Before Occupy Toronto had occupied anything, or even set up so much as a website, the local offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street rallies appeared in each of Toronto’s daily newspapers.
Where the American movement took its cues from the pages of Vancouver-based not-for-profit Adbusters and turned that call for a demonstration into a forceful web campaign, organizers here went directly to the largest media corporations in Canada.
You could argue they’re doing things differently in Toronto. But you could more convincingly argue they’re doing things backwards.
With a web presence that has snowballed since late summer, #OccupyWallStreet has proved that being accessible online is far more important than appearing in newspapers.
The Toronto rally may well attract a critical mass to the financial district on Saturday (October 15), but that will be in spite of organizers’ efforts online.
Here’s where they blew it.
Address inequality
Less than a week before the planned protest, they’re still experiencing “functionality problems” on their website, which has switched URLs in the short time it’s been up.
The group had been using Facebook, but a week before the protests there were reports that the Facebook group had been “compromised.”
On Twitter, the hashtag started as #OccupyBayStreet and moved to #OccupyToronto.
Before they occupy anywhere, can these people just occupy one space online? It would make it so much easier to get involved.
#OccupyWhere?
Speaking of getting involved, the profile of the @OccupyToronto Twitter account has a quote from Ernesto Che Guevara in place of a description of the group. Inspiring, but not very helpful for those interested in the Occupy protests. Who, what, when and where are not tools of capitalism but useful ways to direct interested parties to your protest, FYI.
Bunch of tools
Denver, Phoenix, Seattle, Miami, San Diego, Buffalo and more than 1,300 other places have Occupy rallies and related meetings up on MeetUp.com, an organizational tool used to great effect by #OccupyWallStreet. Toronto is there, but with fewer users than cities like Lake Worth, Florida. This is a free, useful service that can help bring supporters into the streets. There are many other tools like it. Use them.
Call to (Inter)action
Before September 17, the first day of Occupy Wall Street, hundreds of posters had been designed for the Occupy campaign. These didn’t arrive by accident. Organizers asked for them.
In Toronto, there’s nowhere to submit posters, so we’re staring at the same poster for the last three weeks. That’s got nothing to do with the collective creativity of Toronto’s protesters, but on the lack of interactivity of this campaign.
The Get Involved link on the site says it all. It’s pretty much an email address.
To describe this web campaign as “scattered” would be too kind.
Organizing sites like OccupyTogether are joining together fractured protests all over North America. But I’m not sure Toronto can be helped.
Shame, because there is some amazing work here – like the Occupy Toronto crowd map, which will show where arrests are being made, directions to washrooms and a bunch of other location-aware info.
Arranging a protest with such sprawling goals is a daunting task. But other cities manage it – in fact, Portland has even offered up notes on how to stage a successful Occupy rally. What’s going on in Toronto?
In planning these rallies, #OccupyToronto missed out on the greatest democratizing force of this century, the internet. As a result, whatever it accomplishes this weekend can only be viewed as underperforming.
joshuae@nowtoronto.com | twitter.com/joshuaerrett
READ MORE ABOUT OCCUPY TORONTO HERE.
