Thousands of protesters take to the streets of Toronto for the G20 summit currently being held in downtown Toronto, Canada. 27/06/2010
After a week of small protests, an estimated 10,000 took to the streets of Toronto to protest the G20 summit currently being hosted downtown at the Metro Convention Centre. Though most of the protesters were peaceful, anarchist interlopers who go by the name Black Bloc wreaked havoc in the streets. They burned and trashed police cars, a CBC news van, several TTC streetcars and smashed windows at banks and commercial retail stores. The violence has shocked Torontonians and drawn attention away from the thousands of other demonstrators who wanted their voices heard on various issues. Some protesters even took time to upright overturned mailboxes left in the street by the vandals. The police presence was aggressive and intimidating, eventually dispersing the peaceful protest while the vandals still made their way up Yonge St attacking stores. In 14 years of photographing this city, I have never seen anything like this.
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Favorite protest chant of the day 'You're sexy, you're cute. Take off that riot suit.'
Maybe the cop with the gun thought I wasn't going to catch his good side?
I really love Independent media and after what I've seen on mainstream media regarding the G20 protests, the independents are far more reliable. Love the Real News! Did you see their interview with Steve Paikin, amazing. People in this city are turning on each other and getting in arguments over whether the police action was excessive. I'm finding those that support the police action are the ones that weren't there. LOL As much as I don't want my city burned and smashed, the police showed force in all the wrong areas on all the wrong people. I watched as they literally let the Black Bloc blaze a trail through downtown. I was quite neutral in my article on here, but i'm actually quite pissed and have had a lot to say on other sites.
GUN=SCARY
Perhaps I'm content that I couldn't relate to having a gun shoved in my face haha, though a police has tricked me to "move back a couple more steps" then attempted to humiliate my badge by saying "you're blocking their shot now, call yourself media".
On the other hand, yes, I realized that you're one of the few on Demotix who make an effort to show a somewhat balanced view through photos. What worries me is that a few individuals who admitted they weren't downtown have tried to prove a point online by linking only my "non-peaceful" photos. What do you think about channels like RealNewsNetwork?
No, these were from Saturday. I didn't venture back today because I had a gun shoved in my face yesterday, so that was just about enough for me lol. Thanks for your comment. I tried to show both the good and bad sides of the protest and there was a lot of good to. You just won't see that in the mainstream media.
Is this from today (Sunday 27th)? Almost every corner along Yonge below Bloor were covered in bullet holes. I appreciate how you were able to capture the emotions on some faces.
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