Yesterday, I went to the protests in St James Park. There I saw many people concerned of the way things are going. The signs were so much fun. The internet references made me laugh. There was a medic tent, an open library set up, and a food bank giving food to all the hungry people staying overnight (a bank that supplies you with something of value? Who knew such a thing could exist these days!)
The news reporters were there, and chatting with the people. The police were there, constantly on patrol, but they seemed to be pretty calm. The scariest thing I saw was this black unmarked van with tinted windows, and what appeared to be a boat rack on the roof. I almost took it for just a normal vehicle, but when I looked at the rack closely, I saw that it had a huge dark camera built into the top. It was pointed right at the middle of the protest. It was just then that I realized I could see into the dark windows: two men, in black suits, black ties, and black shades, staring me down. It honestly freaked me out quite a bit. I bet they were getting payed hundreds of dollars an hour to be there. Tax payer's money, of course.
Living in the city gives you this impression that everyone is a sheep. No one thinks about what they do, they just live from one day to the next, you think, and you start to live that way yourself. I was so impressed to see so many people happy to dance and sing and talk and think about what is going on. This moment, more than any other, has reminded me that the world is filled with people: people that work, people that feel, people that suffer under this terrible system.
The most common response I've heard to this movement is "Well sure, it's broken, but there's no point in doing anything until you know how to fix it." But thinking that way is foolish. We know exactly what parts of the system are wrong: jobs are exported rather than goods, bailouts made from the bottom 99% 's taxes are fed to the top, fraudulent loans are taken out by the government from the banks... We must remove these things from the system. Taking them out is exactly what we need to do to fix it, not wait until the perfect solution arises, because it never will. Perfection isn't important right now. What's important is moving towards a somewhat-less-terrible position.
This isn't just for us, or for Toronto, Ontario, or all of
Canada. The occupy movement is sweeping the world, as it should. The
people of the world are finally standing up to the big corporations and
the corrupt governments. If we keep this up, the power will people in the people's hands - how it should be.
~ John Adam
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