Gillian Findlay

The Fifth Estate
PO Box 500, Stn.’A’
Toronto, Ontario
M5W 1E6

Dear Gillian Findlay,

I wanted to take the time to thank you and everyone at The Fifth Estate for your documentary, You Should Have Stayed At Home.

What an eye-opening expose of a very shameful event and, I fear, a very shameful trend in Canadian politics!!

I was involved in the American Civil Rights Movement in the early 1960’s. For much of the time, I was working in Georgia with SNCC. And, needless to say, I had some unpleasant encounters with the police during our non-violent demonstrations. We were trained, of course, in non-violent resistance and schooled in what to expect from the police, both out in public places and behind prison walls where no one could see.

(If you ever happen to be flipping through the book, The Movement: Documentary of a Struggle For Equality (Text by Lorraine Hansberry, photos by Danny Lyon), [Simon and Schuster, 1964], that’s me on page 102, sitting out in the middle of street in front of Leb’s Restaurant at the intersection at Lucky and Forsyth in Atlanta Georgia. The young man pictured on the front cover of The Movement, incidentally, is Charlie Walker. He looks to be all of thirteen years old, if that; but he was actually seventeen when that picture was taken. The summer before, he had his back sliced by a razor during a sit-in in a White Castle hamburger joint. I mention all this to let you know I have some experience with which to compare the police violence that took place in Toronto during the G 20 meetings you expose in your documentary, You Should Have Stayed At Home. )

Frankly, as brutal as the American police were during the Civil Rights Movement in the States (some places in Alabama and Mississippi were even worse than in Atlanta), I was shocked, and I do mean shocked, by what I saw the police doing to those poor people in the streets of Toronto and then later in those makeshift jail cells. The criminal acts of brutal violence the Toronto police committed was far, far worse than much of what I witnessed in the US 50 years ago during the Civil Rights Movement, far worse. And that is shameful.

The brutality the Toronto police are guilty of is inexcusable and unforgivable.

I am glad some people are bringing civil suit against the Toronto police. But in addition, criminal charges need to be laid, and all those implicate–including the Chief of Police, the Mayor of Toronto and going all the way up to and including the Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, for not speaking out and condemning that police abuse of power—all of them need to be brought to justice.

In addition to the obvious criminal acts on the part of the police in Toronto, the clear implication is that all Canadians now need to be afraid of our government. We need to be afraid of peaceful assembly and afraid of speaking out, afraid of criticizing the government.

This is as wrong as it can be.

I recently (on Friday, February 11th, 2011) attended an information session about CETA, held at the Nelson United Church in Nelson, British Columbia. The forum was sponsored by The Council of Canadians. I thought the introduction and explanations about CETA given by Peter Julian were excellent, and I found the entire forum very informative and enjoyable. Near the end of the question period, however, a man rose from the back row of the seats near the far left corner of the church and identified himself as a Federal PC candidate, who was going to run for office in the next election. Unfortunately, I did not catch that man’s name.

But I was shocked by his abusive, insulting, disrespectful address. He spoke loudly and rudely, telling all us present that we should go home and scrub with bleach. He then uttered a veiled warning, threatening and hinting at what was going to happen to us after he was elected.

It is a though we were suddenly transported from the safety of the sanctuary in that church out into some street gathering in Nazi Germany being threatened by an SS Officer.

Frankly, I was frightened.

Never in Canada have I heard anything so threatening and upsetting as I heard coming out of that man’s mouth.

But then, last week, I watched your documentary, You Should Have Stayed At Home.

Are these the kinds of unlawful, abusive and totalitarian behaviors we can now expect from the police and our government here in Canada?

Do we need to fear that we might be rounded up and herded off to jail or to some torture camp for having attended public meetings or signing petitions?

Again, I very much thank you and the Fifth Estate for this documentary.

I don’t know how to do that Twitter and Face Book thing, but please use my letter however it can best benefit you and the Fifth Estate.

Thank you,

Pete

You can watch the entire doc live there, and it also includes a tool that allows users to upload their own footage from G20 that they may not have shared with the media yet.

I wanted to note that I put together my own html document in the aftermath of my admittedly less tragic experience as a participant in the Saturday march, which you can read here.