Everyone in the universe who doesn’t live under a rock has, by now, heard about the shameful and despicable rioting that happened in Vancouver after the Canucks lost the NHL finals to the Boston Bruins. Vandalism, violence, looting… all over a hockey game?

I have a more direct and personal experience with rioting – I was in downtown Toronto during the G20 summit last summer and actually participated (along with 15,000 other people) in the rally that occurred before the rioting started. I managed to find safety and shelter in a wing restaurant (lol) and I watched, horrified, as a few bad apples took to the streets and undid all the good we’d tried to do with the positive message of our rally.

Riots are terrible. Mob mentality takes over. No one can argue that rioting and looting do not, ever, have a positive outcome. No one’s going to “get the message”, if there’s even a message to get.

But protests… that’s different. It’s no secret that I lean to the left. I do protests. A lot. Sometimes, it’s the only way to get the attention of the big guys. According to Wikipedia, a protest is an expression of objection, by words or by actions, to particular events, policies or situations.

So. What would cause me to protest for something? Instead of telling you, I’ll show you:

In 2009, twenty-nine staff members at the Art Gallery of Ontario were laid off. In 2010, 39 more workers were threatened with job loss. Many of the remaining staff were being forced to work two part time AGO jobs  equalling 40 hours a week instead of being offered one full time, permanent position. Why? So the employer could avoid providing benefits and pension contributions, and so the CEO of the AGO, Matthew Teitelbaum, could receive 1,070,000$ in salary and “bonuses” in 2009. What’s fair about that? Nothing! So when contract negotiations broke down and a strike vote was given, I went to help my brothers and sisters tell their employer to play fair.

This is me and my 8$-a-week rental megaphone outside a 375$ per ticket Liberal fundraiser at the Scotiabank Plaza in May 2010. The issue here? The McQuinty government’s proposed public service wage freeze. While Children’s Aid Society offices are closing due to lack of funding, children with mental health issues are growing up before they get treatment, and the healthy nutrition supplement for disabled people on ODSP was wiped out, the Ontario government is telling public service workers, some of whom only work part time, that it’s time for them to “take one for the team” – to do their part to help in this economic crisis by taking a wage freeze. Why, then, do top-level executives and senior management continue to rake in bonuses and raises that in some cases exceed a hundred thousand dollars a year?? The working people didn’t cause this problem. They shouldn’t be made to pay.

Here are my daughter and I in the Put People First Rally and March at the G20 in Toronto last June. Hours before a few vandals, rioters and anarchists took the downtown core hostage and wreaked havoc across the city, over fifteen thousand peaceful activists rallied at Queen’s Park and marched through the city to draw attention to what the G20 Summit leaders were ignoring: maternal health with full reproductive rights, poverty and work issues at home and abroad, and how the  G20 should have been about more than helping wealthy corporations and powerful CEOs get back to business as usual, as if the recession never happened.

This was taken at a rally in Hamilton this past January. My union rented a bus and piled people from the Toronto area onto it, and we headed down to support our brothers and sisters from the Steelworker’s Union, who had been locked out by their employer simply for demanding fair treatment and good jobs.

There are others. I have a big mouth and no shame, and I have no problem walking the talk and sticking up for those who need help. I don’t approve of rioting… but if there’s a protest, chances are I’ll be there.