There is a kind of hysteria brewing in Canadian media these days. The Occupy movement has been going on for three weeks in Toronto, for several months in New York, and it’s driving some conservative Canadian media pundits — like Andrew Coyne of Maclean’s magazine — crazy. In a recent article, he declares that the Occupy movement is a “phony class war.” He quotes statistics on dishwashers and microwaves, proudly declaring that 90 per cent of Canadian homes have the ability to nuke their food. Writes Nick Fillmore of Vancouver Observer: “Nowhere in the article does Coyne address many of the key issues Canadian Occupy supporters are angry about, such as the cost of student education, a lack of employment for young people, a real unemployment rate of some 13 per cent, high household debt, a lack of savings, and the undermining of our pension system.”
But it’s always interesting to compare different national media. In U.K.’s The Guardian, an article by Karen McVeigh wonders what the next step is for the occupation in New York’s Zucotti Park. The article begins with a hard-hitting video featuring interviews with some very articulate activists. One guy compares the movement to an octopus. The head of the octopus gives people permission to dream, he says. The octopus opens up the social and political space that gives the body of the octopus the will to obtain justice.
McVeigh writes in her article: “In a tacit admission that the protests will be difficult to sustain over the winter, organisers are now focusing their efforts on planning a ‘spring offensive’ with fresh targets.”
And in Canada? “Few tears being shed for the crumbling Occupy movement,” trumpets the Globe and Mail. On the other hand, David Olive, Business columnist (!) for the Toronto Star argues that the Occupy movement is not the real threat to civil society; gross inequality is. CBC radio, meanwhile, throws out hourly pronouncements about the danger lurking in every Occupy encampment across the land.
A few days ago, I went to St. James Park, home of Occupy Toronto, to donate some sleeping bags. What I saw was anything but dangerous, or crumbling.
A robust little town has spring up in this leafy enclave, looking from afar like a medieval fair. A lovely woman, we’ll call her Jane, greets me casually as I enter the grounds and says, “Let’s see if we can get those donations to the women — they really need them right now.” Apparently there’s a need for a stash of items earmarked just for women (they especially need yoga mats, she says, for ground cover). So we go to the Donations office and create a special women’s donation carton. Then Jane shows me around the camp.
There’s a gentle, I would say even peaceful, even joyous energy to the place. There is a library inside of a yurt. There are dreamcatchers hanging from trees, a man reading a book in the open air.
But trouble is brewing. “The cops keep bringing in people with drug problems. We’re not sure why.” says Jane. “We don’t have enough trained people to keep them safe.” In this scenario, junkies are the wedge the police have been looking for to get their boots and billy clubs into the camp. It threatens to bring down Occupy Vancouver and it may be the excuse the mayor of Toronto seeks.
But only for a while. This movement is strong, stronger than anyone expected. “We never intended to rely on the mainstream media to put out our message,” says an Occupy Wall Street activist. “In two months we have established hundreds of media centres, 24/7 live streaming, and traditional print media in the form of Occupy Wall Street Journal. People are becoming citizen journalists. In the reporting of the movement, we are making the mainstream media irrelevant right now.”
Some say they’ll go home for the winter, “to dream” of a new spring offensive. Adbusters, who initiated the movement, are contemplating declaring victory before the cops sweep in. “We’ve captured the imagination of the world,” says Kalle Lasn of Adbusters, quoted in The Guardian. “Now we need to have a winter brainstorming and we’ll come up with a myriad projects.”
I leave St. James Park regretfully. There is a sweet sense of purpose there, that sustains me for the rest of the afternoon.
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