Skip to content

Spacing

Canadian Urbanism Uncovered

Recommended

8 comments

  2. I wasn’t there, but have seen the pictures and talked to himy who was there and there is something we find puzzling… no cops. anywhere. not that I want cops to show up to everything, but I just find it curious that these nice white downtown hipsters can organize a gathering of 100’s of people and a) not get shut down by cops or security and b) that there were no cops around at all (even for something like first aid) during the almost hour long ‘fight.

    Can you imagine if the African/Caribbean community organized a pillowfight where up to 1000 people were expected to show up? Do you think some cops would check it out?

    Power to the newmindspace organizers who can put together these big fun public events. I just hope nothing bad ever happen at these events.

  3. Karen> Pillow fights aren’t really my thing, but neither is wild speculation. Are there not lots of times when 1000 people, all over this giant city, get to gether — in parks for picnics and etc — where the cops don’t show up? Is there something specific you’re referring to, or is it just how you see the world?

    There is security inside city hall, i’m sure they were watching what was going on.

    what is himy?

    Also, some other pictures I saw of this event showed some of the other shades of person.

  4. as I understand it, you normally need a permit to do stuff on city property and I believe you need cops if you’re expecting over 200 people. there were almost 1000 people who rsvp’d on facebook that they would attend.

    I’m not saying it’s bad that there were no cops there. I just think it’s weird.

  5. One of the greatest things about Toronto is the fact that there is no crime and there are no police.

    As a New Yorker, I do expect to get needlessly harassed by the police instinctively, but Toronto the Good always exceeds my expectations in this regard. As strange as it may sound, I think Toronto is actually less caught up in “permit culture”. In New York, any gathering that is not expressly permitted by the NYPD is illegal. The First Amendment is under attack in a serious way.

    I think our events betray a great deal of trust and I think trusting people are trustworthy as well. I have no doubts that the police are on our mailing list by now, and I believe they “know” us by now, well enough to know they can leave us alone and nothing bad will happen.

    Thanks for coming, everybody who did! It was an awesome afternoon 😀

  6. “Can you imagine if the African/Caribbean community organized a pillowfight where up to 1000 people were expected to show up? Do you think some cops would check it out?”

    You make a good point. Not far away from this pillow fight, I attended a “You Got Served” hip hop dance contest at Central Tech. The audience of 200 was overwhelmingly Afro/Carribean high school students. We were frisked on the way in and I counted four cops guarding the entranceway.

    And – not to detract from the Newmindspace event – there is a risk that if 1,000 people gather in a public square to beat each other over the head with a pillow that just one person might – just might – take this too far and get violent and reactionary.

    The cops are “double standarding” here.

  7. I don’t know anything about either event, but to play devils advocate, are the cops “double standarding,” or do these events have their own histories, informing a need for police vs. no police?

    Who frisked you though? Was it in public space, on the sidewalk, or on Central Tech property? If the latter, it sounds like the paid-duty scenario mentioned above, where the police are invited by organizers, rather than them independently targeting the hip hop contest.

  8. ^Yeah, I was frisked by the event organizers and it was on CT property with the cops just standing around so all points lead to them being invited. I might have gotten a little edgy in my post.

    4 cops was overkill, though.