Chris Butcher Music

I’m at home right now. I should have been at a rehearsal but it was canceled, due to safety and transportation problems cause by the G20. I decided to make lemonade and write this blog.

Most of this morning was spent watching youtube videos, checking out blogs, Twitter and Facebook media. My heart is breaking as anarchists destroy storefronts up and down Yonge and light police cars on fire all while trying to intimidate reporters and hide their identity. The cops are similarly dressed in uniforms of brutality grabbing seemingly peaceful protestors, arresting people for declining to identify themselves or refusing to be searched without a warrant. The police are also strangely non-existent in the 30 minute pillaging of Yonge, it appears they let it happen, possibly to claim justification for the costs of the summit.

This whole thing is a mess. I had to see it for myself yesterday so between a salsa dance hang and a gig I went against the press advisory and ventured downtown. I tried to bike down University but got told to go home and “use some common sense” by a super trooper who didn’t want to let me into Queens park out of fear that one of the protesters would take the horn I had over my shoulder. I went around, there was a police barricade at College and University where there were a bunch of fashionistas doing a weird photo shoot, walking the catwalk in front of a line of riot officers. I tried to talk to a normal police officer at the end of the line about the best way to get home from there, the lady couldn’t help and seemed like all her humanity had been lost in this whole ordeal.

Fashionistas

I continued south on University just below College. The whole street was closed off and it was an eerie ride. I felt alone until coming up to the American embassy. The whole southbound lane was bounded off by little fences organized into a triangular barrier going all the way around the front into the northbound lane. Inside were likely a hundred men in Swat gear hanging out in the green space between the lanes.

I got down to queen and poked my head into the Rex, surprised but grateful the music was still happening. Mike Murley was standing by the bandstand after a solo, I looked back down Queen street to see black smoke billowing from the street a few hundred feet away. I was told this was one of the cop cars that had just gotten torched, apparently the fourth one that day. Multiple fire trucks accompanied with a cavalcade of 15 passenger vans full of riot gear police came bursting down queen. I went a street south to see a man getting arrested, and an ad hoc police station set up where officers were sitting on the ground and rehydrating.

Rest Stop

I have a whole bunch of mixed feelings on this whole thing. First off having this in downtown Toronto was a BAD decision. 1 Billion dollars? Are you serious Mr. Harper? That was just the foreseen security costs, once the cards have fallen, the lost tourism, the bruised image of this city, the cost will be exponentially larger. All while cutting funding to the arts, education, building fake lakes and throwing money at the sinking ship of the American auto industry?

This is all taking our focus away from the G20, a little boys club that as wikipedia states “comprise 85% of global gross national product, 80% of world trade”. There’s propaganda that they’re working to get us out of this economic crisis and towards global growth. First off throwing more fake money at a broken system is not fixing something it’s perpetuating the problem and that’s all that has been done. Second off continual world growth is impossible. This is finite planet with finite resources. We have a population explosion and a world catching up with a totally unsustainable western lifestyle. We should be talking about GLOBAL SUSTAINABILITY  That means quit using so much stuff. Stop driving a car. Find a way, society, the auto industry, oil industry and the governments they have sway over don’t want you to stop pouring money into this bottomless pit that fuels this economy called an internal combustion engine, but trust me you can do it.

Canada’s  claim for propping up the industry was the fear of losing jobs in the auto sector. Let it happen, maybe these people would have found something to do with their lives, like working on the technology or logistics of oil alternatives, or making something of beauty with all their time they have after being laid off by these sad car companies.

Sorry I may be ranting now. Back to the protesters. We need change and in one way they showed us that there are people who have the guts to go against this treadmill that society has placed us on. Most people keep running out of fear, go to school, get a job, get a mortgage, lease multiple cars, rack up a credit card debt and live their lives like a good little hamster as the banks and corporations reap the benefits of all their labour all because they were afraid of “amounting to nothing”, and what do they have in the end?

Even though they showed they’re willing to fight they didn’t accomplish anything and made the situation worse, spiraling downtown Toronto into a violent inferno, resembling a ridiculous video game. Compare what the violent protestors accomplished compared to someone like this who went to the Eaton Centre with a megaphone, to make consumers think about what they are doing, also influencing the thoughts of the 20,000 who’ve seen it on youtube in the last day.

Where are our Ghandi’s? Our Martin Luther Kings? People who changed the way we thought peacefully with their charisma, the strength of their ideas and how strongly they were committed to them. We can do this.

Richard Underhill had a nice little quote on his wall

“Music, art, dance and laughter are the only antidotes to repression.”

With that in mind go see a jazz festival show, make some food with some friends, go dancing, write a blog and quit your day job (just kidding, well mostly).

Through this I’m glad that art is still going on. Herbie Hancock played feet from the protests last night, I couldn’t be there but heard it was an amazing show. Friday night Maceo Parker knocked me out, with 2 hours of the funkiest music I’ve ever heard, all while spreading a message of love on the microphone. Here’s a video of the always funky and articulate, not to mention super nice human being, Dennis Rollins from the show.