The past few weeks have been trying on a number of accounts. Watching good friends getting beaten up and arrested by cops, watching a war machine in propaganda mode after murdering activists bringing aid to Gaza, and (on the positive side) seeing for the first time in Vancouver a massed solidarity movement in support of Palestine.
Just imagine within all this the sheer incompetence of the many in the left to separate reality from propaganda, or the inability to notice how their arguments are tilted in favour of homogenizing movements. Trying indeed.
Where to begin? As with most such issues, it all really began when a caveman/woman very long ago put a barrier around a cave and forbade anyone to encroach. Zip a bit into the future and you get, amongst other things, the 2010 Olympics here in Vancouver which were resisted heartily by some of the bravest people I’ve ever met.
One of the big discussions at the time was over diversity of tactics. Those opposed to anything involving broken glass were taken to task by those supporting it; amongst other debates, the one that stood out was when Harsha Walia, a Power of Women/No One Is Illegal activist took Derrick O’Keefe to task in technicolour.
The fallout from the Olympics did not end since Canada decided it liked spending money on elitist drivel, and decided to sponsor the G8/G20. And a momentous meeting it is since globalization has made it so that the G8 cannot meet anymore since those in power have spread their wealth among a larger group of nations.
Here in Vancouver, student and teacher activists and their allies realized that an offshoot of this meeting, the G8 Education Summit, was meeting here. Planning ensued and three solid events came about:
- The We Ate the G8 Teach-in, which took Robson Square (a beacon of the corporatization of education)
- A set of workshops at Harbour Centre, ironically timed at the same time as some G8 Education seminars in the same space
- A full on confrontation with the university elites called the Street Summit
Some of those who still sore from losing the diversity of tactics debates refused to be part of what was a solid set of events.
And guess what the mainstream media picked on? “Violent” protesters, again.
I should back up a tiny bit since the beauty of the Olympics were in bringing together activists from all causes, and the G8 Education protests were exemplary of this. The Vancouver Community Mobilization Network listed a number of struggles going on all over the city as part of its call-out.
One such struggle was that against the gentrification of an east side fixture: Grandview Park.
With all these protests, there was an element of resistance right up against the state at all times. There was plenty of peaceful rallying, workshops and a teach-in that very calmly occupied semi-public space.
But this is the diversity in tactics I see. Doing all of the above is all well and good, but to an extent. There needs to be the element of radical protest in there to make sure the whole thing doesn’t become just a spectacle, as has pretty much everything else in the left.
A housing march against lying developers in False Creek was exemplary of these varied methods of protest. A civil set of workshops turned out onto the streets and joined with marchers as they approached the development. All of this was acceptable to the authorities. Walking into the development, though, was not approved. People ripped up the fences enclosing the set of condos, and walked into what is essentially land paid for by the public via bailout that had been readjusted to not included social housing. They even got right up to the main exhibition hall and shut down the property showing.
Said shut-down came at the expense of a lot of bruises and tears as cops punched and threw people away from the entrance. At the gate-takedown, they even tried to arrest an activist, claiming later to have been helping hip up.
Having helped many people up myself after being knocked down by cops, I can say that I’ve never used a choke-hold the way the cops did that day.
And there was silence from many on the left to the blatant bullying from the cops, who pulled hair, kicked and trampled people, but arrested not a single person that day.
That night saw an incredible party at Grandview Park to get people together against those trying to gentrify the space. It ended with cops surrounding party-goers in an eerie reminder of what happened on the evening following the 2010 anti-Olympics Heart Attack. Cops just stood around everyone intimidatingly until they decided to let them go.
Perhaps they didn’t like their Community Policing centre getting smashed. Again.
And of course there was the Street Summit, where protesters actually stopped a bus carrying university presidents to a dinner where they would plan how to further monetize the university educational system. Here, the police brought out a 60-person contingent of both uniformed and undercover enforcers to punch, kick and arrest people out of the way of the bus.
Horrifyingly, a number of supposedly leftist publications quickly accepted the cops’ story, including a cheeky line that protesters broke police bicycles, when in actual fact said bikes were broken when the police used them to ram people.
This all has tantamount to do with immigration because of the involvement of immigrant rights groups in said struggles. And the way in which all of these struggles have to do with resisting the kind of immigration countries like Canada are trying to foster – of “good” immigrants that can accept homogenization and assimilation under the banner of multiculturalism.
Something slightly similar happened off the coast of Gaza, when a set of “bad” visitors (according to Israel) tried to drop off some aid to the persecuted people in the region. An utter slaughter ensued, at the end of which Israel claimed it was defending itself.
Similar in the sense that the motivations of both parties to fight an unjust system were the same. Not in that the sad and frightening reality in and around Gaza could ever be compared to Vancouver.
A recent talk by one of the flotilla survivors, Kevin Neish, spoke partly about the failure of a number of media institutions in covering the conflict. I can’t really put it any better than he:
The CBC is an Israeli-occupied territory.
Definitely we can see the results of this rippling through the country, where a comment by a pro-Palestine MP is being more talked about than the murder of civilians and torture of Canadian activists.
The same sort of furor is happening in the US over Helen Thomas’ statement.
It’s all incredibly ridiculous.
Across Canada, people who actually knew how to prioritize were holding rallies in support of Gaza and the flotillas. Vancouver saw three increasingly massive protests.
All this as the Israeli state machine was going on about its right to kill civilians. All contentions aside that it took the death of nine non-Palestinians to bring so many countries to want to send similar missions there, it got something done.
Not to mention the noise of people saying that decrying murder is not how the left should behave. It came with all kinds of innuendo, including some that people supporting the flotillas were standing side-by-side with terrorists.
The Zionist PR machine and its unsuspecting tools were in full motion.
Luckily there were those willing to resist and analyze even online viral attempts to muddy the waters around the slaughter. Still others rightly commented on how this move would impact Israel’s periphery policy.
At the end of all this, the flotilla tactic was one among many and an integral part of the movement to free Palestine.
Oh right, and a group of radicals took responsibility for bombing a bank in Ottawa.
And again the same bollocks from those that sit around pointing fingers.
It wasn’t until a friend in Toronto wrote about against setting up an Islamic history museum that I saw how effective co-option attempts are in any movement. An article that was against elitist capitalism was accused by commentors of being anti-Ismaili.
In the same way those with far different ambitions than social justice seem to be trying to homogenize resistance movements into mere spectacle.
This is something to be very aware of.
Luckily there are those here in Vancouver that are willing to analyze protest holistically and underline the need for more than just the usual.
One anonymous person even brought analysis to the poignant question of what people should be asking of themselves as well as the state in an essay entitled Demand Nothing.
In all this you might notice that I give a lot more credence to those who write from the front lines over those sitting at home and writing comments on expectant forums.
Activism has gotten to a point that some think that writing something from home is enough. To those that do this, I think the best argument is that though they champion Ghandhi, Dr. King and Ms. Parks, one should note that none of these people were activists sitting in their houses. They were on those front lines.
And that is what differentiated these somewhat great but still human people from those that want to be them.
Not mention that, as is the title of this post, movements cannot be homogeneous. Or at least, I have no desire to be around those that are.
The great thing about real resistance is that it continues because those that are part of do not get trodden down by desktop warriors (to borrow a phrase from a dear friend).
Those that aren’t fighting on the ground for Gaza continue to make excellent media to fuel the force – the Narcicyst is my example here with this track God Loves His Children. But those that are on the ground continue to fight, getting ready to send more flotillas, organizing resistance in Gaza and so on.
Vancouver is going ahead with its resistance to everything that is the state and its repression. And as the unmatched Illogik says in this track, there will be one hell of a resistance in Toronto against the G8 (he says it with better flow and rhyming).
And as for anyone who’s still sitting around decrying anything other than what they see to be a righteous movement, I have an excellent joke that I’ve remixed from Slavoj Zizek (many thanks to a dear friend from the real movement for showing me that this sort of humour exists even in the West):
Many many years (maybe even as long as 50 years) ago the Mongols were sweeping into the Middle East. Though resistance had begun, many were at the mercy of the Mongols.
One day a goatherd and his wife were walking home, when a Mongol horseman/warrior rode up to them.
“I’m going to rape your wife,” the horseman announced to the goatherd. “However, the ground in this damn land is very dusty. So you will hold my testicles as I rape her so they will not get dusty.”
After the horseman had finished and rode off, the goatherd burst into laughter. His wife asked him why he was laughing after her ordeal.
“Oh but you see,” he said, “I actually let his testicles touch the ground, so that they got dusty.”
The point is, as Zizek says, to cut them off.
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