The last article I wrote asserted that we in Toronto are living under a subtle type of police state, which makes any form of social activism ineffective.
Its power is in that nobody sees it as what it is. They just see 'infighting' between groups and individuals, and frequent police 'mistakes'. People decide that 'all activists are assholes' and despair of ever forming effective movements.
What needs to be asked is how the 'assholes' always seem to get whatever funding and support is available and do nothing with it, while good people with good ideas get no support. And, why the cops are so consistently interested only in the 'asshole's' side of the story.
There are more scientific terms for all these 'assholes'; antisocial personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder. The term 'psychological bully or 'psycho-bully' best describes what they are and what they do.
It is very hard for most people to deal with psychological bullying from somebody with no conscience, who is willing to do anything to reduce their target to a state of helplessness before eliminating them. A higher order personality, with little ego and few senseless attachments, is best able to defend against this, but this is exactly what enrages the psycho-bully.
Studies of psychological bullying show that it is impossible for any one to defend against a 'gang up' or 'mobbing' by psycho-bullies. Even the target who tries to flee the situation is often pursued. The only thing that stops this behaviour is for it to be forbidden by those the psycho-bullies dare not defy; those with enough power, or the great majority of the onlookers to the bullying.
A discussion of the whys, and the tactics, of psycho-bully attack and of defence from it, is worth a few articles. Here we are looking at a single example of how this behaviour is used as a means of social control.
the smiling Buddha
Call her K. She has been a peace activist for a long time. She once dealt directly with prime minister Trudeau about nuclear disarmament. In the early 1980's she was actually nominated for a nobel prize. She talks little about it, but she has achieved much for the local Buddhist community and for various progressive causes in Toronto.
She is also a Buddhist minister. She is not of Asian descent. Because of all this, she has over the years been subjected to the usual sorts of ignorance and spitefulness.
Only in the past few years has she run afoul of some really vicious people who really to want to destroy her. They have had her in jail for most of the last two years. She has never found out exactly what is being alleged against her.
Her freinds did not know what had happened to her, or were afraid to do anything to help her. The local Buddhist community is apparently paralysed with fear of the Toronto police.
The details of this story are vague, not because anything about her story does not add up, given what we know about how the police and courts really work. It is hard to know what to say that does not risk putting her back in jail. The system keeps its victims isolated and terrorized.
the story
The person at the root of K's problem is Dave Meslin. He is a founder of the public space committee in Toronto. He is responsible for the tacky 'city idol' contest prior to the last civic election.
K came into contact with Meslin and some associates of his when she was involved with a 'guerilla gardening' group. Despite the dramatic title, this was about planting flowers in unused plots of ground around the city.
Meslin was rejected in some sort of sexual advance to K. He then started a classic 'mobbing' campaign against her.
She was followed home and her windows smashed. This lead to her eviction. Strongly glued posters were put up around her neighbourhood with her picture retouched to make her look sinister. These posters 'warned' people that she was a 'dangerous' person and people should call the police if she 'harassed' them.
When she tried to defend herself by publicising the harassment, demanding that it cease, and that people take a stand about it, she got blocked from various internet forums. People began refusing to talk to her.
It seems her very attempts to defend herself from slander and harassment were used to justify the next step against her; to arrest her for 'harassment'. The psycho-bully's power is to turn everything upside down and inside out.
the injustice system
The cops arrested her at her home. She was hustled in front of some aged crank judge who kept her locked up for two years. He has now retired.
K was given no chance to get a lawyer, though a lawyer does not usually do much good. She was given no chance to get her side of the story across. There was no effort to even create some 'conditions' under which she could be released on bail. The aim was to keep her in jail until she was broken and destroyed.
She described one hearing where some evidence was brought to justify keeping her. Meslin claimed he was afraid of her for his life. K is a small and thin woman. It was alleged she is insane and is not actually a Buddhist or a minister and there is no temple where she claims there is one.
Some police meat heads finally had the idea of going and seeing if there was a Buddhist temple there. They found there was and K was a member of a religious community there. This did not cause them to revaluate why they were holding K.
While in jail, K refused to eat prison food, but demanded her Buddhist vegetarian diet. She ate very little for four months, endangering her life. Some of the prison guards stood up for her, risking their own jobs. "You are not a criminal" they said, "so why are you in here?"
K was let out for awhile and then arrested again. Since she has been on the street again the harassment has continued. Meslin's cronies have approached her and claimed that she is following them. They told her they want her to die in jail.
Recently the police pounded on her door at midnight; the same cop, Torkey, who seems to have been co-ordinating this persecution for two years.
standing up
Most people would be completely destroyed by this kind of experience. I have talked with people connected to the mental health system who say a good number of cases of mental breakdown in Toronto are from police harassment. It seems K's religious beliefs, and the mental discipline and objectivity taught by Buddhism have got her through this so far. But how much crap does one person have to live through?
K's situation is not an isolated incident. It is not a 'mistake'. Meslin and the other people involved are not even very adept at persecuting her. A minimally competent police force would have at least charged them under section 140 of the criminal code, dealing with making spurious charges against people.
This persecution of K is being organised by the police. They are going to keep after her until she has a heart attack or nervous breakdown. Or, until further harassment is forbidden. This means, by people beginning to stand up with K and refuse to let her be isolated.
Only when there is a strong network of people willing to shield victims of police-organised 'black-bagging' will there be effective social movements in the city.
TR