Apologist attitude of the Toronto Star notwithstanding, we hope that Mayor Mel Lastman maintains a Rudy Giuliani kind of resolve in carrying through on his threatened lawsuit against the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP). The mayor wants to sue OCAP yahoos for damages and costs in the wake of their disruptive protest in the financial core.
And while he's at it, the mayor should have council send the exorbitant rescue bill for last July's Greenpeace aborted climb of the CN Tower to Greenpeace Executive Director Peter Tabuns.
It is time for the Gucci activists of the world to start paying the price for their games.
Protesters who vowed to shut down the city's financial core were responsible for major traffic disruption, heated exchanges between activists and motorists and what organizers called "petty" vandalism. Predictably, within 24 hours of their "snake march", they were blaming the police on site to protect public safety. Organizers of these events continue to justify their irresponsible actions under the right to dissent.
All Greenpeace really wanted to do was to place a banner 1,100 feet up in the air at the observation deck of the CN Tower. The message on their banner read, "Canada and Bush Climate Killers" because Canada's blocking agreement on the Kyoto protocol on climate change.
Greenpeace didn't blink an eye about importing a professional climber all the way from the United Kingdom to hoist their Kyoto message. When the two activists had to be rescued from their perch, it cost taxpayers an approximate $63,460 for fire, police and ambulance personnel and equipment, including $35,00 in refunds for visitors to the major tourist attraction. CN Tower administration estimates a further $100,000 was racked up in lost business.
In the case of OCAP members who spray-painted public buildings, the damage is still being tallied, but it is reported that the damage to one building alone is estimated at $120,000. That money would no doubt go a long way to feed and house the homeless.
"Direct action civil disobedience backed by muscle is becoming more respectable in Ontario," gloated Toronto Star columnist Thomas Walkom last June after OCAP trashed the Ontario Treasurer's constituency office in Whitby.
Other Star columnists lament a statement from FBI director Louis J. French in defining terrorism and terrorist groups.
Included in French's description are "left-wing groups (that) generally profess a revolutionary socialist doctrine and view themselves as protectors of the people against the dehumanizing effects of capitalism and imperialism. They aim to bring about change in the United States through revolution rather than through the established political process. Anarchists and extremist socialist groups--many of which, such as the Workers' World Party, Reclaim the Streets, and Carnival Against Capitalism--have an international presence and, at times, also represent a potential threat in the United States."
Sounds like OCAP and Greenpeace to some of us.
Columnist Rachel Giese finds this definition so broad, "it could include anyone who protested at Seattle or Quebec City, catapulted a teddy bear or marched with a giant puppet."
Anna Dashtgard, organizer of the Common Front on the world Trade Organization, a broad coalition of more than 60 Canadian labour, education, health and environmental groups participating in national fair trade caravans and protests, culminating in a global day of protest Nov. 9--the day the WTO begins a round of meetings in Qatar--knows what's best for the rest of us.
Speaking about protests post Sept. 11, she mused, "There's a feeling that I think people were shocked or traumatized but there's a feeling that it's more important now than ever to talk about what a better world looks like, and how we work toward it, and how fair trade is a really big part of that."
The only way to force romancing-the-revolution Gucci activists back into reality is to hit them in the same place they hit the little people--right in the wallet.
Throw the book at them, Mel.
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