Expect much more of this

Demonstrators mark International Day to End Racial Discrimination in Vancouver, March 2011 (Photo: David P Ball)

“Silliness.”

That esteemed word from the leader of the most powerful state on the planet – Mr Obama, in reference to long-standing conspiracy theories of whether he was pretending to be a U.S.-born citizen – was exactly on my mind during the Canadian election May 2, and yet for the first time in years I was actually participating in the electoral process. Silliness?

I guess I haven’t been much interested in electoral politics this past decade. My first foray into even voting was in the 2000 Canadian election, in which Chretien’s Liberals were re-elected in the face of the recently-formed right-wing unity Canadian Alliance Party. Being 19, it was the first time I was eligible to vote.

However, I was traveling in Spain at the time – visiting bizarre finger-shaped mountains at Monserrat, hiking part of the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route, eating too many tapas for anyone’s good. I had quite a flap trying to get an overseas ballot delivered to a general post office in Barcelona. I cannot recall if I ever got the ballot and voted, but I do remember feeling upset that I might lose my first vote.

My main politicization at the time was the result of the aftershocks from my first protest – the November 1999 World Trade Organization (WTO) protests in Seattle, where tens of thousands of people demonstrated, were teargassed and arrested, and some windows were infamously broken by an emerging phenomenon known as the “Black Bloc.” It was my first taste of teargas and police repression. As A, a movement elder with a thick Scottish accent, remarked ominously on the bus as we neared Seattle listening to radio reports: “Aye, David,” he said, “We’re heading into the belly of the beast now.”

I had gotten involved in a collective at University of Victoria which organized six buses to Seattle, as well as wrapped an immense cloth banner around the university’s Ring Road. I was new to it all – the most I’d ever done was fundraise as a kid for the Brazilian rainforest, badgering my relatives into donating $25. But a decade later, before the WTO, our ridiculously impressive banner had 50 reasons to oppose the WTO in 2-foot high painted letters – everything from destroying the environment to overriding national health laws, exploiting sweatshop labour to becoming a global constitution of rule by corporations. Yadda.

At the time I believed in non-violence, and wrote naive but earnest tracts on Gandhi in English class. Ever since my Grade 11 English teacher Mr Hamilton had introduced me to Adbusters and Noam Chomsky - and a Geography teacher likewise passed me my first political punk album, Anti-Flag’s Die For Your Government (1996), I had become fascinated by social change and nonviolence a la Gandhi, MLK, Dalai Lama (notably no women – in fact I wrote a Grade 12 essay on women’s equality using only Chomsky… somehow).

So at 18, when I actually reached voting age I found myself on the Seattle cobblestone streets with my eyes stinging, the acrid smell of “crowd control” repressing my senses, watching a pair of fellow students weeping on each others shoulders. Percussion grenades blasted war-like explosions above our heads.

I had voted with my feet. And had done so in a country that was not “my own” because I was starting to recognize how power works.

Experiencing what felt like a war on home soil – riot police in Darth Vader costumes, chemical weapons, airborne explosives, swinging truncheons, mass arrests – broke my innocent little Ghandian heart and made me realize that the British soldiers who massacred Indian independence organizers at Jallianwala Bahg in 1919 – an event that had a powerful impact on my reading of Indian independence – were following the same line-of-command and purpose as the Seattle Police, and that therefore the latter would shoot me dead if so ordered. That’s the chain of command.

This realization, and the beginning of my loss of innocence, inspired a journey around the world. I traveled to India itself, as well as Malaysia, Thailand, Spain, Greece and Northern Ireland in 2000-2001 – during which I discovered that many people elsewhere in the world knew a great deal about global economics and power. Anti-International Monetary Fund (IMF) graffiti adorned the walls from Europe to South and East Asia. General strikes against austerity measures frequently “interrupted” my privileged explorations.

I returned from my journey early to participate in the massive, inspiring, and equally disheartening Quebec City protests against the Free Trade Area of the Americas in 2001. I learned that people could win small gains by fighting back, refusing the back down when faced with police repression, and gain widespread public sympathy.

I also learned that if you take a teargas-saturated banner – used to mercifully stanch a hole in the security fence where canisters were getting through, and held throughout multiple rounds of the chemical – and seal it in a backpack for a week, it will bring the war home to your family. In my case, my poor brother got gassed in his basement while I did my laundry.

Within a month, I apparently still believed in the system enough to participate actively in BC’s elections, campaigning door-to-door for the Green Party. And I watched excitedly as the NDP federally debated (though rejected) a proposed initiative to ally itself more closely with street protests and the anti-globalization movement.

But when I exited the voting booth on election day, a moment celebrated in our culture as one of pride and participation, I began to feel sick to my stomach. It felt futile and pathetic and disempowering, knowing that no candidate I would support would have a chance at governing or often even getting a seat. The sickening feeling rose when the right-wing BC Liberals somehow won 97.5% (all but two) of the seats with only 57 percent of the popular vote.

At that point I disengaged from electoral politics. If a marginal political party like the federal NDP – as it was at the time – could not even muster the courage to support a burgeoning global justice movement, and an election could be so thoroughly and pathetically overtaken by a scarce majority win, I felt completely fed up. My brief honeymoon with combining ballot and bullhorn was over.

I have since associated mostly with communities that outright reject electoral politics – not only as ineffective, but distracting organizers from real community organizing. The argument was summed up by a sticker at our local anarchist infoshop: “Don’t vote. It only encourages them.” This may seem like “silliness” to some, but to me the argument that Canada’s main parties are substantially different from one another seems equally naive.

A series of minority governments couldn’t entice me to the ballot box. Liberals and Conservatives just seem the same to me and most movement members I knew – both parties of the corporate interests.

Sometimes I find it helpful to reach for a political touchstone of sorts – a physical totem like the spinning top in the film Inception to confirm whether you are experiencing reality or a dream.

Take a break and check out Southpark’s spoof of Inception:

For me, this touchstone was the Conservative’s practice of raiding shelters for women fleeing domestic abuse, and deporting migrant women without documentation, and promising to implement Australia-style indefinite detention for asylum-seekers. Similarly, the ongoing and evil legacy of residential schools – the last not closing until 1996 – often serves as such a reality-check. That’s not to reduce all issues to two, or to create a hierarchy. These are just two of the practices of oppression in Canada that I have a closer personal connection to, having heard friends share their own experiences in with school and immigration systems. Harper’s apology for the schools was completely contradicted by everything he has done against Indigenous people – refusing for years to endorse the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, overturning the Kelowna Accord, blindly supported the Alberta Tar Sands, etc.

These reality checks led me to the ballot box on May 2 this year, resolute to fuck the Conservatives out of office. It was a drizzly day in my West Vancouver neighbourhood, a stronghold of fiscal conservatism and wealth. I’d been reading some great writings from New Socialist magazine (here and here) about the need for radicals to engage in electoral processes, despite maintaining a critique of the system. And I was impressed by strategic voting websites, particularly Project Democracy (funded by the Canadian Auto Workers and Avaaz).

I sucked up my anarchist pride and voted for the Liberals. I hate the Liberals. I don’t consider them remotely Leftist at all, and scarcely progressive. In power they basically suck – cheerleading cutbacks to social services they claim to support, continuing deportation regimes, exploiting resources on Indigenous lands without consent. In fact, I discovered that in days of yore, the Conservatives actually advocated for Indigenous voting rights, and the Liberals under Laurier took those rights away in 1898 to get power (“Why so few Aboriginal people vote,” Ottawa Citizen, April 25, 2011). Still, if I don’t really think elections matter substantively, my feeling was it doesn’t matter what tactics one takes to contest them. But my touchstones required resolute opposition to Conservative power.

The feeling of nausea returned from ten years before. Particularly when my sell-out strategic vote didn’t even prevent the Conservatives in my riding. I traded my vote with a brother, so on some level I guess I still supported the NDP. I had some unfulfilled intention of volunteering for a swing-riding NDP campaign, but couldn’t muster the heart for it this time around. Feeling dejected, I slogged my way home from the polling station, once again joyfully exuberated “my” home and native land, Canada.

(As an aside, based on popular vote, the results would have been CON 122, NDP 95, LIB 59, BQ 19, GREEN 13.)

Does this mean I’m no longer an anarchist? Am I veering towards some anticapitalist version of European “New Left” social democrat? Am I just becoming more pragmatic as I age? Is that a bad thing?

Either way, No One Is Illegal-Vancouver captured some of my thoughts after the election with this reflection:

“Don’t mourn, organize!” and dismantle these apartheid systems and structures of sweatshops and prisons, borders and reserves. To all those in the struggle ahead – we look forward to working together to build more sustainable, more creative, more (pro)active, and more disruptive movements for a humanity where everyone has the right to sustenance and the ability to provide it, where we are free of oppression, misery, and exploitation, and where we are able to live meaningfully in relationship to one another and in reverence for Mother Earth that sustains us.

Days after the Conservative landslide victory (though with less than 40 per cent of the vote, and the support of 24 per cent of voters, if you include people who didn’t participate), I found myself in the midst of a Mothers’ Day march. A relatively small group, including many moms with strollers and children, managed to clog up Commercial and 1st in support of beleaguered social services, shelters, and economic justice.

As the hockey fans jeered from the traffic jam we created, I couldn’t help but yell at a particularly meatheaded white male driver who was screaming about being “late,” no doubt for the start of the next round of Stanley Cup playoffs in half-an-hour.

“Guess that’s what you get for voting Conservative,” I hollered with a grin. “Expect much more of this.”

*  *  *

Updates from Facebooklandia… Here are some of the things that have caught my attention this past few weeks, starting with the ones most pertinent to this post:

Canada’s real electoral map: a surge for the left (your heart’s on the left)

 MAY 9, 2011 - It’s just a week after the Canada’s federal election and the battle of interpretation is still raging. Some see a right-wing blue surge, others a dichotomy between Quebec and Canada, while the polls indicate a contradictory phenomenon. But looking at the shift between the NDP and the combined Tory/Liberal vote, both longterm and between the last two elections, a different picture emerges–of an eroding but concentrated corporate vote, and a surging NDP vote. This points to a left-wing shift in people’s consciousness that creates possibilities for change, if we can combine opposition inside Parliament with movements outside.

MY THOUGHTS: Great article that shows how despite gaining the most SEATS, combined support for corporate parties (Cons/Libs) shows gains for the left are substantial if we on the streets mobilise and push.

A step-by-step guide to fighting Harper (Syed Hussan, rabble.ca)

MAY 9, 2011 – Here are some thoughts from a grassroots organizer, gleaned from conversation with people that organize in Toronto. It is directed towards responsible community people, and activists in Canada’s urban centers and really hoping that people add their voices in the comments section.

Maude Barlow on the election results (Council of Canadians)

MAY 3, 2011 - The 2011 federal election was historic in many ways and most of us are still trying to process the outcome. It is crucial that we pause to reflect on its meaning and think carefully about the next steps we must take.

MY THOUGHTS: Don’t mourn, organize!

The morning after: Where are we and where do we go from here? (Judy Rebick, rabble.ca)

Noam Chomsky: My Reaction to Osama bin Laden’s Death (Guernica)

MAY 6, 2011 – “We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic.”

G20 accused Byron Sonne granted bail (Toronto Star)

Enbridge Pipeline Faces Prospect of Civil Disobedience; 500-Strong Crowd Rallies Outside Northern BC Municipalities Convention in Prince Rupert (AlphaTrade Finance)

MAY 13, 2011 - Members of the Tsimshian, Kitkatla, Haisla, Haida, Heiltsuk, Saikuz, Nadleh Whut’en, and Wet’suwet’en First Nations travelled to Prince Rupert to join the rally, showing the unity of BC First Nations from along the proposed pipeline and oil tanker route.

‎”I made a promise to our youth that if Enbridge gets to the point at which it is bringing in the bulldozers, I will put my body in front of it,” said Gerald Amos, a councillor with the Haisla Nation. “How many of you will join me?” More than half the people in the crowd raised their hands.

Mounties in Dziekanski Taser case charged with perjury (CBC)

MAY 12, 2011 - Perjury charges have been laid against the four Mounties who confronted Robert Dziekanski at Vancouver’s airport and repeatedly stunned him with a Taser in 2007.

MY THOUGHTS: This was straight-up second degree murder. All this cops get is charges for lying about it, and those might not even stick. Const. Bill Bentley, Const. Kwesi Millington, Const. Gerry Rundell and Cpl. Benjamin Robinson: we know your names and your crime.

Greece: Clashes in Athens between police and protesters (BBC)

 MAY 11, 2011 - At least 17 civilians and five police are injured after police clash with demonstrators marching against austerity measures in the Greek capital, Athens.

‎”We strongly protest against the unfair and harsh policies that have pushed up unemployment, widen false employment and trample on worker rights,” said the GSEE union, after a strike was called by unions after the Greek government proposed a new austerity package to try to reduce the budget deficit and ease the country’s crippling debt crisis.

Uganda’s anti-gay bill dropped from agenda after international outcry (Globe and Mail)

 MAY 11, 2011 - Bill first proposed in 2009 would criminalize homosexuality.

MY THOUGHTS: Great news that this death penalty law got scrapped for now. But people need to think critically about the tactics used against Uganda – including threatening to cut off ALL global aid and loans to the country. Some victory – sounds more like imperialism. Next time stick with petitions.

My comment was challenged by a friend, J: “The extreme homophobia in Uganda is being pushed by colonial relics old and new… So if some other colonial tools can be used to save some queer lives, it may not be perfect but…”I replied: “Starve em into submission? I feel like some people (not necessarily you) are suggesting it’s ok to be racist if it supports queers. Case in point: Israeli pinkwashing. Or silencing QAIA to keep Toronto Pride apolitical and funding-friendly. This is in my opinion a good example of trying to use the masters tools (colonialism) to dismantle the masters house (homophobia). I know Uganda’s bill was created by colonialism but where’s the line between this and just invading them straight up for humanitarian reasons, as most wars are thus justified (no pun intended). And agreed on the petitions. I was trying to be moderate. :-) but yes little impact.”

Syria’s spontaneously organised protests (BBC)

APRIL 22, 2011 - Who are the organisers of the Syrian protests and how do they keep the movement going? The BBC’s Kim Ghattas reports.

Small committees in neighbourhoods and mosques – formed over the last few weeks – came together discreetly to plan when and where to protest. Meanwhile, an informal army of cyber activists swung into action – sharing information between the towns to keep the momentum going.

Appeals to close drug injection site ‘disgraceful’: Nurses union (Toronto Sun)

MAY 9, 2011 – “Disgraceful.” That’s how a B.C. Nurses Union’s official described the Harper government’s continued legal appeals to close Insite, a supervised drug injection site in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

MY THOUGHTS: Yay nurses for standing up to Harper! Protect Insite.

Libya: Hundreds feared dead as migrant boat capsizes (BBC)

Aircraft carrier left us to die, say migrants (Guardian UK)

MAY 8, 2011 - Boat trying to reach Lampedusa from Libya was left to drift in Mediterranean for 16 days, despite alarm being raised.A boat carrying 72 passengers, including several women, young children and political refugees, ran into trouble in late March after leaving Tripoli for the Italian island of Lampedusa. Despite alarms being raised with the Italian coastguard and the boat making contact with a military helicopter and a warship, no rescue effort was attempted.

Oil spill threatens Lubicon (APTN)

MAY 5, 2011 - After a large pipeline spill on Lubicon Cree land in northern Alberta, the school at Little Buffalo remains closed and community members are questioning whether the air is safe to breath.

Wikileaks comes to Canada: Federal failure on aboriginal rights (Meg Borthwick, rabble.ca)

MAY 4, 2011 - The U.S. cables on the treatment of First Nations by the Canadian government tell of a painful tale of Conservative cynicism, intransigence and disrespect that is played out in the cost of real lives.

MY THOUGHTS: Let’s keep Indigenous sovereignty front and centre as we struggle against this illegitimate government which – remember has only 24% of Canadians’ support.

Palestinian youth: New movement, new borders (Al Jazeera English)

MAY 4, 2011 - The global Palestinian youth movement has a new vision and energy in light of the Hamas-Fatah truce and the Arab Spring.

MY THOUGHTS: Something to be hopeful of these days.

The Ability to Kill Osama Bin Laden Does Not Make America Great (ColorLines)

MAY 2, 2011 - If we could build a just society rather than spending billions on violence, then we could be triumphant.