Occupy, as its participants like to say in their gentle, optimistic style, is now “moving into the next phase.”But it’s a forced evolution, thanks to the drawn-out, dramatic take-down in the mud of St. James Park on Wednesday, November 23. That eviction is the project of a municipal regime ready to intrude on the lives of many more people through service cuts than has the five-week bit of communal activity in a public green space.
The mobilization of green-vested park staff and the extensive police operation we witnessed Wednesday were ostensibly in support of a few dog walkers and a handful of disgruntled restaurant owners, whose rights, it seems, have trumped an urgent appeal for social fairness or what Occupy lawyer Susan Ursel calls “an expression of conscience.”
Not to mention the fact that the contested terrain, on shelter-laden Jarvis, has long been a haven for the dispossessed. If you’re looking for a sense of proportion, don’t seek it here.
The rebel camp in old Toronto, its structures methodically tagged, dismantled and packed up by park staff, is no more. Now we watch for signs that the movement that created it can survive an unnerving eviction and morph with precision and grace into a permanent political presence.
Tuesday evening, mere hours before the raid, was bitterly cold, wet and lonely. Sixty protesters packed the gazebo, shivering and coughing in an encampment fast evaporating; the kitchen, the info centre, the safe-space yurt and many tents were gone, the village slowly returning to the emptiness of November parkland.
There was a kind of wired calm. One of the team who had already been chained for several hours to the library yurt – the scene of intense interest the next day – removed his chains to address the GA and express his frustration: “As of now, there’s no coherent plan. What does tomorrow look like? Who the fuck knows?”
But Trey, with his trademark black bowler hat and keffiyeh scarf, more accurately tapped the electricity of the moment. “People came to the park in anger, love and hope,” he said. “This does not end tonight. We are all going out of this park tonight or tomorrow, some in handcuffs. I know where I will go: I will keep occupying wherever I am needed or until I die or the system is fixed.”
Logistics mastermind Michael Vessey, whose supply centre was still functional and ablaze with its crazy red lights, vowed his committee would hand out blankets and food “until the last minute” to those determined to hold out to the point of arrest. And Wednesday’s events saw them do exactly that.
“We need a large indoor space to keep living communally, having GAs, serving the poor and sharing the resources. I’m not sure we’ll get it, but if we show respect to this park [by cleaning it], then we show we deserve a new home.”
And this is the dilemma. To Occupy, you need public space and a permanent presence to maintain the requisite sense of emergency and keep the dialogue going. But does that space have to be wrested from the authorities, or can it be freely given and still have the necessary resistance appeal?
The GA has agreed, post-eviction, as a short-term plan, to convene in the park for meetings and organizing in the daylight hours – the city lawyer, after all, offered 19 hours a day. But what Tuesday night showed is that without a structure, the weather is a formidable foe.
What kind of venue does the ambitious project need? And can Occupy get and hold it? No question, the movement carries a likely unbearable weight of expectation. I almost couldn’t believe my eyes late Monday, the chill creeping up under my multiple layers, as hundreds and hundreds of people flocked to the park, believing a raid was imminent.
With the djembes beating (noise curfew set aside) and harmonic chanting drifting from the rose garden, facilitator Mischa Saunders captured the geist. “We will make all our dreams possible,” he said, calling for the crowd to break into groups to dialogue, with instructions to “respect the quiet voices.”
Under the dark night sky, at 1 in the morning, multi-aged supporters stood in small circles in the cold, using up their sleep time to solve global problems. The mayor has busted a conversation.
Thousands have been mobilized by Occupy since October 15 on an unusual rotational basis, responding to an action that is perpetual, and it has changed the rules of the protest game from here on in. Monday night at the GA, one of the occupiers yelled out of the blue: “We have lights in our heart just like Jack Layton did.”
Odd – I was thinking a little bit along the same lines myself.
If you add up everything said about the former NDP leader as he was being mourned – his politics of negotiation, essential kindness, DIY spirit, tolerance of those with opposing views – you get some appreciation of what these protesters are about. Not that they have a lot of interest in electoral politics, mind you.
The Occupy frame is not suited to short-sighted, fundamentally opportunistic parliamentarianism; it’s emergency-based and paints in broad conceptual brush strokes.
All the time the media was hounding the encampment for a statement of principles, the “living document” committee was struggling to achieve unity. Currently, the document is only a draft and says among other things that natural resources should belong to future generations and that there can’t be democracy without economic equality. Not so surprising, but the interesting thing is that the statement is meant to be endlessly formed and unformed, added to and subtracted from, shifting and changing through time as the movement grows and develops. Talk about a long-term perspective.
So here are some predictions: the movement of the future won’t follow rhetoricians, windbags or demagogues; there will be a low tolerance for individuals who take up too much space; leadership will be shared; the line between in and not in the movement will be porous, because the premium will be on discovering allies; the dispossessed will not be marginalized; non-violence will prevail; generational lines will be blurred, if not erased; decisions will be derived from an evolving system of consensus.
Occupiers may be out of their tents, but they are only just beginning their take?over of our political culture.
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