Not many people experience Cuba. The real Cuba. Sure you’ve been to an all-inclusive and maybe had a few day excursions out of the compound. But even having lived and worked in Cuba for six months, I still don’t feel that I’ve done more than scratch the surface. This is because foreigners constitute the wealthy 1% of the island, while contributing approximately 30% of the country’s GDP. As a foreigner, it is very difficult to relate to a Cuban whose average monthly salary is equal to the average meal cost for a tourist couple in Havana. Not everything is as it seems in communist Cuba. What I’ve learned is that along with tourists, there is a powerful “1%” of Cubans with a higher standard of living, more resources, and more than average power and access to opportunities. All of this at the expense of those with less economic power.
Sound familiar?
In Canada, I am part of the so-called “99%” of the population, frustrated with the system of corporatocracy that financially rewards unsustainable, socially and environmentally harmful behaviour. In Cuba, I experienced being the wealthy 1% and the unfair power advantage this position yields. Unbeknownst to me, I was experiencing the same frustration that was causing people to take to the streets in the rest of the world, but from the opposite viewpoint. Like in many other countries, the Cuban media is controlled by the powerful and wealthy. For six months, I had no idea what was occupying the media’s attention back home.
I returned to Canada in time for winter and started catching up on the headlines that I had missed for the past several months: Keystone pipeline, Syrian civil war, massive unemployment and bankruptcy in Europe, environmental disasters, celebrity gossip and of course, the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement. This movement seemed to be the embodiment of the same thoughts I had been formulating in Cuba about how the growing global economic inequality is affecting everything from global biodiversity to political processes.
While I was rekindling my relationship with the World Wide Web after months of estrangement, I came across The Canada Expedition (TCE) website and became intrigued by the project. In response to my query about how to get involved with TCE, Dr. Hoffman asked me if I would be willing to write an article about the Occupy movement in Canada. The past few weeks have been my search to understand the who, what, where and why of OWS in our home and native land.
What is Occupy?
As most everyone now knows, and as I recently learned, the Occupy movement is now an international direct action protest against socioeconomic and environmental injustice, designed to be inclusive and horizontally structured. The movement gained global mainstream media attention at the Occupy Wall Street protests in the fall of 2011, though occupations can be traced back to when Spanish youth occupied Madrid’s central square in May 2011 and the occupation of Cairo’s Tahrir square in January 2011.
Occupy Wall Street seems to be a symptom of a broken system, analogous to the camel’s back, broken from one straw too many; the economic crash, the bailouts, rising unemployment, the Arab spring and intensified by increased international connection through social media. OWS might just be my generation’s Woodstock, Vietnam war protests, Cuban revolution or Tiananmen Square. And in my opinion, it’s about time.
Last summer, Adbusters featured a full-page photo of a dancer on the iconic Wall Street bull with figures emerging from the smoky background, a presage of what was to come. The tagline was an age-appropriate hashtagged “occupy wallstreet” and instructions to bring a tent. Within one month of the Wall Street occupation, the movement had spread, facilitated by social media, around the world.
Kalle Lasn, the Adbuster who initiated OWS, described these protests as reminiscent of those in the 60’s:
“It was that sort of deep-down feeling of a black-hole future building up,” he said in an interview in December with the Washington Post, “It was a certain number of months after Egypt and Tunisia, and it was fueled by the fact that people are losing their homes and jobs and some 30 percent of young people can’t find a job even if they have a PhD.”
At the heart of the protests is the fact that nearly half of the world’s income is distributed amongst the richest ten percent of the global population, while a measly one percent of income is distributed to the world’s poorest ten percent. There is an astounding base of scientific literature linking economic inequality with social problems, health, and environmental degradation.
Reading about the background and suspected causes of the movement, like the 2008 economic crash, allowed me to learn a lot about modern economics, CDOs, BOEs, COGS, EBTs, IPOs… it’s enough to give someone ADD and OCD.
Reports reveal that Canada is following the trend toward inequity, with a significant increase in income inequality in the first half of the past decade. Canadian income inequality is higher than in eleven of its socioeconomic counterparts, including Australia, France, Germany and the Netherlands. In the past twenty years, earnings in the top income bracket increased by over 15%, while earnings for those in the lowest income group dropped by over 20%. Add to these statistics the growing unemployment rates, the bank bailouts, home foreclosures, and the increasing disregard of the Harper government for environmental issues, social problems and blatant disregard for our country’s First Nations. This is part of what the Canadian Occupy movement is about.
Incredibly, it isn’t just my generation that is taking up the cause. From what I’ve seen, the 99% that is fighting for fairness spans many generations, income levels and ethnic backgrounds.
Who are the 99%
The Occupiers I’ve met, read about or listened to represent a broad range of people. They describe themselves as the 99% and on a grey afternoon in Montreal, I walked into a warmly lit student hang out near one of the English universities to find out why. Through the wonder of social media networking, I had contacted a student to talk about his experience in the Occupons Montreal movement. He invited me to chat informally at a locally owned resto-café with a few other occupiers. Jamie Klinger has been a participant since he first stepped into the media tent at Occupy Toronto in October and then brought his passion and positivity to his hometown’s movement in Montreal.
“We were just a group of people looking for each other,” said Klinger, “who found each other… a group of people to work towards social justice.”
“We are not they, but we aspire to be them,” he said about the 99%, “We are asking what people want, and we are trying to do right by them. The more people join us, the more opinions we reflect coming to a more and more representative consensus. Nobody said democracy was supposed to be easy, but Occupy is not a system, it is a process.”
I contacted Occupy Vancouver through their website and within a few short hours, I had someone offer to speak to me. Stephen Collis has been involved in the movement from early on, mainly in media and communications. I met him on a typical rainy Vancouver day at a coffee shop in the downtown area. Stephen is an author and a professor of English literature at Simon Fraser University and has taken time off to write another book. He says he has always been an activist and that the Occupy movement came at the right place and the right time for him to participate in this cultural phenomenon.
Collis listed a few of the causes he felt sparked the movement: the 2008 economic collapse, the outrage over bank bail-outs, years of unheeded warnings and talk about environment problems and the media saturation of seeing ordinary citizens of all ages in the streets standing up for their beliefs. He compared the huge global psychological shockwave to the effect of the fall of the Berlin wall. Stephen Collis describes the 99% as “literally everybody; elders with their issues, students, labour unions, hipsters working in a café…” As the professor explains it, “the label 99% isn’t about representation, it isn’t a voting tactic.
It is an open invitation. Come on down, show up, bring your issues” and you will be heard.
It is an open invitation. Come on down, show up, bring your issues” and you will be heard.
Structure
The movement uses various horizontal organization methods, including general assemblies, hand gestures, and the human microphone, which work to increase participation and promote self-empowerment. The hand gestures allow for inclusive discussions, without the discourse becoming about hearing those who speak loudest. The human microphone is like the adult, working version of the kids’ game “broken telephone”, without the whispering. Imagine a varied group of one hundred people discussing how to overcome gender and ethnicity biases. The original statement is repeated one phrase at a time by the crowd, rows of people transmitting the message to those out of earshot in the back. Within seconds, a middle-aged white man is repeating the comment of the speaker, telling people behind him that he feels marginalized for being a black woman.
The absence of a defined figurehead or leader seems to be one of the many strengths of OWS. When asked about this facet of the movement, Jamie explained that leadership manifests as responsibility rather than power: those who play bigger roles in the movement do so because they have a go-getter attitude. The people I spoke to were very clear on this topic. They are not spokespeople, or leaders; they are participants in their democracy. One occupier was quoted as saying “we’re not leaderless, we’re leaderful.”
Evictions
"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists". –Abbie Hoffman, political and social activist
Globally, the longest lasting occupation was St-Paul’s cathedral in London, which ended February 28th with an eviction from the British High Court. For the most part, Canadian occupations lasted over one month from mid-October until November, when according to occupiers, most protest camps were illegally evicted from public property. Their property. Our property.
Klinger said the eviction of the Montreal occupation changed the protester’s view of their relationship with police. For 42 days the encampment had maintained a working relationship with the police, negotiating the presence of various elements and structures, including 180 tents. The morning of November 25th, police arrived at Victoria Square to hand out the eviction notices and forcefully removed the protesters. No one was charged with interfering in the process, though Occupons-Montreal went on record to say that the eviction illegally violated their right to free assembly and free speech.
According to Collis, the difference in Vancouver was two-fold. First, much of British Columbia territory is unceded First Nation land and this creates an interesting situation for any occupation, including Occupy Vancouver movement. Second, the city of Vancouver obtained a court ordered eviction notice, giving them legal clout, with the threat of thousands of dollars in fines and jail time. This “legal” eviction, Collis argues, is unfounded, based on the First Nation land ownership. Currently, lawyers are working pro-bono on behalf of Occupy Vancouver making the case that the tents were political structures. On eviction day, protesters marched carrying their tents in the streets, circled the block and set up their new camp on the property of the Vancouver Law Courts that had ordered their original expulsion. This new camp lasted only 24 hours and the protesters were again forced to leave, tents in hand. The Vancouver eviction can be viewed on youtube under “Moving Day” on the Occupy Vancouver channel. As Collis puts it, “the French had their red flags and barricades during their revolution, we now have tents.” This is an interesting connection between the current situation in the United-States where 1 in 7 American homes are empty and 1 in 402 Americans are currently homeless. Will tents become the new economic bubble? Low environmental impact, no mortgage, no rent.
The mostly peaceful end to these two Canadian protests was worlds apart from evictions that occurred in the U.S. when the movement was afforded total media saturation. Until then, the mainstream media ignored or disparaged the protesters and coverage had relied on each occupation’s media-team. “It literally took white girls getting pepper-sprayed in the face for people to be interested”, said an OWS participant in an Al Jazeera report called Fault Lines – History of an occupation.
The sheer volume of video footage of police brutality during occupation evictions in various cities makes it difficult to ignore how well covered the movement is by its own participants and how much excessive force the police used. If the powers-that-be thought the evictions would shut down the movement, they were sorely mistaken. The evictions not only brought more attention and sympathy to Occupy, but it also forced protesters to reevaluate their plans. As the OWS battle call states: “You can’t evict an idea.”
The way forward
Though the media seems to be ambiguous about whether or not the Occupy movement has died along with the leaves on the trees, the occupiers I spoke to are of one-mind. Occupations will begin again in the spring. The evictions and the winter frost allowed participants to move inside and focus on their long-term plans.
According to Collis, during the occupations the teams and working groups had little time to focus on their long-term visions, as they were constantly involved in the day-to-day tasks of maintaining the camps and complying with regulations. Now that they have had time to organize, the upcoming spring melt will show what has been growing under cover of winter. As Jamie succinctly put it: “last fall was just pre-season, you ain’t seen anything yet!”
Klinger sees Occupons Montreal as a transition to a more sustainable, self-sufficient society. “I see it large, I envision a long-term, self-sufficient, sustainable future with lower living costs.” When I asked why Occupy Montreal hasn’t made any official demands, he responded by explaining that official demands might alienate people and give media a way of dismissing and forgetting about movement. “It gives the media a story once, and never again.” Occupy Montreal’s working groups can be found on their website and range from environmental issues, on-site sanitation, legal aid, health, economy, education and human rights.
In Vancouver, the strongest working group seems to be the environmental justice group. Collis used the analogy of Russian dolls to describe this group with climate change opening up the tar sands problem, opening up the pipeline concern, opening up to First Nations issues.
Collis hopes that the upcoming occupations will continue the education and action that has been occurring in equal parts. The action side of the movement is obviously direct action by occupying a space. “This movement is entirely dependent on age old elements: bodies and space” said Collis. According to Klinger, the movement would be impossible without organization through social media. Collis agrees that social media is important, but as “a tool for organizing something quickly. We still need face to face direct action.” Collis hopes to see two things change this spring. The first is that protesters will respond to the question “what are you doing?” by explaining the reasons for the occupations. The second is that they will respond to the question, “when are you leaving?” by setting clear start and end dates geared to specific issues, whether it be climate change, housing or economic issues.
It may seem redundant, but OWS is about occupying Wall Street, it’s about finance. Collis hopes to see Vancouver focusing on its local problems. He envisions Occupy Vancouver as the capital for environmental occupation and thinks it may be useful to have focal nodes with different cities focusing on city-specific issues.
Thoughts
The Occupy movement embodies the frustration and the hope of today’s world. Now that I am once again a ninety-nine-percenter, I see the movement as our cry and action for a sustainable future. This movement also embodies many of the principles of sustainability set forth by The Canada Expedition (TCE). Occupy is about people pointing out the flaws in the system and working together to improve it. As TCE explains, “The old promises have been broken. We need real prosperity for everyone. It is time for a real wealth initiative.” I firmly believe that the Occupy movement is the initiative that is going to develop strategies to ensure that socioeconomic and environmental sustainability becomes a priority for people and their governments. The working groups in each city are collaborating to create socially responsible visions of how the country should operate. Amongst other mandates, this involves transitioning towards a sustainable economy, decreasing violence, ensuring an accountable, effective government and encouraging self-empowerment of the general public. These elements are very similar to the topics described in The Canada Expedition’s True Wealth Initiative Agenda.
Critics of Occupy point to the need for a comprehensive, unified message to send to the public, in order to involve the average Canadian. I argue that the message is already clear: people are upset with the current reality. In a world where attention spans are being reduced to ten-second sound bytes and 140 character tweets, I believe it is important to preserve some thoughts and not distil them to their faintest essence. If you are interested in learning about the movement, speak to someone, read about it, grab the bull by the horns and get out there. Democracy needs people to make it work and Canadians need to pay attention to how our majority government is acting. We, the people, need to ensure that our elected officials are representing the people’s interests, and not those of corporations. Similarly, the government needs to pay attention to the demands of who it has been elected to represent.
In the same way that spring 2011 was the Arab spring, I believe that spring 2012 will be the North American spring, with reoccupations in major cities, towns and various government and corporate offices. I foresee the average person who has never pictured themselves protesting in the streets taking part in this movement, fighting for our future. With people realizing that they need to protect and fight for their democracy, mediocrity and the status quo will no longer be acceptable. This is dramatically apparent in Montreal, where students are taking to the streets in the hundreds of thousands to have their voices heard. The Maple Spring is off to a strong start with historic demonstrations.
In response to the increasing number of protesters, the mayor of Montreal is looking into methods to legally limit the power of the people by placing restrictions on their rights to protest. In the U.S., a bill was amended that would make it easier to criminalize protests on public grounds. Canadians need to step up and protect our rights to direct action and protests. Occupy might not be the panacea that some people consider it to be, but if enough people occupy their democracy in whatever way they can, we will build a better world.
To those who argue that we are lucky to live here, that we have more than we need and that protesting just inconveniences the general population, I will borrow Collis’ analogy: building a better future is like road construction, it may cause a few people to slow down, but if the end result is positive change, then it’s worth it to change the world.
The occupy movement is open to all and it easy to get involved or just to find out more for yourself, check out your local movement. “It’s easy to get involved, easy to transition into and do what you want. Things are only going to happen if people participate. This movement isn’t about representing people who aren’t there.” –Stephen Collis, Occupy Vancouver
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