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Occupy T.O. photospam
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.
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.