Barrel Strength

You wonder: can it be true? Is this just a right-wing stereotype? Maybe we are being unfair. Maybe we exaggerate. Then comes “Swept from a peaceful protest”. the essay in yesterday’s Globe and Mail by one of  its design editors, Cinders McLeod.

A self-confessed veteran of the anti-Thatcher poll tax riots, she decides to take her children to the G20 demonstrations.:

“I thought since the detention centre was local and far away from the G20 security zone, it would be a gentle introduction into the peaceful art of protest. I cared for the community, I cared for the people who were unjustly detained and I cared that my children cared too. “

“A gentle introduction into the peaceful art of protest”. What a load of hypocritical cant! As if her “caring” justifies her vapid political posturing.

McLeod continues:

“I saw [her daughter] Anya being pushed by one of the group of police. I screamed out her name. They threw the young man next to her to the ground. Diarmid [her son] ran toward the skirmish just as a kind boy pulled Anya out of the policemen’s path. She looked so thin and vulnerable and 14 in her short shorts beside the black, violent swarm.

The front line of protesters sat down again, hands held in the air in peace signs, chanting, “We are peaceful, how ’bout you.”

Someone called out to take care because a line of police officers was approaching from the other end of the street. I had just enough time to take in the notion that we were surrounded when a line of riot police moved in on the crowd. There was smoke and sounds of shooting. Diarmid and Anya ran to us and we all turned to run down a side alley. I felt a punch on my back and calmly thought, “Oh, that’s what a rubber bullet feels like.”

We found our way to the nearest street and headed for home. Diarmid and Anya walked side by side, all sibling rivalry forgotten. They now had a common enemy: injustice. They knew the police had a job to do, but what they had witnessed wasn’t it.

According to McLeod, the reason for showing up at the detention centre was,

“And I didn’t feel good about teaching my children that we should just sit and let the world be interpreted to us by TV. Did good citizens stay home and mimic the broadcasters or endeavour to find the truth out for themselves?”

What truth? A riot is a riot. Police will act brutally or fairly, but they will act to suppress it. And this was the truth you bring your children to?

Is bringing your teenage children to what obviously will be a riot considered a normal part of educating your children?  Would you expose your children to the threat of tear gas, rubber bullets, truncheons, the rough behaviour of cops suppressing a riot, for any reason? for any reason less than revolution against tyranny? Under what conditions would you parents out there bring your children to a G20 demonstration?  If you are Cinders Mcleod, the answer seems to be: knowing they will not be shot, truncheoned, beaten, or otherwise murdered, but also knowing they will get their blood up against the cops. A good indoctrination in becoming a leftist.