Western Standard - May 16, 2022


CORY'S RANT - My occupy experience

Topics
protests & demonstrations
Mentioned
Ninchy
Saturday Long Form with Roman Baber CORY'S RANT： Released thug kills a mother of five.

Episode Stats


Length

8 minutes

Words per minute

221.45

Word count

1,842

Sentence count

124

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

11

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In light of the recent mass shooting in Charlottetown, I thought it would be a good idea to take a look back at some of the most effective ways to protest in the past and present. In this episode, I discuss my own experience with anti-police brutality protests in 2011, and how I dealt with the situation.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Seen a lot of things going on, the Jagmeet Singh thing, a lot of confusion, you know, about whether we support protests, not protests, what's inappropriate to protest, how do you do it right, how do you do it wrong.
00:00:10.500 Well, I feel that there's, you know, we're doing it the wrong way quite often.
00:00:15.680 I'll offer some of my life experience of protests and perhaps how to help things be effective as well.
00:00:22.140 I want to clear the air on some misinformation going on about the land of social media.
00:00:26.280 And that being the one, somebody was tweeting about that the other day, that I drove into a bunch of protesters with a pickup truck.
00:00:33.980 Now, in light of the horrific murders, murder of protesters by a lunatic driving into protesters in Charlottetville years ago, I'd better clarify what I did in 2011 anyways.
00:00:43.200 And rest assured, it was nothing dangerous or threatening.
00:00:45.380 So some people might remember the series of protests across North America called Occupy back in 2011.
00:00:51.100 There were copycat protests of Occupy Wall Street, where leftist protesters took over a park in New York City and set up camp in a general protest against capitalism.
00:01:01.960 Support protests and marches were held across North America and held in cities, and that's fine.
00:01:06.780 The problem came when groups of people set up encampments in city parks all over North America.
00:01:11.960 Now, cities tolerated the encampments for a couple of weeks, but as they dragged on, it was evident there was no realistic endgame for these protests and something had to be done.
00:01:20.200 Their demands were disparate and impossible to fulfill, and that's one of the problems I'm going to get to with ineffective protesting.
00:01:26.560 So some of their demands were things like, we want a Canada where the debt per capita does not double in the next decade.
00:01:32.720 Okay, sounds nice, but how do you negotiate that?
00:01:35.880 We want a Canada where our system of exchange no longer embodies the logic of a cancer cell.
00:01:41.640 These were literal demands made by people squatting in Calgary's Park and protesting.
00:01:47.080 And this list of demands would change daily, too, as they'd change leaders almost daily in these squatter camps. 0.50
00:01:52.480 So as the weeks of squatting in parks dragged into months, cities across North America were forced to get injunctions and have police remove these protesters.
00:02:00.680 The camps had become filthy, overdoses were becoming common, and sexual assaults were even happening.
00:02:05.600 It sounded much like the CHAZ zone in Seattle during the BLM protests.
00:02:09.220 The mess just couldn't continue.
00:02:10.400 Now, while most of the cities in North America had gotten rid of their Occupy squatters, you know, getting into November and such, Calgary's mayor was reticent.
00:02:18.260 He didn't want to have those protesters removed, despite damage being caused to Olympic Plaza and legitimate events being canceled and the safety issues that were going on.
00:02:26.320 You see, these lefties were part of his support base, and he was relatively recently elected at that time.
00:02:31.320 He was hoping the cold weather would take care of them before he had to act.
00:02:34.120 Well, he was wrong.
00:02:34.980 They weren't going anywhere.
00:02:35.780 So I started a petition demanding City Hall Act, and in the petition it noted in the preamble that taxpayers will be fined if they don't shovel their sidewalk within 24 hours of a snowfall,
00:02:45.580 but you can apparently squat in perpetuity in a city park.
00:02:48.920 The petition gained some steam, and soon it had thousands of signatures.
00:02:52.040 It was going to be presented to city council by my then-city councillor to the rest of them in City Hall the next Monday morning.
00:02:59.520 On that Friday, though, Mayor Ninchy told the press that my petition was a waste of time.
00:03:04.480 He said that the charter prevented the squatters from any enforcement, and it was impossible to physically remove somebody based on a bylaw violation anyway.
00:03:12.260 So he said I was basically pissing in the wind, and the case was closed, and we just have to let these guys tire out and leave on their own.
00:03:18.880 So, huh, I decided, well, let's put this to the test.
00:03:23.220 So I went and checked out the park, and I noticed a service road that entered the park.
00:03:26.700 It was designed for maintenance, and it was easy to access and wide open.
00:03:29.220 So on the Sunday morning, I took my pickup truck, drove down the service road into the park, and put my truck in a park, poured a coffee.
00:03:37.880 I was nowhere near any of the tents as they'd set up out in the grass, and I remained on the pavement, you know, over the service area.
00:03:43.020 So again, you know, that rumor that I was driving into or putting protesters at risk, nothing of the sort.
00:03:48.540 And a few of those squatters were even out of bed yet.
00:03:51.120 Now, I'd prepared some signs of ludicrous demands and screwed them to the box liner of my truck.
00:03:55.600 I demanded an end to marmot tickling, and the return of the TV series Arrested Development. 0.92
00:04:00.380 That one actually came true, and unfortunately, the return sucked.
00:04:02.820 But either way, it was a ridiculous demand at the time, and I demanded that two-ply toilet paper be put in all public washrooms. 1.00
00:04:09.700 My demands were stupid, but they were no more dumb than those of the squatters. 0.99
00:04:13.180 Now, the squatters claimed their tents were a form of expression, thus they were protected by the charter. 1.00
00:04:18.440 Well, I claimed my truck was my form of expression.
00:04:20.940 So, of course, before long, by-law officers approached and asked me to move.
00:04:25.080 I politely refused and explained I was exercising my charter rights, and I wouldn't move until my demands were met.
00:04:30.240 Needless to say, they were flummoxed.
00:04:31.980 So, soon, more senior officers approached and told me I was breaking a by-law by parking in the park.
00:04:36.900 They asked if I could park on the street.
00:04:38.640 I said, sure.
00:04:39.720 As soon as you make all those squatters in the tents, move to a campground.
00:04:42.520 And then roll out my window.
00:04:44.060 Eventually, the by-law officers turned into police officers.
00:04:46.420 My truck was surrounded by annoyed squatters, along with frustrated police and by-law officers.
00:04:51.060 And the press was building up as well.
00:04:52.380 So, this standoff lasted for a few hours.
00:04:55.180 Mayor Ninchy and City Hall were stuck with two choices. 0.89
00:04:58.020 They could have me removed and prove themselves as hypocrites, or leave me there and let the gong show become worse in this park. 0.52
00:05:03.980 So, eventually, Ninchy made his choice.
00:05:06.140 The police came by, and I was informed that a tow truck was coming.
00:05:09.320 I would have to leave my truck when it got there, and I was going to be fined.
00:05:12.920 I asked what would happen if I refused to leave my truck.
00:05:14.920 They told me I'd be physically removed and charged with criminal obstruction.
00:05:17.740 I told them that won't be needed.
00:05:19.060 I'm going to leave willingly when the tow truck got there.
00:05:20.740 I'd made my point.
00:05:21.400 No need to make them wrestle me out.
00:05:23.080 I'm not going to be like one of those crazed lefty protesters and make them drag me out of there.
00:05:26.500 So, the tow truck arrived.
00:05:28.680 I left my truck and was issued with $400 in fines.
00:05:32.200 I got those knocked down to $100 later on, by the way.
00:05:35.100 So, the headlines the day after were fantastic.
00:05:38.040 The Calgary Sun cover said in big, bold print, stupefy Calgary.
00:05:41.380 Oh, it was beautiful. 0.99
00:05:42.040 And inside, there was a big two-page spread with a big headline that said, hypocrites. 0.98
00:05:46.460 And the mayor and city hall had no excuses left. 0.78
00:05:48.840 So, that Monday, they sought an injunction, and the squatters were removed within a week.
00:05:53.660 Now, what Ninchy said was impossible on Friday was accomplished the follow Monday, only because of the protest.
00:06:01.760 I'm going to pat my own back a bit there and take some credit.
00:06:04.460 Protests can make a difference.
00:06:05.740 But you see, they've got to be targeted, and they have to have a goal.
00:06:09.280 That's the difference between what I did and some other protests.
00:06:12.320 I mean, I was prepared to spend no more than 24 hours out there.
00:06:14.720 I wasn't going to entrench myself for a long time.
00:06:17.320 When protests go awry, it's when they settle in, and there isn't a reasonably negotiated end to them.
00:06:22.920 You've got to have terms that can be met.
00:06:25.140 And that was the case with the squatters, and arguably later on with the Ottawa protests later.
00:06:30.280 I mean, the Ottawa protests demanded the end of vaccine mandates, but they were also confused through some side demands by a minority.
00:06:36.840 But all the same, they were demanding the prime minister step down and some other unreasonable demands.
00:06:40.900 Now, as soon as the demands get unreasonable, the protest becomes untenable.
00:06:45.420 I still completely oppose the imposition of the Emergencies Act and the treatment of the truckers' convoy protesters.
00:06:51.660 I mean, the Occupy squatters stayed for months.
00:06:54.420 Well, the Ottawa protesters were removed within a couple of weeks, so you can't compare those two protests.
00:06:58.100 Still, there's things to be learned.
00:07:00.780 If one wants to hold an effective demonstration, there has to be a way out at the end.
00:07:04.580 There has to be reasonably negotiable terms, and there has to be somebody who can speak on behalf of the protest.
00:07:10.000 I mean, saying it's decentralized is a good idea, but in the end, it makes it very difficult,
00:07:14.160 because you get different messaging and you get things from all over.
00:07:16.940 And it's all easier said than done.
00:07:18.260 But protests can backfire and actually reduce public support for a cause if they're done wrong.
00:07:22.700 In fact, they often do.
00:07:23.680 Some come out and say, I don't care what the public thinks.
00:07:26.620 Well, you better, because it's fine if you don't care.
00:07:29.120 But the politicians do, and they're the ones who will send the police if they feel the public supports that approach.
00:07:34.480 And the right to protest, I mean, it's essential in democracy.
00:07:37.980 Integral.
00:07:38.560 We can't allow it to be eroded.
00:07:40.000 And that's what we're getting worried about with the whole Jagmeet Singh thing last week,
00:07:43.300 where they're trying to talk about cracking down on expression.
00:07:45.740 Hey, the approach to Singh was tasteless and nasty.
00:07:51.120 That just comes with the turf. 0.93
00:07:52.440 It sucks, but, you know, I don't think it was a good idea to go out and do it.
00:07:54.900 It doesn't help public support, but they have every right to do it. 0.97
00:07:57.900 Protesting, though, has to be done with care and planning.
00:08:00.360 Impulse demonstrations that last a day or so were fine.
00:08:03.020 When things entrench, you'd better have a plan.
00:08:05.320 So we might have more restrictions come from the government in the future.
00:08:07.780 They love control, and they've proven they like to exercise it.
00:08:10.300 And in that case, the citizens are going to need to protest again.
00:08:12.760 We're not done.
00:08:13.320 So let's learn from past protests.
00:08:16.120 We can be successful with them, but you have to do them right.