OrilliaMatters welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected]. Please include your daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following letter is in response to a protest that took place at a city council meeting Feb. 27 and a letter regarding what took place at the meeting, published March 2.
Firstly, I’d like to thank all those on council for considering the voices of those directly impacted by the potential of public transit cutbacks. I think there’s still a great amount of dialogue happening between the differing perspectives on this issue and it’s great to see that engagement, but I feel I have said enough on the topic for the time being.
The purpose of this letter is to highlight one particular area of concern I have that Valerie Kitchen mentioned briefly — the silencing of the voices impacted most and the habit of abusing policing systems to remove anyone who threatens only your comfort level and privilege, which is exactly what was attempted at that meeting. To be clear, I am really grateful that the two officers that attended that call put in by a city staffer found their shoes more interesting than anything else happening around them, which amounted to absolutely nothing.
I do not believe it can be overstated that guns were called into a council meeting for the sole purpose of silencing and removing non-violent people who are known thorns in the side of this city because we were holding a couple of signs and yelled out from the back of the room, about 40 feet away from the intended targets of our frustrations.
The over-policing of marginalized and vulnerable people occurs when others abuse their power or authority to control and censor them. They show up when they’re called. That is what a city staffer did in that meeting.
You felt your influence and power slipping away, so you tried to get it back in the most typical way possible for a privileged person. You called somebody else to do it for you so your hands don’t get dirtied in the process and your position is reassumed. You knew — I firmly believe you knew — that the moment we showed up, that motion would not be deferred and would fail.
This is no longer about transit. This is about abuse of power and a complete disregard for human life. You endangered lives that day. Do you understand that? Any time a police officer attends a call, their life is at risk and the lives around them are also at risk. There is never a guarantee that both parties will walk away unscathed no matter who is present. Never. And you never put people in that position without good reason. You did not have good reason, only annoyance and a desire to make those you found annoying leave.
You handled us the same way you handle homeless encampments. You just call in the big guns to deal with it and carry on trying to keep up the image that this city is full of sunshine.
It rains. Every day. It rains and people are tired of saying it rains and trying to show you how drenched and cold they are.
We were tired that day. We weren’t the only ones, either. We just happened to show up to let you all know after too long of being silenced, ignored and placated.
Human life is invaluable. Human life is not disposable. You can’t put a dollar amount on the lives you don’t even understand. And you can’t just call in a life-saving resource to dispose of them for you when you don’t agree with them and think you can carry on making decisions on their behalf without considering them once you have them removed.
The OPP’s non-emergency phone number is 1-888-310-1122. I suggest you utilize this number and request a trespassing order if you still feel as strongly about the threat to your safety that was not present but clearly felt by a city staffer.
The OPP had better things to do that day than attend a call where no assistance was actually required because constituents bearing witness to their elected officials’ decisions and having their concerns heard is our right — one you trampled on even before that meeting, which resulted in us showing up in the first place.
Krystal Brooks
Orillia
