Janet McNeill

“I had never seen police beat people and seen the frightening orange glow of tear gas before in my life.

Today I marched in the ‘Reclaim Power’ march, an event that meant to symbolize the opening of the UN negotiations, which had previously been closed to most civil society groups at these critical negotiations.

I’m not naive. I’ve marched in protests in the past, and thoroughly enjoyed the bringing together of people from so many different walks of life in the favour of one cause, though always aware that these situations could turn unfortunate for a variety of reasons.

I was not prepared for today. Within minutes of arriving at the Bella Centre with the “yellow” block of the march (the block that was meant to be the peaceful, non-confrontational section making up of NGOs and intergovernmental groups), violence broke out.”

This is the opening of a blog post by young Torontonian Jasmeet Sidhu, who is in Copenhagen & blogging for the Toronto Star.

Please go here to read the rest of her post & watch a short YouTube at the site so disturbing it had me shouting “F— you!!” at a brutish Danish police officer.

I still have tears running down my cheeks.

What can be so wrong with wanting a sane & just world that political leaders & police are prepared to beat up young (& very likely old, or any) people in their excessive zeal to shut them/us up?

Sorry. I just can’t seem to “get” this…

Janet

P.S. Thank you so much, Jasmeet, for being there & for telling (and showing) us the truth. Thank you also to your fellow youth delegates, Yvonne Su and Adam MacIsaac, for their video footage.

There will be a million stories coming out of Copenhagen. Every delegate, every student, every protester, every writer will have her/his own take on what’s happening there. I’ve been writing long enough to know that when 5 writers attend an event & tell about it afterward, you get 5 different “takes” on what happened. Kind of amazing the way that is…

In any case, though, I know 2 men (fellow Canadians) who are over there - long-time activists/writers whose opinions I highly value. I’ll be following what they have to say, & invite you to do so too.

Greenpeace Canada’s Climate & Energy Coordinator Dave Martin’s latest blog post can be found here

Steve Leahy’s work (& that of his many young colleagues from Latin America) can be found here

The Toronto Star has Copenhagen pages here

There is also a young woman blogging for the Toronto Star. Her name is Jasmeet Sidhu & she’s the founder of the Peel Environmental Youth Alliance (PEYA), a network of students in Peel Region (west of Toronto) working to implement environmental programs in all 220 Peel Region schools. Find her blog here

Janet