Through The Looking Glass

Where have we seen this scenario before? Ah, now I remember; it's that creeped-out ploy where the authority of the day, occasionally overstepping its boundaries thanks to the oafish enthusiasm of the brutes whom they employ, is brought to attention by the outraged condemnation of law-abiding social activists engaged in civil unrest to draw a line where civil society will no longer accept official brutalization.

These social revolutionaries meet, plan protests, put authority on notice that they plan to take back the streets. It's become a yearly celebration, an occasion where the voiceless and the put-upon within society are defended by the rhetorical loud-mouths and the sociopathic detritus of society. A must-not miss occasion of meaningful social dissent against brute authority.

Montreal police are, after all, fairly notorious for their occasional lapses in shooting first, looking into the situation afterward, pleading the stress of the situation and the wearily tiresome fact that the victim was behaving in a suspicious manner; above all, wearing the skin and facial elements of a known breed of social malefactors.

To which all people imbued with a healthy dose of social consciousness abetted by collective guilt, breathe a sigh of appreciation that the group naming themselves the "Collective Opposed to Police Brutality" marches, in righteous indignation, speaking for all of civil society.

But damn, as so often happens, something untoward happened on the way to the church.

Intent became sidelined to temptation, and the protest managed to develop instead into a riot. Not that the police in attendance swung their clubs, hauled out their guns, pepper-sprayed and beat the protesters insensible, but that the protesters happened to morph into the lowest measure of society's misfits; goons who took the occasion to run riot.

Taking a page out of the hymnal of the Palestinian "protesters" whom they love to support, they assembled construction debris as handy objects to hurl at police, at the windows of fast-food outlets, pharmacies, hotels and vehicles. That several hundred run-amok of Montreal's protectors of the wrongly police-assaulted managed to turn the downtown area into a war zone.

And wasn't that just a whole lot of innocent fun?

"It was like we were in the middle of a war. I'm so angry, because if it is a demonstration against violence, how can they use violence against people?" That was the emotionally ruffled voice of a woman who, with her 7-year-old child exited the Place des Arts concert hall to discover their vehicle sans whole windshield.

This anti-brutality protest certainly went a far way to endearing itself to the public, and putting police on notice that civil society isn't going to take it any more.