Wondering about the Movement Defence Committee of the Law Union of Ontario (MDC) and what we do? Today we look at out most visible team: Legal Observers.
Legal Observers are the eyes and ears of the off-site legal team. We are there to document abuse by the state against progressive protestors.
We operate from the understanding that police in Canada have been used to advance the colonial project and displace Indigenous communities from the beginning, and took on the role of criminalizing and exerting control over Black people once slavery was abolished.
Police exist to defend private property and our capitalist system.¹
We exist to document the gap between your rights in law and the actual behaviour of the police, with regard to those rights. Too often rights are breached in the moment and only corrected later — and without proper support, sometimes not at all.
¹ "To Protect and to Serve", the motto of the Los Angeles Police Department since 1963, subsequently adopted by many other police forces, was the result of a marketing contest.