Gray-haired social change oldsters mingled with streak-haired hipsters this weekend (June 18-21) at the Peoples’ Summit at Ryerson.[rssbreak]
The energetic gathering met in almost 200 sessions and chewed over everything from animal liberation to the financial transaction tax, climate change, movement video-making, insurgent theatre and free trade.
Here’s a few thoughts from a weekend of somewhat distracted though spirited grassroots togetherness.
The mainstream media went a bit wild a while back when they discovered the Southern Ontario Anarchist Resistance and its website urging folks “to start causing some shit.” But there the anarchos were, on Saturday, sitting quietly at their Peoples’ Summit lit table, affably aiming to interest passerbys in a range of design-challenged leaflets.
The group has said it will join the large People First march on Saturday and then head off towards the fence “to confront the police state and Toronto’s corporate culture.” “This action,” they promise “will be militant and confrontational.”
It’s nice that this “diversity of tactics” thing means orgs are transparent about their intent – forewarned is forearmed for everyone else – and interesting that a group can completely modulate their emotional tone weeks beforehand, sort of like method acting.
But, there are enough martyrs in the world, thank you very much. What we don’t seem to have many of is organizers.
Meanwhile, the group was selling $2 cupcakes, vegan of course. The one with the pink icing almost had me but when I asked one friendly anarchista how sweet it was, she apologized: “I’m really sorry it’s got a huge amount of sugar,” she said with true regret.
Above the Community Commons in Jorgenson Hall, activists were working feverishly to finish a series of placards, lettered by acetate stencils and featuring slogans like “you can’t breathe money” and “stop the commodification of air, land and water.”
One of the artists was particularly immersed, but she took time out to explain how her little assembly line worked. When I asked for her name, she didn’t take a minute: “Oh I’d rather not,” she said. “Don’t want to get CSIS involved.”
This, I’m afraid, is happening too often: protesters are more paranoid than ever I’ve seen them. Perhaps not a shocker since this is the largest police mobilization in Canadian history. It seems like the side effect of security officials’ info-seeking forays into protester territory is a general clam-up. Fear works like that.
I’ve noticed the only activists eager to offer their names are those speaking for organizations – or those who have been in the game a long time. The average demonstrator, seems to prefer anonymity.
This has to be deeply reflected upon. Protesting after all, is suppossed to be about putting oneself on the line, bearing witness and “being counted” as it used to be said. Critical to the act of going public is providing your name. When people are too worried about courting police attention by ID’ing themselves, we have a civil liberties failure – and this one’s going to stick around. Add it to the legacy costs of Harper’s summit.
The NDP-hosted workshop on Canada’s foreign policy, chaired by Olivia Chow, was respectably well-attended on Sunday with an audience of about 60, and covered alot of turf from the Tory’s flatlining of foreign aid, to the Liberals’ mindless support for the Canada-Colombian free trade deal. And NDP foreign affairs critic Paul Dewar made himself particularly popular calling for the ever-more-clearly understood global financial transaction tax. “It’s just sound economics,” he said.
But he ran into trouble when Socialist Action heavy Barry Weisleder questioned him about the party’s mideast policy and the flap over Libby Davies’ comments on Israel. Talk about a room vibrating.
Dewar reiterated that the party stood for a two-state solution and an end to the blockade of Gaza. But when he said “Canada can’t side with one of the actors in this conflict”, there were calls of protest. Someone directly behind me yelled out: how about siding with international law?” There’s an idea.
Some of the most pointed advice on offer at the PS was provided by Robert Lovelace, the former Ardoch Algonquin First Nation chief jailed for refusing to end uranium mining protests.
He’s the native leader who, back in 2008 who, as he was led away in handcuffs, declared: “I’m in a dilemma. I want to obey Canadian law but Algonquin law instructs me that I must preserve Creation.
Friday night, Ardoch reminded the crowd of several hundred at the summit opener at the Carlu, that “decolonization is a process of action it’s never going to happen from the top down.”
The key to a changed consciousness and an altered world, he urged, was the careful use of direct action,
“Direct action,” he said, “is a process of relationships and part of the healing process.” Forget past wrongs, he stressed, and always judge the merits of current action in terms of its meaning for the future. A timely offering on the eve of a protest extravaganza.[rssbreak]
