Juno News - August 06, 2021


The activists have occupied Toronto's parks

Topics
standing in solidarity
Mentioned
Doug Johnson Hatlam Vanessa Jessica
Election Readiness The questions nobody is asking about the vaccine passports

Episode Stats


Length

9 minutes

Words per minute

138.9

Word count

1,378

Sentence count

129

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Toxicity

6

sentences flagged

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

A group of Indigenous people and their supporters have set up a command centre in a park in Toronto's Dufferin Grove area. They have a fire pit, flags, tables, chairs, and a makeshift memorial to honour the Indigenous children's graves found at residential schools out west.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 The white race has to choose between the path of brotherhood or the path of death and destruction. 0.98
00:00:05.000 And I don't know the people, the white people that are recording this now, if they're there to exploit us or make us out to be such bad people like white people usually do.
00:00:20.000 Wednesday morning I took a trip down to Dufferin Grove Park in Toronto's Dufferin and Bloor area to do a story on an encampment there.
00:00:29.000 That encampment has grown and flourished in recent weeks since three other downtown parks were cleared by police and city officials.
00:00:38.000 While the 40 odd tents at Dufferin Grove Park are fairly well hidden on the fringes of the park, you can't escape seeing the amount of garbage and paraphernalia they've created.
00:00:51.000 So the thing that sticks out like a sore thumb is the occupation of a fire pit area near the centre of the park.
00:01:00.000 That area has now been set up as a command central for a group of Indigenous people and their supporters.
00:01:10.000 They've got flags and tables to eat on, tents, chairs, and they even have a makeshift memorial of stuffed animals and dolls to pay tribute to the poor children's graves that were found at residential schools out west.
00:01:35.000 As our videographer Jessica and I stood on the public path and not bothering them at all to take pictures of the tents and that gathering,
00:01:50.000 a couple of them rushed out and started accusing us of taking photographs of their sacred fire.
00:01:58.000 Well, I hadn't, up to that point, hadn't even seen the fire until they pointed it out.
00:02:04.000 But what happened next is proof positive, I believe, of the entitlement, the absolute entitlement of these illegal squatters and the activists who support them.
00:02:16.000 I was just asking you not to take a picture of the fire.
00:02:20.000 I didn't take a picture of the fire.
00:02:22.000 That's all we're asking.
00:02:23.000 Okay.
00:02:24.000 So what did you have to come over here for?
00:02:26.000 So we could have this conversation and you could tell me if you didn't take a picture of the fire.
00:02:31.000 Yeah, no, no, no, no, no.
00:02:32.000 Pictures please, because this is a terrible one-year-old area for us.
00:02:35.000 This part here is sanctioned for us.
00:02:37.000 It's not yours. 0.78
00:02:38.000 It's, it loves everybody.
00:02:40.000 No, this part here is sanctioned for us.
00:02:42.000 We just had the fire inspector leave.
00:02:44.000 We're talking to Indian Affairs and everything.
00:02:47.000 And at the end of the day, this is Indigenous land that you're on.
00:02:50.000 No, we're taking pictures.
00:02:52.000 We're on a public sidewalk.
00:02:54.000 Yeah, you're taking pictures.
00:02:56.000 I'm standing on a public sidewalk, right?
00:02:58.000 No, but look, you see, do you understand?
00:03:00.000 She's still taking a video and a picture.
00:03:02.000 Okay, Vanessa, let's move over this way. 0.94
00:03:04.000 Can you please your camera, let's look in this way?
00:03:05.000 Yeah.
00:03:06.000 Because we're over here now.
00:03:07.000 Keep it away from here.
00:03:08.000 Okay.
00:03:09.000 Okay, point your camera this way.
00:03:10.000 Yeah, point your camera this way.
00:03:11.000 Sure, I think we're done here anyways.
00:03:12.000 Yeah, we're done.
00:03:13.000 We're done right.
00:03:14.000 We're done this way.
00:03:15.000 Okay, was there anything else you wanted to add or say to us?
00:03:18.000 Or we're just gonna...
00:03:19.000 Yeah, just don't come here with your cameras and your, your photos to, to, to desecrate,
00:03:24.000 to disrespect Indigenous spirituality.
00:03:27.000 Because you have to remember, you are on Indigenous land, First Nation land.
00:03:33.000 We were followed, harassed, screamed at, threatened by a group of no less than eight people, simply for taking pictures of the encampment and their gathering.
00:03:49.000 She is my sister.
00:03:50.000 She is standing in solidarity.
00:03:51.000 That man over there is my brother.
00:03:53.000 He's standing in solidarity.
00:03:54.000 This man right here is my brother.
00:03:56.000 He's standing in solidarity.
00:03:57.000 You are all welcome.
00:03:58.000 You want to come and stand in solidarity with us?
00:04:01.000 Do you, do you, my, my person at home listening and feeling all the anger, do you want to come and stand in solidarity with us?
00:04:09.000 You know, it's the, it's the time of the seventh fire.
00:04:12.000 The white race has to choose between the path of brotherhood or the path of death and destruction. 0.97
00:04:17.000 And I don't know the people, the white people that are recording this now, if they're there to exploit us or make, make us out to be such bad people like white people usually do. 0.90
00:04:28.000 They, when we suggested that this was a public park and that we have every right to be there, to take pictures, to walk through.
00:04:54.000 They said it was their land, their turtle island, and they had a right to be there and they were continuing to stay there.
00:05:03.000 Well, at one point, poor Jessica's camera was snatched out of her hand and thrown on the ground twice.
00:05:13.000 And your footage that you're going to write is going to be one-sided.
00:05:16.000 It's okay, the police will see the footage, don't worry.
00:05:19.000 Do you like the one-sided footage that you're creating?
00:05:21.000 Excuse me.
00:05:22.000 No, excuse me.
00:05:23.000 Make sure you don't touch me.
00:05:24.000 Make sure you do not film anyone here.
00:05:26.000 Do not touch me. 0.99
00:05:27.000 Hey, loser. 1.00
00:05:28.000 Do not touch me. 1.00
00:05:29.000 You're over there, through my phone.
00:05:31.000 Stop that.
00:05:32.000 There's another one.
00:05:33.000 An activist from Sanctuary, a group that has enabled people to remain in the parks, took a video of us and also threatened us.
00:05:50.000 I'm a journalist.
00:05:51.000 I know how to do these things.
00:05:53.000 You have an Apple phone, but you're living in a tent.
00:05:55.000 What's going on?
00:05:56.000 You call yourself a journalist, but you're tweeting?
00:05:59.000 I'm a journalist and a street pastor.
00:06:01.000 You said I live here.
00:06:02.000 I wouldn't be ashamed if I did live here.
00:06:05.000 So what is it your business?
00:06:07.000 We were doing a story.
00:06:09.000 It's not your business.
00:06:10.000 I was asked by people to help with a situation where you were recording where they did not want their sacred fire recorded.
00:06:16.000 We didn't record their fire.
00:06:18.000 So, you know, mind your own business.
00:06:21.000 Oh, he's not a journalist.
00:06:25.000 He's an activist.
00:06:26.000 Look at him.
00:06:27.000 He's not naloxin him.
00:06:28.000 You're one of the ESN people.
00:06:30.000 Don't worry about it.
00:06:31.000 You'll be writing a column and won't review the footage now.
00:06:33.000 Will you share the full footage with my column?
00:06:35.000 Who are you?
00:06:39.000 I'm Doug Johnson Hatlam.
00:06:40.000 I write for Counter Punch and I work at Sanctuary.
00:06:42.000 Another woman who, an Indigenous woman, tried to hijack an interview we were doing with a neighbour living in the apartment across the street by singing at the top of her lungs as we were conducting the interview. 0.99
00:07:05.000 They became so threatening, so aggressive that I was forced to call the police, which I have never done before.
00:07:15.000 She's standing right here in front of me. 0.98
00:07:20.000 What did you say I did?
00:07:22.000 Calling the cops.
00:07:23.000 It's like a carrot.
00:07:24.000 Yeah.
00:07:25.000 Uh, hi.
00:07:26.000 See?
00:07:27.000 You're videotaping the cops over there!
00:07:32.000 Is she following me?
00:07:45.000 No.
00:07:46.000 No.
00:07:47.000 Okay.
00:07:48.000 Okay.
00:07:49.000 Okay.
00:07:50.000 Yes.
00:07:51.000 The police came, four officers. They didn't do a whole lot, but they did manage to defuse
00:08:13.960 the situation. Still, the incident reminded me very much of what happened at Trinity Bellwoods Park
00:08:23.400 and at Lambton Stadium Park a few weeks ago when the police and city officials tried to clear it
00:08:30.760 and were accused of undue influence for doing so. Like what happened at the other parks, the activists
00:08:38.680 here and the squatters just wanted to create a disturbance, just wanted to create a scene to
00:08:47.720 portray themselves as the wrong victims. We were the bullies for daring, absolutely daring to walk
00:08:55.880 through the park, a public park, and take pictures. It's a sad statement. It's a really sad statement
00:09:05.880 on what's happening in this city and in fact neighbors living across the street are fearful
00:09:12.200 to walk through the park. We spoke to a couple of them and one gentleman who lives in the apartment
00:09:18.200 across the street has even seen the squatters drinking in his apartment's lobby and believe it
00:09:26.040 or not a couple having sex in the stairwell and nothing is done about it and I blame the politicians
00:09:32.920 for enabling this behavior and allowing this mess to continue out of control. It's a sad statement
00:09:40.600 again about what's happening in the city and we've got to say, enough is enough.