Our Montreal Square Victoria occupiers are going through a tough questioning period. They realize that their site is being taken over by homeless people, psychiatric cases, junkies and dealers. Their own order service can not cope anymore and they appreciate the help from the police and firemen who have been collaborating with them since the beginning.
Last night some of the very first Occupiers went home saying they were exhausted by the "social work" they had to spend their days doing. The fact is that social work without proper training is exhausting and even dangerous.
The Occupiers were hospitable, fed the vagrants and even sheltered them. Unfortunately they failed to fathom the exploitative capacity of some of those guys and they are paying the price.
As a first step they have now stopped giving food to people who can not prove that they are doing their bit on the site. Nights could prove more problematic though. Let's hope they will solve their problems and that the movement will not be destoyed from the interior by the parasites it has attracted.
Ah, the complications...
RépondreSupprimerSame here.
Hope the movement finds traction in a new way.
I'm always amazed at the speed of your reactions. Yes, I do hope that they find traction...but that would require some cohesion that they seem to wish to avoid in the name of freedom of action; could prove to be most tricky.
RépondreSupprimerThat's a strange twist that the Occupy Movement has taken in Montreal. I wholly like the ideas behind of the Occupy movements very much. All this concentration of wealth in very few hands: insane and it makes democracy an empty word.
RépondreSupprimerCafé Philos has a nice take on Plutocracy vs democracy (See my sidebar). In my book, we live in a plutocracy and the Occupy movement, although a bit chaotic, is a whiff of democracy in action.
RépondreSupprimerOccupy Oakland drew in every mentally ill person on the streets, every homeless person, and every thug looking for something to cut the boredom.
RépondreSupprimerAnytime a movement sets up "camps" with food and drink, this is bound to happen. Duh...
The anger is palpable, no question.
You are so right, Cheri.
RépondreSupprimerCurious times.
RépondreSupprimerMy husband opened a production of HAIR in Salt Lake City on Veterans Day. Kids in Utah feel a connection to HAIR, both the performers and the audience. This the dawning of the age of Aquarius?
Why not Jenny? Hair,if I recall was a call to liberty and self realization. We are so pushed around and compressed in our western society that the young ones look for an escape hatch. Occupy Everything and productions such as Hair are part of the hatch.
RépondreSupprimerBetter than drugs and alcohol.
how interesting.
RépondreSupprimeri always thought that rather then handing out scarves and mittens, tents should be handed out to the homeless. on those white tents in big black letters single words like "human", "mother", "son", "see".
the homeless in ohio are often invisible even though they are in plain sight.
In Montreal Dafna,our homeless have many shelters and other resources available to them but many refuse to use them even when specifically approached by street workers. The most prominent "refusers" are the mentally sick who fear that they will have to accept treatment and medication if they go there.
RépondreSupprimerFor these guys, even if you provide them with a hotel room,they will not go. But they do go to meals offered by several organisations and even by a bus making the rounds of downtown streets every night all year round to accommodate them.
My ex-husband would have qualified as one of the refusers -- homeless, at the end of his life, accepting aid only from people he trusted (like me), until collapsing from metastatic cancer forced him to accept help on others' terms.
RépondreSupprimerI say that as a memorandum to anyone who might be tempted to throw up their hands and regard those who behave this way as unaccountable crosses that we must bear, He, at least, was tender hearted, wise, creative, clever, kind to animals, generous to a fault, to name only some of the qualities that make me forgive him for lying, fecklessness and eventually bathlessness. He would have sat down with Occupiers and told them stories of the civil rights movement, the Korean War and being a teenager on V-E day.
Protesters are not equipped by temperament or training to handle people like this in numbers, but I applaud them for their efforts.
Quelle domage, Paul.
RépondreSupprimerNous avons les mêmes problems à Saskatoon. But not as serious for us.
Only for us, it is not a protest; it is a process. Such is "Occupy Saskatoon: Join the Conversation."
A la prochaine, nourours.
Our own first occupiers are also going that way, Rob. They have moved out and are planning new actions of an undisclosed nature as of now. Those still on Victoria Square are now without much support or sympathy, unfortunately they are the trouble makers.
RépondreSupprimerthe occupy movement has from the beginning been different things to different people. it is quite powerful to read about the relationship of your 'official' occupy group with those who are attracted to the movement for their own reasons.
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