On having a voice, #OccupyVancouver #OccupyWallStreet and #ows
Full disclosure before you begin reading this post. I have not had the time to read much of the coverage of Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Vancouver, and I have just recently watched one YouTube video that my friend Kate Milberry shared with me and read one blog post on Business Insider that my friend Morten Rand-Hendriksen has shared. So, I’m not as fully educated on the history nor the evolution of Occupy Wall Street. I am mature enough to know this.
BUT
I have 10 years of experience studying environmental social movements at the local and global scales and I have conducted hundreds of hours of fieldwork and interviews and analyzed the behavior of civil society movements to reduce pollution and confront toxic emissions. And I have studied social movements theories from a variety of analytical lenses that range from framing and social constructivism to resource mobilization and political opportunity. So, I think I’m fairly qualified to speak about Occupy Vancouver. BUT since I haven’t fully comprehended the movement YET, I’d rather just speak to the elements that sort of made me quite hopeful.
The fact is I am actually not expressing much of an opinion here in favor or against OWS or Occupy Everywhere. BUT after reading hundreds of tweets from the stream, I found a quote that sort of prompted me to go from “erm, I’m not sure I understand the purpose of OWS and Occupy Everywhere” to “whether I get it or not is irrelevant, I get why it’s important to have a voice and bring that voice to an organized movement”. Anyone looking for an analytical account of OWS, I don’t have time right now to take an academic look at it it through any of the theoretical lenses I’m fluent on, so wait for a few weeks/months.
While I’m in Calgary, Occupy Vancouver has taken place in my beloved city. From all the tweets I saw on the stream, it was a very peaceful protest where the Vancouver Police Department even had a good series of conversations around this and made sure that the interactions were positive. I saw two streams of tweets, one very angry and protesting and one very hopeful and inspired.
I’m very encouraged by this. Despite the fact that I’m not 100% sure still to this point about the steps moving forward from the actual occupation (e.g. what policy options are being proposed/drafted), I’m really keen on seeing democracy in action.
The one quote that completely made me write this post is the one below. As I said on Twitter: this is why Occupy Vancouver and Occupy Everywhere matters:
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter” Martin Luther King Jr.
Society can’t be silent about gross income inequalities and a growing gap between the rich and the poor. I certainly am vocal about it, I’ve never been silent about it. I do research that aims to narrow this gap, and I do applied policy work to this objective too. Whatever the goals are (and however fluid the goals are) of Occupy Vancouver and Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Everywhere, there IS value in having a voice and not being silent about how we feel.
I wish people who are participating in the Occupy movement can ALSO at the same time, exercise their democratic right and vote and change our world and our policy system.
The YouTube shared by Kate on the consensus process is shown below.
