I can hardly believe that it hasn't been two weeks yet since Occupy Toronto started. A mini-village has emerged in St. James Park, functional despite growing pains in setting up governance from scratch in a charged environment. It's been a rapid learning curve for everyone- for new people who've thrown themselves into political activity, for experienced activists trying to figure out what is going on. I think about other political actions I've been involved in (like the three-month teaching assistant strike, anti mining campaigns, and the G20 protests), but never have I been part of something that's been a game changer on the political scene, not just in Toronto but across North America, even becoming part of ongoing political uprising in Europe. (Although we certainly had our delusions about the CUPE 3903 strike while it was on. I'm quite aware that being involved in an action creates a kind myopia that makes it impossible to judge its actual importance.)

 Most of the time, politics are slow.  Door-knocking, tabling, innumerable lectures, meetings, meeting, meetings. And then sometimes it happens fast. What are the demands?' people keep asking.  I really don't know how it could be clearer. People are sick of corporate governance, big corporations and finance capitalists telling us who is our leader, and what is possible. How is Bloomberg- super-rich creator of the proprietary software used to track the financial markets- the mayor of New York? Does he somehow represent its people? How is the government supposed to keep corporations in check when the government is run by the same corporations? That's what the 99% slogan is about.  We are done with corporate rule, and not just in America, but here in Canada, where Stephan Harper and his tar-sands cronies replaced Paul Martin, shipping magnate, and ne'er an ordinary person to be seen in the halls of Parliament.   People in Greece have been told clearly that they have no choice, that it doesn’t matter who they elect, austerity is coming.  They say no, and so do we. The movement so far has one no, and one yes.  It is set on creating new forms of participatory democracy.  There are a lot of bugs yet to be worked out in exactly what this looks like (I think it will have to move towards some kind of spokes-council system) but its pretty amazing to see large masses of people believing in, and experimenting with, real participatory decision making.  We don’t want one person, or a party, or a corporation, hijacking the movement, and the only way to prevent that is to be truly open to mass participation.

The mini-society at Occupy Toronto has its own media tent, and its own newspaper (that’s mainly what I’ve been working on). It has a food tent that feeds 1000 people a day, a sanitation committee where people volunteer to clean the port-o-potties.  It has a free library. It has a women’s safe space.  There are certainly many problems, most significantly around anti-racism, which is a bit of a nebulous concept to many there.  But I’ve seen indigenous people lead marches and ceremonies and white people listen and learn, probably for the first time, about the history of the land they are on.  I saw a workshop on privilege grow from a half-dozen people to about 50 over the course of two hours.  The people in the park want to learn, and are willing to listen to new ideas and try them out. Now, we don't have a way out yet.  I personally have a particular set of answers drawn from my particular political education- street demonstrations, community organizing, general strikes, workplace take-overs, and community councils setting up decentralized democratic networks. But not everyone has this set of education, and people are going to have to learn by experience.  Some people plan Gandhi- like campaigns of massive peaceful civil disobedience. Others want to start new political parties, or influence existing ones. There’s a lot of utopian socialism/mutualism floating around where we just start growing our own food and stop using money. This is all going have to be hashed out in reality and not in some theoretical journal that you need 5+ years of graduate education to understand. 

I don’t want to have rose-coloured glasses on.  There are lots of bugs to work out, and occupy has in some ways been the most frustrating space I’ve ever tried to work in. But it’s also the most filled with potential, and with hope. Yes, the people camping out are mostly ‘middle class’ youth struggling for their own interests, dealing with lack of democracy, joblessness, student debt. But these are not necessarily the so-called ‘first world problems’, some of these youth are on the brink of homelessness, with trouble buying food, being pushed to the margins of society and told that its their own fault.  The so-called ‘middle class’ has to find itself and its own struggle before it can  remember what solidarity is and not simply offer some kind of misplaced charity.