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.
00:00:00.000Seen 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.
00:00:10.500Well, I feel that there's, you know, we're doing it the wrong way quite often.
00:00:15.680I'll offer some of my life experience of protests and perhaps how to help things be effective as well.
00:00:22.140I want to clear the air on some misinformation going on about the land of social media.
00:00:26.280And that being the one, somebody was tweeting about that the other day, that I drove into a bunch of protesters with a pickup truck.
00:00:33.980Now, 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.
00:00:43.200And rest assured, it was nothing dangerous or threatening.
00:00:45.380So some people might remember the series of protests across North America called Occupy back in 2011.
00:00:51.100There 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.
00:01:01.960Support protests and marches were held across North America and held in cities, and that's fine.
00:01:06.780The problem came when groups of people set up encampments in city parks all over North America.
00:01:11.960Now, 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.
00:01:20.200Their demands were disparate and impossible to fulfill, and that's one of the problems I'm going to get to with ineffective protesting.
00:01:26.560So some of their demands were things like, we want a Canada where the debt per capita does not double in the next decade.
00:01:32.720Okay, sounds nice, but how do you negotiate that?
00:01:35.880We want a Canada where our system of exchange no longer embodies the logic of a cancer cell.
00:01:41.640These were literal demands made by people squatting in Calgary's Park and protesting.
00:01:47.080And this list of demands would change daily, too, as they'd change leaders almost daily in these squatter camps.
00:01:52.480So 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.
00:02:00.680The camps had become filthy, overdoses were becoming common, and sexual assaults were even happening.
00:02:05.600It sounded much like the CHAZ zone in Seattle during the BLM protests.
00:02:10.400Now, 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.
00:02:18.260He 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.
00:02:26.320You see, these lefties were part of his support base, and he was relatively recently elected at that time.
00:02:31.320He was hoping the cold weather would take care of them before he had to act.
00:02:35.780So 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,
00:02:45.580but you can apparently squat in perpetuity in a city park.
00:02:48.920The petition gained some steam, and soon it had thousands of signatures.
00:02:52.040It 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.
00:02:59.520On that Friday, though, Mayor Ninchy told the press that my petition was a waste of time.
00:03:04.480He said that the charter prevented the squatters from any enforcement, and it was impossible to physically remove somebody based on a bylaw violation anyway.
00:03:12.260So 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.
00:03:18.880So, huh, I decided, well, let's put this to the test.
00:03:23.220So I went and checked out the park, and I noticed a service road that entered the park.
00:03:26.700It was designed for maintenance, and it was easy to access and wide open.
00:03:29.220So 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.
00:03:37.880I 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.
00:03:43.020So again, you know, that rumor that I was driving into or putting protesters at risk, nothing of the sort.
00:03:48.540And a few of those squatters were even out of bed yet.
00:03:51.120Now, I'd prepared some signs of ludicrous demands and screwed them to the box liner of my truck.
00:03:55.600I demanded an end to marmot tickling, and the return of the TV series Arrested Development.
00:04:00.380That one actually came true, and unfortunately, the return sucked.
00:04:02.820But either way, it was a ridiculous demand at the time, and I demanded that two-ply toilet paper be put in all public washrooms.
00:04:09.700My demands were stupid, but they were no more dumb than those of the squatters.
00:04:13.180Now, the squatters claimed their tents were a form of expression, thus they were protected by the charter.
00:04:18.440Well, I claimed my truck was my form of expression.
00:04:20.940So, of course, before long, by-law officers approached and asked me to move.
00:04:25.080I politely refused and explained I was exercising my charter rights, and I wouldn't move until my demands were met.