This Saturday promises to be a significant global day of action. October 15 is the day that new Occupy Wall Street (OWS)-inspired mass assemblies will begin in many Canadian and North American cities. But it’s also a worldwide day of action, initially called for by the Indignados movement in Spain.
The preparatory general assembly in Vancouver last weekend saw 300 people turn up. It was unlike anything I have seen in my years of organizing. This weekend I’m in Toronto for the Canadian Peace Alliance’s convention, and I’m looking forward to taking in some of Occupy Toronto. We’ve put together a support contingent under the slogan, “Occupy Bay Street, Not Afghanistan.” I’m excited to hear about organizing and actions in so many Canadian cities and towns.
This movement is not confined to U.S. domestic politics. Pro-establishment pundits, like those on CBC’s “At Issue” panel, can pretend all they want that this has no relevance to Canada. But the times they are a-changing, and people are smart enough to see that this thing is resonating in Canada and around the world.
Adbusters‘ head office in Vancouver supplied some brilliant posters and the initial call to action.
Before that, the people of Tunisia and Egypt and the whole Arab Spring reignited the world’s collective imagination and belief in people power.
And long before that, global capitalism’s decades-long neo-liberal binge provided the objective conditions for a worldwide rebellion. It’s long overdue, and October 15 is just a beginning.
This moment reminds me a bit of February 15, 2003 — a day of action against the Iraq War that was the largest globally coordinated protest in history. As important as that day was, Bush and Blair could ignore and to a great extent demoralize protesters because the balance of forces was not there for our movements to actually avert the war.
The emerging global movement on display this October 15 is a challenge not just to one policy, but to the logic of the dominant economic system itself. This doesn’t feel like a moment that could be defused easily with some new reforms or half-measures targeting finance capital. The central framing — the 1 per cent has benefited obscenely at the expense of the 99 per cent — brilliantly identifies issues of class and inequality in ways that can be applied to all of our campaigns for peace, social justice and ecological integrity.
Perhaps it’s too early to call this a global movement. But it is certainly a key moment, a political opening that we can’t afford to miss (or to squander with excesses of ideological purity and the related internecine posturing that too often preoccupies the left).
Much has already been written about how Occupy Wall Street is emphasizing process over specific policy. The World Social Forum, which began a decade ago during the heights of neo-liberal triumphalism, was sometimes criticized along similar lines. But the focus on process was partly a humble recognition that earlier nominally anti-capitalist projects had failed or collapsed, and that no clear alternative was on offer. The WSF was primarily about creating a pluralistic and much-needed radical political space.
Hopefully the “occupy” encampments can become hubs of discussion and constructive debate, places to formulate and prefigure the better world we hope to build — like a Social Forum you can attend without needing to afford the plane ticket.
The industrial capitalist system began through brutal, forcible enclosure of the commons. Perhaps the best way to begin to end capitalism is by reclaiming key, symbolic parts of the commons as spaces for ongoing discussion and testing of alternatives. “Taking the Square” is a good first step towards taking power out of the hands of the ruling 1 per cent and their enablers, servants and protectors.
That’s why the powers-that-be have worked so hard to prevent these simple acts of reclaiming the commons. In Bahrain, the regime deployed bullets and bulldozers, massacring protesters and physically destroying the Pearl monument at the centre of the country’s most symbolic public square. In North America, the methods will be more subtle — injunctions, media fear-mongering and so on — with force deployed when authorities feel they can or must. After the G20 in Toronto last year, certainly nobody in Canada should discount the danger of police repression.
While global events provide inspiration and ideas, movements in each country will have to work out appropriate symbols and power centres on which to focus. On that note, I’ll just throw out one idea for all the general assemblies to ponder in the weeks and hopefully months ahead:
#OccupyParliamentHill
Parliament Hill is the seat of a government that in no uncertain terms serves the interests of the top 1 per cent above all else.
In the spring of 1935, in the midst of the Great Depression, anti-poverty and labour activists from across the country organized the On to Ottawa Trek. Riding the rails and moving across the country, the trek transformed the political discussion in the country and provided a boost to movements of the unemployed, the working class, the poor and the marginalized.
Maybe the spring of 2012 would be a good moment to revive this great tradition. After sufficient months of local organizing and discussion at general assemblies, a modern-day On to Ottawa movement would be a chance to come together, share what we have learned and show our power to each other and to the politicians inside the House of Commons. (Depending on what “Occupy Ottawa” is already planning, we could just be bringing reinforcements).
We would, obviously, have no illusions that the Harper government would buckle quickly to specific demands. In any event, Occupy Parliament Hill would be more about deliberating in a giant general assembly.
Such a “People’s Parliament” — calls for immediate relief and ideas for truly transformative change in the direction of equality and justice for all — would be transparent, inclusive and even joyful. In other words, a perfect contrast to the government inside.
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