1. What are they occupying?
2. What actions have been taken lately?
3. What kind of numbers and support do they actually have?
To answer the first question, nine times out of ten they are not occupying anything. Do you see any encampments in public parks in major metropolitan areas in Canaduh? NO, you don’t, because everyone is too damn scared of the cops. It’s civil disobedience; you are going to HAVE to deal with the cops, and if you are just going to go along with what the cops say, WHY ARE YOU EVEN COMMITTING THE CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE IN THE FIRST PLACE?!?!?!?
For the second question: What actions have been taken lately? As far as I can tell there has not been anything done in Canaduh under Occupy’s name for at least a few months. Everything that has happened in Canaduh has been done either under the Quebec student movement’s name, or in solidarity with the students in Quebec.
As for what kind of support and/or numbers do they actually have, not much at all.
Why is this?
This is because people have become disillusioned with how things turned out with Occupy. How so? It’s simple. People wanted to SEE ACTIONS HAPPENING, NOT JUST A BUNCH OF PAPERWORK. Which has driven me to create a new portmanteau: “activistocrat”—Activist and Bureaucrat—the definition being someone who thinks of themselves as an activist but doesn’t actually suggest any actions, just bitches about the lack of action while creating a bureaucratic nightmare for those people who actually want to get something done.
For example, at Occupy Newfoundland the activistocrats wanted to formalize the process of how we did GAs and came about to a decision (known further as the “code of conduct”). Sure it sounds good when stated like that, but what it actually entailed was writing a 3-page long document describing how our general assembly process worked. It was written with every detail accounted for and about 20-30 different articles (within 4 main sections) with EACH & EVERY ONE having to be passed by the GA. This process started about the middle of November and still wasn’t done by the time people were starting to stop going to the GAs in May. Almost every GA, some part or another of the code of conduct was brought up. With that one topic, “Code of Conduct,” almost the entire GA was taken up by a 2-hour discussion going in circles on some stupid little semantic detail with nothing else being talked about the rest of the night.
That meant for the ENTIRE winter we were dealing with this one document, which took energy away from other actions or protests that could have happened.
For example, at Occupy Newfoundland the activistocrats wanted to formalize the process of how we did GAs and came about to a decision (known further as the “code of conduct”). Sure it sounds good when stated like that, but what it actually entailed was writing a 3-page long document describing how our general assembly process worked. It was written with every detail accounted for and about 20-30 different articles (within 4 main sections) with EACH & EVERY ONE having to be passed by the GA. This process started about the middle of November and still wasn’t done by the time people were starting to stop going to the GAs in May. Almost every GA, some part or another of the code of conduct was brought up. With that one topic, “Code of Conduct,” almost the entire GA was taken up by a 2-hour discussion going in circles on some stupid little semantic detail with nothing else being talked about the rest of the night.
That meant for the ENTIRE winter we were dealing with this one document, which took energy away from other actions or protests that could have happened.
So how did Occupy die? ACTIVISTOCRATS.
Ken
Part 2: Saving the Revolution: What can be done?
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Read Ken's previous blogpost: Why Occupy Used the Tactics It Did
