Occupy Toronto has joined Occupy Vancouver with the distinction of appealing to the court system for the right to stay encamped in their respective locations. Superior Court Judge David Brown has granted a temporary stay of the eviction order by the City of Toronto, which will be argued in court on Friday with a final decision no later than Saturday at 6 p.m.
In his ruling Judge Brown wrote “The purpose of my interim order is to preserve the status quo as it existed at the time the Notice was served earlier today.”
While many at Occupy Toronto celebrated this injunction against an eviction as a victory, it also poses core questions — what is this movement about?
When the Occupy Wall Street movement started two months ago, the main issue raised was the way the economy enriches an elite class of capitalists, the top one per cent, who have a massive and growing income gap between them and the remaining 99 per cent of Americans.
This is the message that resonated with people around the world who organized a remarkable 1,400 Occupy protests against this basic truth of capitalism.
In the inaugural march for Occupy Toronto on Oct. 15, there were many different signs being held that day, from ones that read “This revolution will not be privatized“, “Underpaid, overworked, unemployed for the 1%. People before profits“, and others about a lack of jobs, union rights, environmental degradation, war, and human rights abuses.
There were no signs that read “Appeal to the courts for our Charter rights of assembly to hold a protest camp in a park”. People at Occupy Toronto simply asserted that was within their rights and started pitching tents.
The Occupy camps have naturally become a focal point for the movement, a physical manifestation of the desire for a new society within the shell of the old. However, that new society can’t be won by a Charter challenge against park bylaws. That new society has to be struggled and fought for by mass movements against the capitalist class and the governments that represent their interests. History has shown us that mass movements are the instruments that force fundamental changes in society.
From the union movement, to the civil rights movement, to the women’s movement, every major change in society has had a mass movement behind it pushing as hard as it could with as many people as possible.
Regardless of the decision by Judge Brown and his counterparts in Vancouver, regardless if Toronto and Vancouver join Occupy Wall Street and are evicted, I hope that the Occupy movement will strive to mobilize the hundreds of millions, indeed billions, of people around the world against the “status quo” that Judge Brown and the one per cent wish to maintain.
Mick Sweetman is rabble.ca’s news intern. He is based in Toronto.
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