By Brett Mineer
I arrive not long after dark.
The evening General Assembly is about a half hour away and with my iPhone nearly fully charged, I intend to Tweet details of what happens.
Right now I have no deadline, no boss, and no format to adhere to. It’s perfect.
Until now I have stopped only to observe the odd committee meeting, march or more spectacular action such as the ‘Run-on-the-Banks’ where about 150 activists held a sit-in-meets dance party in the lobby of the TD Bank branch at Pacific Centre. The goal of a majority of activists who took part was to withdraw their money and close their accounts at the TD and instead plunk their money in Credit Unions, the more socially responsible alternative they say. While the branch was effectively shut down, it’s unclear if any ultimately succeeded in closing their accounts.
Occupy Vancouver is a community in the heart of the city.
The entrance nearest the corner of West Georgia and Howe Streets is an eclectic collection of signs ranging from the standard 9-11 was an inside job to End Corporate Greed. It seems overly simplistic but what awaits inside is anything but.
About 100 or so tents cover what was formerly the lawn (or bark mulch more accurately).
If I am to make the community analogy I guess you could call them the “suburban sprawl”.
Not far away there is a medical tent or “hospital“, information tent or ”tourist info centre“, media tent or “community paper/internet café”.
There is a sign shop, library, food dispensary with kitchen and volunteers scrubbing dishes, yoga studio, tea-house, some kind of performance tent for musicians, an aboriginal elders tent, disabled access lanes, a recycling depot, and some kind of geodesic dome structure that appears to be another artist space in the making.
Much of this is beginning to take on the look of a more permanent encampment.
There are wooden doorways incorporated into larger tents, shelving and makeshift lighting systems with power drawn from a generator or two but mostly from outlets on the exterior of the art gallery.
Tents offering services of one kind or another have signs indicating their hours of operation, and sheets where people can sign up to work shifts. Cleaning crews scour the community sweeping up cigarette butts and other trash.
The Occupiers themselves are a very diverse group.
Within one of the large tents I’m told is a group of teens and young adults who apparently align themselves with anarchist philosophies and have some kind of try-hard name like the Scum Fucks, Gutter Punks or some other such nonsense. They don’t really attend many of the committee meetings or general assemblies, opting instead to smoke weed or drink. Essentially I’m told, “They’re the ones with the ratty leather and all the shit in their face who would generally be hanging out on the steps of the VAG anyways”.
The Scum Fucks (or whatever) aside, the majority here appear to be twenty and thirty-somethings.
Many are well educated. A couple are dressed in elaborate costumes but most resemble more what you’d find in any coffee shop. There are retirees, people in wheelchairs and scooters, some on disability and some not. There are some who appear to have mental and physical challenges, the homeless and the housed, the unemployed and gainfully employed. While by this time in the evening most of the roughly 150 people here are overnighters, others are the come and go type, as in come and go as their work schedules/lives within the status quo permit.
One thing that is abundantly clear – calling the Occupiers “squatters” or “just lazy with nothing better to do” is an act of ignorance that could only be the conclusion of an outright simpleton or worse, a politician.
Amidst the bongo-banging, didgeridoo playing cyber-age hippies playing jump rope or hacky-sack, you find dialogue and analysis all over the place. Some of it is rather simplistic or outright kooky, but most is not if only you listen.
There is talk not just of the gap between rich and poor or of environmental degradation, but of trade deficits, the virtually non-existent financial reform in the United States, various models of democracies around the world and the reasons for their successes or failures.
The evening general assembly begins.
Tonight the woman selected to chair the discussion at the microphone tells the crowd they are going to lighten up on process and procedure so newcomers can feel free to ask questions and contribute.
There really aren’t any leaders here despite media stories that pop up from time to time quoting a “protest organizer”. There are committees. These committees are open to anyone to join.
Some have selected someone to speak for them at the general assembly but most just make those decisions based on whoever is around at the time.
The general assembly uses a system of hand signals for voting, blocking votes, proposing new motions, indicating you have a question or like or dislike whatever a speaker is saying.
It’s been described to me as “the communication of baseball with the efficiency of politics”.
It is silly to watch and painfully slow – but as Donald Rumsfeld said as rioting and looting overtook post-invasion Baghdad, “democracy is messy”.
Someone from the infrastructure committee talks about a project they are preparing for that would extend the stage on the steps of the VAG. He says if they buy the materials it will cost about $400.
Someone suggests they put something out for anyone who has any money to throw in the pot while another suggests they ask around if anyone has surplus building materials like plywood. There is a suggestion from a man in the crowd that volunteers with trades experience offer their skills to a local business in exchange for materials. It will all be discussed further within the committee before coming back to a future general assembly.
As I sit on the steps and quietly tweet my observations I can’t help but notice the Twitter-sphere is alive with partisan haymakers rallying their faithful against the Occupiers. One tweet from an NPA front-site openly contemplates whether the belongings and tents that are left empty can simply be thrown into waiting garbage trucks.
The Twitter feeds of various “mainstream” media are busy with headlines and links to stories with angles of their own. The reports seem wildly contradictory and once again many are quoting one “protest organizer” or another. There is a story that Occupy Vancouver is considering a move to Chilliwack.
Where’d that come from?
Another says protesters are gearing up for a possible “violent showdown” with the city and police.
There are Tweets linking to articles that say “the Occupy protesters” crashed the mayoral debate.
It seems more likely someone from the camp went down with a few Occupiers on their own (this would later be confirmed when a few protesters I spoke to said mayoral candidate Darrell Zimmerman earned the jeers of the crowd and even other protesters when he stormed the stage. Zimmerman has frequented the camp I’m told and may be bi-polar).
None of this registers with anyone at the General Assembly.
Nobody here has any idea of the ferocity of the online war being waged over or against them, or the wild range of theories and hearsay being churned out from the news/sausage factories – all attributed to some random or another within their non-ranks.
Where is this stuff coming from?
One possible clue comes from a twenty-something journalism student and documentary filmmaker Rafferty Baker, who has been here since the beginning.
He says he’s noticed the traditional media has had a tendency to “parachute” into Occupy and leave in fairly short order – presumably after they have rounded up a clip or a quote from anyone who seems to know anything about what is going on. They package it in microwave and satellite trucks parked across the street, and do their live hits from across the street.
It seems to me the only way to get an understanding of what is truly happening here is to have someone hang out for impractical amounts of time.
Whether television, radio or print, the deadlines, time limits and page space are what they are; difficult if not impossible to accurately or sometimes even truthfully reflect something like this.
As the meeting goes on the Occupiers reach a consensus on holding a “family day”, likely this coming Sunday. They want to welcome newcomers and the curious and to do this, one of the committees will draft up suggestions for possible behavioural rules for Occupiers that would at least temporarily render the site more “child friendly”, such as a smoking ban.
More Tweets.
Police and protesters are on the move in Baltimore and Atlanta.
In Oakland police are using tear gas, pepper spray and concussion grenades known as flash-bangs to disperse Occupiers.
There are also reports of rubber bullets and as those are denied by Oakland Police, pictures begin to emerge of spent rubber bullet shells allegedly picked up off the streets.
A 22 year old Iraq war veteran with the group Veterans for Peace has been hospitalized with a fractured skull and swelling on the brain after taking a round from a tear gas gun in the side of the head.
Nobody here seems to know.
I tweet out details of a spokesperson for the “Security Committee” urging the crowd to take concerns regarding rumours they’ve heard about their volunteer security staff to the committee.
He says there are “baseless” and “pernicious rumours” regarding the actions of some of the security personnel and “these will inevitably find their way to the mainstream media” he adds “we don’t want to give any justification to shut us down based on absolutely nothing”.
My phone begins to warn me of it’s impending battery death.
Then comes the first indication to me of any comprehension of the tightening of the noose around Occupy.
Someone from the “Emergencies Committee” takes to the microphone. They explain they formed following a General Assembly earlier in the day and their purpose is to discuss and debate tactics and methods for non-violent resistance they might employ “in the event of an eviction”. This committee intends to meet in what is called “the black tent” immediately after the G.A.
I am never able to find this tent or anyone who knows where – or what – it is.
My phone dies around the time the general assembly ends.
It’s just as well as I’m shivering from the cold and the “People’s lovely Library” tent looks warm and inviting with chairs, a fake leather couch and several bookshelves, a table and a chess board.
With no phone I have no internet, no clock, no access to all the noise.
In here time grinds to a halt.
In one corner a large man covered with a blanket sleeps in a chair.
Two elderly men are quietly contemplating their game of chess.
Three men and a woman near the entrance are deep in conversation about the global economy, and something about China and their repression of the student-led pro-democracy movement in Tiananmen Square in 1989. A college student on the couch next to me is deep into a book entitled European Democracies.
Again I am struck by the notion that anyone would dismiss this as the work of squatters or merely the lazy and bored.
Maybe that says something about why they occupy.
The game of word association played by the politicos, partisans and talk show hosts when they say those protesters are just squatters.
What does that say about their attitudes towards the poor and meekest among us?
I wonder to myself if it might be the same kind of word association that made the schoolyard analysis of something lame, boring or weak as “gay”; the kind of word association teachers are now trying to stomp out.
The ‘People’s Lovely Library’ contains hundreds of books and pamphlets all brought/donated by fellow Occupiers.
Books are categorized and shelved in the respective sections of “History”, “Economics” and “Environment“. You can stay and read or you can sign out a book.
There is a sheet that asks for the book title, when you signed it out, and your contact information.
You can keep a book for 24 hours, though the volunteer librarian on shift informs me, “we’re generally pretty cool about renewals”.
It is warmer in here but I am still shivering.
I cross Hornby Street and go into the Hotel Vancouver.
It is the starkest of contrasts. Outside it is cold and there is traffic noise, the occasional siren and yes, drumming (to which I wonder if any hotel guests are complaining).
Inside I walk past the Gucci storefront and delight in the warmth. Here it is clean and soothing muzak lulls you back into your comfort zone.
I find a washroom.
It has all the class of the Hotel Vancouver, but it smells funky.
It’s not fart-funk either. There are port-a-potties across the street at Occupy that were allegedly going to be emptied out by the Canadian Autoworkers Union, but since the first Saturday of OV, union members have become increasingly scarce. It smells like unwashed human beings in here and I wonder how many Occupiers have been covertly frequenting these stalls and sinks.
I walk down a quiet Burrard Street, past the guard out front of the Louis Vuitton window, and towards the Blenz on Robson I notice a discarded sign leaning up against a newspaper box.
One side reads: “Don’t worry. Everything is fine. Continue shopping”, the other says “Buy Bye”.
I walk into the warmth of the coffee shop, telling a homeless man near the door I don’t have any change.
He didn’t follow me inside as if he knows he’ll be thrown out.
My medium latte is handed to me in it’s disposable paper cup with plastic lid that is allegedly recyclable – if only there was anything other than garbage cans for it.
A discarded newspaper sits on one of the tables. The cover page features a photo of the crying mother of one of Robert Pickton’s victims – another of our throwaways.
A smaller headline warns of the potentially catastrophic collapse of the Euro zone economies.
A woman on her laptop is surfing the Internet, reading an article that appears to be in Cantonese. I don’t read Cantonese but I know what the article is about by the picture accompanying it. It shows figures emerging from a cloud of tear gas, with a line of gas-mask and plastic shield clad riot police in the background.
It looks like a picture from Oakland tonight.
Back at Occupy, I slip back inside the People’s Lovely Library.
Taped to the side of one of the bookshelves is the phrase “injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere”.
Before plunking down on the couch I pick up a pamphlet entitled “Lessons from Madrid”.
It is a written account by one of the leaders of the Spanish Uprising this May.
I hang on a line that asks “What happens when there is not enough money in the kitty and Too Big to Fail becomes Too Big to Bail?”
Worth pondering I ponder.
The author goes on to talk about not just a theoretical global financial collapse, but the collapse of the movement in Madrid’s Plaza del Sol or rather it’s decentralization.
He says as similar uprisings continued to spread to Syria, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Greece, Italy, Israel, and eventually New York’s Wall Street, Spain’s version continued the fight with smaller groups who would show up to blockade evictions from apartments and homes in Madrid’s poorest neighbourhoods.
They have also been active in “reclaiming” abandoned properties and planting “community gardens”.
Is this what evolves from Occupy Vancouver when they inevitably move on or face an Oakland or Melbourne-style pre-dawn raid?
It’s now nearly 5 o’clock in the morning and the camp is stirring.
I walk from the camp beneath Vancouver’s monuments to capitalism.
Our version we’re told is not the same as America’s version.
Austerity here is not like austerity there say the messengers.
We’re told there is less “street homelessness” here now than there was in the past despite what your lying eyes tell you.
Back in the warm cockpit of my petroleum consuming, carbon emitting Honda I flee for the comfort of the suburbs again.
On the radio the politicos and bobbleheads spit and spew again.
It’s noise and I turn it off. The city appears calm in the rear-view mirror as I drive over the Granville Street Bridge. Calm like a bomb.
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