Seven Hours at Occupy Vancouver Day One

BLOG POST posted on Octobre 16, 2011 by Joseph Jones

On the March [photo: Rider Cooey]

At the Vancouver Art Gallery [photo: Rider Cooey]

→Occupy

I arrived at the Vancouver Art Gallery just after 10:00 am on October 15th. The first thing I noticed was a lot of City of Vancouver corrugated plastic signs scattered around the east side saying: "No In Ground Staking." Police were talking to a few guys who seemed to be associated with a few tents already set up. By the time I left around 5:00 pm, about thirty tents had been set up in the area. As I write at 9:15 pm, listening to livestream audio of the evening general assembly, the issue of the presence of police in the tenting area is preventing conclusion.

At the event, an Indigenous woman was singing a song. Over to stage right a worker intermittently used a portable power drill to assemble a wooden structure. The transition from the song to a facilitator launching into human microphone seemed abrupt, if not harsh. The facilitator immediately announced a five-minute break. Then Darrell "Saxmaniac" Zimmerman used the opportunity to talk to those within earshot about his bid for mayor.

About half a dozen facilitators stepped up in some unclear rotation. One of the first points: "Not here to tell anyone what to do."

For the rest of the general assembly, until almost noon, an almost direct transcription of rough notes seems simplest. All about mic and consensus and hand signals and translation. In other words, communication.

10:20 Hand signals. Blocks = serious and fundamentally disagree. Led by consensus. Will ask for objections. Consensus — to know what everyone is thinking. Call at noon [ie, end the GA].

10:30 Suggest marches [at that time]. Have found a generator.
Q: How will people address the facilitators?
A: Continue with double mic check.
Fundamental understanding of what consensus is.
Power mic + people's mic 2 x [two repeats]
Sheet describing consensus being handed out.
Not used to this kind of democracy. Hard work.

10:45 We need translators, including sign language.
Spanish, German, Mandarin, Sign, French, Danish, Farsi, Russian, Cantonese, Kurdish. [Individuals introduced. Later request for Punjabi.]

10:53 Electric mic if loud is OK.

11:05 Improvising hand gestures. A block stops a proposal. GA will be striving for 100% consensus. [That means] not many reservations, no blocks. Confusion over one hand. Also means question. One [raised] finger for point of information.

11:12 What is going on with speaker's list?
Don't human mic the real mic.
Human mic good for listening. Keeps us in check.

11:18 We have only reached agreement on how to reach agreement.
Patience is key.
Two-stage human mic, none from electric mic.
Not fair to translation.

11:25 Taking way too long, just need to get going.
Too much procedural stuff. Talk about issues now.
40 minutes left.
Facilitator needs to speak louder and slower.
Committee for consensus — go to issues.
Path for people with ? to move to podium. Finish with consensus, go to basis of unity.

11:31 Three workshops. 90% super majority consensus.
We've never done this before. Reading of revised statement.
GA on 8th approved broad principles.
20 minutes left. Next GA at 7:00 pm.
Mic at 12:00. Speaker's list. How continue?
With time limits.
Speaker sees hand raised, 3 others, sit down and shut up.
Five minutes to speak. Three minutes to speak.
What about comments and questions?
Blocking is for GA. Speakers have opinions.
5 + 5? No.
Consensus is matter for GA. Leave the time up to the moderators. Think about marching.
Approve propane stove to heat free food since electricity not available.

11:50 First speaker asks to go ahead.
Bob: meter reader for Hydro. A 1% increase in 10 years. In one year, 400 jobs will be replaced by smart meters.
Artist with red bandana: Friends living 3-4 to a room, paying $600 per person.
Joshua: Drove 15 hours from Calgary. Doing an MA thesis on 9/11.
Darrell Zimmerman: Running for mayor.
Moderator: March at 1:00. Hornby into financial district, back up Howe.
Paul: Banks create money from debt.
Laila Yule: Corporate incest government. Stadium, convention centre. P3 Sea-to-Sky highway. Susan Heyes.

After speaker six I went off at 12:20 to eat lunch.

Back at 1:00 just as the announced march started. For between two and three hours I went on three marches. (1) The official march, a short neat loop with lots of police along the predetermined route. (2) The second was a smallish group, caught up with while going south on Granville (through friend with telephone), right after the first official march returned to the Art Gallery. Back at Art Gallery at 2:10. (3) At 2:15 a line of police along the middle of Georgia fell back and opened the entire street between Hornby and Howe to the Occupy Vancouver crowd. Almost immediately afterward, a third march went north to the Convention Center and then south as far as Davie, returning along Granville Street. All of that walking must have added up to at least ten miles.

The only two points of tension that I saw involved in-the-street boundaries defined by massed police presence. The first was in the middle of Georgia after the first march. The second was in the intersection of Georgia and Howe shortly after the return of the third march, a space that developed into chalked messages on pavement and felt marker messages on taped-down rolled-out paper. In both cases the police eventually stepped back and allowed the space.

I had to think this: The hockey riot had messages afterward on the plywood covering broken windows. The first day of Occupy Vancouver had messages on the street itself as part of the event.

Closing thought. I came home and read the Friday October 14 Vancouver Courier. Far too much space was given there to "security consultant" Dave Jones of the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association, who pontificated:

The big wild card is if the Black Bloc types show up and if they will be allowed into the group. That's what they like to do. They like to hide themselves within a group and then work their way into the main body of a protest and then look for opportunities to cause some mayhem.

The obvious way to make big bucks at consulting is to spout crap and fabricate boogeys.

A core tweeter recently suggested that there are no Vancouver protests that have been hijacked. That astute point deserves much repetition.