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Occupy The Mic

Friday night’s Occupy the Mic with David Miller at the Bloor was an effervescent mash-up of conversation, music and comedy, and made the point that punching at the power structure could be a gas and edifying too.

The talk-show cum multi-media happening that segued from serious social critique to hilarity and back, has, I’m betting, raised the bar on your average political forum. NOW editor/publisher Michael Hollett sought to stage an issue-themed event beyond the ordinary, and beyond the ordinary it was. It’s fitting that the subject was Occupy, which itself pioneered a significantly new communication form.

And so it was that our former mayor bounced on to the stage in a cool vest and a pair of pants that looked suspiciously like jeans. “Good evening Toronto I’ve missed you,” he deadpanned, before launching into an attack on “poor” millionaires pissed off about paying the new provincial surtax on wealth. He then headed for more local turf: the city, he pointed out, contracted out garbage jobs and all the workers lost benefits. “When you work for the city, you should be able to afford to live in the city,” he said.

When Hollett, who was the energy-modulator, playfully needled Miller about the extent of his liberation from the constraints of office, the latter quipped that even in the mayor’s chair he always tried to tell the truth, “if even in my dreams.”

Miller certainly owns this format his performance seemed to come from a part of his brain we haven’t quite met before. Perhaps there wasn’t a showcase for his wit down at 100 Queen W., but we got the measure of it here. And he’s surprisingly good, for a former political star, at getting the best conversation from others.

Soon he was introducing the vivacious Sakura Saunders, an Occupy mainstay and activist in the anti-Barrick Gold movement. Saunders, who facilitated many of the crucial general assemblies during the St James encampment, talked about daily life at the camp and the lessons gleaned from the many homeless who flocked to the protest. Civil disobedience, she said to a flash of applause, was “integral” to Occupy and she declared the movement “beyond electoral politics.”

Miller mirthfully threatened to send a troupe of rich people to march on her home, saying she and Occupy were the inspiration for the wealth tax. “You did this,” he said, chiding her.

Rocker/MP Andrew Cash, at home on every stage it seems, and forever interesting, introduced his anti-war number by saying “political songs are the easiest to write badly,” and opining that people would rather see a politician sing than talk.

Miller wondered aloud how the guitar-and-song-man could have given up his rock-star life for politics, but Cash answered that his experience as a NOW writer had convinced him Toronto needed a strong ally in parliament. “I’m from rock and roll,” he said. We’re like herding cats, but I know our democracy is expressed through electoral politics. It’s how you change things.”

Cash explained that he has made a personal rule that whenever he speaks in the House (“it’s called Question not Answer Period”), he tries to mention Toronto three times. “Toronto is a word that dares not speak its name in federal politics,” he says.

Funnyman Arthur Simeon was a hoot, playing off his Ugandan heritage, at one point depicting “his people” as homeless and mostly drunk, and then letting a pregnant pause go by before clarifying he meant comedians. “I love Occupy,” he said, “because it’s asking questions. Where I come from, politics is met by brute force.”

He suggested there would be more voter participation if polling booths were set up in Tim Hortons, as in “I’ll have a double double and put me down for the Liberals.” On the possibility that Conrad Black got preferential treatment from the Tories, Simeon mused that “if I have to go to prison to get citizenship, that’s what I’ll do.”

It was that kind of evening: a call-out for major social change – and firmly and deliciously off the wall.

@NOW_Talks

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