As the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement shifts across borders, grows and develops, a group in Victoria has been working toward its own Occupation.
(The two folks to the right were captured by Flickr user ngawangchodron on Douglas St., a few days before old media had picked up on the OWS protests)
Typical of Victoria, though, there is no consensus and so there will be two groups: the Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria (PAOV) will be at Spirit/Centennial Square, the Occupy Victoria group will be on the lawns of the Legislature (where some of the members have been for a while).
Why two groups? Well, the PAOV spent a large part of their first meeting of the Occupy Victoria group choosing another name,
…by an hour into what turned into a four-hour session, the first order of business was still being debated: whether or not to call the mission Occupy Victoria, in respect to the First Nations group that already occupy the land. The group finally decided on some version of the Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria, with the original name bracketed
— Danielle Pope in Monday Magazine
The PAOV continues to meet, publishing agendas ahead of time, debating minutiae and maintaining a more mainstream profile. They even have pretty graphic posters you can download:
Meanwhile, on the lawns of the legislature, a handful of protesters are asking, “Why are we the only ones here?” Follow some of the other related videos on YouTube and you’ll find suggestions that the PAOV has been “infiltrated by The Man.”
And among all these people, all asking for change, few are talking about how to change things but Mike has that covered in this morning’s blog post, “Pre-Occupy“. We also discussed the topic in our most recent, tangent-filled podcast, “Occupy Everything.” As I said there, I totally get the rage of the OWS movement (check out these graphs from Business Insider if you haven’t seen them already) but I’m having trouble applying the issues to Canada.
Will you be protesting tomorrow? I’d love to hear why/why not.
I’ll be down @ the legislature (after I drop B. off at Cub Camp) to lend my voice to the movement. I will be there because I believe we have to stand up for our democracy. Simply showing up and being there helps to show that we the people are not satisfied with the way our country, our world is run. Maybe no on will agree on how it should be run but I think it is important that the 1% sees that they will not be allowed to rule the world as they see fit. Silence = consent.
Thanks, Ted. I agree that sometimes just showing up is the most important thing you can do.
I’ve been at the legislature every day the past 2 weeks. Claudia started one day earlier. We will continue to go there because we are offering personal lessons in critical thinking and what the answer really is. Wac vic held a fantastic rally and we will maintain this as a beacon of truth to those will to come down, debate us for a while and learn what it is that we see which others clearly do not see and have serious trouble recognizing. We are getting better at this every single day. Come by in the afternoon, same time, same location, as usual.