[these camera-guys were there from a couple of the major news stations. when they noticed me taking pictures, they struck some poses, which i said looked nice. "don't worry," i told them, "you'll be on the cover of the star tomorrow." they laughed and said they didn't believe me. then the one on the right piped up and said "yeah, more like the communist star." nice one, buddy.]
[as the dozen-or-so police realize that this protest isn't going to stay put, or stay on the sidewalk, they scramble to figure out what to do. on their bikes, they attempt to box us in at college and elizabeth.]
[just when things seem to be dying down, we find a hole in the armor and spill out and down elizabeth, heading towards yonge and gerrard.]
[protestors spilling everywhere. cops confused as all hell.]
[a cop carved out of wood. another temporary blockade of police bikes. click to enlarge.]
[we arrive at yonge and gerrard to see that the protest is having an effect. there are about 50-75 police, on bikes and in cars, blocking yonge and gerrard going south. to the north, yonge street is empty and people line the streets as the torch makes it's way down.]
[standoff at yonge and gerrard. click to enlarge.]
[the improvised police "blockade" at yonge and gerrard. click to enlarge.]
[we determine the location of the torch and head north to yonge and college. the police are unable to catch up and retain us, so the intersection turns into a complete clusterfuck and blocks the torch's path. at this point, the torch is up around yonge and wellesley, and has to be "split in two" and diverted. apologies for the lack of focus. most of the time, i'm barely even looking through the viewfinder.]
[it's a weird scene at yonge and college. some people boo us, other people join us, and others just whip out their camera phones and start snapping photos. in a weird way, we've become just another aspect of the olympic spectacle for these people. a strange feeling to say the least. click to enlarge.]
[reinforcements arrive in the form of cars and horses. the spectators there to see the torch seem bewildered by the whole thing. click to enlarge.]
[the mounted police always piss me off most. i think if the horses knew that the work they were being forced to do was so unjust, they would be pissed too. click to enlarge.]
[some people there to see the torch are indeed quite... charming, as jeanette put it. in this bad photo, a man in a cowboy hat gives me the finger and calls me an asshole. off-camera: i return his sentiment.]
[we make our way up towards college and wellesley, even closer to the torch, and the mainstream media is swarming at this point. unfortunately, they aren't terribly interested in talking to the protestors. instead, this reporter asks dozens of spectators what they think of the protest ("it's ridiculous! these bums should go home!"), a nice "balanced" view.]
[somewhere around yonge and maitland, the cops bring in serious reinforcements and start being more serious about pushing people around. the intersection fills with somewhere between 150-200 cops, some of them looking like they just rolled out of bed and still putting on their uniforms. they fall into various formations and split the protest up on either side of yonge street. two minutes after this photo was taken, one of the apparent "leaders" of the squad said quietly to the cop in this photo "that guy over there (referring to one of the aboriginal protestors in a bandana), if something happens, take him out first." i ask loudly "who are you going to take out." the cop who said it says "we're not going to take out anybody" loudly. i ask her to repeat what she said to the other officer. she refuses.]
[at this point, it's impossible to move forward. but some of the protestors that have been split off make their way down to nathan phillips square and drop a banner to disrupt everyone's "good time."]
this blog post is pieced together from my recollection and documentation of the fast-moving events from last night. for a more articulate and complete retelling, check out the official torch block blog.
also, for an eyewitness report from someone who wasn’t actually a protestor, but who provides some good insight, check out nealj’s livejournal entry.
PLEASE NOTE: reposting of photos is welcome, but MUST be credited - “photos by karol orzechowski / decipherimages.com”
On June 18th, 2009, for the first time ever, an all ages show was held at the Project 165 space that I am a volunteer at. The show featured bands from Toronto and Halifax, and was so fucking loud I almost couldn’t stand it. It was part of a larger installation of the Remember Who’s Emma project, a film that I made the DVD menu for. The director of the film, Lyndall Musselman, put together an amazing piece of work, and did a fantastic job of sifting through history to present a coherent story.
The all-ages show was a joint production of Cognate and Project 165. Recognize.
This is a menu clip I made for an upcoming DVD called “Remember Who’s Emma,” a documentary about an anarchist infoshop that used to exist in Toronto’s Kensington Market area. I’ll post information about the DVD release as soon as I know what’s what.
[it's silent because music will be added to it by the director.]
Saturday this past weekend: I discover the spot all over again. It’s not that hard to find. In fact, it used to be much more difficult. You used to have to stroll on past a big office building, and squeeze yrself through a sketchy fence hole, then rappel down a stone wall just so you could walk through a bunch of thick brush. But now, there’s construction. Two huge sets of tracks carve a path right down, and the only thing to negotiate now is a bunch of loose soil that gets into yr shoes.
We go there once in a while, for no reason in particular. It always feels like a celebration but there’s rarely an “occasion” to speak of. Wait, no. The occasion is life, I suppose, if that doesn’t sound too Hallmark. G brings a bunch of scrap wood, someone always brings musical instruments, and we construct makeshift seating arrangements out of whatever we can find. Tonight, we make a bench out of a long 4×10″ balanced on a car tire. Put an equal weight of people on one side as much as the other, and you’ve got yrself a bench with some bounce, and good support to boot. Some others sit on the bare ground, or use some local plant life for cushioning. A song starts up and the instruments trickle in. Voices bounce off the concrete supporting beams with a sweet reverb that would rival any expensive club. And we’re all the main attraction.
Also, tonight, someone brings a little over a dozen vegan biscuits, infused with dill. So fucking tasty, I have to eat three, which isn’t very generous of me, I know, but it’s been a long night with a lot of biking. Though twenty minutes ago there were only four of us, now were approaching ten, maybe more, and the circle is spreading. Greetings are made without the usual awkwardness reserved for social functions. Hugs are the order of the day. We’re all friends here.
The fire gets bigger to accommodate the swelling group. Someone makes a speech about the recent election and a fresh flag is thrown on the flames. The story goes that the flag was stolen from a police station just outside of Ottawa, one where I myself was harassed by cops for hitchhiking. I laugh at the symbolism, and the gutter poignancy. We are good people, trying to do right by our words and our actions. The polyester bubbles and melts, and we laugh at ourselves for not predicting it: In a way, the flag is “burn-proof.”
I leave close to 3am, with a smile on my face. I know you might say that it’s easy to romanticize, but there are so few romantic moments like this left in the city, it seems. If I can’t romanticize this, what’s left? As I walk away, back up the bulldozer ramp and back into the world of taxes, political simulacra and joyless jobs, I wonder if that’s really the real world. Maybe the real world is under that bridge, singing and hugging and sharing whatever we have, while the imagined world is the crust over it all, the world of paperwork and e-mail and racing through the game of life.
Or maybe I’m just romanticizing. But when I get home on my bike, my hoodie still smells like campfire. And that’s real.
[words and photo manipulations by karl carlson. unmanipulated photos stolen from the internet.]
the following article takes a brief look at the corporate news media’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina from an anarchist perspective. i’ve chosen not to deal with the actual “meat” of the disaster for a couple of reasons. first of all, i don’t have any expertise in meteorology, disaster management, or topography. second of all, there’s probably nothing i could say about the hurricane itself that hasn’t already been said: it was one crazy ass storm, and the destruction it left behind cannot be understated. similarly to how i reacted when i heard news of the tsunami, i’m asking anyone who reads this site to donate whatever they can to one of the many organizations trying to pick up the pieces. let’s hope the waters recede soon.
Breaking News! BREAKING FUCKING NEWS!
Over the past week, millions of words and thousands of images have spilled out of and into our collective consciousness about one of the worst meteorological ass-kickings the US gulf coast has ever experienced. It’s been the biggest story to hit the press since the bombings of London this past July, and clearly the media sharks have been hungry. Unlike the cell-phone video and digital images of the London bombings, nearly all of the coverage of the ongoing disaster has been produced and delivered by the corporate news media, with no end in sight. The absence of independently produced imagery has marked a return to the status quo for the agenda-setting press, and the result has been sadly predictable.
The agenda-setting press determines the pace for how and when news is delivered, and what tone each story takes. In a world with 5000 channels to choose from (but only 5 major players distributing content), the news becomes a numbers game where only those with the capital can compete. It’s how your local channel gets those stunning aerial shots of an inundated New Orleans. It’s how every news channel seems to be covering the same thing, at the same time.
When London was bombed this past July, independent eyewitnesses were active agents in “producing” the news through the use of cell-phone video and digital camera technology. Those independent sources offered real time coverage direct from the crime scenes, spreading images and video that the agenda-setters could not have provided because of a slow response time. The media created by these independent sources was quickly appropriated and distributed worldwide by the mainstream press who labeled it “revolutionary”, as if independent media never existed before. The low quality video and grainy images of the London attacks were a huge hit, and the mainstream media seemed like they had found a new ally in their quest to deliver the headlines.
So how can we account for the absence of independent media influencing the output of mainstream news before, during and in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina? Much has been written about “Katrina’s Unequal Toll”, how the hurricane disproportionately affected people of color and the poor (often one and the same group). Those too poor to leave New Orleans were left to fend for themselves, and it’s safe to assume that they were not equipped with the cutting edge technology that has made on-the-spot media production possible. Let’s put it this way: if you’re too poor to leave town, chances are you’re too poor to have a cell phone with video capabilities or even a cheap digital camera. And even if you could afford the technology, beaming the content out of the disaster area would probably be impossible because of a battered information infrastructure.
Looters, Half-Truths, and Anarchy.
When news channels like CNN, NBC, ABC and FOXNEWS are left to their own devices, their output is typically sensationalistic, biased, and problematic overall. With no independent sources feeding content to the agenda-setters and very little independent coverage leaking out through other avenues, the mainstream press has been back to its usual un-checked self. Several stories transcended the headlines this past week and offered us a glimpse into the true nature of monopolistic journalism. What can we learn from the past week of coverage?
A) What makes a “finder” a keeper and the “looter” a weeper? According to photos posted by the AP, AFP and YahooNews! this week [shown above], the colour of your skin has a lot to do with it. All three organizations got a tremendous amount of flak for their racist captioning, and the incident brought the media itself under public scrutiny in a big way. YahooNews! quickly issued a damage control statement and the AFP pulled the photos altogether. To anyone still under the illusion the corporate media are “fair”, “accurate”, or “unbiased”, this should be a big, waterlogged wake-up call.
B) In the race to fill space in a never-ending news cycle, corporate news outlets seem to have gotten desperate with the details. An article credited to AP and Reuters included a blurb about sharks swimming in the streets of New Orleans, and this urban legend has spread to conversations all across North America within a matter of hours. To paraphrase an old cliché: The bigger (and more pointless) the lie, the faster it spreads. Is it too much to ask that corporate media cuts out the shit and gives more space to some realissues?
C) Finally, sensationalism sells, and what’s more sensational than the big bad spectre of ANARCHY??? It all ties in, doesn’t it? Looters, Landsharks and Anarchy, oh my! Anarchy is still synonymous with chaos, and nothing sells more newspapers than chaos. The agenda-setting Canadian press had a field day last week, with the Toronto Star, National Post, and Globe and Mail all joining in the fun. The Toronto Star’s front page spread on Friday was especially sensational, complete with red ink for the full effect.
Where’s The Anarchy At, Really?
Amid all of the chaos, misinformation and wreckage of Katrina, some real anarchy based on mutual aid did emerge. On computer screens, on rooftops, and in soup kitchens, real anarchism was there if you could look past the monolith of the mainstream press.
- Regularly updated independent media, circumventing the corporate press, was delivered to the world via The Interdictor’s blog. Based in the DirectNIC headquarters in Downtown New Orleans, his blog contains plenty of eyewitness information and TONS of photos.
- Food For Life, an organization that was on the ground and helping out during last year’s Tsunami, has a team cooking and serving hot vegetarian meals to needy families, from their farm in Carriere, Mississippi. They’re providing aid to people directly affected by the disaster, now, and could use all the help they can get to keep the aid itself cruelty-free.
- Many organizations are mobilizing to help save the animals affected by Hurricane Katrina. While their website is not yet updated with Katrina-specific information, Farm Sanctuary is currently mobilizing to save the forgotten and unspoken victims of the Hurricane, the thousands upon thousands of abandoned farm animals. Through all of these organized efforts, local newspapers from the surrounding areas are reporting just as many individual stories of people helping out those animals left to die.
Closing Thoughts.
In times of crisis and catastrophe, can we trust the corporate media to deliver the news in a manner that we’re comfortable with? I can’t speak for “we”, so it really depends on who you are and what you feel is acceptable. The corporate media has helicopters, video-screens, connections to state and federal authorities, and correspondents. If you’re looking for flash, flair and finesse in the delivery of your news, the corporate media can be a satisfying source. Still, because of a non-stop 24-hour news cycle, the mainstream press often releases news bogged down with sensationalism [see: ANARCHY!!!], padded by misinformation [see: shark tales], and in a manner that reveals deep-seated biases and prejudice [see: racist captioning]. If you accept these characteristics of the corporate media to be true, there’s really only one question you need to ask yourself next time disaster strikes somewhere: what are you willing to sacrifice in your journalism to get your news?
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