Police are not and never have been about protecting the community. They’ve been granted a monopoly on violence to enact the will of the state and the elite who control it.
Their weapons always point at the working class. ACAB.
They rally 'round the family
With a pocket full of shells
Bulls on parade
Can someone explain why this is happening? Why is it so important to take out these bike lanes? Is it because of traffic congestion? Is somebody complaining that traffic is horrible and something must be done? Has traffic gotten worse since the bike lanes were put in? Is this the least expensive option to deal with increased car traffic?
It all started in 2010 when Don Cherry showed up to Rob Ford’s mayoral induction in a pink suit:
“Well, actually, I’m wearing pinko for all the pinkos out there that ride bicycles and everything, I thought I’d get it in.
(This is a joke).
Seriously tho, the war in bike lanes is quite old, and has happened incrementally. Rob Ford (then mayor) spent $300,000 to remove the Jarvis bike lanes in 2012.
[Rob] Ford defended the expenditure, saying he didn’t approve of the bike lanes in the first place, and the time saved to drivers — which he claimed to be at least seven minutes, even though John Mende, the city’s acting general manager of transportation services, has said it is only two minutes — will benefit the economy by reducing congestion.
But specific to this round by his older brother: lol no.
They were jammed on to this bill that requires municipalities to get provincial approval to add bike lanes when traffic lanes were impacted.
They are going to study it later.
The province has issued an RFP to study and provide design options for restoring vehicle lanes on sections of Bloor Street, Yonge Street, University Avenue, Queen’s Park, Queen’s Park Crescent and Avenue Road. The RFP will also identify options to retain or reconfigure bike lanes, where they make sense and do not make gridlock worse. To get drivers moving quickly, the vehicle lane restoration process will immediately begin on the west section of Bloor Street West starting at Clissold Road, where minimal design work is required.
Ford has a vendetta against Toronto, that’s all.
If I recall, these specific bike lanes are on the same route he commutes to work on. Make of that what you will.
I assume “he” is the dipshit Doug Ford
I am beyond pissed about this. It screams corruption and provincial government overreach.
Decisions like these belong to the city and the local residents, to our local mayor.
Un-fun fact: the laws that allow cities to exist are at the provincal level, which is what allows them to do this. It’s also why they are able to reduce the number of councillors in Toronto a few years ago, and how they can force amalgamation.
I wonder if as many people would have voted for Doug if they knew this.
screams corruption and provincial government overreach.
Doug Ford since day one. He hasn’t been shy about it either.
Doug Ford 100% thinks he’s the mayor of Toronto. It’s all he ever does anything about, the rest of the province means basically nothing to him.
This pig is Doug Ford, one of the most powerful man in Canada.
He wants these bike lanes gone. He publically said he doesn’t give a shit about the consequences.
He is a also a former drug dealer.
Somehow, it didn’t prevent him from being elected.
I thought Rob Ford would have sunk him, but. No.
Well it prevented Doug from being elected mayor of Toronto so now he does whatever he can to hurt the city. It sometimes feels like this is his main objective as premier of Ontario.
If it’s anything like Atlanta’s relationship with the rest of Georgia, that was probably his main selling point for rural and suburban voters.
So basically “I’ll fuck over those snobs in the city to please the rural folk”?
I suppose this is just a case of them “hurting the right people”. And so everything else is fine.
See also: that famous Christian love.
Are you trying to make him look cool?
So what’s to prevent people from just biking in normal lanes in groups and slowing traffic down?
We do. But for day to day commuting, it’s not practical. So we take the lane when we need to and deal angry and dangerous drivers on the daily.
It’s technically not legal to ride two abreast if you impede traffic in Ontario, but for the most part group rides are begrudgingly tolerated.
My guess is the fear of being mowed down by an SUV.
Also, “normal” people (i.e. not activists) are more afraid of taking a bike if there’s not bike path. So they end up clogging traffic even more by going by car.
Don’t know about Toronto specifically but my guess is car ownership in Canada is probably pretty high.
If you want to send a message to drivers who vote, then everyone go single occupancy motor vehicle and drive like a granny. Are they going to road rage lines of trucks carrying bikes on a rack?
Car drivers here, as anywhere, truly will do ANYTHING but actually demand better, varied infrastructure. You could make driving a car complete hell(it does it itself, most of the time) but most of the country would still fight any improvement.
I always like to point put that I own a sportscar and still prefer the metro and bus. They’re just better for nearly everything. Unfortunately, I came to that conclusion by using my brain and that’s not something most Canadians have a fully-functioning example of.
All switch to quadricycles to take up space in the driving lanes? These days there are even some nice covered electric assist cycles.
So, Canada… Are you looking to position yourself in opposition to the conservative ghouls in the US? Or are you not. Because riot police arresting people committed to protecting their city through direct action feels very United States to me.
Yeah Canada has no intent to do that and I’m not sure where you got that idea. Cops have been killing indigenous people on their territories around here since literally the beginning and causing grievous violence towards those that try to defend them or their lands. The RCMP was literally created to control people who were just trying to live on, not even protesting, on their own land.
I think they got the idea from the relentless bitch crying from Canadians about America while their own country is just as shit in every way.
Woah there, bud. You can cool it on the misogyny. America’s garbage fire impacts us too, so I think it’s pretty reasonable to voice our displeasure. If you want to be included in the discussions about decolonizing kkklanada, you can follow the canada specific coms.
I’m not sure I’m getting what you are saying? Are you implying it’s unusual for canadian police to abuse protesters?
I made a post a while back about the 2010 G-20 protest in Toronto with my own boring photos, but Reuters has a lot of bangers here.
Montreal cops are also notably shit, even among the entire class of bastards:
Further information has come to light concerning the Montreal Police Department’s use of agent-provocateurs disguised as “Black Bloc” protestors at a December 18 demonstration against police violence and the anti-austerity policies of the Quebec Liberal government.
More recently: Police brutality against anti-AI protesters in Montreal shows their true colours
And let’s not forget the Kanesatake Resistance (Oka Crisis):
The Kanesatake Resistance, also known as the Oka Crisis or the Mohawk Resistance at Kanesatake, was a 78-day standoff (11 July–26 September 1990) between Kanyen’kehà:ka (Mohawk) protesters, Quebec police, the RCMP and the Canadian Army.
I’m busting their balls for calling the kettle black, I know how awful Canadian cops are but do appreciate the informative PSA.
We all know what side the cops are on.
Hamburg, Germany, the same. Officially it’s a bicycle city - unofficially police, especially older staff, see cyclists as inferior beings and a nuisance to the real and only owners of the streets.
Oh my god that used to be part of my bike commute when I lived in Toronto.
I absolutely hated biking on that stretch of Bloor, but this was before the bike lanes. From what I saw in photos and videos, the lanes made a real difference at some of the common conflict points. The area is undergoing intensification, bike lakes are an important part of urban mobility.
Doug Ford is a timbit. I’ll bet he’s thinking about timbits right now.
Witless bastards. Just standing there like puppets doing whatever they’re told, ethical or not. Pathetic.
US much?
canada really isn’t that different.
america’s hat
I’ve always thought about this being the best time to do other crimes in another area. This many police in one location. Other areas have to be lacking. I just don’t see it as a smart move on the city. Beyond the removal of the bike lanes.
I’ve always thought about this being the best time to do other crimes in another area.
I mean, this is a very glib attitude to have towards “doing crime”, but it really neglects the nature of the acts you’re contemplating. The idea that random local civilians are just predisposed to acts of violence and destruction is half the reason we have these bloated police forces to begin with. When police are so heavily distracted by some insane mayor’s campaign against bicycles, you’d like to think it would be worth noting how little crime happens in their absense.
Because who seriously thinks to themselves, “Oh boy, I can’t wait to cause my neighbors deep lasting harm for my own short-term benefit now that the agency loosely associated with preventing that from happening is brutalizing some street protesters invested in a functioning bike lane system”? Like, does this person exist in any appreciable number?
Even as flights of fancy go, it’s cringe. The least you could do is have some Rambo-esque insurgent delusion of using this is an opportunity to ransack Doug Ford’s house or vandalize Rob Ford’s grave. Instead, it’s just dreaming up an excuse to kick in some random person’s window and steal their TV?
This should be a textbook case of why we need to defund the fucking cops. No moment could be more clarifying when you want to make the argument that they don’t actually prevent or ameliorate crime.
I suppose I misspoke. I don’t really have an interest in committing crimes. But I can assure you that people who do want to commit crimes, petty to serious, would not only share these intrusive thoughts, but also possess the ability and desire to act upon them. The point I was trying to make is that these police are being pulled from their usual duties to intimidate. Some cases, might be preferable. If they’re standing there bored, then they can’t be running around doing the litany of other things the police have become so prolific for doing.
If anything it’s a good time to clean up some of the flock cameras littered around.
There are probably people who consider stealing from corporations as not really hurting their neighbors, as a counterpoint.
I submit this song by Sublime into evidence: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=e1dPKfxRhk
Lyrics: https://genius.com/Sublime-april-29-1992-miami-lyrics
Extraordinarily well said.
It’s a sign of the times that the most insightful comment comes from someone called “UnderpantsWeevil”
I can think of worse…
That’s actually where distributed protest actions actually have a better effect than a large scale one. Because there are more of us than them it’s hard for them to be everywhere at once. The problem in this case is the bike lane is in a fixed location.
I can assure you those cops are doing nothing to prevent crimes.
I wondered this locally when we had about 100 police from multiple other counties turning up to deal with a far right protest with protestors coming in from all over the place and protesting against the disruption caused by a bus and a lifeboat.
Friggin sucks.
