The Yonge St. riot of 1992 … or was it an uprising?: Paradkar
“A riot is the language of the unheard.â€
- Martin Luther King Jr. in 1966
In 1992, as Los Angeles burned, little of the rest of the world paid attention to the violence on Yonge St.
But it did happen.
On May 4 of that year, while L.A. was reeling from the anger over the acquittal of four police officers caught on video beating black driver Rodney King, a few hundred Canadians took to Yonge St. in solidarity with King but also to protest police brutality here. Two days prior, a white police officer in plain clothes shot and killed a 22-year-old black man named Raymond Lawrence.
Looting, fires, smashing of windows, pelting of police. Some 30 people were arrested in the end, some 37 police officers injured, the media reported.
That was one side of the story.
Another perspective was screened Thursday night at Ryerson University. A new documentary It Takes A Riot: Race, Rebellion, Reform marked what its makers called “the 25th anniversary of the Yonge St. Uprising.â€
Uprising. Not riot.
The choice of word matters.
What one calls it is as much a political question as a sociological one, says Simon Black, who is an assistant professor of Labour Studies at Brock University. He co-produced the film with Idil Abdillahi, an assistant professor of Social Work at Ryerson.
The word ‘riot’ connotes violence emanating from an immature, unruly mob. It condemns protesters without condemning the conditions that led to their protest.
“An uprising is about disrupting and creating and bringing to the forefront an issue . . . and doing so in a way that calls attention,†said Abdillahi.
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There is also that nagging little thing about skin colour of the protester defining the protest. American history is rife with “rebellions†when enacted by whites. Black points to the Shays’ Rebellion (1786-1787 protests by armed American farmers crushed by a state militia) and the Bacon’s Rebellion (1676 by armed Virginia settlers) as examples.
“When it’s black people involved, the media labels it a riot,†says Black (who is white). “This has to do with long-standing tropes around black criminality.â€
In other words, blacks who protest violently are thugs, whites who do so have a righteous anger.
You could argue that a rebellion is longer term and planned, while a riot is short and spontaneous. But in the historical continuum of protests, multiple black power ‘riots’ surely count as a long-term rebellion or uprisings.
The 25-minute film, funded by Ryerson at the Akua Benjamin Legacy Project, begins with a question a young protester asks on CBC.
“What’s more important? Broken windows or dead people?â€
It’s impossible to condone violence, but it gets attention, leaving no incentive for protesters to keep it peaceful.
So what happened on May 4, 1992?
A few hundred activists from the Black Action Defence Committee (BADC) took to Yonge St. for a peaceful protest at 4 p.m. The number of protesters quickly grew to a thousand, as homeless youth, Indigenous youth, other minorities as well as white allies joined in. Not to be left behind, members of the white supremacist Heritage Front also showed up. Posters such as, “We denounce the racist murder of whites†were visible.
The protesters had marched to the U.S. Embassy to show solidarity with King, then they had a peaceful sit-in at Yonge and Bloor. By 7 p.m., they arrived at City Hall, and after speeches, brought formal demonstrations to a close.
The organizers may have been done. The protesters weren’t. At around 9 p.m., that crowd — about as multi-racial as the audience who saw the film Thursday night — grew restless and went from chanting “No Justice No Peace†to smashing windows and pelting police.
Black recounts in a blog how a young marcher came up to BADC co-founder Lennox Farrell, and told him: “This is our time. We have to get back at them for how they hurt us.â€
A few weeks prior to the Toronto protest, two white Peel police officers had been acquitted of killing unarmed 17-year-old Michael Wade Lawson.
He was driving a stolen car, and police said they were afraid he was trying to run them over.
As for Lawrence killed two days prior, police say he was wielding a knife at them, although his fingerprints were not found on the knife.
Remember, this was all before smartphones.
The Rodney King beating, caught on video, happened in an era where video cameras were not ubiquitous. It gave visual evidence of the experiences of black people that were being denied until then.
Still, the police officers were acquitted in all three cases.
Plus ça change.
Twenty-five-years later, police brutality is back in the headlines. The BADC’s mantle is taken up by Black Lives Matter, the music speaking the pain of the oppressed has moved from the mouths of Public Enemy to Kendrick Lamar and the names of the Toronto victims have changed to Jermaine Carby, Andrew Loku and Abdirahman Abdi.
The police continue to allege criminality by the victim and a society that prides itself on its decency silently shakes its head — not at the injustice but at the tactics of those who protest that injustice, the injustice of their deaths at the hands of their defenders.
Shree Paradkar tackles issues of race and gender. You can follow her @shreeparadkar
It Takes A Riot will be made available online as an interactive educational tool at the Akua Benjamin Legacy Project.
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