Failed arrest attempt leads to police retreat, barricades of burning tires
SIX NATIONS, Ont. — An argument between police and land defenders erupted in violence Thursday when officers tried to arrest someone outside a protest camp on Haudenosaunee territory.
Witnesses say police fired at least six rubber bullets and tasered a young man after someone threw a rock at their cruiser. In the ensuing chaos, Ontario Provincial Police fell back to a reinforced position about 500 metres from the camp’s back entrance.
Harrison Johnston remembers standing in a little coffee shop last September, watching in awe as a massive crowd marched from Vancouver City Hall to the Central Library downtown.
Then a lead organizer with Sustainabiliteens, a youth-led climate movement in Metro Vancouver that coordinated the Sept. 27, 2019, climate strike, he said he had only expected up to 20,000 people. Instead, the protest became the largest in the city’s history, with over 100,000 people filling the streets.
On Oct. 15, members of the We, the Secwépemc Unity Camp to Stop the Trans Mountain Pipeline walked across Canadian Pacific Railway tracks and onto the Trans Mountain site. There, at least one protester, a woman, sat on an excavator and called for others opposed to the pipeline expansion project to help stop the work being done.
Several people were arrested on Thursday (Oct. 15) at the Trans Mountain construction site on Mission Flats in Kamloops.
