PhilPaine.com

I’ve vis­it­ed the “Occu­py Toron­to” protest site three times, now. The cur­rent sit­u­a­tion is this:

A small, but rather pret­ty down­town park is filled with tents. They do not get in the way of any­thing. Traf­fic along the adja­cent streets and side­walks is unim­ped­ed. There is lit­tle noise. The park is self-con­tained, and the only peo­ple incon­ve­nienced are the hand­ful who stroll through the park in nice weath­er, and some office work­ers who cus­tom­ar­i­ly take their lunch­es to eat among the flow­ers. With the bad weath­er com­ing in, even this small group van­ish­es from the equa­tion. The pro­test­ers are camped part­ly on city prop­er­ty (the park), and part­ly on prop­er­ty belong­ing to the adja­cent Catholic [actu­al­ly Angli­can, see cor­rec­tion in com­ments, below] cathe­dral. This may pose a conun­drum for the city, as the church appar­ent­ly says the pro­test­ers are wel­come on its portion.

I did not see any great num­ber of peo­ple, this time. The ordi­nary peo­ple who showed up in the first few days, and who lent the protest its cred­i­bil­i­ty, are long gone. This was inevitable, since any­one tru­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the “99%” can­not afford the lux­u­ry of camp­ing out for a month. What remains is the core of cus­tom­ary pro­test­ers. I would say, from an eye­ball esti­mate, that between a third and a half of those present were mid­dle-aged or even elder­ly women. This presents a prob­lem for the author­i­ties, since any attempt to dri­ve out the pro­test­ers will result in news footage of cops intim­i­dat­ing a lot of obvi­ous­ly harm­less senior cit­i­zens. The punks are gone, or at least I didn’t see any. They were doubt­less repelled by bore­dom and the tedious speeches.

The pol­i­cy among author­i­ties, in such cas­es, is usu­al­ly to wait for the public’s patience to grow thin, and hope the site becomes suf­fi­cient­ly unsan­i­tary and crime-rid­den to jus­ti­fy a sweep. To this end, a com­mon police tac­tic is to qui­et­ly chan­nel as many drug addicts, schiz­o­phren­ics, and moochers as they can into the site. I’ve seen this sort of thing at first hand, when I lived on the street. Cops would encour­age street punks to go to a demon­stra­tion, telling them there was some “fun” to be had, and hint­ing broad­ly that they could get away with smash­ing a few win­dows. At the same time, a bar­rage of press releas­es and police state­ments will hint at neb­u­lous ter­rors the protest site is sup­posed to hold for the cit­i­zen­ry. Any­one who walks by the Occu­py Toron­to encamp­ment can see instant­ly that there is noth­ing men­ac­ing or dan­ger­ous tak­ing place there, but doubt­less dis­tant sub­ur­ban­ites have visions of ter­ri­ble conditions.

These tac­tics have obvi­ous­ly worked in oth­er cities, but, so far, they have not pro­duced much effect in Toron­to. Unlike Van­cou­ver, which can sup­ply the desired drug over­dos­es and sin­is­ter char­ac­ters from a near­by skid row, the Toron­to camp shows lit­tle sign of fol­low­ing the sce­nario. The site is dis­tant from any neigh­bour­hood in Toron­to that can sup­ply drug addicts or the indi­gent, so any police efforts to “salt” the demon­stra­tion with trou­ble-mak­ers are ham­pered. I’ve noticed no strik­ing dete­ri­o­ra­tion of con­di­tions at the site. The clus­ter of tents is unaes­thet­ic, and there’s been some mod­er­ate dam­age to the grass and some of the flower beds, but the site is kept clean. It appears to be as well-man­aged as any camp­site in a provin­cial park. Signs are post­ed ask­ing peo­ple not to bring or use drugs or alco­hol to the site. Any­one with a thirst can eas­i­ly pop over to one of the near­by pubs. There are a fair num­ber of old hip­pies in the group, but they are obvi­ous­ly capa­ble of discretion.

One news­pa­per report­ed that a near­by restaurant’s own­er claims to have lost 30% of his busi­ness, because peo­ple are “afraid to come down­town.” This is, frankly, absurd rub­bish. The protest site has no vis­i­ble effect what­so­ev­er on foot traf­fic in the area, and is about as dan­ger­ous-look­ing as a bas­ket of kit­tens. Any patrons of the restau­rant in ques­tion would bare­ly notice it. Any­one famil­iar with the area could see at a glance that the claims are nonsense.

Actu­al­ly, there is no urgent rea­son for the city to do any­thing at all about the protest encamp­ment. Even if the campers remained there for the next decade, it wouldn’t do any sig­nif­i­cant harm to any­one. There’s no dan­ger to pub­lic safe­ty. It’s the mid­dle of Sep­tem­ber, and the weath­er is turn­ing bad. Most peo­ple will go away of their own accord, and if a few die-hards remain, so what? Few peo­ple set foot in the park from Decem­ber to February.

But the author­i­ties will prob­a­bly do some­thing even­tu­al­ly, since it pleas­es their Nean­derthal constituency.

All that said, I can’t say that I’m a big fan of the “Occu­py” move­ment. When social media made if pos­si­ble for a broad range of peo­ple to make their dis­at­is­fac­tion known, it had a salu­to­ry effect. If that tech­nol­o­gy had been used to draw peo­ple to spe­cif­ic places, where they could engage in some sur­pris­ing and dra­mat­ic sym­bol­ic activ­i­ty, then equal­ly quick­ly dis­ap­pear, leav­ing the author­i­ties to won­der what would hap­pen next, and the pub­lic eager to under­stand what it was all about, then it would have had even more impact. But, instead, things instant­ly revert­ed to the accept­ed for­mu­lae. Camp­ing out on the protest site for some unde­ter­mined time is just plain dumb. Now, of course, it’s the old-school, old-fart habit­u­al pro­test­ers back in con­trol, and those peo­ple don’t have the slight­est inter­est in chang­ing any­thing. There is no group of peo­ple more stuck in the past, more hide-bound with ortho­doxy, and more ill-suit­ed for intel­li­gent protest.

There is plen­ty worth protest­ing against, in North Amer­i­ca. In the Unit­ed States, nine­ty per­cent of the coun­try’s prob­lems are the result of Con­ser­v­a­tive Ide­ol­o­gy run ram­pant. A small coterie of crack­pots, claim­ing to be privy to the “laws” of his­to­ry and eco­nom­ics, gained con­trol of a pros­per­ous nation. With­in a sin­gle gen­er­a­tion, they have man­aged to destroy its pro­duc­tive indus­tries, sub­stan­tial­ly low­er the people’s real stan­dard of liv­ing, and hand that nation’s assets over to the Com­mu­nist Par­ty and oth­er inter­na­tion­al gang­sters. The U.S. now ranks with Ugan­da in the gap between wealthy and poor, the clas­sic pat­tern of a back­ward or dying soci­ety. These ide­o­log­i­cal zealots have also man­aged to sub­stan­tial­ly erode civ­il lib­er­ties. If the sto­ry sounds famil­iar, it’s because it’s anoth­er cycle of the sort of thing that Marx­ists did in oth­er coun­tries. Con­ser­v­a­tive Ide­ol­o­gy is essen­tial­ly a re-brand­ing and re-pack­ag­ing of Marx­ism. The prin­ci­ple dif­fer­ence is that “mar­ket,” rather than “dialec­tic,” is the mag­ic word used to dis­miss moral­i­ty. It’s aims and meth­ods are much the same. It’s results, unfor­tu­nate­ly, will also be sim­i­lar. Cana­da is in bet­ter shape than the U.S., but I would ven­ture to say that at least half of its prob­lems are the result of the same Con­ser­v­a­tive Ide­ol­o­gy, spilled over from our sui­ci­dal neigh­bour, and some­what dilut­ed, but dam­ag­ing nonetheless.

Peo­ple should be protesting.

But they should be protest­ing intel­li­gent­ly, not doing this dumb stuff.

How essen­tial protest can be made intel­li­gent will be the sub­ject of com­ing posts.