This week marks the end of our weekly series "Reinventing democracy, reclaiming the commons," a project begun last spring to help mark the 10th year of rabble. The series reflected the role of rabble as a site for activists -- a place for people who want to change the world to go, where their values are reflected back to them and where the world is not put through the perverse filter of the corporate media.

My nearly 30 years of experience as a social activist in Saskatchewan immediately attracted me to the NPI 10 years ago: I had despaired for years over the deep and irrational divide between NDP party politics and the active social movements which characterized Saskatchewan political culture. The two should have been working together -- at least informally -- yet they existed as two solitudes. The NDP establishment detested social movements (and distrusted the labour movement) as naive and uncontrollable troublemakers because when the NDP was in power they persisted in criticizing the NDP government and making things uncomfortable for the ministers. Roy Romanow once told me he thought social movements were "totally useless."

The people who have been occupying financial districts in Canadian and American cities are motivated by anger over the glaring economic unfairness that exists in our society. The labour movement welcomes what these young people camping outdoors in tents are saying -- because we have said the very same thing for many years.

The following 24-hour chronology was compiled by David Heap, from London, Ontario, one of the delegates on board the Canadian Boat to Gaza, The Tahrir, which set sail from Turkey at the beginning of November with the aim of penetrating the longstanding Israeli blockade around Gaza.

Friday, Nov. 4, at approximately 8:00 a.m.

The Tahrir and the Saoirse enter Israel's unilaterally declared 100 nautical mile military exclusion zone. We are in fact in international waters up until and after we are boarded.

12:30 p.m.

First spotted large military vessels (frigates?), one to port two to starboard.

12:30 p.m. to 13:00 p.m.