MONTRÉAL (CUP)—Havoc broke out within minutes of Montréal’s 14th annual anti-police brutality march, resulting in dozens of arrests.

Arresting large groups somewhat arbitrarily, riot police gathered people and cornered them against a wall. The two sides remained in a standoff for over an hour before the protesters were loaded into city buses and carted to a police station in the city’s east end.

Michael Connors, a Concordia University Journalism student, was in a standoff against police with about 30 other people at the corner of Hochelaga Street and Prefontaine Street.

“Basically none of the people in that group were the ones performing any of the protests,” Connors said while at the police station. “It felt more like we were used as examples for the rest of the crowd. We were unlucky, in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Connors—alongside everybody else who was cuffed, searched and led to one of three city buses—received a citation for being at an illegal assembly.

Crowds of demonstrators gathered outside the Pie-IX subway station in the east end of Montréal beginning around 5pm on March 15.

Before leading the crowd south along Pie-IX Boulevard, organizers made an appeal to both the demonstrators and police to remain calm and peaceful.

The plea was quickly forgotten.

A smaller group of demonstrators, dressed head-to-toe in black clothing, were seen coming from a driveway on Pie-IX Boulevard, many reaching into garbage cans and under vehicles, grabbing full garbage and grocery bags.

Minutes later, after turning east on to Ontario Street, a BB gun shot was fired. Paintballs were fired as the marchers encountered the first group of police, dressed in full riot gear, with some on horseback.

As a warning, police tapped their billy clubs against the shields.

In response, firecrackers were launched at police, eventually provoking a brawl that saw four or five men, alleged to be undercover cops, flee the pack of marchers.

Though organizers never revealed the path for the march, police seemed prepared, armed and ready at almost every turn.

Demonstrators were chanting, “Fuck the police,” “Liberer nos camarades,” and calling police “assassins.”

Some said the police presence was too strong at the march, which has developed a reputation for becoming violent.

“Sometimes the police act violently towards protesters, and that’s unacceptable,” said Stefan Christoff, a social activist, musician and journalist based in Montréal. “But really, what I think is important today is why so many people are protesting, and why those numbers are increasing every March 15.”

Approximately 200 people participated in the 1998 march, while last year’s event drew over 2000.

Last year, over 220 people were arrested. Six police cruisers were vandalized, some of them being lit on fire.
—files from Adam Avrashi

On February 16 Christian groups on campus participated in a “Mass and March” to nonviolently protest the negative impacts of the Olympic Games.

The mass was held in St Mark’s chapel, located at Iona Drive, on Ash Wednesday. Afterwards, spectators marched down Wesbrook to Thunderbird Stadium, where women’s hockey takes place.

St. Mark’s and Corpus Christi were also present. The event was endorsed by groups such as Streams of Justice, the Regent College Students’ Association and Servants Vancouver.

In an interview prior to the protest, acting Vice President of the UBC chapter of the Student Christian Movement (SCM) Emily Hopkins explained the aim of this demonstration.

“SCM was trying to come up with a response to the Olympics and trying to figure out who we were protesting and what exactly we were protesting,” she said. “We want to make it clear that homelessness and poverty are things we are all responsible for and can all address, because as Jesus said, ‘whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine you did for me,’ said Hopkins, quoting the book of Matthew 25:40.

Several minutes before the march, the atmosphere at St Mark’s was tense, as the group of about 38 students and adults gathered under the surveillance of police officers on both foot, motorbike and vehicle. There were also two helicopters circling directly above the St Mark’s area. Two Legal Observers were also asked to join the event, who recorded the students’ interactions with the police in case anything were to get out of hand.

SCM president Greg Williams remarked on his mixed feels towards the march and the security. “I’m nervous, but that’s what they’re designed to do,” he said.

Meanwhile, Chris Miller from SCM at York University led a brief workshop in non-violent demonstration and SCM member Neil Jongbloed led the group in song.

“With the songs and readings from the Bible, we hope to express some of the different emotions and attitudes we experience in our efforts to follow Jesus, especially in his call to serve the marginalized around us,” said Jongbloed.

“We’ll sing songs that recognize our distance from God, songs that express His call to serve the poor…looking forward to the day when poverty will indeed be history.”

Jongbloed explained the significance of having the demonstration on Ash Wednesday, which is the first day of Lent and when Christians place ashes on their foreheads as a sign of repentance.

“By the ashes on our foreheads we’re recognizing that we ourselves have sinned against the poor and the homeless, by things we have done and things we have failed to do,” he explained.

With this mark of distinction, the marchers continued singing down Westbrook waving big posters with messages such as “Homes for ALL,” “Apathy is a sin” and “STOP Social Cleansing of the DTES.”

The four police officers on foot followed the march the entire way to and from the Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Winter Sports Centre. Despite the increased amount of security down Wesbrook, the protesters and officers interacted well. “If there’s no traffic, you have nothing to worry about,” an officer told them.

However, during the demonstration at the Sports Centre the group was confined to a patch of grass between the lanes of Wesbrook. The group was threatened with arrest if they were to step on to the road.

At the end of the demonstration, Miller was clearly shaken by this news and the amount of restriction. “Who are you protecting?” he yelled at the officers as the march continued back to St Mark’s.

Most spectators watching the day’s game at at the Sports Centre strolled past the group with smiles or ignorance while others explained to their guests the issue of poverty in Vancouver. “There’s a huge homeless problem…a huge drug problem here,” said a fan on the street.

“People who are protesting the Olympics aren’t doing so because they hate sports, or just because they want to ruin the party,” Jongbloed emphasized in response to criticism of the protests. “The Olympics have become all about image, about being the best, about individual achievement.

“I don’t think Jesus cares all that much about these things. He cares way more about things like justice, humility, and sacrificial love. And I’m not that sure he’d feel that welcome in the Olympic venues—he was homeless, after all.”

Click here to view the slideshow.

A 6pm on Monday protesters gathered in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery to speak-out against “war mongering,” torture, and “global economic fascism.”

As the protest wound through the streets of Downtown Vancouver, the organizers periodically stopped to present mock gold medals for achievements such as warmongering to Stephen Harper, Michael Ignatieff, and General Hillier. The protest was peaceful and civil, with no known altercations between protesters and police. It attracted the interest of many tourists, who stopped to take photos and interact with the crowd.

The march ended at the “Olympic Tent Village” which was set-up earlier in the day on an empty lot between Abbott and Carrall on Hastings.
—Michael Thibault

By 1pm on Monday, DTES residents and volunteers from across the city had started construction of a tent village on a vacant lot between Abbot and Carrall on Hastings. The demonstration started at a rally in Pigeon Park nearby the vacant lot, and as protesters marched around the nearby streets they chanted now-familiar slogans like “2010 homes not 2010 Games.”

Amongst the supporters was City Councilor and UBC Alumni Ellen Woodsworth, who has been an outspoken critic of the effects the Olympics and misallocation of resources. The tent village is endorsed by over 90 groups and has no plans to disseminate. The organizers have put out a general call for more volunteers to help support the community 24/7 “to protect the Tent Village.”
—Michael Thibault

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“There’s nothing I can possibly do as one person to stop the Olympics from happening,” said Kim Larson, a UBC Okanagan student who protested the torch relay in Kelowna a month ago.

“I wanted the people who went…to see the torch to think about the people who might have to sleep in that park that night.”

Larson is one of a growing number of protesters against the Olympics that are getting involved for the first time, according to Chris Shaw, a leading anti-Games protester.

“There’s a lot of people showing up and talking about showing up who have never held a protest in their life,” Shaw said. “The Olympics have done that thing they claim they are very good at—they’ve united a lot of people.”

Larson, who is pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in social work, doesn’t identify as an activist. “I am one of those people who has sat around drinking coffee with people, and said, ‘you know what sucks about the world?’

“I often share my opinions, but I never do anything about it.”

“The newcomers are not the traditional leftist groups that you would associate with this sort of protest,” said Shaw, a professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences at UBC Vancouver.

According to Shaw, the Olympic protest movement includes everyone from taxpayers’ advocates to businesspeople to simply interested citizens. “There are some single moms and single dads,” he said. “We have soccer moms and soccer dads.”

He said that this leads to some surprises when it comes to the protesters that arrive. “Some people are showing up for reasons that are more fiscal than poverty-related,” he said. “There are…Russians who are coming out to protest the [2014 Olympic] Sochi Games. I have no idea what their politics are.”

The public image of protesters varies, Shaw said. “There are a lot of people who follow the mainstream media [portrayal] that all of the protesters are bunch of black-clad, hoodie wearing, face-scarved hooligans who are intent on breaking windows and creating mayhem.

“I don’t think I fit into the black-hoodie brick-throwing type, but the police would like to pretend that we all do.”

Protesters have been cast as the party creating conflict, according to David Jefferess, assistant professor of Cultural Studies at UBC Okanagan. “From the media representation, the focus is on the event of the disruption, and not necessarily the context, not necessarily…the way the protesters figure within the conflict.”

Larson said she is proud of the Olympics, but wants to raise awareness of homelessness in Vancouver and abroad.

At the Kelowna torch relay celebration, Larson brought a sign that read, “Is this flame keeping the homeless warm?” and held it up right in front of the stage.

“There was about a chorus of 50 people telling me in not a nice way to take my sign down,” she said. “The police even came by and asked if I would like to move to the back.” According to Larson, they did not pressure her when she refused.

Shaw maintains that it is the issues that are bringing people together. “They’re doing that for a variety of reasons….A lot of people just don’t like how things have gone,” he said. “They didn’t sign up for this.”

Larson is happy with her protest, despite the disapproving looks. She found that a lot of people, including Kelowna Mayor Sharon Shepherd, came up to talk to her and discuss those issues.

“A few homeless people that are clients of the Drop-In Centre came to talk to me, and that was the most touching thing,” she said.

“Then [BC Premier] Gordon Campbell drove by, and gave me a big disapproving look as he was in his limo and read what my sign said….So that was funny.”

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Students, staff and faculty alike braved the cold and rain as the Olympic Torch passed through campus Friday night.

Thousands packed the streets—and buildings with good views—for hours across campus dressed in red and white, waiting for the arrival of the flame.

“It’s a once in a lifetime thing, you don’t see it on your campus that often,” said first-year Arts student Jaidev Subaiah.

The torch started at West Mall and Thunderbird Boulevard just before 6pm, and traveled north along Main Mall to University Boulevard where spectators were lined up on both sides of the street to catch a part of Vancouver history.

Cheers emanated through the crowd as torchbearer and UBC alumna Lena Ling passed the torch to Scott Tabachnick on University Boulevard.

It was a festive scene for hours at the muddy and newly beautified centre of campus. Bands, cheerleaders and troubadours entertained the crowd of close to 2000 that had congregated at the main celebration zone, but most stayed close to the road, angling for the perfect position to see the flame pass.

“It was really amazing just seeing it,” said Matthew Paine, a third-year Applied Sciences student. “I can’t believe it’s actually here.”

Not everyone was pleased with the torch coming to campus.

“I feel [the Olympics have] been hijacked by the athletes,” said Bryce Beckett, who was visiting campus to see the torch relay. “[I’m] pretty pissed off about the freedom of speech shit going on, where people are not allowed to speak down against the Olympics.”

A group of protesters, including outgoing AMS President Blake Frederick in his final full day in office, marched around the torch route carrying signs and shouting. While their protest was peaceful and their impact minimal, some were not pleased with their presence.

“When they say UBC students don’t want the torch, that’s not true,” said Christine Johnson, a first-year student in Human Kinetics.

UBC estimated the total attendance at 10,000 for the portion of the relay on campus. The torch continued to 10th and Sasamat, where a celebration site was set up, before heading downtown.

Students on University Boulevard stayed to watch performances by indie band Said the Whale and the UBC Symphonic Wind Ensemble.
—Samantha Jung

Students protest Olympics at Torch Relay

Despite a few dicey moments, the student protest of the Olympic Torch’s procession through campus ended peacefully, if not politely, on Thursday.

Olympic dissidents and enthusiasts alike endured the cold, wet weather and the presence of their ideological opponents to either denounce or praise the Olympics as the official beacon of the 2010 Winter Games came to campus before heading off to BC Place for the opening ceremonies on Friday.

The sight of the torch, its bearer surrounded by a crowd of police officers and watched from the sky by helicopters, produced excited cheers from the crowd’s Olympic supporters. The protesters, about 60 strong, booed and waved placards reading “corporations off campus” and “complacency is complicity.”

Tension flared between the groups throughout the protest, which began near the south entrance of the SUB before marching helter-skelter to the intersection of University Boulevard and Main Mall.

At one point, a group of Olympic supporters ran through the march and shouted “go back to Russia” at the protesters.

Rumours flew the day before the UBC leg of the relay that the protestors were going to try and extinguish the torch, attracting the attention of large media outlets such as CTV and CBC. However, it was only very tense between the members of the RCMP and the protestors when the torch ran by.

Some question the point of protesting an event that is past the point of being cancelled, but marching was a matter of principle for Rory Breasail, a UBC student who helped organize the protest.

“Just because something is happening doesn’t mean it’s not wrong,” he said. “I have to register my dissent, and everyone who feels like I do should register that dissent, especially when the eyes of the world are going to be watching.”

That dissent grows from a variety of areas. When Breasail said that his main issues with the Olympics are their high cost, infringement of civil liberties and rights, and promises broken by the Vancouver Organizing Committee, Morghain Gibbons, another organizer, chimed in with a new concern.

“I think the other important thing is the environmental destruction associated with the Olympics,” she said. “There’s all the carbon emissions, and there’s all the relationships with the sponsors with things like the tar sands.”

However, other UBC students paint the protesters’ criticisms as baseless.

“Some of [the reasons] may be valid from some points of view,” said second-year student Luke Yin. “But if you look at things objectively, none of them are that valid.”

Yin, who will participate in the opening and closing ceremonies of the Games as an athlete marshal, argued that the heavy security presence the Games will bring to Vancouver is justified by increased risk. He also said that most of the cost of the Games comes from infrastructure, which will endure after the Olympics conclude on February 28.

Though Breasail recognized his opinion is not held by all of his peers, and that the Olympics will go ahead whether he protested or not, he remained resolute.

“There’s going to be more people that are here to celebrate the torch, I’m under no illusions of that,” he said.

“But people have to see that there’s another side to it, and I think that’s important. It’s valid in and of itself.”
—Lewis Kelly

A Washington man and two Vancouver women have been charged in their role in the “Heart Attack” protests that left windows smashed on West Georgia.

18-year old Willow Riley and 22-year old Charlotte Hannah, from Vancouver, are charged with assaulting a police officer. Daniel Myers, a twenty-two year old Washington man, has been dealt weapons-related charges and is being investigated in regards to immigration issues.

The other four protesters, two men and two women, were released Saturday evening after being detained for breach of the peace.

The protests, which started as a homelessness awareness march, were darkened by property damage as protesters vandalized mailboxes and broke storefront windows.

Although Hasan Junaid, legal researcher for the B.C. Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA) said that the legal observers did not attend the Heart Attack protests, overall, relations have been good. “We’ve noticed that generally, overall, police and protesters have both been very well behaved on both sides,” he told The Ubyssey.
—Andrew Bates

Police forces and several thousand anti-Olympic protesters met in a tense clash outside of BC Place Friday night, as the 2010 Opening Ceremonies kicked off inside the stadium. The demonstration is, at present, the high watermark for anti-Games protest. Estimates of the peak size of the crowd range from three to five thousand.

The demonstrators converged on the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery Friday afternoon at around 2pm. The demonstration began with music, speeches from anti-games activists, and the occasional tense confrontation between protesters and pro-Games visitors.

The protestors gave varying reasons for attending.

“I think it’s just a few people who really benefit from it when most of us will have a huge debt to pay off,” said Mustafa Ururyar, a Political Science student at SFU. “It’s the crony capitalists of the big corporations who are close to the politicians that really make the money.”

At around 4pm the demonstration moved into the streets and proceeded east on Georgia. At its peak, the crowd stretched four blocks. It made its way along Homer, with a group of First Nations people leading the way with songs and chants.

Some onlookers expressed their annoyance with the protesters.

“I don’t believe in this. I’m proud to be a Canadian,” said Christina Garson, a Vancouver resident decked out in red and white. “I came to show the tourists that came to Canada that we are a wonderful country.”

Things became tense as the protest turned on Robson and BC Place Stadium came into view. VPD officers, some on horseback, assembled in a line on Beatty to block the demonstration. A standoff began. At 6pm, with the Opening Ceremonies playing on screens along the block, cops and protesters began pushing against one another. Some demonstrators grabbed pylons from along the street and threw them at the police line. The number of protesters dwindled after an announcement from organizers that the demo would return to the VAG. The protest ended at around 8pm. The VPD could not be reached by press time, though no arrests were observed.

See Monday’s issue of The Ubyssey for more extensive protest coverage.
—With files from Samantha Jung

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“Poverty is not a crime” and “resist police control” were the rallying cries of a group of over a hundred anti-Olympic protesters who converged at Victory Square to show their solidarity against what is being called an “Olympic security crackdown.”

“Anyone posing even a potential threat to Olympic Security is being subjected to police “friendly visits‚“ and blatant harassment,” asserted the event description. “We see the clear connection between Olympic repression and ongoing police intimidation and brutality.”

The demonstration, called “Solidarity in the Face of Police Repression,” began shortly after 6pm on Friday night with speeches from anti-Olympic activists. They spoke out against what they perceive to be the negative effects of the Games: the increasing incidents of police surveillance and brutality, the security build-up, the efforts to hide downplay poverty and homelessness on the Downtown Eastside, and the impact of the Games on aboriginal communities.

“The government we are dealing with is not our friend,” said Cease Wyss, an anti-Olympic activist and member of the Coast Salish First Nation, who spoke at Victory Square. “When I see Premier Campbell shaking hands with First Nations, it makes me vomit.”

“None of us are benefiting from this,” Wyss continued. “As a First Nations person, it makes me ill. There’s nothing about [the Olympics] that I believe people are benefiting from.”

“I’m sick of it,” said one demonstrator. “I’m sick of the lies. I’m sick of the juxtaposition of Olympic rings next to McDonald’s hamburgers.”

“This is our year, 2010,” said another demonstrator, who requested anonymity. “The Olympics are three weeks away and people are getting angrier and angrier.”

After rallying at the square, the mass of protesters moved down East Hastings Street, blocking traffic in the eastbound lane. The group formed around a pickup truck, which carried a loudspeaker. Some of the protesters lit torches and scattered leaflets. Vancouver police officers on bikes rode with the protest, directing traffic and, according to one officer, “making sure nobody gets run over.”

The demonstration snowballed along East Hastings. The peak number of protesters was estimated at 150, but a statement from No 2010, an anti-Olympic organization, put the number at 200. The protesters themselves were a varied bunch: among them were homeless people, working class people, anarchists and students. AMS President Blake Frederick, Student Legal Fund Society President Emily Griffiths and UBC alumna and ex-VP External Stefanie Ratjen were also in attendance. Frederick declined comment.

On several occasions, press photographers were harassed by a group of protesters dressed entirely in black, carrying black flags.

At around 7:15pm the demonstration blocked traffic at the intersection of Main and East Hastings for several minutes, holding up anti-Olympic banners to motorists. The VPD officers formed a wall between the motorists and protesters.

Shortly after, the demonstration proceeded down Main Street. It eventually rallied in front of Pacific Central Station, where after a short speech, an organizer announced that they would reconvene at the station at 8:30am on February 13, the day after the Opening Ceremonies. No arrests were reported.

According to a release from No 2010, after the demonstration, protesters confronted who they believed to be two plainclothes members of the Vancouver Integrated Security Unit (ISU) who had been with the protestors. By press time, neither the ISU nor the VPD could be reached for comment.

Editor’s Note: This is an updated version of a previous post.

People from all walks of life met at Victory Square on West Hastings and Cambie to protest the Olympic police crackdown, the displacement of the homeless and the Games themselves, in what is only to be the first of many large anti-Olympic demonstrations in the city.

The demonstration Friday night, called “Solidarity in the face of police repression,” began at 6pm with speeches and songs from anti-Games activists. There were several Vancouver Police Department officers on bikes standing by.

The mass then moved from the park onto East Hastings Street, and towards Main. Protesters formed around a pickup truck, and a few lit torches. When the demonstration reached Main Street just after 7pm, protesters formed up in the intersection and blocked traffic in all four directions, holding up anti-Olympic banners towards motorists.

VPD officers followed the mass, and directed traffic. There were no observed altercations between police and protesters.

Among the demonstrators were a few students, including AMS President Blake Frederick, Student Legal Fund Society President Emily Griffiths, and UBC alumnus and former VP External Stefanie Ratjen.

After blocking the Main and Hastings intersection for several minutes, the demonstration moved down Main Street. The march ended around 7:45pm in front of Pacific Central Station. An organizer announced plans for a similar protest, to begin at the station on the morning of February 13, the day after the Olympic opening ceremonies.

For more on this protest, see the Monday Issue of The Ubyssey.