The site’s co-founder and executive director Sean Devlin says his collective is still using online humour to engage age groups whose apathy at the polls is well-documented. But the SHD group, which just finished up a 14-stop national campus comedy tour, is now focusing on conducting workshops to empower young Canadians to take direct political action or perform acts of civil disobedience to have their voices heard.
Citing personal experience, Devlin says most young Canadians’ political apathy is an act of self defence aimed at avoiding the jarring set of incongruent truths that make up our world.
“A few years ago I became really overwhelmed by the state of things like climate change and became quite depressed,” a scruffy Devlin said at Simon Fraser University’s downtown campus last week after the penultimate comedy show of the national tour.
Two separate doctors prescribed him to stop reading the newspaper, “essentially prescribing me apathy,” he says.
“Apathy is usually a label put on us young people to say that we don’t care,” an earnest Devlin says. “I care a lot, but it’s just really painful to be acutely aware of what’s happening - it’s really overwhelming.
Praising Stephen Colbert and the acerbic Daily Show host Jon Stewart as comedic role models for SHD, Devlin says humour allows the group to bring up challenging issues and now link them to “a long history of people’s movements” and show them a “number of ways to take action.”
Devlin, 29, is speaking from experience. He and SHD’s community organizer Brigette DePape were two of five protesters charged with trespassing in January when they crashed the National Energy Board’s public hearings in Vancouver for Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gateway pipeline.
The charges were eventually dropped and Devlin told The Sun at the time “while we do respect the individuals who are expressing their opposition within the hearings, we wanted to remind the public that at the end of the day all of these hearings can be disregarded by the Harper government, and that is simply unacceptable.”
DePape - the former page who held up a "Stop Harper" sign in the House of Commons in 2011 – arrested last Tuesday’s crowd of idealistic SFU students with the tale of what led a humble kid from Winnipeg to stage her attention-grabbing protest in front of the prime minister.
“We know that it will take people doing things that they have not yet done in order to, not only stop Harper and stop Christy Clark, but also to change a fundamentally-flawed system,” the 23-year-old said. “We’re hoping that through this (SHD activism) young people become more informed that Christy Clark’s and Harper’s agenda are the same.
“It’s one that is failing to confront the economic crisis and the climate crisis.”
DePape said she is buoyed by the success of the energy of the youthful protests like Occupy Wall Street, Idle No More and the Quebec student protests.
The original site became an overnight viral phenomenon during the 2011 federal election, garnering 4.1 million views in its first 72 hours. Now, Devlin and co. – a group that includes the 2012 Canadian Comedy Award winners The Sunday Service and comedian Graham Clark – hope the site’s relaunch garners as much attention, but also want to move beyond “clicktivism” and energize young Canadians to become politically active with on-the-ground action.
Retiring North Coast MLA Gary Coons, in attendance at last Tuesday’s comedy show, praised the troupe for engaging youth and advocating for direct action.
“The tar sands are ground zero for climate change in Canada, if not globally, and I think we gotta take all actions necessary,” Coons said. “This is one piece of the puzzle as far as putting actions together.”
On Tuesday DePape exhorted the crowd of about 100 wide-eyed SFU students to stand up if they were willing to join a day-long SHD workshop slated for this Saturday on their campus.
Roughly 30 stood as the rest of the crowd cheered and clapped - about the same percentage (38) of Canada’s youngest voters to cast a ballot in the past two federal elections.
Original Article
Source: canada.com
Author: Mike Hager
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