Occupons Montréal: Don’t Listen to the Media

He was working at the base of the statue of Queen Victoria when I photographed him. The tools of his trade were a simple black marker & a small sheet of plywood. What he was drawing was a beautiful, if a little terrifying, piece of artwork. This was the moment that my scepticism about Occupons Montréal faded & was replaced with hope – cautious hope, cautious optimism – but hope nonetheless.

The reason I had felt sceptical, the reason I had felt that Occupons Montréal might fade into irrelevance until I saw it for myself, is rooted in my understanding of other occupations worldwide – most notably, Occupy Wall Street, where the message is much clearer than the media is portraying it to be & the protestors’ organizing prowess & sense of community repeatedly seems to win out against the established powers & authorities. Globally, we are seeing a sort of 1968 all over again – a mass protest movement, simultaneously local & international in scope, with issues ranging from ending war, economic justice, student debt, unemployment, animal rights, etc. The momentum of this movement seems implacable & the energy of the people participating in it is contagious when you are around it.

So when I saw, over the weekend, a headline on the Le Devoir website saying that Occupons Montréal was associating itself with a march for Québec independence (the headline has since been removed), I felt my heart sink. The rest of the world was challenging an unfair, unscrupulous & predatory economic system that is pushing governments to austerity & here I was seeing my city’s Occupation rehashing old battles & using old, still-divisive politics to undermine its own message & popular support with nearly half of Québec’s population.

Except it wasn’t, and it isn’t. The Occupation General Assembly’s Minutes don’t mention a word about sovereignty or independence. The Occupation seems to be about changing the system to make it fairer for the people in our society who aren’t at the top of the wealth & power pyramid; the old battles are being brought up in the media, but not in the discussions I heard people having down in Square-Victoria-cum-La-Place-du-Peuple. Some of the ideas being discussed are frivolous, unachievable, blue-sky pushes for revolutionary, total world-system reform, but mostly what’s talked about seems to be about making the movement work, making the occupation durable &, beyond those goals, it seems to be about making the world better for people who need it. Allowing people not just to exist, but to live.

 

So yes, my scepticism faded. It faded because of the message of the Occupation, which is simply “Here are the problems foisted on our society by the wealthy & the powerful at our expense & in our name. Fix them. Now.”; it faded because of the people at the protest, who are living together with a sense of community I have simply never seen in Montreal; it faded because artists are sitting next to enthusiastic political activists, drawing pictures & sculpting stones while someone lectures about inequality and social justice, just because this place has given them the opportunity to express themselves in a way they could not before; it faded because in a city where people will riot because a band can’t play a gig for being held up at the border, there is a village of tents cooperating in an astonishing display of direct, deliberative democracy to change things for the better & not only has it not descended into chaos, but it has grown larger, more organized & more beautiful.

The artist with his plywood canvas sat on the plinth of a statue in a true, 21st Century Agora. If nothing else is accomplished by this movement, the community & the sense of being at the bustling, creative heart of a true democracy will nevertheless stay with me always.

The Animosity in Canadian Parliament - A Letter to Stephen Harper - Video

A Letter to Stephen HarperI sent this email to the Prime Minister a moment ago

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The Animosity in Canadian Parliament - A Letter to Stephen Harper

Mr. Harper,

The events of the last week have me concerned, I'm afraid, for the future of my country. I have stated, in public and on my blog (http://moopthas.blogspot.com), that the Canadian electoral process is inherently undemocratic and that the minority forum of parliament is the only way of approaching, through that process and in a representative fashion, the true desires of Canadians. So understand that I do not believe that the mandate to govern falls necessarily on the winning party of an election (in your case, the Conservative Party), but rather on the House of Parliament, whose makeup is reasonably close to the will of the Canadian people.

So it is with consternation that I witnessed your move to consolidate your party's power and capitalize on your Opposition's divided nature. It is with consternation that I witnessed your shock as your Opposition banded together to decry your heavy-handedness. It is with consternation that I witnessed you accuse the opposition, who together hold a majority of both the popular vote and the House, of acting undemocratically and it is with consternation that I witnessed your Sun King approach to party politics, reining in the dissent of those members of your party, such as the Honourable Mr. Day, who disagreed with your approach to the situation.

The absolutist approach you've employed, Mr. Harper, has given you one advantage. It is an advantage you can use to save your party's government from being toppled by the coalition; it has drawn responsibility away from your party and onto yourself and so, by your resignation and by your party's nomination of a new leader, you can save the Governor-General from setting a new, dangerous and potentially costly precedent in Canadian political history.

Please understand that I send this letter as a concerned citizen, looking to protect my country. I want the last year's economic growth (because while our neighbours to the south suffered a recession, our economy grew 1.7%) to continue and I want our country to survive what is a very uncertain economic period. I want the government to remain stable and I want you to resign, Mr. Harper, in order to accomplish that.

My name is Steven Alleyn, I thank you for your time and I hope this letter finds you well.

P.S. I do not support them, but the Bloc Québécois is a legitimate political party seeking to protect the interests of the Province of Québec. While their charter establishes them as a separatist party, history shows that they have acted in the interest of Quebec and Canada and have not directly acted against Canadian unity. Attacking their credibility and their legitimacy can be construed as an attempt to discredit the opinions and legitimacy of the entire French Canadian franchise; it is not in keeping with the political shrewdness you have demonstrated over the last eight years.

Democracy's End

Here's how Harper pissed off the opposition to the point where he can now declare his political career officially dead:

He presented preliminary financial measures, leading into the budget to be released next month, which undermined the already tenuous democracy of Canada's electoral process. His measure rescinded the right of political parties to receive public financing for every vote garnered at the polls, which would have effectively rendered every vote not cast for a winning candidate utterly worthless.

The opposition exploded; an attack on democracy and, more importantly for the self-interested politicians, an attack on their bottom line! It was unacceptable - it is unacceptable. The public financing measure was the only thing standing between Canadian Democracy and its transformation into a complete farce.

For those of you who find the coalition proposition undemocratic, I've got news for you; the opposition, between them, control a majority of the seats in parliament. The coalition is essentially more democratically legitimate than the minority conservatives, in that it has the support of 163 MPs, versus the 143 seats held by the Conservatives.

Democracy in this country is a joke.