Dear Occupy NL,

I would like to help implement a think tank model for OccupyNL or an affiliated group. I believe there is a gaping hole downtown in this city for intellectual and theoretical applications of common good. OccupyNL has the capacity to render high political thought in text, image and action in this city and say goodbye to the failed Arts Faculty at Memorial, whom I’ve been waiting for to take the lead. I have waited for 25 years for Newfoundland culture, heritage and tourism to benefit more people economically than it currently does; that this has not happened, especially in the outports, means it is time for a change.

The oil industry has done more harm to Memorial culture than any other single event or leanings; it has rendered the Arts at Memorial at the St. John’s campus completely moot philosophically or as a body in relation to city culture, impact or social progression. Occupy NL can fill this gap as a body with some specific strategies. Occupy NL has the knowledge base and the writing skills to do this.

In the early 1990s I worked for the U.S. National Park Service to collect folklife and lore regarding the railroad, steel and coal heritage in the devastated, post-industrial American wasteland of southwestern Pennsylvania.

The project’s mandate was to document occupationally-based folklife in the region and then use the data to create tourism products filtered through an actively de-politicized


~Kathryn Foley

Some of you may have looked at the title of this post and thought, “What do you mean Occupy died? People are still calling themselves Occupiers.” Yes, it may be true that people are still calling themselves occupiers, but here’s the thing:

Join us back at Harbourside Park for a General Assembly (Tuesday) starting at 7 PM.
Professor of History at MUN, Robert Sweeney, (who researches Inequality trends in Canada and the history of capitalism, among other things) will be leading a Q&A on the financial crisis.

I recently finished reading an economic history of the US education system, The Race Between Education and Technology by Goldin and Katz.  The main message of the book can be summarized in three points:

1) The US was the world leader in education for over a hundred years (e.g. the High School Movement and the GI Bill).  This played a major role in making the US the leading economy of the 20th century.

2) Progress in education has stagnated in the US over the last 35 years and they have now fallen behind other advanced countries.

3) The modern economy increasingly demands more highly educated workers.  Combined with 2), this has led to greater income inequality in the US, as people without advanced education have fallen behind.

This made me curious about how the Canadian situation compares to the US.  I'm happy to say that the news is mostly pretty good.  We continue to make great strides in education in Canada and especially in Newfoundland.

This is my first contribution to the blog and as such I wanted to make it (semi) memorable. I apologize ahead of time if this just seems like a bunch of pointless ranting, it's just my writing style. I also apologize for this long winded introduction but i feel like i have to get it out of the way, after this post you wont see it again. Anyways, on to the actual blog post now.

I started occupying in St John's on October 17th (day 3). Why did I join Occupy in the first place? well that's because I saw it as the only way to work towards making a drastic change in our society, a way of getting people to start breaking the last "real" taboo we have in our society: Questioning the way our society works and if capitalism (read corporatism) is really the best way of doing things.

What did I think could possibly be accomplished? I think I just answered that, but ill do so again. What i thought the Occupy movement could accomplish was getting people talking, it kinda worked in phases. phase one's leading quote being "A better world is possible, lets talk about it."

How did we get this done? We got it done through civil disobedience. For those who don't know what civil disobedience entails ill explain it. Civil disobedience is when you purposefully break a law for the purpose of either showing how ridiculous said law is, or for just plain old drawing attention. I bet you can guess what reason we were using it for. We were using civil disobedience tactics so that we could garner media attention which could then be used to highlight what we were talking about. Mainly: economic disparity, who holds the real power in government (those with the money), and how money is created in our fiat currency system. Through highlighting these three related issues it is hoped that people will actually wake up to whats going on around them.

I would like to thank you for your patience as I write (you read) this small treatise on some philosophical and political points.

Ken.

Harbourside Kitchen began as a group of people cooking food down at the Occupy camp at Harbourside Park. The original intention was not to subvert the corporate food system, but mainly to put food in their hungry bellies on donated food items. The working group, after The Great Eviction, has become a nomadic tribe of renegade vegan cooks intent on cooking together and giving it away for free together (a la Food Not Bombs, it seems). They are looking for like-minded people to join them in their outdoor cooking adventures.


From their blog:

So a large percentage of the Harbourside Kitchen crew will be moving out of province in the near future, and we'll likely be without a CEO, health inspector and eventually a groundskeeper.

Are you interested in any of the following things?

• Putting a bunch of ingredients on a table and saying "...It's done!"
• Taking naps in the afternoon.
• Storing a propane tank.
• Taking naps in the afternoon. 
• Being part of some inside jokes. 
• Being a super cool punk rocker.
• Not appearing in photos.
• Taking naps in the afternoon.
• Cooking for people and doing it outside.

 If you'd like to quickly move up the ranks in a fast-growing corporation that is concerned with synergy and capitalism or synergies in capitalism, you can go [insert profanity of choice here] yourself.

If you're not interested in that sort of thing, then you might want to consider applying for a highly taxing position with Harbourside Kitchen. You can , leave a comment on this post, or talk to us when we're cooking (next excursion will be Thursday 12:30-3 pm, corner of George and Water) or if you happen to recognize us on the street!