Activists put the finishing touches on plans to occupy Toronto’s financial district Thursday night, laying out strategies to deal with the mass arrests and aggressive crowd control they believe will be the police response.
At a “people’s assembly” held on the lawn outside the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, organizers of the Occupy Toronto movement said they were building a roster of lawyers who are willing to represent activists for free at bail hearings, and called for donations of baby shampoo, an effective treatment against tear gas.
“In regards to whether or not we expect any violence, the record from the G20 speaks for itself,” said an organizer named George, who is heading up the movement’s medical team.
More than 200 people attended the meeting aimed at hashing out the details of the indefinite sit-in scheduled to begin on Saturday. Thursday’s meeting was noticeably better organized than one held only a week ago, which was bogged down by disagreements over the decision-making process.
This time, activists moved quickly through their agenda and broke off into workshopping groups after two hours of discussion. Like last time, the group had no public address system and instead employed the “people’s mike” technique, in which all attendees repeat individual speakers’ words so everyone else can hear.
The technique means each speech takes twice as long, but also compels everyone present to stay involved in the discussion. The group is committed to having no designated leaders or spokespeople.
Since last Friday, significant progress has been made in laying the groundwork for protests inspired by the unprecedented Occupy Wall Street movement in New York. The head of the group’s food committee, who identified himself only as Antonin, said he had secured a donation of 100 loaves of bread per day, collected 100 pounds of produce, and raised $1000.
“There’s more coming every minute,” he said, adding that more donations are still needed.
The group’s media committee called on bloggers willing to write articles and diary entries during the occupation, and the logistics committee distributed a list of supplies needed for the sit-in, which included tents, warm clothing, blankets, and drinkable water.
One organizer estimated there would be as many as 3,000 participants in the initial protest on Saturday, and somewhere between 200 and 300 people would camp out overnight. A march will begin on Saturday morning at King and Bay streets, but the location of the camp-out won’t be announced until the protest is underway.
While critics accuse Occupy Toronto of simply mimicking the New York protests and ignoring the fact that Canada has weathered the recent economic crisis comparatively well, organizer Kevin Konnyu said that argument ignores inequality in our own system.
“This isn’t about, ‘are we as bad as the United States?'” he said. “This is about are we, like the rest of the world, waking up to the fact that we don’t have any decision-making power, and the big decisions are being made by unaccountable people.”
Two days before the occupation is set to begin, the activists’ hopes for the protest are high, even though they have yet to articulate a clear goal.
“I know this is hard for the media, because this is not a traditional narrative,” said Antonin. “Right now, we’re just trying to create a framework where we can hang out in a park and philosophize about politics. It’s not much more complicated than that.”
