*Current State of Affairs - (Dec 11/98)The corporate media nationwide is going through a phase of trying to cover and back the RCMP and the Police. The posts in this file point to police violence and brutality. The police are reviewing a video they took, but only with the idea of using it to charge protesters, not to review their own misdeeds. The protesters will be filing compliants and releasing a video of police brutality.

For the file I collected the posts sent out from Apec Alert on the protest at the Hyatt -- or Operation Tenderize as I call it.
 

God rest ye lying Liberals
How long do you think you'll stay?
Remember, like Suharto, you've seen a better day.
You've made no jobs, you've robbed the poor,
you've stolen equality pay.

        O thick clouds of mace and pepper spray,
        pepper spray,
        O thick clouds of mace and pepper spray.

Chretien's invites all went out
The APEC despots came
Against the student protesters
the mounties then took aim
no democratic rights for you
they said we're all to blame

        O thick clouds of mace and pepper spray,
        pepper spray,
        O thick clouds of mace and pepper spray.

And then they brought in Andy Scott,
he wasn't very bright.
He couldn't keep his big mouth shut,
he never told it right.
He had to resign in disgrace
now he's a sorry sight.

        O thick clouds of mace and pepper spray,
        pepper spray,
        O thick clouds of mace and pepper spray.

A press conference for Jean Chretien
(the "Shawinigan strangler" of late)
He said to the reporters
"I put pepper on my plate" (sing with his accent)
"Water cannons, baseball bats," (sing with his accent)
Spin doctors were too late.

        O thick clouds of mace and pepper spray,
        pepper spray,
        O thick clouds of mace and pepper spray.

Oh Chretien and you Liberals
it's time to turf you out
if you don't leave of your own will
we're gonna kick and shout
We all want you gone today,
of that there is no doubt,

        O thick clouds of mace and pepper spray,
        pepper spray,
        O thick clouds of mace and pepper spray.

[The following article is based on telephone interviews with protesters, organizers, and eyewitnesses at yesterday's "Welcome Chretien" demonstration in Vancouver. First-hand accounts were provided by Julie, Aiyanas, Martha, William, John, Marion, Jon, Zoe, Darryl, Nora, Jamie and Matt. Further information was used from corporate media reports on the web -- the Vancouver Sun, Vancouver Province and the Globe and Mail -- as well as CBC Radio.]

RIOT POLICE BLOODY PROTESTERS AT ANTI-CHRETIEN DEMO IN VANCOUVER

MORE THAN ONE YEAR AFTER APEC, PRIME MINISTER RETURNS TO VANCOUVER

9 ARRESTS MADE FOR "UNLAWFUL ASSEMBLY", OTHERS INJURED AND HOSPITALIZED

by Jaggi Singh
for A-Infos and the Direct Action Media Network
http://www.tao.ca/earth/damn/
http://www.a-infos.ca and http://damn.tao.ca
[posted Wednesday, December 9th, 1998]
 

Close to 2000 demonstrators (700, according to the Vancouver police) gathered at the Hyatt Hotel in rainy downtown Vancouver yesterday evening to protest outside a $400/plate fundraiser for the governing Liberal Party of Canada. The focus of the demonstration was Prime Minister Jean Chretien, who was making his first public visit to Vancouver since the infamous Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leader's Summit last November 1997.

The "Welcome Chretien" demonstration was organized and supported by wide cross-section of Vancouver groups and individuals: unions, socialist parties, student organizations, anti-poverty groups, youth organizations, alternative media outlets and other coalitions and collectives. The protest was spearheaded by "Democracy Street"
<http://democracy-street.tao.ca> which represents 27 protesters who are pursuing a lawsuit against the government and police for their conduct at last year's APEC Summit.

The large and animated mobilization yesterday evening was marred, however, when riot police were deployed from inside the Hyatt. Armed with shields, batons, rubber bullet guns and police dogs, they attempted to disperse demonstrators from Burrard Street in front of the posh hotel.

The police made a concerted effort not to use pepper spray and repeat the images of last November. Ironically, weeks ago Prime Minister Chretien defended the use of pepper spray as "more civilized" than baseball bats. Yesterday, batons were the chosen weapon of Vancouver's "civilized" police.

Many demonstrators were injured and bloodied as the riot police --officially termed the "Crowd Control Unit" -- began beating their shields in unison and attacked the crowd of protesters.

According to Marion, who attended the protest as a legal observer, "Riot police swarmed out, switched places with the VPD [Vancouver Police Department], and just started beating people."

In the words of William, who helped organize the protest and was filming the demo, "[The riot police] were pushing [protesters] back with shields and then started swinging clubs. People were getting absolutely clocked."

According to Martha, who had her camera broken by the police, "[The riot police] just came forward and started swinging. I tried to step back, but there was no where to go." In her words, "People cleared out after people were injured."

Darryl, who received four blows to the shoulder, described the actions of the police as "disgusting" since they were striking at demonstrators were attempting to back up.

Many demonstrators were badly injured. According to media reports, at least 4 people were hospitalized, but everyone was soon released and no injuries deemed life threatening.

At the scene, the demonstration's medical team, which set up across the street at a bus shelter, was treating dozens of people for injuries as a result of baton blows. William observed at least two or three people who were unconscious. In his words, there were "three or four people with serious scalp wounds" and "six people [were] laying on the ground with gaping head wounds."

Other demonstrators received bruises and cuts. One protester received a black eye from an officer, and was also grabbed by his nostrils.

The brutality and provocations incensed demonstrators, who remained outside the hotel for up to 45 minutes while surrounded by riot police. Ironically, a second unit of riot police that made an appearance was led by Staff-Sergeant Hugh Stewart of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), infamous for his liberal use of pepper spray at APEC (He was quickly dubbed Sergeant Pepper).

The demonstrators eventually left the front of the Hyatt and moved to the police station at Main Street and Cordova where 9 arrested protesters were being detained. From there, a smaller crowd moved to the Main Skytrain station, where over a hundred entered without paying and proceeded to occupy the station for some time.

Police intimidation and brutality started well before the arrival of the
riot police. During the demo, protesters who were blockading entrances had their hair pulled, necks twisted and had bikes shoved against them by police. According to one account, one person's nose was yanked by a VPD officer. Another person had his banner grabbed away (for the record, it read: "Human need, not corporate greed"). Apparently, these actions served no other purpose than to try to provoke demonstrators.

Before the arrival of the riot squad, the atmosphere of the protest was, by most accounts, festive and militant. The demonstration had managed to block off most entrances to the posh hotel. Members of Food Not Bombs, APEC ALERT <http://www.cs.ubc.ca/spider/fuller/apec_alert> and other individuals also engaged in civil disobedience, willing to risk arrest to ensure an effective blockade. Chants of "No suits, no suits" could be heard at one site on Melville Street. The sound truck for the demo, however, was not permitted to get near the hotel.

Food Not Bombs had a street serving, and Las Cacaphonistas, a street protest band, played throughout. A giant Chretien puppet weaved in the crowd, occasionally being peppered with mock spray. Two protesters, Nora and Jamie, were offering up impromptu fashion commentaries through megaphones. Observing the well-heeled attendees of the fundraiser, Jamie yelled, "Take a good look at them, and take a good look at us, and let's play "Guess my income!""

According to a VPD police spokesperson, the pretext for the use of riot police, who could be observed through windows on the second floor of the hotel prior to deployment, was a supposed "breach" of police barricades.

This "breach incident" occurred when some demonstrators attempted to enter the hotel at the main entrance. Nine of them were eventually arrested. One of the people who tried to enter the Hyatt was punched by a police officer, bloodied, and received stitches on her face. Along with many others, she is considering laying charges for assault.

It was after the arrests were made that the riot police were deployed, for no ostensible purpose but to scare and intimidate demonstrators outside the hotel.

While the arrests were happening, the Vancouver Sun reports that the 1300 guests inside the hotel were singing "O Canada", the national anthem of the Canadian state.

The crowd inside was described by the Vancouver Province as "impeccably coiffed." Some guests were quite upset at the blockade and demo. The Province quotes one Vancouver businessman: "I certainly respect their right to protest, but I think they should respect my right to get in to hear the prime minister speak." He neglected to mention the $400 price tag for his "right", not to mention the riot police defending it outside.

Pre-publicity for yesterday's demo included posters with Chretien's face reading, "Wanted: for Crimes Against Democracy." The demonstration focused its opposition to the economic policies of the Liberal government, specifically the embracing of corporate-style globalization of which APEC is just one manifestation. Many of the demonstrators were overtly anti-capitalist, rejecting all the mainstream parties that dominate political discourse in middle-class Canada.

The demo also focused on APEC. Chretien has come under fire recently in the mainstream media and elsewhere as a result of documents implicating him in the repression of dissent at the University of British Columbia (UBC) during APEC. It is alleged that the heavy-handed police response at UBC -- including indiscriminate pepper-spraying, nabbing of activists, removal of signs and banners, and more -- was all undertaken to appease former dictator General Suharto of Indonesia who was threatening not to attend the conference for fear of embarrassment.

In all, 9 arrests have been confirmed from yesterday's demo: Ian, Tina, Ivan, Mike, Cyrus, Jodi, Sid, Aiyanas and Anton. They are a mix of anti-poverty activists, Food Not Bombs members, APEC ALERT-ers, environmentalists and students from UBC and SFU. They were all charged with "unlawful assembly" and released in the early morning without conditions.

A judge elsewhere has already ruled the unlawful assembly provision of the Criminal Code "constitutionally unoperational". This is a result of a challenge by members of Montreal's Commando Bouffe, who expropriated food from the posh Queen Elizabeth Hotel last December 3rd, 1997. The case is now before the Quebec Supreme Court. Yesterday's arrested protesters have yet to receive a court date for a charge that may not even legally exist.

[The above article will be updated as more information becomes available.]

Hi, my name is Mike Clinchy

   I was asked by Megan from the "Jean Chretien welcoming committee" to speak to people, and the media (aka the THOUGHT POLICE), about my experiences during the protest at the Hyatt hotel in Vancouver on Dec 8, as I was one of the nine people arrested.

   I am a 34-year-old Ph.D. student (yes I'm a bit old but but I took time off to work between degrees) in the Dept of Zoology at UBC.
   My area of research is wildlife biology, so I'm very familiar with the behaviour of wild animals, such as the chanting, grunting, silverback gorillas dressed as STORMTROOPERS, that I saw at the Hyatt.

   I live at the UBC campus and I had participated in some of the Anti-APEC demonstrations on campus last year. I went down to the Hyatt to express my disgust with the global corporate agenda once again.

   It was not my plan to engage in civil disobedience, nor to get arrested, but this should not be misinterpreted by the THOUGHT POLICE (who may be reading this) as in any way indicating my opinion  (which should be of no interest to anybody but me) about anyone whose plan it was to engage in civil disobedience.

   I was standing outside the police tape line near the south-east (Main) entrance to the Hyatt, with about 20 or 30 other people.  Several people ran up Burrard St, followed by about 100 or so onlookers.

  A handful of people (a total of 6 were arrested) ran past the police tape line (which I did not witness) and had run towards the front doors (which I did witness).

  As people moved up Burrard I moved onto the sidewalk in front of the entrance to the Royal Bank bldg, to the south of the police tape line set to block access to the driveway to the Hyatt.

   I had consciously decided NOT to cross the police tape lines and had moved to the sidewalk to the south to see what happened to the people that rushed the front doors.

  The handful of people that had rushed the front doors had been restrained and were lying face down on the pavement BEFORE the riot police (hereafter referred to as NAZIS or STORMTROOPERS) ran out of the Hyatt to confront the people on the sidewalk.

  The NAZIS formed a phalanx of about 12 across and 3 deep. There was at least 30 feet separating the NAZIS from people on the sidewalk, none of whom were making any motion towards the NAZIS.  Instead, the NAZIS began advancing on the people on the sidewalk.  The NAZIS advanced beating their batons against their shields, grunting (which was the most surreal element), and chanting in unison.

  This is not meant as a rhetorical flourish, but my perception, which was that of a bunch of silverback gorillas dressed in SS STORMTROOPER uniforms.

  The NAZIS got to where I was and were yelling at people to move back.

   I knew I had NOT crossed the police line and that I was in a PUBLIC SPACE.

   I also knew that if there's one elementary lesson to be learned from the history of the 20 th century, it's that "you don't give ground to NAZIS"!  So when the NAZIS yelled at me directly I sat down.  When they grabbed me I went limp.  I know what NAZIS are, so I knew I was going to be beaten, which I was. I knew I would probably be arrested, which I was.  And I knew I would probably be hauled off to jail, which I was.  But there was really no decision, "you don't give ground to NAZIS", PERIOD. It's not open for debate.  I'm surprised even now at how completely emotionless the whole experience was.

   I wasn't angry that they brought out STORMTROOPERS so much I was analyzing what this meant.  Fascism is the last resort of capitalism, so this said to me that the capitalists inside are becoming truly afraid.

   When the NAZIS were banging their batons and grunting I recognized this for what it was, which in zoology is referred to as the "threat display" of an animal, and I am not an animal, but a rational human being, so I decided calmly and rationally to sit down and relax and thereby provide ABSOLUTELY NO EXCUSE for violent action to be taken against me.

   The THOUGHT POLICE (aka the media) have implied that all 9 people arrested had rushed the front doors. There were 6 people who had rushed the front doors, who were already restrained BEFORE the NAZIS came out. I and two other men (Sid and Ian), who were beside me, and had sat down when I did, were the other 3 people arrested.

  The three of us had not crossed the police tape line, we were in a public space, and we had all responded to the NAZI advance by sitting down, and then going limp.  Every time the THOUGHT POLICE repeat that there were 9 people arrested who were rushing the front doors, KNOW THAT THEY ARE LYING.

   Obviously, I did not see what happened after I was beaten and arrested but I gather that most people did as I did and simply sat down in the face of the NAZI onslaught, and many were savagely beaten by the NAZIS.

   This was not an incidence of "police violence", this was an incidence of "STATE VIOLENCE".

   In between my MSc and my PhD I worked for Agriculture Canada in Ottawa.  I know full well that the first inviolable rule of bureaucracy is CYA, "cover your ass", and this applies as much to the police as to any other bureaucracy.
   The best way to CYA is to never take personal responsibility for anything, and this is achieved by having every action taken be approved and signed in triplicate by your superiors.
  These forms signed in triplicate are then exchanged for other forms signed in triplicate that very slightly alter the meaning, which are then exchanged for other forms, etc, etc, so that the top bureaucrat can claim she/he never approved the action taken by the lowest bureaucrat, and THEY BOTH HAVE FORMS TO PROVE IT!
   Somewhere, somebody has to have signed a form in triplicate authorizing the release from police stores of the actual equipment used to commit violence (batons, shield, etc). Somewhere else somebody signed a form authorizing transportation of the equipment to the site (undoubtedly stipulating the nature of the vehicle to be used and which sub-unit the mileage was to be charged to). ETC, ETC.

   Once again, this was not "police violence" this was "state violence".  Consequently, the appropriate response seems to me to be political action rather than legal action (since ALL the bureaucrats have forms signed in triplicate PROVING that they were not LEGALLY responsible).

Michael Clinchy
Dept of Zoology, UBC

Woo hoo!

This is my little account of events at the Hyatt. I am not going to try to be comprehensive. I'm just going to pick a few highlights. If enough of us put our stories online, we'll have a much fuller picture of the event than any cheesy mainstream news story. We're more objective too...
-------------------

Protesting Chretien at the Hyatt: an examination of the psychology of the police officer
 

Anticipating police violence, I left my bicycle at work and walked to the protest, figuring it would be easier to run from unruly police without a bike. I arrived at just about 6PM, the scheduled start time.

The crowd had formed nicely, already numbering over 700. People were positively pissed and pissedly positive. When a protest connects with your soul, you know it's going to be a good one.

Skip to underground parking lot entrance...

The crowd was split up into concentrated groups at the major entrances to the hotel. I found myself face to face with a cop with about one hundred pissed off but calm protestors behind me at the entrance to the underground parking lot. We jeered the Liberal Party dinner attendees as they entered. We jeered them down to their fucking spines. That had an impact.

One particular man, however, with $400 to spend on ensuring that his status remained quoed, didn't look particularly shaken. He gave us an obnoxious wink and a kiss and then turned to walk in. I guess he was trying to anger us, and I guess he kind of did. But if he thought that he won some kind of moral victory there, I'd have to say he was wrong. Maybe if he stepped into the crowd and French kissed us and took off his clothes and had sex with us, then I'd say he'd have gained something. Otherwise he just looked... well, obnoxious.

The only thing separating us from the parking lot was a thin plastic police tape and a row of cops who were not heavily armed. It would have been very easy to enter here. I was amazed at the poor security. But I was also betting that, behind the bend, just out of our view, were mobs of over-zealous riot cops waiting for us. So I didn't make any particular effort to rush the parking lot.

We all slowly took the plastic tape down, without the cops noticing. When they eventually clued in, they tried to put it back up. One cop asked me to step off the tape and I told him "it's already down" pointing to the rest of it, and he realized I was right and couldn't do anything about it. That was kind of fun.

So now I was face to face with a cop, a female officer. It's funny, the police force is 99% male but whenever they want to appear friendly for the media, more female faces appear. Not that this cop looked friendly. She looked as dumb as the rest of them.

At one point she asked the fellow beside me to step back behind the line, referring to the fallen police tape which was somehow supposed to act as a barrier. But the ground had several painted lines as well, and so the guy asked her, mockingly, "which line? This line? This line? Or this line?" pointing to all the painted lines but not the police tape. It was quite funny. Yet I also knew that, in her little brain, the cop was appropriating his act of political rebellion as an act of childish disrespect.

So I decided to go for her head.

She was trying hard not to look at us in the eyes, just like all the other cops were. It's like when you're on the bus or subway but even sillier. By not looking at you in the eyes, the cops are trying to maintain their authority over you and also demonstrate that they don't care about what you say. Occasionally a cop will try to intimidate you by staring in your eyes but that's always great fun because then you get to stare back and they have to turn away first because they can't afford to get caught in a stare-down but you can. They have to monitor the crowd but you get to observe their features.

So, in an attempt to break her concentration and force her to reassess the power dynamics of the situation, I said to her, calmly and surely, "perhaps you should clarify which line you are referring to." Of course, it was obvious which line she meant, that I was just trying to prod her, but I said it in such a calm way and addressed it to her so normally, that her pre-cop instinctual reaction was to listen. I saw her eyes turn towards me, but then, as she registered what I had said, she knew I had poked her badly, and she turned her eyes away. Then, briefly, an uncontrollable angry frown came across her face. She managed to wipe it away, but not in time. I had made my mark.

After that, I almost felt kind of guilty. So a minute later, I said to her, again calmly and respectfully, "you know, the only reason we're antagonizing you is because you antagonize us." I guess I had established myself in her mind with my earlier comment, so she tried to reply this time, but she couldn't think of much to say.

I'm hoping she took that home with her. Demoralizing authority is very effective.

Skip to the scuffle outside the main entrance...

I arrived just after the cops had hit people with batons. What had they done to provoke the cops? What was their crime? They tried to walk into the hotel. I later heard that my friend Caleb was clubbed hard and bleeding from the head. The oh-so-violent Caleb.

I was off to the side a bit. There was an opening in the police barricade and a few of us were standing there. The police, realizing that they had left an opening, freaked out and rushed over to block us off, even though we were making no motion to move forward. All of a sudden, immediately before me I saw this huge, THING. I looked up and it was a riot cop, decked out with heavy armour, a riot shield and a baton.

Now we all know theoretically that riot cops are big. But this was hilarious! It literally took me a second to register that these were actually people wanting to bash my head in. They looked so large that the intimidation factor was lost on me. It's like a bug being scared by a human being --- it doesn't happen, bugs are more likely to be scared by a spider, something more their size. You need to comprehend something for it to be scary. Considering that intimidation is such a key element in riot policing, I'd have to say that they're doing a bad job.

So I wasn't scared.

Then, crazier still, from behind the baton-wielding cops came an even more enormous figure, thick, THICK with armor, and waving around a tear gas cannon. It was this huge bazooka-like cannon, and he was aiming it straight at us, ready to blast it.

Have you ever played the video game "Doom"? It's a violent 3-D action game where you go around blowing peoples' heads off. Well, this guy looked JUST like a Doom opponent. His face was SO intense, waving that high-tech cannon at us. This was war, and he loved it. He'd been waiting for this moment all his riot-cop life.

And you know what? I wasn't scared then either. Literally, the first instinct I had when I saw him was to reach over and hit the CTRL key to fire my plasma gun. Was this supposed to be scary? Well it wasn't. It was laughable. I stood there, waiting to be tear gassed, waiting to go down in pain. He was THIS CLOSE to blasting that gas right in my face. But I just stood there, thinking, "man, this is ridiculous."

Thankfully, I never got gassed. We were just too calm to warrant an attack at that moment. The chaotic --ness stemmed only from the cops themselves.

Would I have been scared if they gassed me? Probably not. I would have been in great pain, yes, but not scared. I know what I'm doing. I believe in what I am doing, strongly. I believe in it more strongly than the cops believe in themselves. I heard from the inside that for APEC at UBC the RCMP shipped in masses of cops from the rural stations of B.C., with the idea being that they were rowdier and would be more brutal with the protestors. Apparently the local RCMP and Vancouver Police Dept. officers were disgusted when they learned that their authorities were going to such tasteless lengths.

They are breaking apart. Internal divisions. They are losing faith in what they are doing.

And we are gaining faith in what we are doing. It can only get better.

Shiraz Dindar
==================================

Western Protest Rights Diminished
By Gary Morton

   In the last SprayPec episode the Prime Minister said he likes pepper on his plate, in this episode he likes to see protesters tenderized by Billy Clubs first. Big Jean says he used to stage protests in old Quebec and that he knows the mechanics. But I would say that he doesn’t. And neither do the RCMP.

   In Western Canada protesters have had their privacy invaded and rights removed. They’ve been sprayed and beaten. This has happened on a much smaller scale in Ontario, though in Ontario there has been a lot of protest activity since 1996. I have covered many of those Ontario protests and have files on them on the web at
http://www.interlog.com/~cjazz/action6.htm

   One recent protest covered in the file is called Campus Coalition Protests Tory Fundraiser. It is an example of an almost identical protest to the one at the Hyatt out West. This one being in Toronto on (Oct 7/98) where students marched right into a Tory fundraiser and took over the stage. It ended peacefully without a mass riot attack – though one person got picked off by guards after the action and beaten.

   So when Big Jean says he knows the mechanics, he is saying he knows how to use force. The RCMP clubbed people who may have gotten inside, when the facts are that protesters would not have posed a threat if they did get inside. They would do what we did in Toronto. Disrupt the event by stealing the stage and speaking and eventually a deal would be struck and they would march out.

   The point here is there was no need for violence. And if the protest had been in Toronto there likely wouldn’t have been any.

   Another example is the Hands Off Street Youth Rally by the Street Kids, Anti Racist Action, Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, Food not Bombs and others August 22nd in Toronto. 1,000 demonstrators took over the road and marched to police station 52. Once there speakers denounced the police war on the poor. Riot cops were present, I even had a friendly chat with some of them on what a louse Mike Harris is – and they didn’t attack. If it had been out West people would’ve been arrested, sprayed and beaten.

   Other actions include the Education a Debt Sentence student protest where students blocked an intersection at rush hour, the Student Bank Sit-in where students took over a downtown bank tower for an entire night, the Free Tibet Protest out front of a Toronto Hotel and the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty's Neighbourhood Tour which was an illegal march through the streets of downtown Toronto. In all of these situations the Toronto Riot police allowed these protests to carry on to peaceful conclusions. The protest point was made and democracy was well served.

   So why don’t people in BC have the right to protest?  A key seems to be the involvement of the RCMP and federal liberal advisors. The RCMP are politically motivated and they openly hate the protesters. The liberals are also politically inclined. Free Trade and APEC are sacred liberal cows. They were content in their game of selling Canada and its sovereignty as a nation off as some sort of commodity on the international markets. Then protesters emerged in BC and started questioning the whole thing. It is obvious that the RCMP and the government want the protest movement on the Coast crushed. In Ontario where the many protest groups are well connected they are left alone for the most part, though there are some gross violations like the shooting of Dudley George.

   Another thing that bugs me is the liberal refusal to answer to the issues. Big Jean says dialogue with the protesters was not on the agenda. And I had the same experience with my lobby effort to ban pepper spray. Answering mail is not on the agenda of liberal MPs so I never get an answer to my pepper spray posts to them.

   One answer I want to get is why the spray is legal when Special Agent Thomas Ward of the Firearms Training Unit in Quantico, Virginia, who authored the1989 study that approved the spray, ended up pleading guilty in February 1996 to charges of accepting $57,000 in payments from the manufacturer of Cap-Stun.  Also -- Joe Cummins, Professor of Genetics, in London, Ontario has recently pointed out that the spray can be a culprit in genetic damage and says that officials promoting use of the lethal toxin without health warning are more than just negligent; they are perverse and probably criminal.

   Though my questions are reasonable the government doesn’t answer and I suspect that on the protest rights issue and spray, we are in the same boat as on the poverty issue. A United Nations committee just said that none of our political parties have made a real effort on behalf of the poor and homeless. And in spite of their words – Manning, the NDP and so on don’t really want help on SprayPec.

   I think people will likely be SprayPec –ed and tenderized for many more years.
=============================

WESTENDER
December 17, 1998
Brian Peterson
"EVIL BRAIN"

        Sergeant Pepper, cowardly Chretien stand solid in face of change.

EVIL BRAIN
 -- Sergeant Pepper, cowardly Chretien stand solid in face of change.  What's with all this crap I keep hearing about running down biased reporters?
        I'm a television producer, pop culture columnist and theatre critic and I've never had an unbiased thought in my entire life!
        My friend Sid Tan says, "Social change doesn't happen until you can motivate people to march in the streets."
        I guess I agree.
        So there I was outside the Hyatt on Dec. 8, ostensibly to do some actual research for this column but more to see if maximum jerk Jean Crouton might toss us a $400 dinner roll from the balcony in lieu of addressing the complaints of the citizens over whom he balanced the budget!
        Despite the rain, the atmosphere was a carnival with 1,000 citizens peacefully demonstrating in the streets.  I hooked up with a glib friend and we tried to get some satirical chants going.
        Outside the blocked parking garage our cries of  "No Justice, No
Parking!" failed to stike a chord.  "I'm white, I'm straight, I'm sorry!" met a similar fate.
        I moved around to the thinly guarded Burrard St. entrance and joined in a round of Taunt the Rich Liberals who were skulking in through the police cordon.  "Choke on it! Give your four hundred bucks to charity!"
        "Bring me your doggie bag!" I threw in petulantly just as a flying wedge of six youth stupidly arrowed through the police line to get a taste of the short, sharp shock.
        Then it was bang-bang-bang: clubs on shields as the riot squad impressively gestapo'd out.  The regular cops had control restored; then they stepped aside and let the squad wade in and thrash student and grandma alike.  I watched a riot cop look a woman from Food Not Bombs (call 215-9039 if you want to help feed the hungry) right in the eye, then bash her on the beak.
        As she fell, he pulled his badge off his breast and pocketed it.
Nice touch, hero.
        The squad was well equipped with the latest armor and hurt sticks, but I found it curious that they lacked a single megaphone to give directions to the crowd.  Why's Anne Drennan spouting the line to the media and not protecting the citizens in these tense circumstances?
        The rally organizers got everyone to sit down extremely quickly.
The chants turned to "The people seated will never be defeated!" as the wet tarmac soaked our asses and word came that another 40 riot cops under the command of Sergeant Pepper himself, Hugh Stewart, were preparing to sweep down Burrard.
        "Great , he can take the fall for this fiasco, too!" Citizens chuckled nervously as they covered their faces with bandannas and dust masks.
        Then word came that the police felt nervous about people covering their faces.  If we hadn't been seated I'm sure we would've fallen down laughing.  "How about losing your face shields, riot boys?"
        I was relieved when the rally marched off to the Main St. cop shop to free the nine arrested protesters.  Moving onto the lower West Side brought out a fierce reaction from the residents. "The cops beat my husband to death yesterday!" shrilled a First Nations woman with a megaphone.  "The violence you've just experienced is an everyday occurrence for those of us who live here."
       When the cops announced everyone would be released as soon as the crowd dispersed, the dwindling crowd marched down Main to the Skytrain station, but I hung in with a newsfinder bud who was monitoring the police frequencies on his scanner.
        "They're talking about grabbing some of the protesters who really pissed them off."
        He stood poised with his Betacam, but suddenly a totally scorched crackhead came cartwheeling up to the riot line and spewed, "Hey-faroutman! Whatreyalldressedupfer?"
        "It's a parade." A riot cop pointed up Main with his club. "They
went thataway!"
        The freak strode off and the scene defused.  The next day I ran into my friend Sid who was limping from where he took a bat on the knee and ankle.  He was seated passively on the ground, arms linked with two other protesters, when the cops  beat and arrested him without laying any charges.
        He's working up his considerable indignation and activist resources to seek redress.  I pity da fools who run afoul of him.
        We're deep into the finger pointing part of the caffufle now.  But does it really matter who crossed the line and who swung  back too hard?
        Lay the blame on the arrogant Prime Minister, who won't make himself available to the dissatisfied citizenry for five minutes of Q and A.
        You suck Jean, and if you don't face up you're going to need the army to surround you next time you want to panhandle on our corners.

        By Brian Peterson:   Westender, Dec. 17, 1998