It would have been an interesting view of Earth from orbit last Saturday. As the line between light and darkness crept across the globe, city squares and plazas began to fill with people waving signs and banners. As the lights boundary crossed the Pacific, the residents of Tokyo, Hong Kong, Manila, Seoul, and Johannesburg filtered into the streets. The light crossed Europe, setting off breakfasts like a line of firecrackers, with Zurich, Frankfurt, and London joining in. By the afternoon, an estimated 20,000 occupiers were in the streets in Lisbon and 100,000 in Rome. In the Americas, more folks rose and stretched in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Toronto, Santiago, and dozens of other major cities, with plans to hit the streets.
In hundreds of cities in dozens of nations, people were rising up in both senses of the word, in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street.
The We Are the 99 Percent meme captured the global imagination, resulting in the most widely distributed mass demonstration in history. On Saturday, more than 5,000 people packed the Vancouver Art Gallery grounds. The mood was festive, the speakers articulate and impassioned. Seniors, boomers, Gen-Xers and kids marched through the downtown core, some in masks and costumes, waving signs.
The decentralized occupy movement isnt communicating through PR firms or PowerPoint presentations. Non-violent occupation IS the power and the point. Not that Occupy Vancouver is without a manifesto. Theres one at its website, which begins, We, the Ninety-Nine Percent, come together with our diverse experiences to transform the unequal, unfair, and growing disparity in the distribution of power and wealth in our city and around the globe Opposition to institutionalized greed and corruption makes for a pretty big tent, policy-wise.
I returned to Occupy Vancouver on Sunday evening. Beyond the tents staked at the Art Gallery grounds there was a rickety media centre, a Peoples library, a medical station, and a kitchen operated by Food Not Bombs. A discussion board listed upcoming teach-ins on monetary policy and other issues. Three cheery women, bundled up against the cold, were handing out slices of Occu-pie.
Like their contemporaries in New Yorks Zucotti Park, the occupiers of the Art Gallery grounds have no interest in leaders. Theyre not looking for a Moses figure to lead them to the Promised Land. Theyve seen that movie before and they know how it ends. Hence their protocols for transparency, consensus, and rotating facilitation.
Weve taught our children well. Many have learned that past the civic level, electoral politics only tinkers around the edges of a fundamentally flawed system. So a new generation is drawing on new media and street-level connecting in search of a better model. In the process, they are building real-world community and social capital.
The occupy movement has little in common with garden-variety street protest, or the Flat Earth plane of party politics. Its added a third dimension of public dialogue. Jessie Rockley, 28, has been camping out at the art gallery since Friday night. The general assembly meetings every day at noon and seven are so interesting. Its definitely worth coming down and giving it a listen all the conversations that have been building are conversations that are going on all around the world. And were really feeling that sense of community and sense of unity.
On a sunny Tuesday afternoon, the participation at Occupy Vancouver appeared low, with a small group of about 75 people sitting for a general assembly. The Oct. 15 day of action had far bigger numbers than the present scene, at least in this city. No Arab Spring here.
I never expected the Occupy movement would take off on Canadas West Coast as it has in the U.S. The pain hasnt hit us hard enough yet. The numbers of campers on the art gallery grounds may decline further with the winter cold, but the Occupy template has now been beta-tested on a global scale. No one knows what comes next, but people around the world who participated in the Oct. 15 day of action have connected the dots and broken the spell. The vast majority of them are not camped out, having returned to their jobs and families, but they support the cause. The potential energy of democratic dissent is still largely untapped among the 99 per cent, like household current.
www.geoffolson.com
