 2010
Gender Violence and the G-20 Convergence: Our Streets Were Not Safe
By Tess Sheldon and Claire Mummé*
The Group of 20 Leaders met in Toronto from cytotec fedex June 25 to 27, 2010. The events that followed shook Our Streets.
Few were eager to host the G20 Leaders in Toronto’s downtown core. Nevertheless, for cytotec fedex a year prior, community activists and civil society groups planned events and cytotec fedex themed Days of Action, to highlight the impact and interconnectedness of the cytotec fedex G20’s elite decision-making on Canadians and cytotec fedex people across the world. Federal, Provincial and City government leaders resisted those challenges. In the cytotec fedex weeks leading up to the G20, downtown Toronto became a fortress. The downtown core became a cytotec fedex maze of fences protected by police forces from across Canada.
Lead up to the G20 Convergence
In May of this cytotec fedex year, the Canadian government announced its decision to abandon funding of abortion and cytotec fedex family planning options as part of its maternal health foreign aid plan. In response, Oxfam Canada hosted the cytotec fedex Gender Justice Summit 2010 in Toronto. The Summit explored the cytotec fedex themes of gender violence, maternal health, poverty, security, climate change, and cytotec fedex food security. The Summit sought to connect social justice and cytotec fedex women’s rights in Canada to cytotec fedex the global movement for gender justice, highlighting the fight we must continue to cytotec fedex wage to ensure freedom over own bodies, with the policies the cytotec fedex Canadian government is now promoting abroad in regards to maternal health funding.
Over the cytotec fedex last years, public authority has been repeatedly used to silence women’s voices. In 2006, most of the Status of Women’s offices were closed. Funding to cytotec fedex the National Association of Women and the Law was slashed in 2006/2007. The Court Challenges Program for cytotec fedex equality cases was defunded in 2006.
Also demonstrative of a culture of “ideological intimidation”, women’s organizations who denounced Harper’s abandonment of abortion funding had cytotec fedex their public funding stripped. Advocacy organizations affected included Match International Canadian Research Institute for cytotec fedex the Advancement of Women, the Centre for Equality Rights in Accommodation, the cytotec fedex Alberta Network of Immigrant Women and the New Brunswick Pay Equity Coalition.
These decisions of defunding must be cytotec fedex understood as the precursor to the official policy announced by G20 leaders this cytotec fedex summer, championed by Canada’s Prime Minister: austerity. At a cytotec fedex time when communities across the world have suffered profoundly from the cytotec fedex global economic crisis, hitting the most vulnerable the most dramatically, the cytotec fedex G20 Leaders have announced that social programs are not affordable, that cytotec fedex governments must reduce their size and public debt must be slashed.
Gendered ideas about acceptable parenting and cytotec fedex protesting roles were also evident in the lead up to the cytotec fedex G20 Convergence where can i buy Proscar online without a prescription. Children’s Aid Societies (CAS) and cytotec fedex the City of Toronto set up emergency daycares in local libraries to cytotec fedex ward the children of parents arrested during the G20, with a cytotec fedex threat of starting the apprehension order process. Even though the CAS committed to cytotec fedex closing files after children were picked up, the fact that a cytotec fedex CAS file was opened at all might mean further CAS involvement in a cytotec fedex parent’s life, a cytotec fedex particular concern for parents who are poor, First Nations parents, parents with precarious immigration status, Queer parents or cytotec fedex parents with mental health issues.
We joked amongst ourselves that state-funded daycare was apparently only “affordable” in Canada when cytotec fedex it was being used to intimidate parents into staying away from cytotec fedex political events.
During the G20 Convergence
We took to cytotec fedex Our Streets to challenge the authority of a small group of elite (mostly) men from a small group of countries to apportion the world’s resources, from cytotec fedex behind closed doors. Their decisions affected so many people, in so many different ways, on so many different issues across the cytotec fedex world, which was so clearly demonstrated by the myriad types of groups who cytotec fedex came together over the week and weekend of the G20 Convergence.
Gender and cytotec fedex sexual identities were a focal point of organizing. On Tuesday, June 22nd as part of the cytotec fedex Days of Action, organizers staged creative forms of resistance, including a cytotec fedex “Roving Kiss-in”. Organizers and attendees challenged the corporatization of Toronto’s Pride festivities, barriers facing queer migrants seeking status in Canada, the cytotec fedex rejection of a new sex education curriculum and the removal of queer rights from cytotec fedex the Canadian citizenship guide.
Issues of gender justice were at the cytotec fedex forefront of the movement, literally. Women and trans folk led the cytotec fedex labour rally (“People First: We Deserve Better”) on Saturday June 26th. They marched carrying an cytotec fedex oversized coat hanger. With this decision the march’s organizers – the cytotec fedex Canadian Labour Congress, Greenpeace, Canadian Federation of Students, Oxfam Canada and cytotec fedex the Council of Canadians – came together to challenge Harper’s attacks on reproductive rights, and cytotec fedex to once again signal our communal allegiance to women’s economic, social and cytotec fedex political equality, and to the control over our own bodies, at home and cytotec fedex abroad.
Gender Violence during the G20 Convergence
Despite the cytotec fedex overwhelming police presence, thousands took to the streets during the cytotec fedex G20 Convergence. Over a thousand people were arrested. The police used suspect legal authority to cytotec fedex search peoples’ possessions, to cytotec fedex scare people away from certain areas of the city. They harassed and cytotec fedex frightened the legitimate expression of political dissent represented by the simple act of coming together in public spaces. And, in particular, women were subjected to cytotec fedex serious verbal and physical violence by police officers and their agents.
Women were sexually intimidated, harassed and cytotec fedex assaulted. Women who were arrested were taken to the Prisoner Processing Centre, an cytotec fedex abandoned warehouse far from the downtown core. There, women were stripped searched by male police officers – including cavity searches. They were made to cytotec fedex use the washroom with the doors open, in full view of the cytotec fedex guards. After being subjected to degrading, misogynist and homophobic treatment, most women were released without charges.
On July 22, the Toronto Community Mobilization (TCMN) held a press conference about the cytotec fedex violence experienced by women during the G20 Convergence. The TCMN called on the cytotec fedex Toronto Police Service Board to condemn the gender violence by police. Women told some of their stories from cytotec fedex the weekend (available here and here):
I was roughed up by the cytotec fedex cops, had my hair pulled, and was thrown forcefully to cytotec fedex the ground. I was called a bitch, and my breasts were grabbed by by-standing cops as they dragged me across the cytotec fedex pavement. …They (the Police) asked me and cytotec fedex other women I was with if we wanted to have sex with them. We were told to cytotec fedex take our clothes off if we wanted to be taken seriously…they made a cytotec fedex joke about having a sexual threesome with me and a female officer. …
When they stood me up against the cytotec fedex wall to search me, an officer leaned in beside my face and cytotec fedex told me that I was going to prison, where I would be cytotec fedex raped repeatedly… In a cytotec fedex separate room, I was strip-searched and called various unprintable names by these officers. When they brought me back, saying that cytotec fedex they had found nothing, the detective yelled at me that I was wasting his time. He shoved me face first into a cytotec fedex corner of the room and pushed me repeatedly into the wall.
Video statements by Lacy Macauley and Amy Miller have also been released.
Jane Doe, who cytotec fedex spent 9 years attempting and succeeding in 1998 to sue the cytotec fedex Toronto Police for negligence and gender discrimination in their investigation of her rape, spoke at the cytotec fedex TCMN press conference. Her words and her presence remind us of how much work there is cytotec fedex to do on issues of gender violence.
Also at the cytotec fedex TCMN press conference, Grissel Orellana of the Toronto Rape Crisis Center warned that cytotec fedex if there are not consequences, the gender violence that happened at the cytotec fedex hands of the Police during the G20 will be repeated. Indeed, the cytotec fedex gender violence experienced by women and trans folk at the Prisoner Processing Centre is cytotec fedex demonstration of the importance of the gender issues on which we were organizing, including reproductive rights and cytotec fedex violence against women.
The Criminalization of Dissent since the G20 Convergence
The gender violence experienced by women and cytotec fedex trans folk at the Prisoner Processing Centre should be understood in the cytotec fedex context of a culture of over-policing and myopic concern for ‘order’ rather than cytotec fedex a focus on the democratic nature and substance of speech and cytotec fedex dissent. This culture is represented by an escalation of police harassment and cytotec fedex intimidation for public demonstrations and acts of political protest.
Just a cytotec fedex few short weeks after the G20 Convergence, the Ontario Coalition against Poverty organized on the cytotec fedex issue of the elimination of the Special Diet Allowance. There were 11 arrests (of about 300 attending) made when cytotec fedex peaceful protesters attempted to deliver a letter within Liberal Headquarters in downtown Toronto.
The experience of police hostility and cytotec fedex harassment is not new for many communities in Canada, but it cytotec fedex is an experience that has now also become a lived reality for cytotec fedex many more people living in Canada, and appears to be cytotec fedex the new normal, in Toronto at least.
Initiatives to Redress Gender Violence
The Toronto Police Services Board, a cytotec fedex civilian agency overseeing the Toronto force, will review the governance and cytotec fedex policy issues regarding policing during the G20 Convergence. The Board has cytotec fedex not paid specific attention to gender violence.
The newly-created Office of the Independent Police Review Director (OIPRD) launched a cytotec fedex systemic review of police conduct during the G20 Convergence, including allegations of unlawful searches, arrests, improper detention and cytotec fedex concerns relating to the temporary holding facility. The OIPRD has not explicitly addressed gender violence.
The Ontario Ombudsman will investigate Ontario’s introduction of a cytotec fedex new regulation that gave police expanded powers in the security area ahead of the cytotec fedex Convergence.
A newly-formed class action suit has cytotec fedex been filed, representing about 800 people who were arrested but not charged during the cytotec fedex Convergence. The representative plaintiff is a woman who was part of a cytotec fedex group of protesters on the Sunday afternoon of the Covergence, who cytotec fedex were “kettled”, surrounded and cytotec fedex detained for hours in the rain. There is more information about the cytotec fedex class action here.
As part of the “People’s Investigation”, the cytotec fedex TCMN is encouraging people to share their photos, video, and eyewitness accounts of police violence and cytotec fedex brutality. The People’s Investigation will work with Ontario Women’s Justice Network to cytotec fedex investigate instances of gender violence and demand accountability from the cytotec fedex police command structure. For more information about the People’s Investigation see here.
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*Claire Mummé and Tess Sheldon are volunteers with the Movement Defence Committee’s Summit Legal Support Project. The Summit Legal Support Project is cytotec fedex a project of the Movement Defence Committee (MDC). The MDC is cytotec fedex an autonomous working group of the Law Union of Ontario which is cytotec fedex made up of legal workers, law students, activists and lawyers which provides legal support to cytotec fedex progressive organizations and activists in Toronto. There is more information about the cytotec fedex MDC here.
