Dear Service de police de la ville de Montreal,
The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms
Outlines my right to protest in any medium.
Free Speech and Peaceful Assembly, you will recall.
You see, the political will always be personal.
Ideas will never need protection,
But people always will. And an election
Or a G8 summit shouldn’t need crowd control.
Dear Service de Police de la Ville de Montreal,
Why did you arrest Anarchopanda?
This mascot had the admirable agenda
To criticize a controversial municipal by-Law.
Called P-6, which prohibits faces from being covered,
And the police must know where y’all are headed
and they’ve become draconian and now dreaded
after tourists were kettled and their freedom smothered.
Here, there`s a lot of anger towards the police,
Almost every year, the March against Police Brutality
Starts calm but erupts into a riotous finale
There’s graffiti in the city that shows without crease
Ian Lafrenière with a gunwound to the head.
But should a young Jennifer Pawluck serve time
For posting an image of that graffiti online?
It seems that Justice can be easily misled.
Lady Justice is blind so that she may remain objective.
Her sword and scales may support either side
The arc of the moral universe is long and she’s our guide
Towards a world working for the collective.
But, if the Commission Charbonneau
Teaches me anything about Justice
It’s that the execution of Augustus
Was quick while our blind Lady is slow.
And so the final place for free speech to exist
Is in the street and scrawled on bathroom stalls
when corruption slows due process to a crawl
and Intelligence insists that the gub’ment needs kill lists.
Like the U.S., where oligopolies
Suck up all the subsidies
Divide and conquer all the industries.
Haven’t you ever played Monopoly?
And if I am working for the Bottom Line
I’m going to buy me a politician,
Financially influence his decisions
Until his stock portfolio aligns with mine.
Corporations are Darwinian!
Their only purpose is profit
So they kill to control global markets
Look at the kids overdiagnosed on Ritalin
And all our fuel is ruled by The Seven Sisters
The “Consortium for Iran” oil cartel
BP, Exxon, Gulf, Chevron, SoCal, Esso, Shell
Who lobby to the greed of Ministers.
The epidemic is systemic, which is why it’s so scary.
When the Harper Government was ruled
to be in contempt of court, who were the fools
That ignored our tar sand’s canary?
Dear Service de police de la ville de Montreal,
I know that this is not all your fault,
But people are worried about unwarranted assault.
Who watches the watchmen when an empire falls?
Who watches the watchmen when an empire falls?
by Michael Cody Clarke
All Rights Reserved