Reflections on Occupy Ottawa II

During the past week there have been some significant changes within the movement and I am struggling with whether or not I can justify staying on.

The most salient concern I've been having is with many people considering the camp an unsafe space. There have been recent actions taken by small groups of individuals that have led many committed occupiers to abandon the movement. Making people uncomfortable who identify as LGBTQ is intolerable and must be dealt with. Moreover, any attack on any individual is not justifiable. Many women, first nations, communists, and others have decided that the movement no longer welcomes them. It is truly sad to see people who fight socioeconomic equality engage in behaviour that breeds inequality. Fundamentally, we have to judge this movement, just as we famously judge a society, by how it treats the people in the most vulnerable positions. And while one of my compatriots noted that "no community is impervious from conflict", I would like to point out that every community has the responsibility to find a way to minimise it.

The so-called "problem" has been traced back to those in the camp who are using substances. At a meeting for Security and Safety that I decided (thankfully) to attend, most agreed that we need to adopt a zero-tolerance policy for these activities in the park. After it was clear that the group was achieving consensus on this issue, I reminded them that these policies are extremely ineffective and gave them a brief explanation of Ontario's zero tolerance policy in schools, instituted in the 1990s. I warned the group that there are three key issues here:

1) that intolerance will not solve the problem;
2) that we cannot act actually remove anyone from the land we are illegally occupying;
3) that not following through on the process undermines it entirely

So there are severe pitfalls to harsh treatment, and the only positive that we can see coming out of it is that it makes decisions "easier" because we are bound to a set principle. Thankfully I was able to defuse the situation, but when emotions are running high it is difficult to take a step back and find appropriate ways to deal with things. Although we still do not have a policy, at least we don't have a zero-tolerance one.

All this ties into a perceived notion of requiring leadership - an idea that is rapidly gaining ground at virtually all Occupy locations. Many feel that with these growing safety concerns we must find a way of strengthening a core group that will be leaders. While leader is a term that was avoided purposefully, the positions that were being advocated would cement more concentration of power in individuals. While there are already some informal structures that create hierarchy to a degree, they are very decentralised and thus make a minimal impact. The effects of heavily central power and the formalisation of roles (whether liaison on representative) will only serve to privilege certain people, often who are already quite privileged.

In response to a growing impression that leadership was on the way, there was a meeting last Monday where a small group of us designed an alternative model. We agreed that the atmosphere was becoming more toxic and that the best way to deal with the situation would be to invest time and energy into running camp-wide workshops on self-reflection before general assemblies.

The idea is relatively simple: people are coming to this movement and mentally and physically becoming very tired. Moreover, many in the movement are not applying their critical thinking skills that they devote to the 1 per cent to the 99 per cent. This is terribly problematic, especially when we are in a process of building a community. While we agreed on the idea and announced it throughout the week, it didn't catch on as people seemed dismissive of it. This is going to have some serious long-term consequences.

And now for my final thought: messages. Occupy has been criticised by the media everywhere for failing to have answers. This line of thinking has penetrated Ottawa's camp and is now taking over the discourse. This, of course, despite the purpose of Occupy to merely bring attention to the gross inequalities in our system. I fully oppose presenting a platform or list of demands. This movement, as one of my professors eloquently put it, is about "changing the channel". This resounded with me and made me think of this picture from Occupy San Diego.

I don't know where this movement is going in the short term, but I intend to stay involved and help keep this movement from slipping into hierarchy, exclusion, and ultimately failure. Stay tuned.

Reflections on Occupy Ottawa

Yesterday was the first day since the movement started on Saturday that I did not participate. Occupy Ottawa is part of the Occupy Together Movement, which started in New York, and has drawn more than 500 people to the park daily.

Having been very involved in the protest for the past week, I would like to offer some insights into my experiences - just a simple reflection, if you will.

To start off, I think it would be worthwhile dispelling some of the unfortunate propaganda that's been flying around in the media. For the most part, the movement was ignored. Although the protests in the United States started in September, it was nearly three weeks later that coverage made it into television newscasts, radio announcements, or the newspapers.

Social networking sites were the main source of information, though there was certainly interference collaboratively from Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, and the police, attempting to censor information both at its origin (on the streets of New York) and its distribution (on the internet). Overwhelmingly, this was photographs and video. There are thousands of pictures of protesters having their cameras snatched from them (often by force). Similarly, Facebook has made certainly pictures just disappear. Thankfully, a critical mass of support was reaches in early October, and now instead of ignoring the movement, the media had to at least address it.

With the rise in awareness came the spread of the movement internationally. This past Saturday, 15 September, similar movements sprouted across the globe. There are now more than 600 locations located in more than 80 countries. That is absolutely phenomenal.

As for the aims of the movement itself: this has been a source of real controversy. Broadly, it is about the growing disparity between the so-called "haves" and the "have-nots". In the movement, this has been framed by the 1 per cent and the 99 per cent. This has, naturally, garnered some significant criticism, not the least of which is that by virtue of living in North America you are definitely not living in abject poverty. Nevertheless, this movement attempts to raise awareness of a collusion of social, political, economic, and environmental factors that have devastating effects for everyone in our communities, whether regional, national, or international.

It's important, then, to look at just who is participating. It's truly a cross-section of societies. Homeless, environmentalists, LGBTQ persons, women, socialists, communists, veterans,  immigrants, students, elderly, unemployed, underemployed, professors, politicians, writers, artists, and the list goes on literally forever..... because it includes everyone. At the General Assembly meeting on Wednesday at Occupy Ottawa, we agreed that even Stephen Harper would have a voice if he were to drop by.

As someone who has participated not only in the decisionmaking processes (I attend the General Assembly meetings in addition to being someone involved in the Education Committee and the Non-Violent Direct Action Committee) but also in the day-to-day affairs of the movement, I can say that it is both thoroughly engaging, and very empowering. While there are agonising hours spent building consensus, it is at the same time inspiring to see true direct democracy that is not a tyranny of the majority or the minority. This movement is often criticised for not standing for something - and that claim is ludicrous. Occupy Together is about working collaboratively and making the decisionmaking process open to everyone and totally transparent. If you don't think that's the case, drop by a protest near you and tell me differently!

All I want to accomplish in writing this is that I hope that after reading my post, you will question what you see in the media. What are they telling you? What are they not representing? What images are being shown? Remember, the 1 per cent are disproportionately represented in government and in the media, and it is in their best interests to portray this movement as illegitimate, incoherent, or immoral. We must fight this labelling!

Here are some interesting links with pictures or video to check out:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mikehayes/depressing-photos-from-we-are-the-99-percent

http://welcome2thenow.blogspot.com/

http://www.santiagotimes.cl/chile/education/22732-protesters-occupy-government-building-demand-national-plebiscite

http://occupystreams.org/item/occupy-istanbul

http://www.viddler.com/explore/knowyourmeme/videos/94/


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjitiLnlRn4

Better to Lie?

I recently saw this ad for Andes Beer posted on a friend's wall. I was surprised not so much at the content (I mean, really, it is a pretty standard dialogue in modern society) but by the person posting it. I don't want to out the individual who posted it, but I will mention that he is someone dedicated to tearing down barriers in our society against race, religion, sex, class, and more. Even more interesting is that he had just posted the clip going around for Miss Representation. To his credit though, the video is no longer on his wall!

So let's take a look at the video. The first thing that comes to mind is this dichotomy of men as oppressed victims and women as possessive and overbearing. It really is ridiculous to see this, given how the reverse is so true (and has been throughout history). Watching the video really made me want to comment on it saying something sarcastic like: "finally, someone is stepping up for the rights of men who are unable to go to the bar!".

Seriously though. Maybe I just don't understand this culture very well. I may well be in the target audience for the beer commercial, but as someone who doesn't particularly enjoy the bar, I think that it's lost on me. I mean, I thought that going out to the club was to pick up, not to just have a friendly drink. So what's the subtext here? Are women limiting their partners' sexual activities? That's entirely laughable when we consider the effort being made throughout the world to control female sexuality.

What's really interesting in this commercial, and there are certainly other elements that I would like to talk about if you comment below, is how international this culture is. Keep in mind that this commercial was produced for Andes, an Argentinian brewery. Notice how similar (or perhaps how "western") this representation of Argentinian culture is? With many people from across the political spectrum declaring that feminism is dead or that sexism doesn't exist anymore, it's really important to understand where the spaces for inequality still exist.

Many people determine inequality based on law. In many jurisdictions in the world, women and men, at least on paper, have the same rights. However, that just means that capital, social relations, various media, and religion are now spaces where women are unequal. Think about these examples:

What good does having equal access to the courts mean if a woman is unemployed and can't afford to go to court?

What good does the right to have an abortion do when a woman's family will not support the decision?

What good does the right to run for office mean when a woman is belittled for her clothing or hairstyle in the evening news?

What good does equality do when a woman is told by her congregation that her role is centred on the family?

I hope you will thoroughly consider these - especially the ties that are made back to the particular media I have highlighted in this post. I want to quickly point out one more thing, though.

My partner showed my the Everything I Do Is Wrong campaign as well, which again paints women as irrational and oppressive, and men as victims and in need of banding together to protect their interests. Thankfully, due to much public pressure, the California Milk Board pulled the advertisements, though not without a ridiculous controversy and claiming that "some people found it funny". It was a weak apology. My hope is that together we can stop making beer commercials about ridiculous premises such as the oppression of men by women. And maybe get a good apology while we are at it?

Spent

Recently, I came across this really interesting game, Spent. It was posted on a site that my partner and I love to check out, called feministing.org. I really encourage you to take a few minutes to sit down and try to play this game. The most important part of it is to be honest with your answers and make it as realistic as possible.

The premise of the game is remarkably simple - it's a flash-based interface that asks you some challenging questions about how to avoid running out of money. You are a single parent who has just lost their job. You have to take a job working in either the service industry, a factory, or as a temp, all for minimum wage, while trying to stay afloat.

Poverty in North America is a tough road. I really can't explain in text how awful it is, and I'm exceptionally lucky to be where I am in life, a professional student of eight years, and still not be in debt. But the reality for a growing number of Americans and Canadians is that they cannot make ends meet.

The corrosion of great public programmes for basics (such as social housing) is devastating to the collective well-being of our society. When combined with more competition for lower waged work, particularly in the wake of the recession, life becomes unlivable for many. As the game highlights, those in poverty are more likely to be unhealthy, depressed, unable to access medical care or legal help, living in fear of losing their homes or their jobs, using illegal substances or alcohol, and often suffering alone or in silence.

Fighting poverty is one of the most basic social justice needs out there. It's a straightforward cause in and of itself, but what's more: it's intimately connected to a variety of other social issues. Poverty is far more likely to strike ethnic minorities, women, single parents, people with disabilities, people with poor mental health, or LGBTQ North Americans.

As such, combating poverty requires some reeducation on how unjust our modern capitalist society is. Again, since I'm a teacher and a strong advocate of publicly owned and operated infrastructure, I see this as the prerogative and the great responsibility of the state. Ontario, and many other provinces, have curricula that emphasise social justice and critical analysis of modern society. However, it is always up to the discretion of the individual teacher - many of whom don't have the skills needed to be fair and critical. It's time for some change here....

Something that has been in the news a lot in the Ontario Election was the issue of teacher training being extended to become a two-year programme. I wholeheartedly support the shift to spending more of an effort preparing our future teachers to be able to be effective in the classroom. But the issue is not having teachers get more experience, it's about spending more of an effort training them how to think critically. As a graduate of York University, I am fully aware of just how central the inclusive teaching practices are to being a great teacher. It's what education needs to be to keep Ontario at the top of the best education systems in North America.

I find it hard to find a better purpose in life than to make the word a fairer, greener, and more prosperous place. Let's put people before profits and fight for a tomorrow worth living in. Fight inequality by opening your mind and realising that living in poverty is not a choice or that people deserve it. Poverty happens because our system is designed to make it happen. That needs to change.

Education and Provincial Politics

It has been a pretty interesting year for politics - just a year ago we had some very significant municipal elections nationwide, in May we witnessed the federal election which brought the Conservatives to power in a majority government, and now we are only a month away from an Ontario provincial election.

I can't help but feel exhausted when thinking about another election campaign. And I'm someone who enjoys the culture of politics in Canada immensely. It gets me thinking about our nation's political landscape, more specifically the realities of federalism in our country. With the turnover for our governments being so short and with the presence of three layers, it is not surprising that not only are people overwhelmed, but they are also rather confused about everything from political parties, to how different levels of government interact, to how elections work. It's enough to cause some serious headaches for many.

One of the biggest solutions to this problem is also one of the parts of our public infrastructure that is under threat in Ontario: education. I aim to talk about both public education and post-secondary education in this post, but I will try to stay concise and focused.

Let's start with the post-secondary education system. In Ontario, we have a mixed private-public partnership for operating and funding universities. While tuition in Ontario is relatively inexpensive when compared to tuition in the United States, the province actually ranks LAST in terms of cross-Canada rankings. What's interesting is that fees have also gone up substantially in the past fifteen years, easily outpacing inflation. That previous link is to an HRDC report which outlines many stats about affordability, including the effects of students carrying more debt on average.

While this is a trend that is nationwide, Ontario has been particularly hard hit. The tuition freeze in Ontario has been a contentious issue, with the Liberals oscillating on what is to be done. While the modest growth in the cost of going to school is viewed as unfair by most students, there is a growing demand for tuition fees to be decreased. Unfortunately, universities have been underfunded by successive governments, there is an increase in private funding. The privatisation of public institutions should be worrisome for a wide variety of reasons, not the least of which being that it generally results in university being less affordable, particularly for those who are already economically marginalised in our society.

Privatisation of course carries other problems, and the one that I think is dangerous is a change in the way that curricula are developed. This has been an exceptional problem in a lot of schools in the United States, prompting a leading writer on eduction Martha Nussbaum to pen Not For Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities. While I have yet to read this book, I managed to catch an interview by Michael Enright of CBC's The Sunday Edition. In this segment, she argued very articulately that liberal arts programmes in America (and by extension Canada) are facing a crisis of funding. In many colleges and universities the curriculum is being modified so that students in programmes such as business or engineering are no longer being forced to take credits in philosophy, languages, or history, where they would be subject to learning about ethics, perspective, or the ongoing struggle for social justice. Nussbaum's main thrust is that it is a grave error to support technical skills while leaving out critical thinking, something which, as a social scientist, I agree with wholeheartedly. One of the strongest pillars of our democracy is our schools.

What's fascinating here is that a new book written by two Canadian university professors called Campus Confidential: 100 startling things you don’t know about Canadian universities has a chapter devoted to the scary trend that universities and colleges are rapidly becoming very similar. This, in my opinion, is a significant problem of universities becoming increasingly larger and run for profit. Moreover, its emblematic of the fact that universities now are in the business of acting as a career path, not a path for enlightenment or self-discovery.

So, what about public education? Well, all I really have to say about this is let's keep looking at the effects of cuts and privatisation at the post-secondary level. If we are unhappy with where our colleges and universities are going, then we need to rally behind strong public schools. For more information about privatisation in schools, have a look at some of the following non-academic resources:

The Canada eZine - Education
Canadian Dimension
ETFO - Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario
Solidarity
Canadian Union of Public Employees

Let's make sure this is a campaign issue that gets a lot of attention. Talk to your MPP or find your candidates!

If The Olympics Made Us Prouder Canadians.....

When I woke up on Monday morning to the news of Jack Layton's untimely death, I was completely devastated. My first thought was that I was not in Ottawa when it happened, which made me feel the loss even hard. However, I was fortunate enough that a state funeral was held for him in his home city of Toronto, and I was able to attend with the help of the local NDP Riding Associations.

Getting on the bus yesterday morning was such a fantastic experience. I rekindled relationships with members of the party I haven't seen since the 2008 Federal Election. It made me really think about our conceptualisation of democracy as citizens - that elections are neat bookends and that in between it's not our job to act. For Jack, there was never rest. Trying to change our political, social, and economic systems is a venture that simply has no breaks. Sadly, it took such a devastating event to make us realise this. I hope that the energy that people put into memorialising such a great life will be channelled to make our country a better place.

What probably struck me most - out of the whole experience - was walking to City Hall at Nathan Phillips Square to see the messages of hope and remembrance written on the cold concrete landscape. I took a quick moment to write my own very brief tag, one that read "May your legacy inspire". My voice was lost in a sea of outpouring, but I still felt that others would be moved, as I was moved by others.

While I was taken aback by almost everything I experienced, I would like to cast some light on what I thought was so interesting and lovely about the events. I would like to say that seeing so many people.... tens of thousands of them..... gather together to celebrate a great Canadian was incredibly moving. Regardless of people's political stripes they were there to support someone who mixed honour with politics. Someone who strove to make lives materially better for millions of people in our country. And you could see it by what was said, and by the looks on people's faces, or by what they were saying.

But I think what spoke loudest - to me anyway - was the sheer diversity of people around me, all laughing and crying - remembering and envisioning - together. I sat between a same sex couple, immigrants that barely spoke English, people with an array of disabilities, children, the elderly, Muslims and Christians and aetheists. Everyone celebrating together in what I can only say that Jack's memory can do. It's amazing to think about how divisive and negative politics can be - no other figure in recent history could have garnered this support. It made me feel bad for a brief second when I saw Stephen Harper sitting uncomfortably in the audience. I wondered if he was thinking: "would this be how I'd be remembered?"

I wish that I could write more about Jack, but I'll leave that to the eulogist, NDP statesman and activist Steven Lewis.

"Never in our collective lifetime have we seen such an outpouring, so much emotional intensity, from every corner of this country. There have been occasions, historically, when we've seen respect and admiration but never so much love, never such a shocked sense of personal loss.

Jack was so alive, so much fun, so engaged in daily life with so much gusto, so unpretentious, that it was hard while he lived to focus on how incredibly important that was to us, he was to us. Until he was so suddenly gone, cruelly gone, at the pinnacle of his career.

To hear so many Canadians speak so open-heartedly of love, to see young and old take chalk in hand to write without embarrassment of hope, or hang banners from overpasses to express their grief and loss. It's astonishing.

Somehow Jack connected with Canadians in a way that vanquished the cynicism that erodes our political culture. He connected whether you knew him or didn't know him, whether you were with him or against him.

Jack simply radiated an authenticity and honesty and a commitment to his ideals that we know realize we've been thirsting for. He was so civil, so open, so accessible that he made politics seem so natural and good as breathing. There was no guile. That's why everybody who knew Jack recognized that the public man and the private man were synonymous.

But it obviously goes much deeper than that. Jack, I think, tapped into a yearning, sometimes ephemeral, rarely articulated, a yearning that politics be conducted in a different way, and from that difference would emerge a better Canada"

Politics and Public Broadcasting

CBC/Radio-Canada just announced today that former Bloc Québecois leader Gilles Duceppe will be participating once weekly on a daily programme on on La Première Chaine. I stumbled upon this because I am a fan of CBC on Facebook, and I was appalled at the responses from Anglo Canadians. My favourite being:

"this makes my head explode .... how much more $$$$ does the ROC have to "give" this man - whose whole political life has been spent trying to rip this country apart ... the whole thing disgusts me. "

But why the hate? In a poll conducted for the 2008 General Election, CBC reported that Duceppe was an "elegant separatist" with an impressive political background dating back to 1997 when he became party leader. Unlike many other Québec nationalists, he has managed to gain some popularity outside of Québec, mostly because of his fervent criticism of liberals and conservatives alike. In the past decade the Bloc has become increasingly renowned for its social democratic principles than for its desire to break out of confederation, and this is owing to Duceppe's leadership. The idea being that if Québec is not going to legally secede from Canada, then the Bloc should be a voice of representation in parliament.

And with respect to the financing issue, all Québec residents who pay their federal taxes fund the CBC/Radio-Canada. Since approximately 40 per cent of Québecers support sovereignty and social democracy, it only seems fair that the organisation is selected Duceppe to host a show in that market. This hasn't stopped large Anglo news agencies from attacking the move, such as the Toronto Sun.

So why don't we delve deeper into Duceppe's past to figure just what about him irks non-Francophones? Well, as soon as I started investigating this, I determined that it has a lot less to do with him and a lot more to do with a few other variables.

First, the longstanding Anglo-French rift in Canada. It is no surprise that the disdain directed at Duceppe is mostly because he is a symbol of this divide. I think it would be counter-productive to go on a diatribe about French-English relations in our country, but it's important to consider that this has been, and most likely will continue to be, a sensitive issue for most Canadians.

However, equally important seems to be the legitimacy of having a separatist party in our federal legislature. And of course this point is tied to the first - people seem to have trouble recognising that Québec wants to, and should have every right to, represent their interests as best as they can in parliament. We tend to forget that other political parties often have bases of support that are very regional in nature, for example, the NDP historically. A good example of this is the 1972 Federal Election, where the NDP didn't win any votes east of Ontario. The reality is this, Canada: we very rarely have political parties that can represent the will of Canadians across the country.

Given that Canada is federated (click here to learn more about federalism) we should invest in our regional differences, not look for reasons to introduce a monoculture. And if that's the case, the CBC, which is a public, national broadcaster, should certainly promote a show that is hosted by Duceppe.

What it all seems to come down to ultimately is that parliament doesn't have the right to select who should be on the radio. While the CBC/Radio-Canada is a public enterprise, it'll ultimately be listeners who decide whether or not Duceppe will make a good host. Looking forward to your first show, Mr. Duceppe.