My favourite Occupy tweet says it all: “In future generations they will ask, Where were you during the great shift?”Well, we know where some folks are. As events hurtle toward that injunction hearing on Friday morning (November 18) and wealthy-born Mayor Ford works to wreck Occupy’s stand for economic justice, it’s time to note who’s doing and saying what.
All those silent sitting MPs, MPPs and councillors who’ve bought into the “gone on too long” argument are really telling us they basically don’t care about the global movement that’s taking on the social disparity eating the world alive.
As the occupiers say, the money folks own the game, which is why condo construction can disrupt the cityscape with noise, dust and fumes while a tattered-looking tent community gently interrupting business-as-usual with an urgent message faces extinction.
On frantic Tuesday, November 15, the city’s eviction notice arrived, demanding tents be dismantled and the park vacated daily from midnight until 5:30 am. Protesters, under a rare November sun, spent the day spinning out strategies and scenarios for what they feared was a looming bust.
As always, the GA consensus process was painstakingly inclusive of ideas both strange and brilliant – form a defensive conga line, surround the park, link arms with PVC plastic, create affinity groups, etc. A proposal to hold a midnight-deadline dance party was junked for optics reasons, though Charles added another wrinkle: “While we’re dancing, the media won’t be able to hear our screams as cops beat the shit out of us.”
Meanwhile, marshals were devising an intelligent plan urging participants to divide themselves into red, orange and green groups according to their tolerance for arrest. Reds would non-violently protect the yurts and the First Nation sacred fire, and others would be marshalled to the sanctuary space beside the church.
The evening of that manic day ended in a giddy calm: a judge, responding to a court injunction against the city’s action filed by five campers, had ordered a reprieve until his promised Saturday ruling. Nonetheless, by 11 pm the park was crawling with solidarity-exuding labourites, yellow Steelworkers flags flashing in the night.
It was a mixed blessing, since one of the terms of the stay was that protests in the park wouldn’t be cranked up. OFL head Sid Ryan, obviously enjoying the rebel drama, told occupiers, invoking Martin Luther King and other movements, that “there’s nothing wrong with a little civil disobedience. Do not go down without a fight.”
Steelworker Nancy Hutchinson, too, sent out kisses. “We are here with you because we believe in you.” There under the midnight sky, the labour-Occupy love-in promised interesting times to come, but to be frank, it’s hard to believe a mayor ready to chop up union contracts will have his head turned by such occurrences.
One protester handed out leaflets with the message “We are not camping; we are assembling peacefully to fully express our grievances,” a sentiment sure to form part of lawyer Susan Ursel’s argument in court Friday.
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association has already issued its caution that constitutional rights to assembly and even an enduring public presence take precedence over inconvenience in the absence of other compelling issues.
And what exactly would these be? There’s no danger to the public or health and safety disaster emanating from St. James, only puffed-up pretexts. Anyone who’s spent time on site knows passersby are mostly enjoying being courted by campers and touring the site like it’s an exotic vacation spot.
As for the limp rationale about winterizing the sprinkler system, give me a break. As if the city weren’t dealing with the most negotiation-positive rebels ever. Occupiers have made it clear on several occasions that they would like to work with the Parks Department on this, and are even discussing returning in springtime to help with planting.
But dialogue was never on the table for a mayor who believes in privatized services and privatized citizens, and the successful model pioneered by Occupy’s police-liaison committee will never be allowed to extend to city matters. Instead, columnists were allowed to develop the theme line: the park is dirty, the portapotties smell, occupiers are partiers and lay?abouts.
The party charge must really smart. The key organizers are working about as hard as most corporate execs and are exhausted, exhilarated and sometimes despondent about the challenges of democratic processes, keeping folks fed, mediating nasty arguments and coping with the city’s most oppressed showing up on their doorstep for solace and sustenance.
As one of the core protesters said Monday night, referring to the troubled souls now the responsibility of Occupy, “I came here because I knew the world out there was messed up. But I didn’t really know how messed up till I got here.”
The same night, following that ferocious rain, one of the campers slipped in the mud, and I struggled to get him up for several seconds before I realized my problem wasn’t that I hadn’t the strength, but that he was drunk.
The people who set up this action are among the most committed of a generation, but they are engaged in a high-stakes political action with the most forgotten in tow: the mentally ill, addicts, alcoholics, ex-prisoners. And now, in some karmic intervention, these folks are suddenly and through a most fascinating process, participants in forging a new political reality.
This week, as occupiers were dealing with the eviction threat, they also had their hands full fending off truly dangerous individuals, easing fiery disagreements over marshalling, chilling out a major blowout on the food committee, encouraging mavericks not partial to group processes to stick it out, and guarding the integrity of GAs.
Their coping skills are getting sharpened in the confusion of mixed personalities and experiences and a chronic sense of flux that requires several days and many meetings to establish any new idea. It’s a university of social transformation, but will occupiers have time to graduate? And where will Saturday’s ruling leave the camp when next week rolls around?
The mayor’s positioning is that he only seeks to see the tents depart. But what he really wants off the scene are the upcoming leaders (though they hate the word) of the great equalizing project to come, somewhere in a future we cannot yet see.
Origin
Source: NOW
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