OpenFile

Steve Paikin tweets from the G20 frontlines
Posted by Craig Silverman on Sunday, June 27, 2010

Steve Paikin may have tweeted himself a place in history last night.

Late Saturday night, the host of TVO's current affairs program The Agenda with Steve Paikin unleashed a long series of eyewitness tweets that painted a picture of a demonstration that was at times jovial, concerned, celebratory, puzzled and, eventually, outraged.

Over the course of two hours, he became a trending topic for Canada and helped provide confirmation that, contrary to official denials and protestations, the police did in fact use rubber bullets when dealing with demonstrators.

Here’s a selection of some of Paikin’s most notable tweets. (All tweets are listed in chronological order).

Moving down Yonge St., south of Front St., Paikin seemed to be in a good mood:

pouring rain now. everyone getting wet. no umbrellas out here

police phalanx, to its credit, just holding the line, not moving on crowd.

But it wasn’t long before Paikin started to express concern with police tactics:

here come the cops again. weapons drawn. ppl sitting again. middle of esplanade

police in full riot gear moving closer. ppl still sitting in middle of street

crowd surrounded. cops on both sides now

don't mind saying it...this is scary. one dumb person on either side & this could get dangerous.

suddenly 20 cops is now 100

can't tell what kin[d] of weapons are being pointed. can't be live rounds, can it? new riot squad now here. why? this is peaceful.

Paikin followed this with several tweets about the police seemed to have been ordered to “tighten the noose.” Then, roughly around 11 p.m., he announced that the police had moved in and were arresting people.

mny arress now. inexplicable ppl say "we wan o go home cops overwhelming crowd[”]

Then, an ominous tweet about rubber bullets:

weapons are rubber bulle[t]s

At that point, the retweets of Paikin took off even more. Paikin also caused many Twitter users to be concerned with his next tweet:

# i. gone police escor[t] me away

Some took this to mean that he had been arrested, but Paikin soon cleared things up, and unleashed a flood of tweets that described what he had seen. Here’s the essential reading:

i saw police brutality tonight. it was unnecessary. they asked me to leave the site or they would arrest me. i told them i was dong my job.

they repeated they would arrest me if i didn't leave. as i was escorted away from the demonstration, i saw two officers hold a journalist.

the journalist identified himself as working for "the guardian." he talked too much and pissed the police off. two officers held him....

a third punched him in the stomach. totally unnecessary. the man collapsed. then the third officer drove his elbow into the man's back.

no cameras recorded the assault. and it was an assault. the officer who escorted me away from the demo said, "yeah, that shouldn't have happened." he is correct. there was no cause for it.

i can appreciate that the police were on edge today, after seeing four or five of their cruisers burned. but why such overreaction tonight?

the demonstration on the esplanade was peaceful. it was like an old sit in. no one was aggressive. and yet riot squad officers moved in.

police on one side screamed at the crowd to leave one way. then police on the other side said leave the other way. there was no way out.

so the police just started arresting people. i stress, this was a peaceful, middle class, diverse crowd. no anarchists

literally more than 100 officers with guns pointing at the crowd. rubber bullets and smoke bombs ready to be fired. rubber bullets fired

i was "escorted" away by police so couldn't see how many arrested, but it must have been dozens.

we must make a distinction between the "thugs" who broke store windows and torched cop cars and the very reasonable citizens who...

...just wanted to remind the authorities that the freedom to speak and assemble shouldn't disappear because world leaders come to town.

i have lived in toronto for 32 years. have never seen a day like this. shame on the vandals.

# and shame on those that ordered peaceful protesters attacked and arrested. that is not consistent with democracy in toronto, G20 or no G20

That last tweet was sent just before midnight. At around 13:20 12:30 a.m., Paikin gave a final burst of tweets:

2. Who specifically gave the order to clear the street? was that decision made on site or by a higher authority?

3. Does the tor police svc have any evidence of dangerous acts from those demonstrators that forced them to act that way, at that time?

# if any journos are talking to the police chief on sunday, those would be questions i'd like answered. ok, that's it. signing off tonight.

Reaction

Aside from the flood of retweets for Paikin, here’s a selection of the reaction to his tweets:

@brianstelter: Check out @spaikin's eyewitness tweets of police assaulting a journo at #G20. Read bottom to top. Powerful use of Twitter. (via @palafo)

@AlisonLoat: Goal of @spaikin's employer @TVO is to engage citizens. Let's not forget importance of this. Thanks to him & other journos working tonight.

@mattfrehner: Everyone in Toronto should read what @spaikin is tweeting right now.

@remark: Glad to see that Steve Paikin is getting love for doing the job of a journalist, shining a light in dark places. @spaikin #G20

@qu1j0t3: Hm, so #Harper's goons beat up a @guardiannews reporter, with other journos including @spaikin as witnesses. Sweater Man's Waterloo? #g20

@ottguy: want @spaikin at Harper's closing press conference and I want him asking the first question. #g20

@jessehirsh: Twitter's defining moments this week. An earthquake & Steve Paikin home from demo. Twitter the media of record. #newera #g20”

Update June 27 10:15 a.m.: Paikin has a brief blog post up on the TVO website. He writes:

I have reported from war zones in Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia, Lebanon, and Israel.

But last night's confrontation between peaceful demonstrators and riot squad police was the scariest situation I've ever been in, in almost 30 years of reporting.

Did you follow Paikin's tweets? What was your reaction to them? Add your comments below.