news
Newsstand: November 29, 2011
Some days are days for buying fish from Walmart, some days are not. Today, though, today is a Tuesday, and there is news to be got: notes on a ball ban, more G20 policing tactics revealed as G20 mischief counsellors are sentenced to jail time, checking the basement for tenacious Occupiers, and the budget is here.
Of course we’ve all seen this episode of Disney’s Recess, but let’s recap. School bans balls. School kids experience mob mentality activism for the first time. We all feel weird about the people who wonder if this story would be so popular if it didn’t require frequent use of the word “balls.” Saturday Night Live makes fun of us. Parents make hyperbolic bubble wrap analogies and grim jokes about kids choking on skipping ropes. Turns out the whole issue may have more to do with schoolyard design than a paranoid principal overlord bent on ruining fun forever. Anyway, kids get to play with already approved balls. And let’s just leave it at that now.
A man unlawfully arrested during the G20 weekend has settled his lawsuit against the police for an undisclosed sum. In suing, Jason Wall also revealed the Toronto Police Services’ relentless dedication to eradicating all potential evil-doers that weekend, animate objects or not. As an officer’s report quoted by the CBC reveals, police were advised that “as well as people, weapons including bottles and canisters of liquid were to be investigated and arrested for Possession of Weapons.” Whoa, somebody call the grammar police! Chyeah. Oh and then arrest those gun-toting guns, because that does sound dangerous.
Still speaking of the G20, some admitted Black Bloc–types were officially sentenced and jailed yesterday, and, as is to be expected, they had a few things to say for themselves at the sentencing. The three men who pleaded guilty to counselling others to commit mischief were each given jail time, none for more than nine months. All three made speeches, sometimes invoking Tahrir Square, sometimes thanking their assembled fans, and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom.
Not content with not occupying, some Occupiers had moved their operations into an empty basement in a City-owned building on Queen Street West with hopes of staying there for a couple of years. But it was not to be, as a City not content with not evicting occupiers evicted the Occupiers a few hours after that first Star article was published. Not discouraged, the Occupiers have vowed to move on, maybe to a basement near you.
And the 2012 City budget process officially kicked off Monday with a self-congratulating speech from Mayor Rob Ford, a sober analysis of the rhetoric used up to now from us, some easy-to-digest budget tidbits, and some reaction from those parties facing negative impacts if this thing goes through untouched. That is, pretty much all of us.