Occupied Vancouver

On October 15th, I was kissed by a giant horse chestnut.  It almost broke the $15 pair of sunglasses propped on my head and turned out to be a convenient alternative for a helmet.  This nut fell from a tree at the exact moment I walked by...(or just before, right Newton?) It was enormous and it hurt!  But that was not the coolest part of my day, nay...nay.  I got to witness and be a part of downtown Vancouver's protest march.  To be honest, I've never done anything like it.  It was a gorgeous autumn day in a typically rainy city. There were lots of people of all ages gathered in one spot, and then the crowd flooded the street.  We took it over, oblivious to traffic, shouting out thoughts about what democracy ought to be, that thought echoing back in the voices all around.  That in itself is not something you experience everyday.  Unfortunately, some of the speeches I heard were a little bit too radical for my liking, by that I mean pretty much unfounded and I suspect ultimately designed to inspire outrage and ignite energy in the audience.  For example, one man claimed Obama is building a "military totalitarian regime".  Earlier that day I saw a poster that actually depicted the President with a Hitler-style mustache, which I think is without any shadow of a doubt grossly inappropriate.  Rather than vilify one person and blame them for an unjust system, it makes a lot more sense and is more useful to attack the system itself, the mechanisms that propel it forward and compel it to leave so many people behind in its wake.  It's not so simple, there exists not one pilot; a system that encourages unequal distribution of wealth is reinforced subtly by a group of powerful corporate elites and anyone else who cooperates within it, meaning us.  Occupy Vancouver did not have a single coherent mandate or agenda.  Perhaps the strength of the gathering could be found in its diversity and inclusiveness, the general air of dissent and discontent.  But to create real and effective "system anarchy", civil society needs to distill its dissatisfaction with the status quo down to a potent message and an imaginable alternative.