Occupy Canada and the Great Darkness: My Video

I visited St James Park the other day, about a month after the Occupy Toronto campsite was torn down. And not even the Christmas lights on the old gazebo, could brighten up the bleakness.

I much preferred it when it was full of gentle dreamers, talking about changing the world.

For long after this horrible year is history, I will always remember how after the horror of Stephen Harper's majority, and the tragedy of Jack Layton's passing, the birth of the Occupy movement made me feel alive again.

In the Great Darkness of Harperland, where so many look on helplessly as a sinister regime sets out to turn us into a prison state, privatize medicare, and sabotage all efforts to try to save the planet, it revived my will to RESIST.

Oh sure, like any other baby movement Occupy Canada has made many mistakes. Like when it tried to close down the port of Vancouver recently, and alienated some of its good friends in the union movement. 

But its heart is in the right place. It's right to want to save the world. It's encouraging many young people to get involved in politics.

And in a country suffocating with apathy, this picture still haunts me.

So I agree with this guy.

If nothing else, Occupy Toronto has created an infrastructure for resistance at a time when resistance is as necessary as breathing.

And of course I agree with Stephen Lewis.

 “We will not recognize the Canada that exists in 2020,” he said, exhorting progressives to do what he suggested Occupy has done: “Grit your teeth and go after these neanderthals and philistines.”

So I decided to put together a little video, with some pictures and videos I took, some pictures from others across the country, and some music from the Canadian folk group The Travellers. 

To say thank you to Occupy Canada. For keeping my hopes for a kinder, gentler, better world alive. For saying Harperland is not Canada. This land is OUR land.

And daring to RESIST...