National Post: "It’s a bizarre instinct: “These people aren’t rioting like we were warned; let’s poke them with a stick!” And it also seems to be based largely on a misapprehension about how Canadian police forces generally handle such protests — namely, the belief that when it’s Indigenous or Black or progressive folks marching and honking and inconveniencing people in the name of their cause, the cops charge in with batons raised every time. It is belied by very recent objective reality.
"The Mohawks’ 2020 blockade of CN’s main line near Tyendinaga, Ont. in solidarity with anti-pipeline Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs was by no means their first to have been resolved peacefully — but at almost three whole weeks, it was certainly the longest. In the meantime, Ontario Provincial Police had resolutely refused to enforce an injunction ordering the line cleared, precisely in the name of not escalating the situation — just as they had done throughout the land dispute in Caledonia."
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