So it begins. The Occupy Movement rolls into Toronto. I couldn’t get to the kick off in the financial district, but went to St. James Park in the early afternoon. Below are a few photos and comments. You can view more photos on my flickr space. Early on, I saw a sign I liked: “Let the conversation begin.” No demands. No message. Just an invitation to converse.I found people who took this invitation seriously, like Roy and his friends shown below. When I took their photo, I asked what their schtick was, their point-of-view, their cause, whatever, but they didn’t say; they were just sitting on the grass having a chat and anyone was welcome to join them. So I did for a while.
It was definitely an all-ages event. Yes, there was a healthy representation of twenty-somethings. It seems social movements need this demographic – the students, the people who haven’t yet frosted over, the people with the most energy and a hunger for change. Unfortunately, it seems this is also the demographic that takes the brunt of abuse whenever power decides enough is enough.But there were also young families out with their children.And more seasoned activists, like this woman who told me she drove down from Fenelon Falls. There were people who could articulate clearly why they were there, like these students, one from the Munk School of Global Affairs, the other (to his right) a first year student at U. of T.’s Faculty of Law. There were people who didn’t have a clue, like Eric who told me in one breath that he was a surgeon who attached prostheses on the stumps of disabled amputees, in the next breath that he was a psychiatrist, and in the breath after, that he was, in fact, the late Prime Minister Trudeau. While critics of the movement say it just attracts a lot of nutbars, that fact doesn’t bother me. Nor do I regard it as a criticism. Social movements always implicitly demand space for the most vulnerable, the people most marginalized by dispassionate neo-liberal policies. Men like Eric belong at the very centre of things. At five o’clock, everyone gathered for the general assembly. So that everyone could hear, things spoken at the centre were relayed outwards like the ripples of a wave. Isn’t this how all movements work? The word gets out in waves, relayed by people standing away from the centre. That’s what I’m doing now with my blog. You can do it too. Help spread the word. Help change the world.
