Writings, Reviews, Cultural Criticism
It is arguable that in the summer of 1978 the whole world felt an innocent pause, a shining moment in time when people of the West could pretend there was nothing pressing at the doorstep. Saigon had fallen which meant American and Vietnamese kids weren’t getting killed anymore. A peanut farmer was President of the US of A. Canada’s leader was a playboy/media darling who seemed to swing the world by its tail.
In the age of Trump, the startling rise in Ontario of yet another populist leader, nationalism, political fear-mongering, scapegoating, press-bashing, and power grabs by craven oligarchs, it’s important periodically to remind ourselves what it means to live in a free society. It’s likewise important periodically to test the limits of that freedom to make sure those limits haven’t contracted around us while we were asleep.
#BlackLivesMatter was a thing, just like #OccupyWallStreet was a thing before it. And now those things are done. The problem with turning chronic social injustice into a media concern is that once it loses its traction in the media people get the idea that somehow it’s been dealt with.
I make no secret of the fact that I intensely dislike Rob Ford. If it were simply a matter of concern for his substance abuse issues, I could cut the man some slack.
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.
As the Occupy movement creeps ever closer to Toronto, we who support it brace ourselves for the inevitable backlash, not only from voices of power, but also from an eerily complacent middle class.
As preparations got underway for the G20 Summit in Toronto, one of the fears critics had expressed was that heightened surveillance would become a permanent situation for residents after the event was over.
A protester pretending to be police officer in riot gear ran into the intersection at Charles St. & Yonge. He was carrying a shield with the word “Polite” on it and wore a visor low over his face to mimic the visors the police wore last week while protecting Toronto’s fair citizens from the G20 Summit.
I celebrated Canada Day by engaging in the highest form of patriotism which, according to Howard Zinn, is dissent.
On Friday June 25, 2010, the day before the G20 Summit, I accompanied my wife to her place of work on the northern limit of the secured zone in Downtown Toronto. I went partly out of concern for her and partly out of curiosity.
We (my wife and I) went down to the planned protests at Queen’s Park. It was moving to witness all the different concerns/causes/stories/sufferings people brought into this public space.
Since my post on Monday, the mood in downtown Toronto has changed. For one thing, it’s empty. The people there are either police officers and security personnel, or they are people like me who have come to gawk. It’s a show. A spectacle. It even has its own posters hung from the street light poles — like Miss Saigon or Legally Blonde.
My daughter, now in grade 9, is learning to do linear equations in her math class, then mapping points as Cartesian co–ordinates on graph paper. She’s a reasonably bright 14-year-old, but no math whiz, mostly because she feels no motivation to learn the problems. How do they relate to real-world issues?