Putting the State on Trial: The Policing of Protest during the G20 Summit ed. by Margaret E. Beare, Nathalie Des Rosiers, and Abigail C. Deshman (review)

Putting the State on Trial examines the policing and suppression of protests associated with the Toronto and Huntsville meetings of the G8 and G20 in summer of 2010. As a volume with fifteen chapters, the book offers an extensive analysis of those many enduring images from the protests in Toronto: police kenneling and mass arbitrary arrests, shoddy conditions of the temporary holding facilities, the manipulation of laws to intimidate and arrest protesters, as well as the images of police violently attacking unarmed protestors. With a security budget of over $1 billion, what transpired in the streets and temporary detention facilities of Toronto solicited a fair degree of media scrutiny and public outcry. Though the policing of the G20 summit has received some degree of academic attention, the volume does an excellent job providing new analysis and discussion of both the events of the G20 as well as the relationship between these events and the long-standing police suppression of the political left in Canada.

In their introduction to the volume the editors stress that the book is not simply about the G20 but a broader examination of the policing of dissent in Canada. In an effort to underline this point, they give a short synopsis “From the Winnipeg Strike to Toronto’s G20” that, though quick, provides an illustrative portrait of the historical suppression of leftist movements by policing forces in Canada. Though the editors themselves shy away from framing their analysis of policing as only targeting the left (they make a shallow point regarding the policing of hockey riots and Guns N’ Roses concerts), the historical record is overwhelmingly illustrative of the rcmp’s (and others’) obsessive surveillance and disruption of left-wing movements.

After the introduction from the editors, the collection is divided into three sections. The first of the thematic sections features five chapters examining trends that gave rise to the mass suppression of protests in Toronto. This section contains a number of useful chapters for instructors of upper-year courses looking for concise readings on the relationship between leftist political movements and the state in Canada. In particular, Leo Panitch offers an excellent stage-setting chapter that catalogues the transnational architectures of global capitalism and the protests that have coincided with these meetings of political elites. Though hasty in its concluding remarks around violence and tactics, Panitch underlines the connections between transnational economic powers and localized protest, as well as relating how Canadian events figure into global patterns of accumulation and resistance. Though perhaps outside the interest of some readers of this journal, the first thematic section also contains a brilliant chapter by Lesley Wood on the transforming strategies (and tactics) of protest policing in North America between the 1995 and 2012. As a concise yet comprehensive account of the transforming repertoire of police practices, Wood underlines how Toronto’s G20 is best understood as the most recent iteration of suppressive mechanisms developed to control increasingly plural social justice movements. As Wood concludes: “to understand why police kettled protests in the rainy Toronto streets in 2010 means looking beyond that day and those actors to the increasingly integrated and less accountable networks in which police decision-making takes place.” (61) It is precisely the operational environments of integration and discretion that are addressed in the second thematic section of the book.

Under the banner of “Policing the Event,” five chapters provide a range of discussions on the policing and surveillance activities that transpired in preparation and on the streets of Toronto. Indeed, as perhaps the most radical transformation to protest policing, it is precisely the pre-emptive surveillance practices that structure the “events” that unfold in protest spaces. As an important theme within social movements and policing literature, the role of pre-emption and ubiquitous social movement surveillance was central...