In The Wake

I am reeling from watching G20 news unfurl over twitter on the weekend and listening to friends' stories, during and after. I stayed home, did nothing but click refresh on my various feeds and watch videos and read testimonials and look at photos and feel the frightened band around my chest get tighter and tighter.

There are a million things I'd like to link to here, but really, just google G20 and you'll see. Or start on Mae's blog. I've been in awe of her ability to communicate through this while I have sat dumbstruck and horrified in front of the glowing screen.

Over 900 arrests. Hundreds more forcibly silenced. Thousands more scared into silence and absence by the threat of police violence.

All to capture, ostensibly, fewer than 200 people. Ostensibly. Ostensibly.

It is shameful.

A lot of terrible things have been said about the cops. I don't disagree, but I can't stop thinking about them as people. What do they say to their partners? Their children and neighbours? Their own consciences? I've read testimonials where individual cops acted with contrition; though those reports are few and far between.

I have been thinking a lot about The Stanford Prison Experiment. About how if you dress people up like faceless robotic borg and give them the permission to be violent, then that is often how they'll act.

I have been thinking about how the state - on all levels, municipal to federal - put those individual cops in a position where human nature basically dictated that many of them would act the way that many of them did: with inhumanity.

I have been thinking about how terrifying that is for all of us and then where do you start. Because that's not just fuck the police; that's fuck everything.

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Rallies in solidarity with those who were arrested are being held across the country.

Maybe I'll see you in Montreal.