Friday 9 December 2011

PAOV (Occupy Victoria): The Birthing Room and Beyond

Terence Stone

My blog today is a little 5:00 a.m. rant I wrote in reply to an email from a dear friend. I'll let it stand as it is:


Yes. Occupy was forced out in Victoria too. The authorities couldn't cope with the homeless becoming perpetually visible and actually finding a forum for their voices; so they've been forced back into invisibility and silence.


Atomized for so long by powers wanting us to consume more, and more, and more, we are all struggling with how to be together as organic, inclusive communities. It's all rather painful at times--a bit like being born again; but if people keep their faith and determination, the movement will evolve and change.


The entire phenomenon is protean. Law enforcement, the justice system, the political establishment, and the Chambers of Commerce have become so co-opted by their own production of images-as-reality, closing down the sites seems to have satisfied them that Occupy has been dismantled. They couldn't be more in error. They've only closed the delivery room after the painful but exhilarationg birth of goodness knows how many children.


All have dispersed into other locations--many of them virtual--gathering stregnth for the next level of public disobedience--of creative rebellion. If nothing else it's heightened for everyone involved, and those who have been curious bystanders, the reality that we are indeed living in a world gone mad. It's an asylum for pathologies of greed, corruption, delusions, and high-risk, self-harming behavious that are now clearly suicidal and genocidal. Institutions of all kinds have become great echo chambers that do nothing but amplify destructive ideologies maquerading as rationality.


You're right. Harper and his thugs go about with impunity insisting they represent the majority in the stupid, first-past-the-post electoral system we have in which fewer and fewer Canadians participate every four years. In reality, as so many people were warning pre-election, there was always an insidious backroom agenda in play as narcissitic Harper stared lonley and longingly into the cesspool of his ambition and fell deeply in love with his own shitty reflection.


With only the Senate as a low hurdle for Bill C-10 to clear and COP 17 disproportionatly undermined by our pathological Prime Minister, the question is what comes next and just how much will aquiescent Canadians tolerate. Is this really a national trait so entrenched that Canadians will endure any lie and abuse? I hope not. I dare not believe it for the sake of our country and the entire globe.


In any event, the many facets of Occupy that still exist and grow daily will inevitably confront and dismantle all of these excesses and non-democratic systems over time. To believe anything else is to roll over and die. If that happens, we deserve extinction. For me this weekend--a little culture jamming!

No comments:

Post a Comment