Bianca Muller

Media discussion of Occupy Wall Street has been frustrating, tiptoeing around the big picture with the technicalities of municipal law and other spin-off issues. Coverage of Occupy NS itself has dwindled into arguments over the handling of the Victoria Park eviction and the treatment of those arrested.

By-law P-600 states that camping is not allowed in public parks. Shouldn’t we be asking why laws like this exist in the first place? Or why they are pulling rank over the spirit of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms?

The cities in which our mayors interpret and enforce these laws were built on the lands of First Nations (who respected the land so much that they never imagined claiming ownership of it – something the settlers took advantage of). We have built a grotesque maze of urbanized centres across Canada bleeding toxic chemicals into the Earth. We have created a world where a ticket to the table costs an arm and a leg and now we turn around and tell the homeless that they’re cramping our style? Sure, you can live simply, but not in my backyard!

When did it become illegal to live in a public space?

Widespread vagrancy during the Great Depression sparked laws designed to keep undesirables away from the rest of us. The approach of fencing ourselves off from those we’ve left afflicted continues today. People may not want scrappy derelicts all over the place, but it’s something we must accept because human beings have a right to exist, regardless of the social norms we’ve created. Think about this for a minute – we’re requiring human beings to purchase the right (in the form of homes, possessions, and services) to physically exist.

Homeless Workers - AKA Hobos (from Wikipedia)

Human rights come at a high cost. We now live in times where your right to citizenship and mobility are hindered by the obligation of purchasing complex passports. Expensive degrees hinder our right to education and pursuing our livelihoods. Our freedom to express ourselves is weakened by the propaganda of corrupt governments, bought medias, and indoctrinated consumers.

Occupy movements across the world are exposing the fact that our freedoms to assemble in protest are being hindered by games of who-owns-what and silly by-laws that obscure the real issue: we have big problems, and if it takes months or years of continuous exercising of the right to assemble, our representatives need to respect that.

Morals vs. Ethics

People confuse laws and ethics. The police and the military are just “following orders,” journalists are just “doing their jobs.” We are allowing not only companies, but institutions of public trust to pay employees to cast aside their values and follow the “rules.”

We need to defend the personal right to ethics. Furthermore, we need to choose ethics over morals. Morals are given to us on stone tablets and in company handbooks. We have to build our ethics on critical foundations of choice, reason, and honour.

We are on the cusp of something exciting. Let’s ask our cities to allow the Occupy movement to form, to swish around in the people’s mouths, to let them acquire the taste of what could be and figure out what forms they want it to take.

I would ask law enforcement, politicians, educators and every cog in the spinning wheels of the system to forget what they were told is legal and right. Do the math yourself before you blunder out into the world derailing the hard work of those who are trying to change it.

What’s happening in Halifax isn’t an isolated occurrence. Look at what’s at stake here. We all want to be the generation that looks to our grandparents and says, “Change is possible, look what we’ve done!” Does the city of Halifax really want to be the voice of by-law P-600 instead?

The Eviction of Occupy Nova Scotia (Mini-Doc) from Nicolas James on Vimeo.

UPDATE: At least 14 protesters have been arrested (cbc) – read our original post here

Clip 1: A young man and girl both just emerged from a fistfight with the police. Young man says he was trying to stop the police from arresting his friend who had just been sitting there – protesters chant in the background.

Clip 2: Kyle Buott, President of the Halifax-Dartmouth and District Labour Council

Clip 3: Two protesters describe what’s happening in Victoria Park

A protester jammed in the mud being arrested

A short video by goldford23 shows more:

The protesters had moved to Victoria Park from Grand Parade, where they had been living since October 15th, out of respect for the city’s Remembrance Day Ceremonies. They were planning on returning tomorrow.

Audio Clips and BeaconVJ footage to follow.

—
Bill McEwen
03 Nov 2011, Halifax Grand Parade

Participants in tonight’s General Assembly cluster on the southern steps of the war memorial. There are 50 tents on the grass at Grand Parade, but only 22 people show up for the start of the meeting. The assembly huddles together with fraying blankets, sleeping bags and as many layers of clothing as they can find. Those who stand have their hats pulled down low and hoods cinched. Their shoulders droop and their hands are jammed deep into their pockets. Nearby city street lamps cast long shadows over the group. They are weary.

The facilitator, Mike Anthony, begins by explaining the different hand signals used by the assembly to communicate. There is a second person, Brian, standing next to Mike who has been designated as his assistant. His job is to help Mike by keeping a mental “stack” of who wants to speak, when. They give priority to women and visible minorities as these people are often underrepresented elsewhere.

Mike lays out the agenda for the evening but those sitting in front of him lean forward, straining to hear. Mike is soft-spoken and is contending with more than a dozen people across the square hollering and laughing boisterously. A skateboarder pushes himself around with a 7 foot boat hook, clattering loudly across the cobblestone pavement. Mike raises his voice, but it’s still tough to hear.

They work through the rest of the evening’s agenda patiently and diplomatically. The assembly learns that tomorrow the Nova Scotia Labour Federation will be donating $5000 to their cause. This is met with applause, but some wonder if the movement has gotten charitable organization status yet. Without it, the credit union won’t let them deposit much.

The skateboarder is coming towards the assembly at top speed. A man in a bright yellow trench coat is sprinting and pushing the boarder from behind. The thrumming of the wheels on the stones becomes overwhelming and the group turns to stare down the two shit-disturbers.

“Dumbass!” someone yells. The skateboarder jumps off his board and laughs as it cranks past the assembly. It is the group’s one momentary lapse in composure. They carry on.

After solidifying their plans to support the Veteran’s protest coming up on Saturday, the group then moves to a proposal to track the amount of work people do within the camp. It’s presented by Angel, a short, orange-haired Acadian woman who delivered a speech on the first day of the protest. She thinks that the creation of a timeshare table will help the group allocate their ever-dwindling supply of sleeping bags and food. Everyone who contributes, whether by slaving over dishes in the food tent or drafting minutes for the general assembly, can mark how many hours they’ve spent helping the community on a public time sheet. Those with more hours are prioritized in the distribution of resources.

The proposal is the latest in a series of attempts to solve a problem the protesters are still trying to figure out: how to get the other 70% of the camp to pick up their socks and get involved. They are acutely aware of the growing number of homeless and disaffected that show support for the movement by eating its food and laughing during general assemblies. Opinion is divided on how to handle them. There are, as always, hard-liners that want the hang-downs gone. The majority realizes that those people are here because normal society has neglected them. There are stories of the mentally ill within the camp being simply shipped to a hospital or their homes in the middle of a paranoid episode. Many of them return within hours to the site. One such person’s activities has earned them a restraining order. There are teenagers whose parents are more interested in their next high than their kids’ grades (or whether or not they’ve even eaten). The occupiers understand why these people don’t contribute to normal society: they’ve never seen its value.

The majority of the protesters believe that these people have come to find community – to find a broader sense of belonging. They provide these people with the basics. Food and shelter in a non-judgemental community is freely available at OccupyNS. But because their resources may not last through the winter the protesters struggle with the temptation to use what’s left as a means of encouraging the disaffected to contribute in some way. Two birds – one stone, but they’ve already seen how that story ends.

Many in the group voice opposition to the time share idea as they feel it will alienate members of the group. They argue that some people, such as the mentally ill or emotionally fragile, may not be able to contribute. Others think that incentivization will allow some to build up social credit, giving them heavier weight when it comes to decision-making.

“One person, one voice” somebody says. And with that the timekeeper, a woman sitting somewhere in the crowd, indicates that they have reached their limit for this agenda item. The facilitator moves on with an upbeat tone. “Good discussion,” he says. The discourse becomes a long slog through a debate on the financial structure of the group.

All activities within the camp are coordinated by small, leaderless units called working groups. They are split up by function. A short list includes food, direct action, safety and security, and medical teams. The occupiers have a credit union account with about $2000 in it. There is also a safe on site with a smaller amount of cash. The discussion on financial structure sought to improve the accountability and transparency of the current system by introducing the idea of “floats”: a sum of money doled out to each working group that can be replenished based on approval by the general assembly. The discussion on specifics lasted for what seemed like an eternity.

Throughout the evening, on almost every single issue, it was clear that a consensus based approach to governance was not an easy thing. Some of the attendees rambled or abused the hand signal for “point of process” (a way of bringing discussion to a halt in order to stay on topic). It was difficult for some people to understand what others meant. It was hard to hear over the skateboarders. Eyes rolled over sighs, but the general assembly carried on.

Over the span of two hours, they trudged through financial minutiae and debated the moral implications of allowing outsiders or non-educated people to speak out against new proposals. They talked about bus tickets, brooms and trash pickup. They explored the implementation of a new economic model to allocate resources. And they did this all outside, in the dark and cold as fuck.

At the end of the meeting the facilitator (who was replaced halfway through – it’s a taxing job) decides to end on a positive note. He asks everyone in the group to note something the movement has accomplished over the past three weeks. The first person opens her mouth to speak and is interrupted by a drunk, middle-aged man who stumbles into the assembly. He feigns support for the protest but goes on to expound the benefits of working and enunciates a message of unclear intentions.

I turn to someone in the crowd and ask, “So, what do you do when a drunk asshole derails your meeting?”

“Gotta let him finish,” the protester says with a shrug.

An assembly member attempts to respond to the man but his friends come to grab him. He starts to back away but the protesters, who had patiently allowed this man to dither on, holler at him; they want to be heard too.

“Oh no no, I didn’t commit to anything,” the man says.

But the group is insistent.

“You had your chance – “
” – listen to her – “
“We listened to you, now it’s our turn to be heard!”

The man and his friends stop moving away. He acknowledges the protesters and listens to them. A woman in the crowd, maybe it was the timekeeper, said that they recognize the value of work. In fact, they think what they are doing is work.

The words may have fallen on drunk ears but at least they were heard.

—

The strength of character that these people show is an example for others to follow. Many of us complain about the way the world works today, but so few of us try something new. The protesters on Grand Parade and around the world that collectively form the Occupy movement don’t need to tell us what they are protesting or why they’re there. It should be obvious to anyone who takes more than a five second glance at what they’re doing in the parks and parade squares. They’re testing out new ways of getting along. They’re beginning with the idea that community is just as important as the individual’s place within it. It takes courage, hard work and patience to make this idea a reality.

The teenagers on the square may not have much going for them, but at least they’ve got some good role models to look up to.

In solidarity with protestors across North America, hundreds of people from all walks of life converged on the Grand Parade in Halifax today.

The crowd grew from three tents, a handful of protestors and a smattering of cops to almost a dozen “dwellings”, crates of donated food, a medical tent (with a sign reading “First Aid: Health & Wellness – Have a hug, meditate, relax!”) and around 300 people.

A schedule of events was handed out that listed what one person called “democratic action spaces” – events where people can engage in democratic dialogue with one another.  Some of these were speeches, some of these were workshops and some were teach-ins.  They had two days worth of these “spaces” already planned.

The people that helped cultivate the idea of a peaceful occupation of one of Halifax’s public squares never thought of themselves as “pointmen” or “media relations people” and preferred to be out of the spotlight when possible. We secured interviews with some of these people but once the speeches began we realized something. What the people in the pulpit were saying was far more important.

Billy Lewis is a leader of the Indigenous Solidarity Movement.  He opened the day’s speeches on the steps of the Cenotaph in front of St. Paul’s Church with a moving statement that was laced with a Mi’kmaq mindset.  As he finished each few words the crowd repeated him. “I see the Mi’kmaq microphone is working well,” he said.

Here’s what the protestors in Halifax had to say:

Special thanks to those who gave us interviews:

- Andrew Fraser from Pictou Landing, N.S.

- Jerry Mackinlay who works for the Provincial Government and is the President of the Halifax-Atlantic NDP Constituency Association

And to those who said they would do an interview but who we never had the chance to really talk to:

- Ian Matheson

- Vive la Revolution (AKA Jennifer Anderson)

- The Dogfather (AKA Ibrahim Ali Muhammad AKA Jerry Reddick) who is also running for city council.  You can see him in front of the Dalhousie Student Union Building daily.

If you’d like to get in touch with the Occupy NS movement you can try:

- email: OccupyNS@gmail.com

- FB: http://www.facebook.com/OccupyNS

- twitter: @OccupyNS

- website: OccupyNS.org

If you’d like to add media (photos, video, articles, etc.) please email them to beaconvideomagazine@gmail.com