STORY posted on December 3, 2011 by username1

38 days later: Occupy Ottawa the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

by matt

38 days later: Occupy Ottawa the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

 

Occupy Ottawa has, at times, driven me literally insane; years ago I was diagnosed with “Schizoaffective Disorder,” and this movement has certainly, at times, made me symptomatic – which is the medicalized way of saying that it has made me crazy, has made me paranoid, anxious, elated, depressed, and generally wonky.

 

I often watch, and participate in this small portion of the broader movement, while feeling like I’m watching a movement that has the potential to be a beautiful and powerful and to radicalize large numbers of people, turn into a clusterfuck train wreck.

 

I’ve seen to many Occupy activists overpersonalize criticisms of the movement, where every statement about oppressive dynamics in the movement, or the limited nature of an analysis that relies exclusively on the distinction between the top 1% of income earners and the bottom 99%, is interpreted as a personal attack, so perhaps it will be helpful if I emphasize that these dynamics are a part of the broader society, and it is no surprise that they are found in the Occupy movement.   Similarly, while I continue to try and challenge my privileges and organize in solidarity with oppressed people, I’m not making any claims to be free of oppressive habits or ideas, or to have no responsibility in the culture of Occupy Ottawa and the decisions we have made.  Finally, it is not a knock on the good intentions, passion, ideals, or commitment of Occupy Ottawa.

 

Join Us!

 

“We Are The 99%!” This slogan, so important to the Occupy Movement, is both vague enough to be widely inclusively, and vague enough to be, in many ways, essentially meaningless.

For example, when, during the Novembre 17 International Day of Action, Occupy Ottawa marched onto Parliament Hill chanting, “We Are The 99%!,” we passed the ever-present anti-abortion protestors and their ever-present signs and displays.  They are also, surely, part of the 99% - although they anti-abortion movement is also funded, to a greater or lesser extent, by the 1%.  If the Occupy Movement is going to develop into a real force for positive social change, or as some occupiers say, revolutionary change, then it will have to be able to elaborate a politics that, while it continues to be broadly inclusive, is able to recognize that the 99% do not all have the same interests.   That despite being part of the 99%, anti-abortion activists are not part of any movement that wants to see gender justice, or that wants to end gender oppression and heteropatriarchy.

 

A movement that isn’t able to recognize that race[i], gender[ii][iii], sexuality, nationality[iv], etc., as well as class, are oppressive systems that maintain the status quo, and that keep rich, white men in power, will never be able to end capitalism, imperialism and oppression.   It is likely to become simply a movement whereby some white folks get a little more for themselves, while everyone else continues to get screwed.   Although this would be a betrayal of the vision and the passion of many people in the Occupy Movement, it would certainly be par for the historical course.   Movements that fail to fight against the “White Supremacist Capitalist [Hetero]Patriarchy” (to quote bell hooks) are inevitably co-opted, to the extent that they ever had a vision for radical social change to begin with, and end up becoming a reactionary force that helps, at best, to maintain the status quo.

 

This overly simplistic analysis of the 99% vs. the 1% is, I think, very much rooted in the liberal tradition, and the politics of tolerance.   Examples from Occupy Ottawa include the unwillingness of the occupiers here to eject a man who said openly that he was a neo-nazi, and who made any number of racist comments and threats.   The fact that many people of colour decided to stop going to the campsite, participating in General Assemblies, or even completely rejected the movement SHOULD have come as no surprise (but for some, somehow, it did).  The not-at-all-surprising result is that Occupy Ottawa has become increasingly white dominated.  The reason for this complicity with open racist fascism was a combination of ignorance, inexperience, Nonviolence, and, I would argue, the liberal politics of tolerance, as he “is also part of the 99%”.  To quote Chairman Mao [v]:

 

liberalism rejects ideological struggle and stands for unprincipled peace, thus giving rise to a decadent, Philistine attitude and bringing about political degeneration….

 

To let things slide for the sake of peace and friendship when a person has clearly gone wrong, and refrain from principled argument because he is an old acquaintance, a fellow townsman, a schoolmate, a close friend, a loved one, an old colleague or old subordinate. Or to touch on the matter lightly instead of going into it thoroughly, so as to keep on good terms. The result is that both the organization and the individual are harmed. This is one type of liberalism.

 

A similar dynamic exists around gender, and sexual violence, where real issues and concerns were often minimized, ignored, covered-up and generally not dealt with.   The not-at-all-surprising result was that many women stopped going to the campsite, especially to stay there overnight, participating in General Assemblies, and sometimes even completely rejecting the movement.  Aside from the ethical failure of Occupy Ottawa to address particularly obvious and violent forms of oppression, the consequences have been and will continue to be that there will be less men of colour and white women and women of colour engaged in the movement.   For everyone involved in Occupy Ottawa who truly wants to change the world for the better, this is one sign that we are going in the wrong direction.

 

From Occupy Confederation Park to Occupy Ottawa

 

On Monday, Nov.  21, Occupy Ottawa was served with an eviction notice which stated that, as of 11:59pm of that day, the National Capital Commission and the Police (as always referred to euphemistically as “Peace Officers”)  they would be removing any tents, structures or materials from the park.   They’re claim was that this did not violate Occupy Ottawa’s right to protest, while, in fact, removing the tents, structures and materials meant that there was no way that the protest camp could continue.  As is so often the case, the right to protest exists only when people do not exercise that right, at which point the state either decides that the right does not really exist, or finds a convenient excuse to violate that right. 

With the Occupation of Confederation Park at least temporarily over, OO is now focused on trying to (re)define itself.  The end of the camp has both positive and negative aspects. 

The biggest negatives are the loss of free housing and free food for those who truly needed it, with additional losses including the uprooting of the campsite community, and, more symbolically and psychologically, the loss of the physical space itself, which acted, in many ways, as the hub of the movement in Ottawa.  

 

Positives include the fact that outdoor camping during an Ottawa winter is no easy task, one that most of the occupiers simply wouldn’t have been up for, and it is a task that was draining, and would have continued to drain, large amounts of the limited resources that OO has/had.  Many people had also expressed safety concerns, and/or felt unsafe at the campsite, especially at night.  If/When another occupation begins, safety issues will be addressed, to a greater extent in any event, prior to the creation of a new campsite, or squat.  More generally, all of the time, energy and money that was going into maintaining the campsite can now be directed to envisioning phase 2 of OO, to internal and external (re)organization of the group, to building bridges with other Occupations, and with community organizations in Ottawa, and, hopefully, healing some of the rifts that have been created in the days leading up to the occupation until today.

 

Occupy Ottawa The Good

 

It is always important to recognize the positive contributions that individuals, groups and movements are making, and Occupy Ottawa has made several[i], with the potential to make many more.

 

Politically, the most significant contribution that OO, as part of the broader Occupy movement, has made, is raising awareness around the issue of economic inequality, and the massive, and growing, disparity between the incomes of the top 1% of “job creators” and the incomes of the 99%, or, in the interest of calling things by their right names, in the oppressive and exploitative nature of the capitalist system.  To a very limited extent, the Occupy movement has even managed, on occasion, to actually disrupt the smooth functioning of this system.

 

The combination of this awareness raising, and the minor disruptions of capitalism has resulted in both the mass media attacking the movement, and in police repression.  For those people who were not already well aware that the mass media will misrepresent and even falsify their ideas, statements, political positions and actions, and that the police use violence to maintain an injust system, to oppress people, and to repress political movements, it has also been an important wake up call, and political education about some of the ways in which this system works.

The most tangible positives have been providing free food, and, to a more limited extent, free “housing” (tents).  In both cases, for those people who truly needed them, the Occupy campsite was, presumably, preferable in many ways to the social services being provided by the municipal and/or provincial and/or federal governments.

 

The campsite also helped to create an OO community, to nurture relationships, and to connect people both through day-to-day life together and through the shared experience of political organizing and political struggle.  And, for the most part, this was a community of people who were/are new to activism.

 

This new community of activists formed out the relatively wide support that the Occupy movement has/d, and, although this support, in Ottawa at least, has waned to some extent, it is still, relative to much of the radical community organizing in this city, comparatively popular.  And this popular support has meant that Occupy activists have had the opportunity to participate in and organize out of a, if not mass, at least medium-sized movement.  The lessons and skills that organizers have been learning are potentially extremely valuable for both OO and for any other future mass organizing.

 

Finally, and in a point that is connected to both the experience of (small) mass organizing, the directly democratic nature of the movement, with all of the difficulties and failings that this has so far entailed, is an inspiring example and model.  The fact that some Occupations have found a way to make directly democratic decisions, with hundreds or thousands of people, is a forceful  reminder of how powerful real democracy is, and how much it resonates with people, as well as a solid reminder that “el pueblo no esta tonto” – that people aren’t stupid.

 

Occupy Ottawa The Bad

 

I think that the place to begin when addressing criticisms of Occupy Ottawa has to be, identical to Occupy Wall Street and the Occupy Movement more generally, is the colonial mentality that was/is evident in the name and, more significantly, in the failure of the movement to address the historic and ongoing theft of indigenous lands and genocide of indigenous peoples that makes it possible for the national and Transnational corporations to reap massive profits, and for the US, and Canadian nation-state’s to even existi.

 

Related to this failure to acknowledge the unceded Algonquin land that Occupy Ottawa was going to occupy, is the ongoing problem which I’m going to call Activist Urgency Syndrome, to paraphrase a six nations elder who calls it European Urgency Syndrome. Hopefully it is clear that would have been better to make a serious effort to contact members of the Algonquin community and to talk with them about the occupation and exactly what it means to be occupying space that is already occupied (by the Canadian state), to be occupying stolen occupy or unceded land. But that didn’t happen, and the desire to begin while the Occupy Movement still had a great deal of momentum, and was, in some ways, quite understandable. But this same Activist Urgency Syndrome is an ongoing theme in almost all of the political organizing: people suggest organizing an action every day, or even every week. In politics, a week may be a long time, but in organizing, a week is a short time. Political organizations and relationships, just like any other type of relationship, are built over time, as different people and different groups learn to trust and work together. Similarly, political consciousness, revolutionary consciousness, is not created in the space of a week or two, or in a month, but over years and decades of struggle.

 

While all sorts of political organizing, relationship building and consciousness raising was rushed (and, therefore, made less effective and less meaningful), day-to-day issues of racism and sexism in the camp took weeks to even acknowledge, let alone address, and some of them, such as the presence of an open neo-nazi, never got addressed, except to the extent that all of these particular camp problems were “solved” by the eviction of the Confederation Park camp by the Ottawa Police.

 

It needs to be said that movements to end of capitalism, imperialism and oppression most emphatically did not begin with Occupy Wall Street, and whatever good the Occupy Movement does – and i hope it does much – it will not be this movement, by itself, that will end them. What role it will play in creating the conditions for those movements to emerge remains to be seen. And the role it plays will be dependent on what it learns from past movement for social justice, for racial justice, for economic and gender justice, and, for those of us who believe in the only solution (revolution!) from revolutionary movements. The ignorance about the history of different struggles, similar to the ignorance about the land, has and continues to be a serious flaw in Occupy Ottawa, but not, given the number of people new to activism involved, one that is especially surprising.

 

Two fundamental flaws in the Occupy Movement are the belief that absolute Nonviolence, or pacifism, has the potential to make revolutionary social changeiiiiiiv, and the ignorance and naiveté that exists about the role of police in society, and the role that the police play in repressing social movementsvviviiviii. Non-violent struggle certainly has a place, more than a place, really, as it is an essential part of revolutionary movements. Most, by far the vast majority of all of the organizing by people struggling for justice is Non-violent. The problem emerges whenever a tactic, in this case, non-violence, is elevated to the level of a strategy.

 

Another issue was the lack of analysis around the role of the police, both in the day-to-day work that the police do, and the daily violence that they effect on oppressed people, and in the role that they and any other corporate or security type agents play in disrupting, and in some extreme cases (such as the Black Panther Party) destroying those movements through a series of illegal activities, up to and including murderixx. Contradictory to this was the very bad habit of “cop-jacketing” people – accusing people, usually strangers of being police and even harassing them out the park. While it is certainly true that there were undercover police officers in the park, and informants, etc., it is absolutely not alright to publicly accuse people of being police officers if there is no evidence that they arexixii.

 

Occupy Ottawa has also had difficulties dealing with the mainstream media, both in terms of having various occupiers using the media to settle personal grievances, and/or out of some desire to be, however temporarily, a celebrity. Some members of the media team also chose to cover-up and minimize serious problems that were taking place in the camp. While the desire to present a positive spin to the public is understandable, misrepresenting serious issues doesn’t actually do the camp or the movement any good, and it was irresponsibly to portray the camp as safer and more peaceful than it, in fact, was.

 

It is at best an irony that Occupy Ottawa was willing to tolerate the presence of a neo-nazi, while the tent set-up by the University of Ottawa Marxists (a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist organization) has a urine, blood and shit soaked sleeping bag strung up on it, and they were harassed and red-baited out of the occupation. The irony is at least as great in that a variety Ottawa conspiracy theorists have made Occupy Ottawa their home. I think this points to, for the most part, the widespread ignorance that exists about the Radical Left, as a result of the anti-communist purges of the 50s and 60s, coupled with programs like the Counter Intelligence Program, followed, not coincidentally, by the resurgence of the Right-Wing since the 1980s.

 

Finally, The stigmatization of drug users, and the stereotyping of people with mental health issues and homeless people as somehow inherently problematic people to have at the camp was also a serious issue that was never well addressed. A friend who i had invited to speak to people about harm reduction was met with hostility, and his offer to leave disposal boxes for injection drug users was flatly rejected. Granted, This was in the context of a recent incident where several hundred needles had been found around the camp. The response however, was not the correct one. Harm reduction saves lives, and it should be an integral part of social justice organizing.

 

Occupy Ottawa The Ugly

 

Probably the “ugliest” aspects of the occupy movement in Ottawa is the rift and disconnect that has developed between this newly created community of activists and much of the pre-existent communities of radical activists. I have been organizing as part of the Radical Left (anarchist faction) for the past 7 years, and i have also been quite involved with Occupy Ottawa. Watching this rift broaden and deepen over the course of the past 6 weeks has been a pretty distressing experience. But i made the decision that i wasn't going to try and “fix” this problem – it is too big for me to actually be able to address and it really requires both sides (to simplify, since there are far more than just two sides) to have a real interest in trying to address and resolve the issues that are dividing them.

 

In my opinion, this split has been caused primarily by the inexperience and privilege of many of the Occupy activists (i have watched as Occupy Ottawa has become less and less diverse. This isn't to say that there is NO participation from people of colour, queers, working-class people, etc., but they are certainly a minority at the moment) and the rigid and overly critical attitude of many radical activists. The extent to which the police and government and corporate agencies have been involved in creating or accentuating this split will probably never be clear, but it seems highly likely that they have been involved in some attempts to disrupt Occupy Ottawa, and most certainly in attempts to disrupt and derail the Occupy movement more generally. Regardless, one of the results is that Occupy Ottawa has alienated experienced activists with a large number of useful skills and insightful analyses of capitalism, imperialism and different forms and systems of oppression, while the radical community has alienated a significant community and movement of (predominantly) new activists.

 

The absence of long-time activists and the vagueness of the 99% analysis continues to result in a movement that is, in many senses, politically incoherent. This does have some positive features to it, primarily in terms of making people from diverse political backgrounds feel at home in this movement. Negatives include folks will try and screen Zeitgeistxiii, or will post “documentaries” that quote directly from The Protocols of the Elders of Zionxiv, and more generally that a whole series of people who believe conspiracy theories about the banking system, often theories intentionally or not, that use the language and history of anti-semitism. This presents at least three difficulties: 1) theories that are based on fundamnetally flawed principles, such as that jews or international bankers, or the rothschilds secretly run the world are not true and do not provide useful insights on how to organize against capitalism, the state and for anarchist revolution; 2) how does the occupy movement engage with these people, who are attracted to the anti-bank message and politics, but who have a conspiratorial understanding of how systems of oppression work, rather than a systemic or institutional analysis? 3) the potentiality that, rather than involving them in the occupy movement and working with them to reach a common understanding about just what the role of finance capitalism and the banks are as parts of the overall capitalist and imperialist systems, that there politics will find a real home in the occupy movement, and move at least a significant section of the movement to this reactionary and conspiratorial politics. This is no doubt a goal of the organized and strategic elements of the conspiracy theory movements, and of the extreme right, and there is often quite a bit of overlap between these two political positions.

 

This lack of analysis is coupled with, not surprisingly, a lack of political vision; a limited and/or flawed understanding of what problems exist in our societies, and how to organize to end them, understandably leads to confusion over political direction and strategy, as well as to tactical confusion (yes, i mean the philosophy of absolute Nonviolence) and combined with the previously mention Activist Urgency Syndrome it results in the attempt to do everything all the time with little thought given to political priorities and to organizational capacities.

 

The process of learning to make directly democratic decisions with groups of 50 – 200 people has been a weird, conflicted, but absolutely necessary process with most people simple learning by doing it, and learning from mistakes along the way (and having to learn to do this despite both organized and individual attempts to disrupt it). With the current average attendance being around 50 people, and with 6 weeks of experience in holding General Assemblies, the process has improved greatly, but is still too often vague, and lacking direction. In my opinion this stems from the well-intentioned desire to let everyone be heard, which often conflicts with what is, to my mind, the more important issue of making political decisions on behalf of Occupy Ottawa. I believe that the process should be restricted only to committee and individual proposals and that committee proposals should be given priority. Failing this, the committees have become semi-autonomous bodies that organize in the name of Occupy Ottawa, but without any formal accountability to the Gas. This is a serious flaw in our democratic process.

 

This ongoing failure (which, i believe, many people are aware of and are trying to address) is also part and parcel of what Jo Freeman called, “The Tyranny of Structurelessness”. The fact that Occupy Ottawa does have a formal structure (General Assemblies and Committees) means that it can avoid some of the worst problems of total structurelessness, such as cliques, lack of accountability and real power lying in the hands of a few individuals, rather than in the committees and the General Assemblies. The fact that the GA process is still not entirely functional, means, though, that committees often make decisions for the group without the groups knowledge or approval. A related problem is the time commitment that Occupy Ottawa is asking of people if they want to be involved: there are usually four General Assemblies per week, plus a slew of committee meetings. For anyone who is not interested in or able to immerse themselves in this schedule, it means that they can easily be pushed to the margins. This is another institutional problem with Occupy Ottawa and it is one the prevents broader participation from a large number of people. Finally, people who understand well how the process works can, if they do not act in a principled manner, have an excessive influence on the decisions that are discussed, and whether they will be accepted or rejected.

•  

38 Weeks Later?

 

Where will the Occupy Movement and Occupy Ottawa be in a year? This is the sort of question that Occupy Ottawa needs to start figuring out. The eviction means that we can now focus our energies on answering this question, in making sure that, if there is another occupation we make sure that we learned our lessons well and that we can create another camp that is substantially safer, more organized and more politically radical. It also means that we are no longer currently occupying anything (aside of course from us settlers who continue to occupy indigenous territories), and this means less visibility, less community building, and less of a centre for Occupy Ottawa to organize out of.

 

For me, the essential points are around the political direction that the movement will take: will it take to heart the valid criticism that have been made by indigenous people, people of colour, women, queers, disabled people, etc? Will it make sure to prioritize the issues of oppressed people, and ensure that the movement is consistent in working in solidarity with oppressed groups in order to end oppression, capitalism and imperialism? Likewise, will it reach out and learn from other movements, groups and individuals that have been organizing around these issues for years and have a great deal of knowledge, skills and wisdom to share?

 

The issues of radicalization, and militancy are also key to this movement becoming, as some of it's members aspire for it to be, a revolutionary movement. I hope it is clear that these issues are inextricably linked to the issue of political direction that i just mentioned: revolutions are made by the masses of oppressed people rising up against their oppressors by any means necessary and taking power back into their own hands, into the hands of their communities, nations and organizations. There is a famous quote, “Freedom can't be given, it has to be taken.” The banks, the White Supremacist Capitalist Heteropatriacrhy, the Canadian government cannot, and they will not give us what we need, they cannot give us freedom, or justice, or dignity, as they exist in order to ensure that oppressed people do not have access to any of these, and, if we are serious about wanting a better world for ourselves, or friends and families, we will have to take it for ourselves and for our communities.

 

This movement needs to learn how to use all the methods at our disposal and make sure to use strategies and tactics that will be effective in putting power in the hands of oppressed people, and in their revolutionary organizations and movements. I know that this is a little vague, and it should be no surprise really, as the Radical Left remains, while growing, still quite small and without the theoretical and practical vision needed to imagine what a mass revolutionary movement would look like. But that is what we need: a mass revolutionary movement, one that is not beholden to Foundation, Corporate or Government funders, one that is not subservient to political parties, NGOs or union bureaucrats, and one that is based in oppressed communities and will Fight To Win!

 

 

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[i] “Whiteness and the 99%,” http://www.bringtheruckus.org/?q=node/146

 

[ii] “Occupy Rape Culture,” http://thefeministwire.com/2011/11/occupy-rape-culture/

 

[iii] "Activists Tie Occupy Movement To Global Gender Rights" http://www.awid.org/News-Analysis/Women-s-Rights-in-the-News2/Activists-Tie-Occupy-Movement-to-Global-Gender-Rights

 

[iv] ‘OCCUPY WALL STREET: The Game of Colonialism and further nationalism to be decolonized from the “Left”,’ http://www.racialicious.com/2011/09/30/occupy-wall-street-the-game-of-colonialism-and-further-nationalism-to-be-decolonized-from-the-left/ 

[v] "Combat Liberalism," http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-2/mswv2_03.htm

[vi] This article lists a number of the positive aspects of the occupations generally: THE PURPOSE OF THE OCCUPATION MOVEMENT AND THE DANGER OF FETISHIZING SPACE, http://pmarcuse.wordpress.com/2011/11/15/the-purpose-of-the-occupation-movement-and-the-danger-of-fetishizing-space/