Translating the printemps érable

June 11, 2012    Original French Text: http://www.twitlonger.com/show/hpnscq

I experienced my first political profiling today.

I had to go out to the Grand Prix as a volunteer to pick up garbage from Scouts who were running an ecological consortium at the request of the Grand Prix.  I went by bike.  A police officer approaches me, and tells me up front I have no business here. 

I explain to him why I was there and he retorts that that was the most original excuse he’d hear all day for needing to enter the site and stir up shit.  At this moment I was not trying to access the site: rather, I was waiting for others at our meeting point next to metro Jean-Drapeau.  They search my bag, take my ID and call their superior to see if I am on any lists, and they read all my personal papers. They find only a lunch and sunscreen.

Obviously disappointed by not being able to arrest me right there, they tell me I have five seconds to leave otherwise I would be picked up and taken to prison (!).  I am completely speechless.  It goes without saying that during this time, none of the fifty police officers around me bothered to search any of the young hotties with their the Gucci handbags.

You’re a douchebag? Welcome.  You look like a student?  Get the fuck out, or you go to prison.  AND THEY SAY THERE WAS NO PROFILING AT THE GRAND PRIX? Finally, when they are about to arrest me, a Grand Prix official passing by tells the police officers that yes, the ecological consortium did exist and I could enter the site without problems.  I was thus able to spend the day picking up crap after other, more “welcome” people. 

I have always thought that the slogan, “The police, to serve and protect the rich and the fascists,” was grossly exaggerated but as of today it expresses exactly what I am feeling. 

#ggi #manifencours #loi78