Toronto Homeless Encampment Remains Cop-Free By Camouflaging As Anti-Vaxx Rally

Toronto - It has been a particularly brutal summer Toronto's unhoused community. In June we watched officers and police helicopters brought in to clear the encampments at Trinity-Bellwoods, followed shortly after by another eviction at the Lamport Stadium encampment which quickly escalated to violence. To speak on the matter of the city’s unhoused we sat down with Evan, a member of the Encampment Support Network.

“These community members were trying their best to not bother anyone, so when your very existence makes some people angry, what more can we do to protect them? And that's when it hit me: We need to disguise ourselves as what makes us the most outraged!”

During an incident at a recent vaccine rally, an anti-masker bit a police officer. Surprisingly, the officer did not see fit to use pepper spray on this man that was attacking him like a rabid animal, yet pepper spray was thrown out quite liberally during Lamport Stadium evictions on people who were just trying to keep their tent in one piece. And that got Evan thinking.

“The ESN was discussing how our community has been affected by the recent anti-vaccine protests happening outside Toronto hospitals, and we realized that there were never cops stopping these people. That’s why we’ve rebranded the Alexandra Park encampment as a protest outside of Toronto Western Hospital and now the police leave us alone!”

“This is a new encampment for Toronto's unhoused people surrounded by a state-of-the-art cloaking device: A crowd of assholes who aren't sure who they’re mad at anymore. We launched the secret encampment on Wednesday and it hasn't been approached by any outsiders since.”

Evan recalled of only one incident with the police since the encampment was settled, where a Toronto police officer approached one of their fake vaccine protestors and said “I know what it's like to feel like you're playing on the team that nobody likes,” then raised his fist and asked him to bump it.

Dan Pearce is a contributing writer for The Toronto Harold. Dan can be found on both Twitter and Instagram @danfromlinkedin.