Police arrested Clarke, OCAP organizers Gaetan Heroux and Stefan Pilipa, and OCAP supporter Patricia Lilley the day before for their participation in a June 15 demonstration against homelessness held at the Ontario provincial legislature. Their arrests brought the number of those charged since last month's protest to 32.

Clarke was charged with participating in a riot and counsel to commit an indictable offense.

The June 15 protest turned into a police riot after some of the estimated 1,000 demonstrators pushed against the barriers set up by more than 200 cops. The police charged the demonstrators with truncheons and pepper spray. Then about 20 mounted riot police stormed into the crowd. Dozens of protesters were injured. Police claimed 29 of their members also suffered injuries.

Among those participating in the July 22 rally outside the OCAP activists' bail hearing were representatives of the Canadian Auto Workers, Canadian Union of Public Employees, Metro Network for Social Justice, and Canadian Union of Postal Workers.

The four OCAP activists were released on bail, under particularly undemocratic conditions imposed by the judge. Clarke was forbidden to talk with or associate with other OCAP members while awaiting trial, to participate in any demonstration, to go near the provincial legislature, or to leave the province of Ontario, and he must report to police if he changes jobs. He is a staff worker for OCAP.

The police have used the five weeks since the protest to view videotapes seized by police from several news organizations for their case against the accused. On July 20, lawyers for TV networks CBC, CTV, Global Television, and ONtv, and for the newspapers Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, and Sing Tao Daily announced their intention to argue in court that police should not be allowed to use photographs and videotapes shot by the media to investigate the protesters.  
 

"The Toronto city authorities are covering up police brutality and clamping down on the democratic right to protest by carrying out these arrests backed up by the bail restrictions," said Steele following the rally at the courthouse. "The frame-up charges and bail restrictions against Clarke and all the others should be dropped immediately," he added.

Steele, a meat packer and member of the United Food and Commercial Workers union, addressed a Militant Labor Forum here the next day, where the Communist League campaign in the November 13 municipal elections was officially launched.

"Toronto mayor Melvin Lastman represents the class of super wealthy families that control the economy and government in Toronto, in Canada, and around the world. They live in homes costing many millions while thousands of homeless workers and their families sleep in hostels each night and hundreds of working people sleep on the streets, even in freezing weather," said Steele.

"Attacks on democratic rights by capitalist governments, such as the police assault on the July 22 demonstration against homelessness, are increasing," said Steele, as political polarization sharpens in Canada and the employers anticipate greater working-class resistance.

"Stockwell Day, the new leader of the Canadian Alliance, who is more openly rightist than any major bourgeois politician in recent memory, calls for return of the death penalty, additional laws and police to 'fight crime,' sending undocumented Chinese immigrant workers immediately back on a plane without the hearings they are currently entitled to, and the recrimi-nalization of abortion."

Steele urged working people and their unions to fight to beat back the effort by the Lastman administration and the cops to victimize those involved in the June 15 protest. "Our watchword has to be 'an injury to one is an injury to all,' " he said.