Joe R. Golowka JoeG at ieee.org Anarchist FAQ - http://www.anarchistfaq.org
"Necessity is the argument of tyrants. It is the creed of slaves." -William Pitt Jr. ----- Original Message ----- From: <Tom_Childs at Douglas.BC.CA> To: <infoshop-news at flag.blackened.net> Sent: Tuesday, June 19, 2001 8:22 AM Subject: (en) Canada, MEDIA: Labour gearing up for battle - The Toronto Star
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>
> ..Some interesting coalitions of resistance forming against the corporate
> govt. of Mike Harris in Ontario, Cda. Direct action is becoming 'the way'
> of bringing to light the tyranny of government by corporate interest.
> Thanks to Sid Shniad at Simon Fraser University for this...
> Regards, Tom @ the Douglas College Library
>
> > From: Sid Shniad <shniad at sfu.ca>
>
> Labour gearing up for battle Unions will put muscle into Tory protests
> By Thomas Walkom
>
> When anti-poverty protesters invaded Ontario Finance Minister Jim
> Flaherty's Whitby constituency office and threw his furniture out the door
> last week, most reaction was predictably negative.
>
> "Outrageous," said Education Minister Janet Ecker. "Nothing short of
> anarchy," fumed Labour Minister Chris Stockwell.
>
> "We call it pillaging," thundered the National Post, which demanded
maximum
> jail sentences for those arrested.
>
> The Star's editorial board, while sympathizing with the protesters' aims
> (the action was designed to draw attention to Toronto's alarming eviction
> rate), denounced what it called a "display of orchestrated violence" and
> suggested that, in the future, critics of Premier Mike Harris' government
> confine themselves to passing out leaflets.
>
> Indeed, for many, the notion of a busload of protesters invading a quiet
> suburban constituency office struck uncomfortably close to the bone.
>
> Canadians are familiar with protesters heckling politicians at Queen's
> Park. But to confront a minister's staff in his home riding when he's not
> even there seems another thing altogether. And in Whitby?
>
> Well, get used to it.
>
> Because, according to labour leaders as well as social activists, there's
> more on the way.
>
> Direct action - civil disobedience backed by muscle - is becoming more
> respectable in Ontario, particularly among those who feel squeezed by
> right-of-centre governments.
>
> The executive of the Ontario Federation of Labour has just voted
> unanimously to endorse "direct action" to fight legislation it says would
> harm worker health and safety.
>
> "We're going to be more active in how we express our opposition," says OFL
> vice-president Irene Harris (no relation to the Premier). "There's a real
> sense of anger out there and people want to express their anger.
Everything
> is on the table."
>
> Sid Ryan, Ontario President of the Canadian Union of Public Employees,
says
> the unions have agreed to form flying squads to invade workplaces they
deem
> unsafe.
>
> "Each union's going to contribute 10 to 20 members," Ryan says. "We're
> going to hit four or five places before the end of this month -
unannounced
> - and shut them down.
>
> "We're fed up with just handing out leaflets. We've done that. It's
> pointless. We protest in front of Queen's Park and the building is empty.
> Mike Harris doesn't even show up there any more.
>
> "With all due respect to The Star, your editorial is nonsense."
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Vigorous political protest is not new in Canada. During the Depression of
> the 1930s, Queen's Park was often the scene of pitched battles between
> police and those protesting high unemployment.
>
>
> During the early 1970s, student protests - some involving property
damage -
> flared in Toronto. And well into the 1980s, injured workers would
routinely
> invade the Legislature, often disrupting the chamber's business, to
protest
> what they saw as inadequate compensation benefits. But for most of the
'80s
> and early '90s, political protest in Ontario followed a predictable series
> of steps, a kind of minuet.
>
> First would come an authorized march (usually held at a time when traffic
> wouldn't be disrupted). This would be followed by an authorized rally at
> Queen's Park at which speeches would be made and slogans chanted.
>
> Teachers routinely held their Queen's Park rallies on weekends - a curious
> practice on the face of it since MPPs had usually gone home.
>
> But the real aim of those rallies was to demonstrate that protest
> organizers enjoyed at least some level of popular support. Once that point
> was made, the leaders - be they unionists, environmentalists, child-care
> advocates or student council presidents - could repair to the back rooms
to
> hammer out some kind of arrangement with the government of the day.
>
> In many cases, the protest was only the most visible form of a
> sophisticated lobbying effort, one that typically involved well-researched
> submissions to a legislative committee, discreet discussions with senior
> bureaucrats, a word in the ear of an influential minister and
> letter-writing campaigns to individual MPPs.
>
> In this constellation of efforts, the protest was the public face, the way
> to win media attention. Television in particular, with its insatiable
> demand for visual images and its insistence that news follow an orderly
> schedule (in order to make efficient use of costly camera crews), was
> always susceptible to a well-planned protest.
>
> But by the late '90s, two things had happened. First, the media had begun
> to pay less attention to protesters and their issues. Even television,
> which had by this time become more technologically flexible, was no longer
> as dependent on the scheduled demonstration.
>
> In some cases, changes in media ownership appeared to make a difference. I
n
> Vancouver and Calgary, for instance, journalists complained privately that
> they were under orders to no longer cover what their new bosses referred
to
> as bleeding heart stories.
>
> In some cases, journalists themselves became bored by poverty stories and
> more concerned with problems that reflected those in their own lives -
such
> as mortgage rates, the stock market and how to save for retirement.
>
> But perhaps most important was the structural bias of media. Typically,
the
> poor are not the target audience of newspapers and television. The reason
> is simple - the poor don't have much money. And those without money aren't
> much use to advertisers, upon whose revenues most media rely.
>
> While some news organizations made a conscious effort to cover poverty
> issues, there was no structural imperative to do so - particularly at a
> time when the media's real target audience, the broad middle classes,
> appeared to have so little interest in the topic.
>
> The second development, in Ontario at least, was the election of a
> provincial government which prided itself on ignoring "special interests."
> In fact, the Harris government proved itself quite open to some interests.
> It was just more discriminating than its predecessors.
>
> Business lobbyists, golf entrepreneurs and friends of the Premier could
> always get fast access to government. But those speaking up for wage
> earners, the old, the sick or the poor were out of luck.
>
> All of this would be moot if the social problems plaguing Ontario had
> disappeared over six years of Harris rule. But they didn't. Indeed, many
> worsened.
>
> The statistics are relentless. The number of children living below the
> poverty line is on the rise. In Toronto, the ranks of the poor are growing
> at a faster rate than those of the well-off. Rents are rising faster than
> incomes. The number of homeless is on the increase.
>
> About 60,000 Ontario families were evicted from their homes last year.
That
> number has been climbing by about 10 per cent annually since the Harris
> government moved to abolish rent controls in 1998.
>
> (Controls still apply to those already living in rental units. But if a
> tenant leaves, or is evicted, the landlord may raise the rent to whatever
> level he wishes. This, critics charge, has given landlords a powerful
> incentive to evict.)
>
> Even those with jobs haven't fared well. Wage increases have not kept pace
> with either the stock market or the pay packages awarded corporate CEOs.
> Across Canada, average family earnings have increased by less than 2 per
> cent in 10 years - and that only because more family members are working.
>
> Yet these are the good times. This is the situation after six years of
> economic boom.
>
> If the doomsayers are right, Canada is heading back into another era of
> slow growth, joblessness and lower public revenues - which will increase
> both the numbers living below the poverty line and the pressure on
> governments to cut those social programs which still remain.
>
> Is it any wonder that people are ticked? Is it any wonder that there is
> something like the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty?
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> The coalition (usually known by its initials, OCAP) makes Toronto's
> establishment - even its left establishment - uneasy.
>
> An eclectic band that includes not only poor people, but students,
retirees
> and the odd university professor, OCAP doesn't play by the usual rules. It
> is direct, in-your-face and occasionally rude. Where other protest groups
> try to make their points by holding demonstrations in authorized public
> spaces such as Nathan Phillips Square, OCAP tends to take the fight right
> to where its enemies live.
>
> In 1997, when middle-class ratepayer groups protested against hostels
being
> established in their neighbourhoods, OCAP picketed their leaders' homes.
>
> The tactic was not well received. The Globe and Mail chided OCAP for its
> bad taste. Others compared the protesters to a gang of Nazis.
>
> "Nobody who is anybody is very happy with the Ontario Coalition Against
> Poverty," The Star reported then.
>
> Two years later, OCAP members pushed, shoved and shouted down Tory Leader
> Joe Clark on Parliament Hill, an action which earned them even more
tut-tuts.
>
> Last year, after police and anti-Harris protesters clashed at Queen's
Park,
> OCAP topped the newscasts again.
>
> John Clarke, the group's de facto head, was labelled a "cancer" by crown
> prosecutors, who charged him with taking part in a riot.
>
> The organization just went on. Last year, OCAP peacefully occupied the
> Etobicoke constituency office of Labour Minister Stockwell. There was
> virtually no media coverage.
>
> Last Tuesday, OCAP performed what it called its mock eviction at
Flaherty's
> constituency office.
>
> That got people's attention.
>
> In conversation, Clarke is unfailingly polite. He notes that OCAP has had
> some successes in individual cases. (Indeed, The Star reported one
recently
> - a lobbying effort in which OCAP convinced Immigration Canada that two
> young Somali girls would face genital mutilation if deported to their
> homeland.)
>
> The Flaherty raid, Clarke says, was designed to give the minister a small
> dose of "the extreme disruption, intense suffering and extreme
humiliation"
> tenants feel when bailiffs turn up at their homes to evict them and toss
> their belongings on the street.
>
> In effect, it was a rough form of street theatre - a symbolic event
> designed to make a point.
>
> But what did it accomplish? Clarke says he and his confreres aren't naive.
> He acknowledges that 11 years of similar direct actions by OCAP haven't
> brought major changes.
>
> "We haven't stopped the agenda. Harris continues to launch his attacks.
> There's no dispute about that."
>
> Still, he says, OCAP's activities are having some resonance with the
> broader anti-capitalist left.
>
> "We've posed for the wider movement the idea of fighting to win. Now the
> issue is no longer about criticizing governments but of doing something.
> People are looking for ways to actually stop them."
>
> The funny thing is that he may be right.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Those who do direct action are rarely anxious to explain what the phrase
> means. But there is an unspoken understanding that it almost always
> involves something that is illegal and may well include property damage.
>
> How much is left vague. At the anti-globalization protest in Quebec city
> this spring, protesters seemed to feel that banks and vehicles belonging
to
> television networks were fair game for vandalism. But small businesses -
> such as restaurants and book shops - were left alone.
>
> And violence? Most practitioners of direct action will tell you that
> violence against property is not violence, and that those who do violence
> against people - such as the police - do so only in self defence.
>
> (This latter point wasn't true in Quebec, where some protesters threw
rocks
> at police before the latter began firing tear gas.)
>
> But in many cases, the rhetoric of direct action - from both supporters
and
> opponents - is wildly exaggerated.
>
> "Today's action is the first skirmish in what will be an all-out war on
> this government," is the way Sue Collis, an OCAP organizer and one of 13
> arrested after the Flaherty raid, described that particular action.
>
> For his part, Flaherty accused the protesters of "terrorizing" his
> four-person staff.
>
> Just how terrorized the three women and one man felt is unclear. Flaherty
> has refused to let them talk to reporters. Margot Weir, the minister's
> constituency assistant (who was not in the office during the raid), says
no
> one was hurt or threatened.
>
> Property damage consisted mainly of a ripped canopy and damage to
> furniture. No windows were broken; one graffito - "F--- your corporate
> pride" - was carefully painted on an office wall.
>
> What does seem clear, though, is that actions such as the Flaherty raid,
> for many years the preserve of a small fringe, are now becoming more
> acceptable to the mainstream left.
>
> Labour leaders have never been shy to indulge in rhetorical overkill. But
> their rhetoric has changed; they now employ the language, including the
> loaded phrase "direct action," of those the labour establishment used to
> dismiss as sectarian loons.
>
> "We have to make it impossible for Mike Harris to govern and for them to
> get away with their agenda," CUPE National President Judy Darcy said
> earlier this month, in a call for a province-wide campaign of economic
> disruption.
>
> Her words could have come from John Clarke.
>
> "Taking furniture out of someone's office won't stop the Tories," he says.
> "But it certainly will get their attention. Eventually, if we can convince
> Bay Street that we are more than a fleeting unpleasantness, they will say
> to Harris, `You're a liability and have to get out.' "
>
> Why this new convergence between the mainstream and the fringe? CUPE's
Ryan
> says it's not just because the left has tried everything else. It's
because
> direct action can work.
>
> "We're old hands at direct action," he says. "We've done strikes for 150
> years."
>
> And he's right. When unions began to strike in Canada, strikes were
> illegal. In fact, a historical plaque at Queen's Park commemorates an
> illegal 1872 printers' strike (one in which labour leaders were jailed)
> that eventually led to the legalization of strikes.
>
> But the real exemplar for much of the mainstream left today is the success
> of the anti-globalization movement, a movement which has not been shy to
> use the techniques of anarchists and other direct-action aficionados to
get
> things done.
>
> The anti-globalization movement hasn't stopped globalization. But since
the
> 1999 Battle of Seattle, when protesters managed to shut down a meeting of
> the World Trade Organization, it has mobilized segments of an entire new
> generation to question the economic status quo.
>
> And that impresses a mainstream left which is itself, remarkably moribund.
>
> "If it wasn't for Seattle, we wouldn't have had people talking about the
> WTO," says CUPE's Ryan. "If it wasn't for Seattle, we wouldn't have had
> people coming (to protest) at Quebec city. . .
>
> "I think people should chill out about what happened in Flaherty's office.
> The real violence happens to people who are evicted from their homes. . .
I
> say hats off to OCAP. They used street theatre and they were very
> effective. Would anyone (in the media) have covered this story if they
> hadn't done what they did?"
>
>
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