Posted by
AudiR10TDI on Wednesday, December 12, 2007 2:49:27 PM
December 12, 2007 -- Today the city of Toronto went toe to toe with a group of anarchist rabble called OCAP and Toronto, as always, blinked.
Fortunately, the average businessman and woman in Toronto's financial district is just as hard-nosed as those in the Buckhead/Piedmont Road area of Atlanta, and the encounter was a net loser for the rabble.
To set the scene for those of you who are unfamiliar with Toronto: the buildings of the Financial Centre (which is where I work) are connected underground by wide, store-lined walking boulevards extending about 10 blocks North and South, and maybe three blocks East and West. These boulevards are called the PATH, and are owned and policed by the private building owners and the businesses therein. Absolutely no panhandling or homeless napping, etc. is allowed in the PATH. There is also, as I discovered, no photography down there. Security is good, tight, and ubiquitous. The streets outside are pustular with the homeless mentally ill and alcoholic/drug addled, the grifters, con men, out of town fakers and loafing teenagers all accosting people or sleeping or urinating in the public thoroughfare. Not so in the PATH. Down there we can eat, read, shop, visit and walk in safety and unmolested.
Well, last night our office manager informed us that this group, known to be confrontational and violent on occasion, had been given permission to hold a "Mass Panhandle" in the PATH. Frustrated, apparently, by the fact that we could have a private place where we could ignore them, their leader stated, "We are bringing homeless people and those who support them to panhandle in the very heart of the commercial showpiece they seek to drive people from."
Last night was our firm Christmas party, and besides the usual query "Why don't they take these people and get them jobs?", the question du jour was "How do they think they are going to get more money from us by invading our property and making our lives more difficult?" Many people said they would undertake to avoid the PATH today and some of us for the rest of the week, and even those who planned to use the PATH would ignore the panhandlers or tell them to get right out of the way. There was no sympathy expressed, nor was there solidarity. This was looked on as an invasion of privacy, a definite abuse of private property rights, and a total non-starter when it came to extorting more money (they get $200,000,000 per year from the City now) for "programs", which include free liquor and cigarettes in some shelters.
The protest has now ended. Despite the lure of buses, free food, and teevee cameras, they could only muster 40 protesters and panhandlers, who were spread pretty thin from the sound of it, and were seriously outnumbered by police, security, and video surveillance personnel. With not only a lack of sympathy but a flinty animosity toward their cause, and word to the buildings that their tenants did not appreciate the harassment, the whole thing turned into a farce and the OCAP slunk away defeated.
Once during a downtown riot in Atlanta, a Black person was heard wondering aloud why they were burning and looting their own neighbourhoods. "Why don't we go burn Buckhead?" said this enterprising individual.
The answer was swift in coming. "That's their territory," he was told. "They gon' fight back."
And that's the name of that tune.