Sunday, June 27, 2010

Wasn't That A Party

Could've been the whiskey
Might've been the gin…


Well kids, did you have fun at G20 Central? Did you enjoy watching hooligans smash store windows and torch police cars? Did you tweet your friends to say “here on Queen Street, guy just lit cop car on fire, SSOOO great.”? Did you feel like the Leafs had just won the Stanley Cup? I mean, didn’t it feel like one big celebration? You really did fuck the new world order. Now it’s time to go back to the suburbs and work on that novel or study law or create sustainable eco-fashion. In 40 years you can tell your kids or grandkids that you were there man, at the G fuckin’ 20 in the T-Dot. Better yet, show them all the video and pictures of yourself smiling beside guys kicking in doors and spitting on cops. You kids ROCKED the G20.

Police Chief Bill Blair politely called you the”naïve and curious”. I call you middle class white kids who don’t know the meaning of the word suffer. Meanwhile, your vicarious thrills may have cost legitimate protesters with serious agendas their voice. How did you feel, with your clown nose on, watching black clad thugs breaking the store window of the TImmies where you get coffee on your way to work? Did it make you feel a little sorry for the new Canadians who man the coffee stations, who do so for minimum wage, who smile and take your guff? Did you think of them and how they may feel going into their violated workplace Monday? Funny, I didn’t see any of them protesting.

Fact is I used to be a punk. Okay, punkish. Okay, a punk music aficionado. I’m not without sin by any means. But at least I had the decency to take my anger out on the dance floor in the mosh pit where it belonged. Believe me, I sympathize with the need to do something about the rampant greed that’s dehumanizing and diseasing our world.

And here’s what I suggested, as a way of protesting.

Everyone should have just stayed home. No one should have set foot on Toronto’s downtown streets. That way, the almost $1 billion spent on security would have been all for naught. Then who would have been shamed?

Party’s over kids. Help clean up.