URGENT: warning re. increased police powers near the security zone

URGENT: warning re. increased police powers near the security zone

June 24, 2010 - 5:01pm | by movementdefence
Under the Ontario Public Works Protection Act, the area inside and within 5 metres of the security perimeter (as seen on this map: http://www.g8-g20isu.ca/g20/resources/10-06-11-map.pdf) has been designated as a ‘public work’ from June 21st to 28th, 2010.

This means that police officers have the power to require anyone entering or attempting to enter or approaching the public work “to furnish his or her name and address, to identify himself or herself and to state the purpose for which he or she desires to enter the public work, in writing or otherwise”.

The police may also “search, without warrant, any person entering or attempting to enter a public work”. The police can also search “a vehicle in the charge or under the control of any such person or which has recently been or is suspected of having been in the charge or under the control of any such person or in which any such person is a passenger”.

Finally, the police “may refuse permission to any person to enter a public work and use such force as is necessary to prevent any such person from so entering”

Police may arrest, without warrant “any person who neglects or refuses to comply with a request or direction of a guard or peace officer, or who is found upon or attempting to enter a public work without lawful authority.”

Neglecting or refusing “to comply with a request or direction made under this Act by a guard or peace officer” or if you are a person found upon a public work or any approach thereto without lawful authority means you could be found guilty of an offence and be liable to a fine of not more than $500 or to imprisonment for a term of not more than two months, or to both.

Details of the geographic limitations are here: http://www.e-laws.gov.on.ca/html/source/regs/english/2010/elaws_src_regs...
Read the Public Works Protection here: http://www.canlii.org/en/on/laws/stat/rso-1990-c-p55/latest/rso-1990-c-p...

Midnight. Start of a new day.

Rambunctious at La Palette. The new one on Queen Street.

Tory descent continues in 'strange new political world': poll

Mr. Graves says that the first-past-the-post system is now unworkable because the “old parties are incapable of creating stable constituencies.

“Boomers will lose their strangle-hold on power. Young voters are turning to new parties like the GP [Green Party]. Parliaments will be forced to become mosaics rather than monolithic, reflecting a more pluralistic and faster-changing society.”

What if we had an election and no political party won?

What if we had an election and voters won?

Tory descent continues in 'strange new political world': poll

Big day coming up Saturday June 19

Saturday, June 19 I will be helping present a workshop on electoral reform on behalf of Fair Vote Canada from 10 am until noon at Ryerson University, room Vic 206, as part of the People's Summit 2010.

This means someone else will have to give the regular Saturday noon orientation tour at Free Geek Toronto.

I may not make it to work at all, because I'll be playing with the Big Trouble Band at Mitzi's Sister, 1554 Queen Street East, from 5 pm to 7 pm.

I'll be jammin' with the Geminis at Ray the Baby Giant and Loretta's birthday party in the evening, then I'll be playing with Rambunctious at La Palette (the new one at Queen and Portland) at midnight.

Sunday I'll be at The Free Times Café from 8 until 11 pm with Gordon's Acoustic Living Room, this month featuring saxophone, mandolin, violin, pedal steel guitar, bagpipes, and (finally!) steel pan drums!

Stop talking about coalitions.

"Let's stop the talk about mergers and monolithic parties and start addressing electoral reform."

http://communities.canada.com/shareit/blogs/themark/archive/2010/06/14/stop-talking-about-coalitions.aspx

BURMA: Freedom Vigil, Holy Trinity Church June 17, 2010,7:00 pm.

I'm Blogging This Moment

http://pennyred.blogspot.com/2010/05/im-blogging-this-moment.html

So there I am at the gates of Downing Street, at around 3pm this afternoon, with a moderately raucous throng of people in purple demanding 'Fair Votes Now.' We're here to hand in a petition as thick as a man's thigh, demanding a referendum on proportional representation.

And it's all got a bit noisy and spontaneous, in a shufflingly British sort of way, and I've managed to end up at the front of the line, just behind all the people with the huge cameras, who are always there at protests in London but don't really count. This is the closest I've ever been to Number Ten and aha, here come the vans.

Three riot vans screech up and police in yellow jackets pour out of the hatches like predatory lymphocytes to sterilise the dissent. They stream into formation and edge us back from the gates, politely for now, but extremely firmly. One young policeperson's face is really close to mine as he shuffles us unseeingly back, and suddenly hey, I bloody know you, officer.

Last time I saw Officer X, he was wearing my underwear and a red velvet corset.

This was about three years ago, at a photoshoot for Genet studio show we were both involved in, in which I played a cross-dressing lesbian hooker in 18th-century Paris and he played, funnily enough, a career sadist. We were all set up in an empty wine bar to do the shoot for the publicity posters, and we decided it'd look great and also be kinda hot if we swapped clothes.

So we did, and then we did the play, and then we left university and went our separate ways in the way that young people do, me to urban squalor, activism and writing, him to be a state t-cell. I recognised him instantly, because he was doing the same flinty, murderous, slightly suggestive gaze into the middle distance that made his character so effective. He's clearly not going to be on the beat for long.

So I say, hey. And he says nothing. And I say, hey, name. And he says, oh- er, hi!

His flak jacket is still all up in my face. We exchange awkward pleasantries. Because he's a copper now, he asks me if there really are another thousand of us coming. Because I'm an activist, I deny any knowledge of anything.

The crowd shifts, surges forward behind me, a shifting sea of quiet human rage. We're losing each other in the swell. The moment of connection is gone, and time rushes back with the noise of the chanting and more vans turning up.

We promise to contact each other on Facebook, and I disappear into the crowd