I riot now... I'm a rioter! Rah Rah Rah!!!

Hey guys! So, yesterday was an exciting day for me. Just one block from Mulli's place was the 10th Demo Against Police Brutality. It was a meeting of the rebels and anarchists. On the back of the flyer that I received the first day I arrived in Montreal there are 10 reasons a person should attend the rally: It said “The police harass, brutalize, rape, kill, do racial profiling, social cleansing, political repression, is corrupted, hide us the truth, benefit from impurity”

This flyer of course fails to mention the good work that the police officers do daily and it fails to appreciate the risks they take in their jobs. In any case, I had to take this opportunity to march with the rebels and see what this rally was all about. There was a meeting at the square at 5 pm. The ages of the protesters mostly ranged from late teens to those in their twenties. Many were either wearing masks, handkerchiefs over their faces or pink pig snouts made of cardboard egg cartons. The majority of the crowd falls under the punk genre. Most wore leather studded jackets, army type boots, lots of black wear, Mohawks (dyed or not), tight jeans that have patches on them or rips in them… you get the idea. There were signs and flags being waved in the air, and a megaphone with someone constantly shouting into it.

The cops were on stand by… waiting. The crowd of about 300 protesters then took to the streets of the city and marched among the traffic, stopping cars and kicking over road construction materials. They were ripping down the election signs and shouting throughout the streets. Some of them were banging on buckets that they brought. The megaphone was also going the whole time at the front of the march.

The only advice I received was from my brothers friend Tim, he said to keep a safe distance and that generally there are a lot of arrests at these things, so leave yourself an out so you can run away if you have to. As the march was leaving the square Jay (my brother) was in the midst of the crowd waving me over to come and walk with him… I reluctantly came to him from the sidelines and began walking. I said, “I’m scared… some of these people look really angry… but I guess I’m marching with them… so its ok.”
Jay laughed and said, “Yeah, it’s the cops you should be scared of right now.”

So, there were a few pit stops, one of which there were fire dancers/spinners at. Music was pumping, people climbing traffic light posts and yelling out into the crowd… others were sitting on the parked cars (which the roof of one got badly dented… that wasn’t cool at all.) The traffic was among us, the drivers looking a little bit frightened. March on…

Jay left me at this point… now I was alone with these people that I did not know more than 3 of, who I didn’t even walk with anyways. By the time Jay and I parted I looked around and realized that I was now among the entourage of police officers that were following the crowd. (I ripped my pig nose off so fast… what a poser… whatever! You guys would have put on the pig nose too when that anarchist told you too!!! Ok! And if you were left alone with a bunch of cops you also would have ripped it off really fast!! Ok?!)

So I caught up to the tail end of the rally now I was in between the rioters and the police… great! Just what Tim told me not to do. I had no out. I all of a sudden felt really claustrophobic. Sure enough the march halts again but now they start hurling large objects at the police who are lined up against the windows of a restaurant. Objects like sticks, recycle bins, buckets… whatever they had on hand. Windows shatter there is a huge commotion, people start running, all of a sudden way more cops come out on foot from I don’t know where. They have shields and masks and helmets… and they looked scary. They started getting behind the protesters and pushing them along back down the road… I snuck into the stoop of a restaurant hoping that everyone would just run on past me. Yeah… not so lucky. All of a sudden the cops are in my face yelling “MOVE MOVE MOVE!!!!” They were coming at me with their shields first. All I could think was “Run and please don’t fall because you will get trampled”. So I ran. I wandered around for another 45 minutes, driven by adrenaline. I wanted to see more. Shit was about to go down. For the next while every street I looked down either had a small army of cops, or there were little clusters of protesters, some single stragglers like myself (which I liked and thought was the safest), cops on peddle bikes, riot police in vans, cop cars driving around, road blocks… it was crazy!

I eventually made my way back to the square where it all began and in the centre the main intersection was a large group of protesters. They dumped the garbage out of the cans and were hitting the cans with their sticks. There was the sound of glass breaking. And a few random shouts and a distant murmur of people talking. In the distance you can see police lights flashing down every road, they had to close down those roads leading to this intersection. You could also hear the distant sirens going off. Other than that the streets were very quiet… no traffic… just the clicking sound of the lights changing from green to yellow to red… it was strangely beautiful. I eventually left because I was so cold. I knew it wasn’t over, but my legs were numb… so the link I’m sending out now you can copy and paste into the address bar of your Internet site and you can see how it all ended.

http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=4574454d-e2b5-4688-81b1-464563be9190&k=94408

or this one too - http://www.mytelus.com/news/article.do?pageID=cbc/montreal_home&articleID=2200337