In June 2010 activists opposing the G20 meeting held in Toronto were greeted with brutal and arbitrary state violence. Whose Streets? is a combination of testimonials from the front lines and analyses of the broader context, an account that both reflects critically on what occurred in Toronto and looks ahead to further building our capacity for resistance.

Featuring reflections from activists who helped organize the mobilizations, demonstrators and passersby who were arbitrarily arrested and detained, and scholars committed to the theory and practice of confronting neoliberal capitalism, the collection balances critical perspective with on-the-street intensity. It offers vital insight for activists on how local organizing and global activism can come together.

Tom Malleson is Assistant Professor in the Social Justice and Peace Studies program at King’s University College at Western University. He is a long-time anti-authoritarian activist and organizer and has worked with migrant justice, anti-poverty, global justice, anti-war, and solidarity economy groups. He is co-editor ofWhose Streets: The Toronto G20 and the Challenges of Summit Protest.

Tom Malleson's profile page

David Wachsmuth was trained as an urban planner in Toronto and is now a PhD candidate in Sociology at New York University. He is an organizer with GSOC-UAW, the union for graduate employees at NYU.

David Wachsmuth's profile page

When we invited journalist and activist Naomi Klein to campus in the fall of 2004, five years after the international success of her bestselling first book, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, she was a literary star. She had recently returned from a trip to Iraq for Harper's Magazine, which would form the foundation of her next book, Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. We expected she would draw a crowd, so we moved the lecture into the 400-seat St. Thomas University chapel and set up an overflow room downstairs in the cafeteria. When Klein arrived and discovered the overflow room was full, she insisted on stopping there first to address them in person for a few minutes. She said she is always running late; the people in the overflow room were her people. A version of the talk she gave that evening was published in Harper's.

Naomi Klein's profile page

Whose Streets? warrants a broad and diverse readership, within and beyond the academy.

Labour / Le Travail

I love that editors Tom Malleson and David Wachsmuth made the democratic and risky decision to include a broad spectrum of opinions in their book…This sober retelling of events replaces knee-jerk emotions with necessary facts for anyone still trying to figure out what the hell happened…The spark lies in the storytelling.

rabble.ca

Focusing on eyewitness accounts and reportage,… [the book’s second and third parts] provide powerful illustrations of the clashes between security forces and protestors.

Quill & Quire