Columbia Journal

Book Review:

Reading the Riot Act:
A Brief History of Rioting in Vancouver
By Michael Barnholden
Anvil Press      Vancouver
2006
$18.00       144pp.

reviewed by Rowan Lipkovits

A spectre is haunting Vancouver. Eerily, a blockbuster has been filming in our streets re-enacting the 1999 anti-World Trade Organization protests known as "the Battle in Seattle". This spectacle evokes memories of the last political mobilization to produce such a pitched response here, the 1997 student riots at UBC against our hosting of authoritarian leaders Jiang Zemin and Suharto at APEC. Since the more recent well-heeled political demonstrations against David Emerson's defection and war and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan have manifested less public disorder than a typical Friday night downtown on Granville, a more historical examination is needed to understand these outbursts.

Until recently, all we had to consult was the Vancouver Police Department's A Century of Service (1986), but beyond its increasing datedness, it is problematic due to the very historical nature of its being written by victors.
When the authors are a conservative force concerned with upholding the status quo, which is to preserve an environment in which business can be conducted -- and for which the sanctity of private property is paramount -- they may gloss over how the public interest is best served by following bricks breaking glass with truncheons breaking noses. Clearly an outside, independent perspective is needed.

This sets the stage for author Michael Barnholden, whose book Reading the Riot Act:
A Brief History of Rioting in Vancouver (Anvil Press) tells the stories of the clashes that rocked our streets. Grouping them according to the major themes of their eras, he demonstrates that even unexpected, apparently spontaneous flarings are about something deeper, from unemployment pressures, freedom of speech and inhumane conditions in prisons all the way to racism and the disappointing performances by our professional sports teams and Axl Rose, the frontman of the notorious GM Place no-show rock band Guns 'n Roses.

This tapestry is woven against a backdrop of class war, demonstrating that while the rowdies ground beneath the heels of the police are always the working poor, it's suspiciously rare that they take their grievances to the neighbourhoods of their bosses. Challenging the popular conception that riots are just the result of "a few bad apples" sowing discontent, Barnholden advances the competing thesis that the entire orchard may in fact be infested with parasites.