Case in point: Occupy Toronto’s somewhat smallish Activist Assembly last weekend, January 20 to 22, at OISE, though what the happening lacked in numbers it made up for in heroic grit.
As always with the shape-shifting org, the people count was elusive because of all the comings and goings (there was a mobilization at Caterpillar in London the same weekend), but I’d wager about 150 in total showed up to celebrate past successes, fortify the consensual decision style and chart new forays.
OT may not have been terribly visible in the months since its November expulsion from St. James Park, but it has, astonishingly, remained in emergency mode, as if in the current economic crisis politics were of necessity a daily practice.
In this vein, the general assembly has until recently been meeting nightly at Nathan Phillips Square – frost, snow and rain notwithstanding – although attendance varies widely and some meetings are cancelled due to no-shows.
As well, mostly below the media radar, the group has valiantly kept its Livestream alive, fomented GAs in subways, streetcars and malls, bolstered climate justice and anti-cutback organizing, as happened at City Hall last week, hosted a New Year’s Day border meeting with U.S. Occupiers and maintained a number of watery but generally intact committees, from marshalling to outreach.
At the same time, there’ve been wrenching challenges: a tumultuous conflict over control of the finances, an unsettling showdown with an individual participant, more physical assaults and soul-searching over safety issues, and a major contest over meeting periodicity (GA now meets four times a week) and what constitutes quorum (now 26).
At Friday night’s OISE session, Judy Rebick in a thoughtful presentation praising the movement for breaking through “the manufactured consent to say inequality is obscene,” quoted filmmaker Velcrow Ripper to the effect that Occupy “isn’t an ideology; it’s a methodology.”
It’s really the only way of grasping this unconventional mode of organizing, which gets its strength and legitimacy from remaining responsive to a multitude of issues and the various groups organizing around them, and providing a sort of perma- cadre of protesters.
But the contradiction has always been that while the movement declares itself uncontainable, and boundary-less, it also aspires to coherence and strategical elegance. The disjuncture was evident at Saturday night’s GA on the frozen terrain of the OISE courtyard.
Here, discussion focused on the ongoing tent-in at Osgoode Hall established during the city’s anti-cut showdown. OT had issued a media release promising a three-day camp in City Hall square (later moved to Osgoode). But here it was, day five after an obvious budget victory, and a group of enthusiasts were still holding their ground. The question was whether they had the GA seal of approval and if OT should back their effort to fight eviction by seeking a temporary injunction. (The issue, by the way, was not “It’s freaking freezing, wet and miserable.”)
One participant suggested they were breaking a contract with the public by continuing the action past its stated expiry date. “Is the Osgoode camp a wise and strategic application of our energies?” he asked. “We told the media three days, and now it’s a stealth occupation. It shows us to be undisciplined and unfocused.”
Another felt the group was duty-bound to follow their most energetic flank. “Occupy is a mysterious process, creative and spontaneous, and responds to things that need to be addressed as they come up; this is one of those moments.”
In the end, campers, with discernment, heeded the caution of Movement Defence lawyer Omar Ha-Redeye that the legal bid had been too hastily initiated and a court loss would prejudice future occupations.
Still, for all the dilemmas dogging autonomous action, activists remain dedicated to their unusual post-lefty modus. The best-attended workshop Saturday was Occupy Neighbourhoods, where facilitator Andrew Owen codified an Occupy organizing manual. Unlike project management, he said, Occupy encompasses many issues at once and relies on the spontaneous and heartfelt initiatives of individuals.
“We are an expressive movement,” he said. “People do what they feel moved to do, after checking in with the GA. It’s not linear. It’s not ‘Let’s do this campaign and then this one.’ People contribute what they want to contribute.”
Soon enough, discussion turned to the possibility that Occupy might try to run some of the social services lost to the austerity knife. “We are creative; we can find our own solutions,” one woman said. “No one can tell you a vision is too big or too small,” Owen emphasized.
And that, as Leonard Cohen would say, is “how the light gets in.”
Original Article
Source: NOW
Author: Ellie Kirzner
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