to fellow citizens of the Occupy movement
As you can see, I started my Occupy Vancouver photoset at Tiffany last night. What more proof can you require that the 1% have offshored all the decent jobs? That window display is absolutely covered in dust! Ou sont les cleaning persons d’antan?
Moving on to Louis Vuitton. Does anyone besides me remember when they had a window display made of dozens of silver CCTV cameras focused on one pair of $1100 shoes? No? Just me then? FINE! In any case, the 1% are, as you can see here, safely confined behind bars as if in a zoo, and if Alberni is not a zoo, what IS? I ask yez. Especially on a Saturday night.
I got a lot of photos of signs, and although it took me a minute, I did like “Walk like an Egyptian” on the flag, which was over by the potted palm. There’s also a sign crediting Tunisia as the birthplace of modern democracy.
The little “I’m here for you. Are you here for me?” sign at the bottom-right of the “We are not kidding around. Stay a night and talk to us” sign at the top of the steps is the one that was kicked over earlier that afternoon by the chubby, dark security guard, who should have been on the other side of the fence in fact.
There is a guide to hand signals used in the General Assembly propped up against one of the Lions, although for the nearsighted a little more proximity would be helpful. God only knows what’s written on the whiteboard against the other Lion, as I myself am nearsighted and couldn’t make it out, even with the zoom, because I can’t fly.
YET.
I did like the guillotine labeled “Bargaining Tool,” but then as we’ve established, I’m a big old anarchistic meanie who thinks fear can be an effective weapon.
“My Other Occupation Sucks” is pretty good as well. A nice takeoff of the “My Other Car Is A…” bumper stickers. I saw a Porsche once with “My other car is a Datsun” on it.
Actual Bohemians not welcome at Bohemian Grove
Obscene Wealth and Greed are Not Canadian Values
Yeah, whatever. Tell it to Conrad Black.
There are now TWO red Homelessness tents on the premises. The number of tents is growing daily/nightly, and I expect tomorrow to be the biggest day yet, thanks to Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, authors of my favorite theme song. It’s hilarious to me that the YouTube has now become popular enough to have ads on it.
I had an enjoyable conversation with some firemen. I didn’t recognize the jackets, and firemen weren’t around the first couple of nights, so being me I toddled up and asked what group they were with, where they were from. They told me and asked where I was from. I said “The Internet,” and it was FUCKING GLORIOUS because I swear to god one guy’s eyes opened wide in alarm. Then I told them I was a blogger, they asked me where I lived, which was really none of their business, but I’m not very closety so I said Chinatown and we shared a chuckle over the fact that when the alarm goes off at my place all the Chinese people wait till I get there and then sort of shove me at the firemen, like “she’s white, let HER talk to them.” They were quite cool and probably around to make sure there were no open flames in the tented area. Later, I heard some of them go for coffee and they were discussing the income disparity and arguing whether or not it was bigger in BC than in the US.
raincoaster 
what are you guys doing for the Native people in BC? thats what i want to know. you dont help them, dont expect help in other provinces…
Well, we teach them to capitalize and punctuate properly, for one thing.
I know, I know, it was a cheap shot, but I had to take it.
What is the Occupy Vancouver movement doing? A fair bit (you can see the various First Nations issues on the photographs of various manifestos and signs, with particular concern for all the dead and missing, and the first platform put forward by the General Assembly included the acknowledgement that the gathering was taking place on unceded Salish land) although it has been suggested that Occupy Vancouver change its name to “Decolonize Vancouver” but the General Assembly voted that down. Decolonize is, however, an ongoing theme as you can see from the various signs.
Although the protest is primarily white, First Nations people make up the second-largest ethnic group of participants, and do vote in the General Assembly, organize, speak, etc.
Funny……I wonder if the ORIGINAL cause of the Occupy WALL STREET movement will be all but forgotten in the utter melange of protest “causes”.
Y’know, to hold the Wall Street firms accountable for their black-letter law breaking which caused the immense and ongoing global economic damage, and to hold the U.S. government accountable for upholding said black-letter law. Period.
Or will this all simply dissolve into little clumps of “1%” and “Native” and “GLBT” and “Green” and “Democracy” and “NWO” et al ad nauseam. In the end, allowing the perps to continue their crimes unfettered.
Perhaps someone should set up a big screen teevee at the art gallery and show a documentary on how the Saturday-only protesters of Iceland got themselves a brand new government and banking system in the span of four (4) months.
Nothing awesome has ever been accomplished without intense focus and clarity of vision. Time will tell if the “Occupy X” protesters have what it takes.
Will you pay for the screen you want those messages on? Send the DVD and I’ll be happy to show it.
I find cries for a unified message come from people who fear that they might be included in one of the splinter grievances. The reason there are so many messages of outrage is that there are so many different things to be outraged about.
Tahrir Square didn’t have a unified message, and yet, it accomplished real change.
But you’re right, time will tell if this movement will change the world. I think it’s pretty clear it already has.
I’d rather pass out printed historical documentation of what took place in Iceland, 2008-09. That way we could quasi-establish how many of the protesters would spend the effort (and posses the attention span) to read something longer than a placard slogan. It takes no mental engagement to watch teevee.
Speaking of history….I have no supporting data (as it currently stands), but I’m pretty sure throughout history there has ALWAYS been a “1%”, and always those who protest against them. Ergo, nothing changes.
Actually there WAS very much a unified message in Tahrir Square: removal of the corrupt government.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Egyptian_Revolution#Reform_process
There was no fractional pansy-ass protesting like here in N.America.
And please, don’t even try to pretend your life in Canada is even remotely as abysmal as it was in pre-revolution Egypt. Tahrir Square took place because the all-sides oppression of the citizens became unbearable — the bow broke. The average Canadian is more wealthy than the average citizen in 90% of the world’s countries. Imagine Harper in power for 30 years and the the nation’s poor quadrupling…now you know just how far Canada’s revolution factor is from terminal velocity.
The focus should NOT be on the elimination (or subjugation) of the 1%, but rather a focus on discontinuing the connectivity between the 1% and the government of the day. A separation of corporation and state is desperately needed.
But…the two are symbiotic parasites which feed off of each other.
That bond will be all but impossible to snap.
Viva.
Oh come ON! “I have no supporting data (as it currently stands), but I’m pretty sure throughout history there has ALWAYS been a “1%”, and always those who protest against them. Ergo, nothing changes.” is just a bullshit claim, even by your own standards. You’re getting desperate.
Desperate? Really?
So….if there has ALWAYS been a 1%…and there have ALWAYS been uprisings and protests…and the 1% still exist…as do protests and uprising….seems to me like a natural state.
Gotta remember, Nature abhors a vacuum — there always needs to be poor and rich.
Back that up! Yes, you’re desperate. Pulling opinions out your ass is a move of desperation.
The disparity between the 1% and the 99% was fundamentally different even just in the 80’s. I’ve seen hunter-gatherer societies, I’ve seen feudalism, I’ve seen theocracies, and no, the divide is not the same everywhere, throughout all time. If it’s too much for you to back up, then don’t say it.
Uh…I’ll leave you with this — MATHEMATICALLY there will ALWAYS be a top 1%!
The bottom 99% will ALWAYS have LESS!
LOL!
My empty Pabst Blue can has instantly become more entertaining than this empty “blog”.
Viva $$$!
sounds like truth in math works for them. counter agruing. now your getting deep. disinformation. a tactic used on us for a long time. these type of people can be spotted a mile away on the rez. Out there, they all look the same. Here easily spotted and isolated.
welcome to politics.
Hey GBF — show me the “disinformation” I am supposedly issuing.
Thanks.
He’s a troll, Bobby. But I enjoy toying with trolls, especially pretentious, asshatty ones.
The issue is not that the top 1% have more money: the issue is that now more than ever, the American Dream as it’s called is impossible to achieve. The middle class isn’t eroding, it’s nearly extinct. As a very wise friend of mine said on Facebook:
The Occupy movement isn’t about getting things “handed to you on a silver platter.” Nor is it about “redistribution” of wealth. Still less is it somehow about “socialism,” or “communism,” or any other “-ism.”
It’s about the undisputable fact that over the past thirty years, the rich and the political classes have tinkered with models of capitalistic democracy that worked fairly well for most people, and turned them into effective oligarchies which work best for the rich.
That t_i_m takes pride in not protesting injustice, CORRECTABLE injustice, shows you what kind of a person he is. Besides one who gets so wrapped up in smacking people down he can’t keep his Districts or his mathematics straight.
Oh my god. I just noticed: you drink PBR.
Toying with the mentally handicapped is no fun. I should leave you alone, I guess.
Oh my god. I just noticed: you lack the ability to read irony.
The only reason people got SOLD on the “American Dream” is because they were asleep.
As I’ve posted on here, what the protests NEED to be focused on is the breaking of the corporate-politic bond. Period. Dissolve that and a lot of problems go down with it.
All the other “ass-hat” protests are just that.
Love how I am LABELED a “troll” because I bring an opposing ideal to an “open” blog. LOL! Good luck to you and your ilk trying to establish concrete change.
p.s. — still waiting to be shown my “disinformation” and incorrect math. Thanks, babe.
You’re a troll because you’re trolling. People have come up to me in real life and asked me why I bother responding to you. I suppose it’s because I want to see how long it takes you and your arbitrary statements to completely infarct.
Have you considered the possibility that you lack the ability to WRITE irony?
Like I said, I’ve photographed all the manifestos and statements at OccupyVancouver that I can find. Read them. There they are. If you don’t see anything opposing the Corporatocracy, you clearly need to sober up before approaching the internet.
Now, go back to telling me Washington DC is a state…that was at least funny.
Please provide EVIDENCE/PROOF of where I wrote that Washington DC is a state.
Will wait for you to come up with a good LIE…..
Thanks.
p.s. — could you please also provide PROOF of all my “ARBITRARY statements”.
You’ve provided all the proof of arbitrary statements, right here in writing.
Including this: https://raincoaster.com/2011/10/15/occupy-vancouver-day-one-point-five/#comment-290982
Arbirtrary: based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system
(Mathematics: of unspecified value)
per your link to my post:
1. I proved your massively OUTDATED “arbitrary” figures to be WRONG.
2. comparing a province in one nation to an entire different nation is about as arbitrary as you can get!
3. in your original post: “…Vancouver has more of them than any other city in Canuckistan except possibly Toronto” you use the word “possibly”, denoting that you have no FACT on the matter — just random choice and personal whim.
Enjoy your complete bullshit “blog”, chickie.
You are sooner or later going to have to come to terms with the fact that the Occupy movement is right and you are wrong. And you are going to have a breakdown.
The Occupy movement is definitely the correct thing to do — on that I most certainly agree.
However, the Occupy movement is doing it in the absolute worst possibly manner.
I visited the Occupy Victoria site this weekend. OMG (and I never use that!).
I’ve never seen anything more pathetic.
There are extremely FEW actual protesters there.
The rest of the “movement” is comprised of Victoria’s finest homeless (of which there are a LOT) who now have a quasi-legal inner-city campground which to occupy instead of roughing it on the actual streets.
Why they are camping out beside city hall when the PROVINCIAL LEGISLATIVE building is right down the road beats me.
If this movement wants to inflict any type of change it has to STOP protesting the banks — who care nothing about a few thousand “hippies” spread across the country — and focus 100% on government reform.
Government enacts and enforces the laws — not the banks/corporations.
The banks will keep on doing what they have been doing until they are stopped.
Thus far the government has neither arrested or prosecuted any the the major culprits. Yes, the banks (and corporations) have deep controlling ties within the government — whose fault is that? Not the banks, it’s the government’s for allowing it to take place.
There are ZERO protesters on the front lawn of the BC Legislative grounds — why not?!? That is where provincial laws are made.
There are ZERO protesters on the front lawn of Parliament Hill in Ottawa — why not?!? That is where federal laws are made.
There are ZERO protesters at the front doors of the Bank of Canada — why not?!?
That is where monetary and fiscal policy are made.
I have neither the time nor inclination for gutless drum circle “revolutions”.
I have neither the time nor inclination for bloated, inefficient government.
I do my absolute utmost to free my resources of both.