Occupy T.O. photospam

[sabotabby]

So who wants a whole whack of photos from Occupy T.O.?






Ironic bank is ironic.


Occupy T.O. was a bit more colourful than our usual demos here in Toronto. I credit an influx of new blood. It turns out that this woman buys her wigs from the same Value Village I buy mine.


This guy is kind of barking up the wrong tree, but I'm nevertheless impressed at his costume and the sign made me laugh.


This guy was the best speaker, talking about the occupation of indigenous land and welcoming us colonists to the fight that they'd been waging for centuries. He was the best speaker a) because he was eloquent and insightful, but also b) he used a megaphone. More about that later.


Another guy from the First Nations contingent.


Shit, dude, where did you find a $2 bill?


I snapped this one by accident but I love how curmudgeonly this guy looks so I kept it.


Someone printed out Canadian-relevant facts on 11x17 papers and passed them around, providing great soundbytes for everyone.


Lots of For Sale signs.


The Financial District march turned out to be impressively large, despite dreary weather. I didn't recognize most people in the crowd, which is always a good sign.


The SuperPot guy was cool, but these two win for the best sign of the day.


The march ended at St. James Park, where, bacon providing, the most hardcore among us will be camping out.


It stayed big for awhile but no one was quite sure what was going on.


I love the look of handmade signs on cardboard. It was a stark contrast to the usual mass of IS-printed signs.


I'd rather be climbing a tree.


Cute dogs abounded.


As did Guy Fawkes masks.


And now you are dead of cute.

So, I think OWS and its global offshots are an amazing historical moment. Like many veteran activists, I'm struggling with what a movement that claims to represent 99% of the population really means. Obviously, it involves some diverse and possibly unpalatable ideas—the lack of leadership, vague ideology, and the presence of so many people who have never protested in their lives leaves the movement open to being co-opted by, say, the Truthers or the Democratic Party or other opportunists. It's also a strength. It's been a long time since the Left in North America was truly populist, and we desperately need those new bodies and new ideas.

Strategically, I feel that Occupy T.O. has already made a few crucial errors. Megan Kinch, a dedicated activist whose opinions I trust, has an inside look at the planning meetings, which were not as democratic as one might hope. I also heard that the organizers discouraged unions from bringing banners (my union was going to bring its banner, but a call early this morning nixed that); rejecting the resources and expertise of organized labour is a huge mistake. Unions have made vital contributions to OWS and OWS has radicalized and reenergized unions. No reason why we shouldn't bring our banners and identify ourselves!

The biggest problem I felt was that we did not stay in the Financial District long enough. Sure, it's great to have a camp-out in the park, at least until the cops evict everyone at 2 am like they do to OCAP all the time. But OWS is not, primarily, about sleeping in a park; it's about maintaining a presence on Wall St. We marched through the Financial District but didn't stay there, and certainly on a Saturday, we weren't disrupting business as usual. The symbolism of sleeping in a park is questionable at best.

Finally, I felt like our newest and freshest activists repeated a mistake that is common to seasoned activists—adopting the forms of historical or international successful actions without thinking about pragmatism. The human megaphone tactic seen in New York was adopted because blasting speakers in Manhattan is apparently illegal. In Toronto, it is perfectly legal. However, the organizers ignored the perfectly functional speaker system in favour of the human megaphone. It may sound cool and get many (but not all) people in a crowd participating, but it doesn't get detailed information, like march routes across as easily as just using available technology. I actually saw a group of maybe eight people voting on something ("we won't serve food until the sanitation issue is dealt with"—eek!) using human megaphone tactics, which makes no sense whatsoever.

This said, it was a positive thing to not only see this many people flood the streets of my city, but also that they were promoting an overtly radical, anti-capitalist message. It wasn't altogether different than what we were saying during the G20, but there was absolutely no violence—the police were shockingly unobtrusive and I didn't see them hassling anyone—so the messages actually didn't get lost.

Here's the Occupy T.O. site, if you're interested in following what's happening here.

I went home because I was starting to feel dizzy and tired again. It seems like they've got events planned into January, so I'll be back.

Comments

[symbioid.livejournal.com]

I think - as scary and weird as it sounds - the "benefit" of the human microphone tactic is more one of memory. It's a bit cultish, brainwashing and indcotrinationish, but the fact is... if you can get the people to repeat things to each other, they are reinforcing it by hearing it out of their own mouths. Actually - kinda funny when you think about it. By preventing megaphones, the State now forces people to indoctrinate themselves by their own propaganda. I know I've been to marches where I could barely hear the speaker through the megaphone. The clips I've seen, I understood the repeaters more than the originator. The lack of megaphone is actually a reinforcement, I think. Trust me, hearing native English speakers repeating Slavoj Zizek's words and understanding it better is much better than struggling to hear him through a somewhat hazy/echoey microphone. (The video clip really did lay out how much easier it was to understand the crowd than the speaker).

I really do have hope - honestly - I ... I think this is the biggest hope I've had in a long time. But how do we grow it. How do we drown out the MSM? I dunno.

Anyways. Hope you get the rest you need. I'm glad you went.

I'm less afraid of Libertarians this time (because I know the principled ones actually do oppose bailouts) than I am the Dems and center-left parties co-opting it. But so far it seems the organizers are ready and willing to say "fuck you, you don't speak for us" from what I've seen.

One of these days I have to make it to Occupy Madison.

[sabotabby]

I think it probably works if everyone is involved. It's the first time to my knowledge that anyone has tried such a thing in Toronto, and people didn't quite get what to do.

Parts of the MSM here have actually been kind of sympathetic. The Star, at least, has been having pretty regular positive coverage of the lead-up to Occupy T.O.

[jackspryte.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... Speaking of libertarians. There was a libertarian lady whom spent a big chunk of time talking to folks in really dismissive, intellectually aggressive and insulting tones outside the open library space. You could tell she was looking for a form of intellectual sparring. She didn't really get it so went away. She was being divisive but not overly harmful so I ignored her and kept reading my book.

[sabotabby]

Hey, there is a lot of pretty with all these new kids joining the protests! Like that girl with the pink hair getting arrested. You know the one.

I can see it being effective when the message being shouted isn't "MIC CHECK." Which was about 75% of the messages being passed on. I also witnessed actual broken telephone happening.

Ah, Seattle. Seattle is so adorable. There were weird stops in the march today, rumoured to be because of stoplights, but it turned out they were just weird stops to avoid people tripping on each other.

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

I am feeling huge guilt and disappointment with myself for not going here. I overslept then couldn't face the plice kettling or the thought of being traped somewhere for hours, but it sounds like it's going well, although of course many more people and, as you say, actually occupying the financial district and disrupting something would be far preferable!

[sabotabby]

Well, I'm hoping it won't end anytime soon, so maybe you'll still get a chance.

I pretty much went with the idea that if the cops started to move in or I was feeling like I might be trapped, I'd leave right away. I'm having trouble standing for long periods of time without getting dizzy, so I was fully ready to flee at the first sign of trouble.

[outcastspice.livejournal.com]

thanks for the write up!!

[sabotabby]

There'll probably be more, given how things are going.

[terry-terrible.livejournal.com]

My experience with the human mic to the general assembly I went to was positive, I think it encourages engagement and collective action through forcing (in a way) people to pay attention instead of starting side conversations or drifting off as some activist drones on with the same anti-capitalist speech they've heard for years.

But I agree that for planning details it is a poor method. I left my general assembly not really clearly knowing what the plan for today's march was or if there was going to be an encampment starting today or not, I had to seek out some coordinators to make sure what was going on after the GA.

I'm encouraged by the non-violence aspect since I agree on pragmatic grounds that it just flat-out does not work and it has created a culture within some radical communities where confrontation with the state or police is the only tool in the toolbox in the place of building a broad-based infrastructure and communities of resistance.

As much as I've become disenchanted with the North American left and the protest tactics that we seem to have latched on to since the "Battle of Seattle", I hope that I'm being happily proved wrong, it seems that a lot of the experiences and lessons learned in the last twelve years are now bearing fruit for a more dynamic, grass-roots movement.

I know the politics around unions are probably totally different in Canada, but as far as the events in the states go I would be cautious about getting unions involved. Here 80% of the big unions are basically arms of the Democratic Party and filled with Move-on.org type progressives in leadership positions, I be very wary of their motivations as I have not had many positive experiences with them in the past.

[sabotabby]

Yeah, I certainly see the point of it. But for whatever reason it really wasn't working here.

I'm glad to see an abandonment of Black Bloc tactics, to be honest. They worked in Seattle, great. They worked in some places in Europe. They by and large aren't effective. I have nothing against property destruction in principle, but in practice, if it doesn't accomplish anything and in fact alienates people and divides the movement, why do it?

Here, the unions are political in occasionally unfortunate and naïve ways, but mostly they are just unions. My union's involvement in electoral politics is to campaign for NDP and Liberal candidates (I disagree with the latter), and then lobby sympathetic MPPs. They are clunky and bureaucratic and I have all kinds of criticisms of them, but they're certainly not interested or capable of taking over movements.

[franklanguage.livejournal.com]

The "human mike" is quite an elegant solution:

[sabotabby]

I'm not saying that it doesn't work in any circumstances, just that it didn't work under these circumstances.

[ginny-t.livejournal.com]

I really didn't (and don't) understand the choice of St. James park. It's too far from everything. Even if the protest outlasts the weekend, if it stays there, the financial district can just ignore it and continue on.

I want this to be effective, and I worry that it won't be from so far away. :/

[sabotabby]

The only explanation I can think of is that it was chosen after some negotiations with the police.

This isn't an entirely bad thing, of course—the last thing I want to see is a return to the level of policy brutality we saw during the G20. And the number of people involved would make it impossible to hold a location that hadn't been mutually agreed-upon. If we had New York numbers, we might be able to hold a more strategic location, but we don't.

Still, it's a defanged version of what we're seeing in the States, for sure.

[goddess32585.livejournal.com]

(long-time lurker, probably first-time poster?)

Here in Boston, I've observed another benefit of the People's Mic: it strongly encourages messages that are concise and thought out in advance, while also including built-in time to think about what to say next. I think that for some people, this makes public speaking a bit less nerve-wracking than usual. And as you say, it does keep the audience much more engaged.

It is time-consuming, though, to run GA entirely that way. Luckily we have a power infrastructure that sometimes allows conventional microphones.

I will be in Toronto/Waterloo next week, and plan to check out what's going on there. Good luck, and may your police continue to be well-behaved!

[sabotabby]

Hello there!

Yeah, the left could certainly use a heavy dose of concise! But I also think that it can encourage a sort of simplicity. At the very least, one ought to think out whether it's better to use a people's mic, a regular megaphone or speaker, or, well, just say it (as with a small group making decisions).

Enjoy Toronto! Should you happen to bump into a fellow blue-haired person at one of the demonstrations, feel free to say hi.

[numb3r-5ev3n.livejournal.com]

I kind of wish our group had a Pot Guy costume. Dallas is still way to hot for that, though.

[sabotabby]

Yeah, Toronto is cold. I think that'll kill the occupation faster than anything else.

[numb3r-5ev3n.livejournal.com]

Dallas has also learned effective use of megaphones. Ours even have nicknames "Mjolnir," "Excalibur" etc. It's gotten to where yelling 'MIC CHECK' with one is the fastest and easiest way to get an entire marching group's attention (especially if part of the group is lagging behind.) They're pretty much indispensable to Occupy Dallas.

[sabotabby]

I was even saying that I could have swiped a bunch of megaphones from school! SIGH.

[northbard.livejournal.com]

I have a problem, where I support, endorse and absolutely refuse to engage in consensus building if I can possibly avoid it. I'm allergic to democracy in close proximity, I think. At heart I'm a lefty totalitarian.

[sabotabby]

Me too. Consensus fascism is part of why I no longer identify as an anarchist. I remember when I was in a collective and there was this one dude whose only political position was Ludditism, and blocked everything that had to do with technology. No one could kick him out of the collective because that would be authoritarian. Meanwhile, he basically controlled the entire group by being the one guy who used veto power.

[dustyasymptotes.livejournal.com]

Me: OMG Michael!

N: Well, it sounds like a joke in that context...

Me: but he's still doing it! Right now! At Occupy Toronto!

[sabotabby]

I love that you know who I'm talking about without me even having to say. This was over a decade ago! I saw him at Occupy Toronto—don't tell me he's at the planning meetings, too. That guy tried to throw a punch at me once; so much for non-violence.