Police close down Dufferin Grove camp
A protest camp at Dufferin Grove Park was dismantled peacefully on Monday morning, under the watchful eye of Toronto Police and city security officers.
Police showed up early Monday morning to enforce a city trespassing order delivered last week. While some protesters screamed insults at police, they also took down the camp, stuffing their sleeping bags into clear garbage bags, taking down their tents and loading everything, including small gardens planted in plastic wading pools, into three U-Haul vans parked nearby.
“We plan to set everything back up,” said organizer Jonathan Taylor Brown, who has been with the camp since it was first set up in Nathan Phillips
Square in June.
The goal of the group, which identifies itself as the Afro-Indigenous Rising Collective, is to abolish the police. “There is no reform when dealing with institutions whose very existence are rooted in racist, colonial mechanisms,” the group said in a press release issued Monday.
Taylor Brown said he was heartened by the fact that while there were less than a dozen people at the site when police and security showed up in the morning, more people joined the protesters throughout the day, bringing the total number to about 40 by early afternoon — roughly equal to the number of police and security guards on site.
“More people are coming to support us and it’s inspiring,” said Taylor Brown. “It’s encouraging me to keep going.”