activism

The essay below is both parts of the essay that was published in two parts in rabble.ca

I have spent the last year mostly away from the mad activism that has characterized much of my adult life. After the G20 and its aftermath, I decided I needed a break. It was finally time to write the memoir that I had wanted to write for several years. So I decided to take three months totally off from activism. It turned out I needed more time. With some exceptions, I have stepped back from organizing, blogging and most speaking. You may be surprised that during that time, when Rob Ford was elected mayor of Toronto and Stephen Harper, prime minister, I have become more hopeful about possibility of actually making the world a better place.

For people sitting at home and watching TV news last night, Toronto was burning.  The same police car on Queen St W. burned and blew up over and over again.  The same image of a young man very violently smashing Starbucks windows appeared over and over again.  Windows smashed all along Yonge St.  None of us had ever seen Toronto like this.  It was shocking. 

Lucas Oleniuk, Toronto Star

This morning police raided a Toronto home and arrested four organizers.  No doubt this is an example of preventative detention yet another tactic in the arsenal of repression known as the Miami protocol that has turned our city into a police state. 

Last Friday I walked along the security fence and felt like I was in a concentration camp and that was before thousands of police officers occupied our city.  That's how it feels now, a city under occupation.  No-one has rights now.  Two friends from Vancouver were having a snooze in the park at 9 am in Kensington Market and woke up surrounded by 10 cops searching their bags.  When they asked what the cops thought they were doing, the reply was "you are sleeping in the park.  That's illegal."  At 9 am?

Just got this historic document from Ben Powless who is secretary of this group and writing from Cochabamba

WORLD PEOPLES’ CONFERENCE ON CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE
RIGHTS OF MOTHER EARTH
INDEGENOUS PEOPLES’ DECLARATION

Today is the opening of the First World People's Summit on Climate Change in Cochabamba, Bolivia.  Called by President Evo Morales after the failure of UN climate talks in Copenhagen, the Summit has attracted more than 50 countries and more than 10,000 delegates.  Nevertheless it is likely the North American mainstream media will ignore it.  You can follow the Summit live on internet tv, on alternative media rabble.ca and Democracy Now and in European media Guardian UK.

It is International Women’s Day 2010, forty years after the Report of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women. A generation has passed, my generation. In some ways, there has been a revolution in the status of women since that time.