Occupy the World

Although I have only used this as a travel blog, my reference to borders was not intended to be limited to national or geographic ones. I want to start documenting my experiences and sharing my ideas as I try to make sense of this world and find my place in it. What has inspired me recently to begin to be more proactive in finding answers is a series of events in the past two weeks which all led me to one place: the Occupy Wall Street movement.

My Thanksgiving weekend was spent in the United States. I briefly stopped in New York City and Philadelphia where I had the chance to witness Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Philadelphia. The protests reminded me of the occupation of University of Vienna by students while I was on exchange there. The students were fighting for their right to free education as the government had been talking about imposing a fee on higher education in Austria. My perspective on the protests has drastically changed since then as I have become more aware of the issues surrounding post-secondary education here in Canada and of how apathetic and perhaps oppressed we actually are as a society. It was a breath of fresh air to see that something like this was gaining momentum in North America and that people were finally waking up and realizing they are not powerless.

Last Wednesday, I attended a talk with Judy Rebick which intended to focus on climate justice as social justice. Her conversation with Brigette DePape ended up touching on many issues pertaining to social and economic justice, including the Occupy Wall Street movement. Brigette brought up Judy's book Transforming Power and how relevant it is to this movement. Judy was delighted to see that somebody had picked up on that.

On Friday, I saw a documentary film called How to Start a Revolution at the One World Film Festival in Ottawa. It was the Canadian premiere of the film. It exposes Gene Sharp's writings on non-violent action against oppression and the use of his ideas in various resistance movements and revolutions around the world. A Q&A period with the director of the film followed. Again, the conversation in the end became about whether this was applicable to Occupy Wall Street. The answer was: very much so.

This all brought me here: on Saturday at noon I was at Confederation Park in Ottawa where the first general assembly of Occupy Ottawa was about to begin. The occupation became official by 3pm.

This movement is finally exposing people's frustrations with the social and economic inequalities they experience. I am deeply enthusiastic about it for its empowering and unifying nature and also because I am sick of living in an inherently unjust society where government and corporations do not represent the interests of the majority.

Jack, you were right.

Love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.