G20 Madness
Toronto, the city I live in and love has erupted into insanity. Friends are arguing over what's going on, Queen Street, one of my favourite old places to hang out has been torched and smashed...all of the peaceful protesters are pointing fingers at the anarchists and the anarchists are just shrugging. The cops are legion.
The reasons the protesters have come to march has been all but forgotten in the madness and the reasons that the politicians descended on my normally peaceful city has been overshadowed by burning cop cars and broken windows.
Even the general energy in the city is different. It's tense, even though I'm far enough out of the downtown core to not be in the thick of it. I'm worried about my friends who live and work mere steps from where cars were being set on fire and storefronts defaced.
While I'm no fan of big corporations, either, smashing their windows and keeping honest working folk out of work until the repairs are made is no way to prove a point.
Right now, it's like the city has taken a collective deep breath and is holding it in its' lungs, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
I can't wait until all of this is over and I hope our city will return to what it was before all this madness. I somehow don't think it will. Not for some time.
When the fences come down and we're all allowed to return to normal lives once more, the scars will still be there, the memory of the ugly underbelly of the city has been exposed and we will remember...
The reasons the protesters have come to march has been all but forgotten in the madness and the reasons that the politicians descended on my normally peaceful city has been overshadowed by burning cop cars and broken windows.
Even the general energy in the city is different. It's tense, even though I'm far enough out of the downtown core to not be in the thick of it. I'm worried about my friends who live and work mere steps from where cars were being set on fire and storefronts defaced.
While I'm no fan of big corporations, either, smashing their windows and keeping honest working folk out of work until the repairs are made is no way to prove a point.
Right now, it's like the city has taken a collective deep breath and is holding it in its' lungs, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
I can't wait until all of this is over and I hope our city will return to what it was before all this madness. I somehow don't think it will. Not for some time.
When the fences come down and we're all allowed to return to normal lives once more, the scars will still be there, the memory of the ugly underbelly of the city has been exposed and we will remember...