creative forces

Blog 3 November 2011

Frozen Assets, Diego Rivera, 1931

In 1930, the newly opened Museum of Modern Art in NYC invited Mexican muralist Diego Rivera to be its second featured artist - the first was Henri Matisse. Because Rivera’s pieces weren’t portable, a studio was set up for him and he was commissioned to create works for the exhibit based on the recent stock market crash and resulting social conditions in the US, New York in particular.  A current show at MoMA reunites the gallery and the murals, with an ironic twist as real figures create a living reflection of economic disparity a few miles south in Zuccotti Park.

From the moment last summer when Adbusters threw down the gauntlet in Vancouver and mobilized people in New York, Toronto and 1500 centres around the continent and the world, much of the news has been animated by the unfair distribution of wealth in an inequitable global economy. In parks and public spaces people gathered, set up tents and civilizations were created overnight.  They struggled for consensus democracy in a version of the Greek agora – a public space that is always open where people can participate in a talk about ideas at any time.  They created horizontal structures with no official leaders, rotating facilitators and no fixed stated demands.  A grass roots combustion gave an urgency and passion to the discussions that policy-laden meetings about income distribution usually lack. Shock waves swept round corporate boardrooms and government circles.  Everyone began to realize that “They’re not going away”…for now anyway. 

When I went down to St James Park in Toronto I found a calm, benign, tidy setting, pretty different from what I remember of gatherings in the 60’s and 70’s.  It was friendly and accessible (more so than our city officials, as one local restaurant owner observed).  As well as the activists (I prefer this to protesters) there is a Diaspora of people like me -and maybe you - who support the cause of a more equal society. What we all seem to share is a wish to change the channel, without a very clear notion of how to do it. People gathered in St James Park, expressed themselves quietly and peacefully against the status quo in the financial industry. They don’t have ready answers to the losses of jobs, homes and retirement savings…but neither does anyone else.                                        

"What comes next?": an idyllic day in St James Park

The Occupation has given rise to some common responses   People have been frustrated with the lack of clarity of purpose and demands, Democracy is uncomfortable, sometimes messy, and anxiety provoking. We’re not good at tolerating uncertainty or ambiguity and patience isn’t our long suite (not mine anyway). My friend Ron Shirtliff (fellow admirer of Marx…both Karl and Groucho) sent around an urgent reminder recently to “be thankful for youth…who may succeed where our generation has failed.”  It’s an uphill battle to change a system from below when most regimes operate on a top down model and the people in charge have an investment in the status quo. The Egyptians are discovering that the transition to civilian rule is made difficult by not having a group prepared to guide it…the old order eviscerated or abolished the institutions that could do so. The Occupiers don’t have any solutions, but at least a process has begun, the channel has been changed. If Marshall McLuhan was here he might say, “Their presence is the message.”  And I think this movement is too big to fail!

Some people saw our homegrown Occupiers as copycats, feeling that our Canadian system had somehow escaped or avoided the recent and more long standing disparities and chaos that exist in the US.  It’s a question of degree rather than difference though and if you have any doubts about that, take a walk along Bloor Street and look at the homeless people gazing wistfully into the windows of passing BMW’s.  Just this morning I saw a young dude getting out of his sleeping bag in the doorway of Tiffany’s.                                                                   

There’s no economic farness here and there hasn’t been for many years.

The Occupiers have a mammoth job on their hands to keep the enthusiasm and momentum that was galvanized by being in a group with people’s eyes and ears tuned to their agenda. The movement is more an idea than a location and staying in a public place as a group was beginning to be a problem anyway for many reasons, not just complaints from neighbours and the wish of city officials for control and hygiene. The need for housekeeping began diluting the effectiveness of the group. Adbusters’ editor Kalle Lasn said, “the chessboard has been overturned and now a new game begins!”   

What’s next? Will the Occupiers disperse and things go back to where they were before? I sure hope not. Let’s trust that this is only the end of the beginning.

Still depending on John Bilodeau for technical help...thanks John