This was actually the first blog entry I wrote under the "And I Am The One Called Disabled". Fitting honories for the inaugural "And I Am The One Called Disabled" were the organizers of the 2010 G20 summit.
First off, downtown Toronto was an extremely poor choice of where to hold it. As a general rule of thumb, if you want many people to attend an event, you would do it in a central location, with easy access. If you do not want people attending, maybe you should do it in a more remote location? It was interesting that when rioting started on Saturday, the police closed the subway lines in downtown. Why not do it somewhere where there are no subways?
This brings me to a second point. $19 million for a fake lake? I have to admit my high school geography is a little rusty, but last time I checked, we had quite a few bodies of water in this country. So here is a way to cover off both points. Find a nice resort, next to a lake, in a remote area. Close it off for the time of the G20 and compensate the owners accordingly. This would be a lot less disruptive and easier to manage.
Then there are the protestors. Given that many people protesting the G20 are opposed to big business and capitalism, among other issues, doing the summit in the financial capital of Canada was probably not a good idea. The only way to have given protestors a better target would have been to hang the CEO of BP by his feet like a giant piniata and let people throw things at him. Doing it in a remote area would limit the number of people who would come, which also raises the question if the location should be disclosed, or only disclosed to media covering the event. While I realzie there are those who would say that this violates the principles of transparency and accountability, how much accountability do we really have from the leaders now? We basically can march, and speak, but do we change or influence anything?
An interesting comment in one article I read about the rioting on Saturday was that there are those that feel they need to protest and make noise in order to be heard by the leaders. While I do not condone the use of violence, I would suggest this is a sad state of affairs if our elected leaders can only hear us when there are protests. I believe that perhaps the solution is to have some time at these summits dedicated to interested parties to come and question the leaders. I am not talking about having President Obama and Prime Minister Harper sitting down with Bono to talk about the environment or aid for Africa, but to have average citizens be given the opportunity to present their concerns...and have their questions answered. If security is an issue, then perhaps do it over the internet, as a sort of webinar. Have the leaders on camera and they need to answer questions presented by the people they are elected to represent.
I think my favorite part of the G20 summit is what came out of it. The G20 countries have agreed to reduce their deficits. So essentially, all that effort, to come out with a basic economic principle of do not spend more than you bring in. And it only cost us $19 million for a fake lake, and I do not even know how much in security, and compensation to people who lost business, or had their stores damaged.
Like I said...and I am the one called disabled.
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