What are you protesting?
This is a question that I
have heard quite often since Occupy Montreal began on the
15th of October 2011. Due to the myriad voices that sprang
out that day, almost each protester shouting a slogan of
her or his own, the general public was lost as to what we where (and
still are) protesting. From Tunisia to Egypt, Libya,
Bahrain, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Israel,
Spain, Greece, France, China, India, Russia, Germany, Chili,
Brazil, Mexico, the USA, Canada, and many more countries, our main
goal was (is) to protest the system of inequality that the greedy few
(be they corporations, despots, or filthy rich individuals) have
imposed on the majority of the World population. please mind the use
of the word World with a capital W, as this is not an issue that
touches folks merely on a local and isolated level.
This is an issue, that now, in a globally connected world,
touches every living soul on the face of this planet. All
7 billion plus of the earth's human population (and
also that of other species from bacteria to animals and plants) are
in one way or another affected by the greedy few and their lust
for wealth and power, and in the process of creating
the capitalist dream of false equality they have
managed to make sheep out of us all. This is exhibited in
the incredibly unbelievable line-ups of people every time
there is a new release of an insignificant gadget like the
i-phone or i-pad. True that these "marvels" of technology
make life easier for us all in some ways, but they remain
insignificant while much of the world still lives
in absolute poverty.
For those of you who see
numbers as more significant than human values here is the run down;
1.7 billion human beings (over 20% of the world population) live on
less than $1.25 per day.
Over 50% of the world
population (or more than 3 billion human beings) live on less than
$3 per-day.
80% of the world
population lives on $10 or less per-day.
In contrast the richest
1% of of the world population own 40% of global assets while the
bottom half of the world population owns 1% of the global wealth.
Poverty is not the only
issue that has made so many of us indignant. There is also the
worsening environmental situation, with yet many people
who truly believe that climate change is a myth,
nuclear energy is safe (even after Fukushima and with
Chernobyl forgotten in people's minds). The business of
war and profits from the sale of weapons (including crowd control non
lethal weapons) to despots and oppressive regimes
which have in many documented cases been used against a civilian
population. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that have
generated much misery amongst families of soldiers, wars that have
worsened the situation of the local civilian population weather at
home or abroad. The exploitation of entire peoples by
corporations, all in the name of economic progress and growth that
somehow always makes the rich richer and the poor poorer. Governments
that have failed in their duty to provide the tax payers a sound
return on their collective contribution towards the improvement of
the larger community in which they live in.
All these issues
are intricately connected on one level or another; the
environment is deteriorating because we keep on consuming
its resources that are not renewable, all in the name of
economic growth. Vast oxygen making forests are cut down,
several species have gone extinct in just the
last 20 years, the world climate has indeed changed drastically over
the last few years (unless you consider the opening of the north
west passage a "natural" phenomenon) as a result
of our ever increasing dependency on fossil fuels.
Our hunger for more energy has lead us to build nuclear powered
plants that produce radioactive waste that cannot
be disposed of safely for thousands of years. The
sales of weapons to despots, tyrants,
and oppressive regimes like Saudi Arabia, Syria, African,
and Asian countries has fulled the deterioration of human living
standards across the world, all in the name of increasing profits
for the industrialized nations' weapons makers
and weapon brokers and smugglers. Those who make
profits off the backs of the tortured, the hungry, the
miserable, live a royally comfortable life void
of conscious. The problems of Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia and
other poor countries, for instance, are artificially created by the
leaders of those countries who prefer
to purchase expensive weapons form the
USA, Europe, Russia, and others, while their people can't even
get access to fresh water, let alone use an infrastructure that would
help them fight against famine, drought, and
deplorable health conditions. As a result, the people of
poor nations live a life of misery so that their leaders
and the world corporate weapon makers may live a life of
extreme luxury.
Yet all of these issues,
at first glance at least, seem far removed from wealthy
countries like the the USA, Canada, and Europe. People I talk to in
North America cannot fathom why the collective “we” should bother
with the troubles and misery of “those on the other side
of the world” when "we have it so much better". I
wish I had a penny for every time someone said "You can't
compare the situation in the Arab world with us here in
North America". This is a statement that I heard
repeated time and time again, which at first glance might seem true,
but scratch the surface a little bit and the realities
quickly start to emerge with the stark differences suddenly tipping
over to reveal a situation, that may be different in
scale, but which is the same non the less.
In the Arab world people
did not just rise up against tyranny. The people of the Arab world
rose up against economic and social injustices. The same kind of
injustices that exist here in North America, albeit at a much
different scale.
Consider this; In Quebec
the average income tax is around 45 percent, we pay around 15 percent
sales tax and a varied amount of visible and invisible taxes. in
short, we pay the federal and provincial governments a lot of
money. in return what do we get? A transport infrastructure that is
falling apart and a construction scandal to remind us all why this is
so. We also get a health care system that is falling apart at the
seems, ever increasing stoical program spending cuts, less and less
free public services, increases in tuition fees, increasing numbers
of people living in poverty, and an increasing number of homeless
people with untended pharmacological conditions. Yet the
explanation I get from most people is that "we at least have a
healthcare system unlike the USA and our tuition fees are still the
lowest in all of North America".
These kind of replies
nauseate me. We are not paying more than half the money we work
very hard to earn so that we'd role over and accept the current
situation as normal. We are not paying these ridiculous amount
of taxes so that we get told that there is a budget deficit while the
infrastructure is falling apart. we are not paying through our teethe
in order to be told that we also need to buy insurance for our cars,
homes, health and whatnot, or to pay extra for roads and bridges that
are also paid for with our tax dollars. Why are we paying so much
more on top of all the sky high taxes we already pay? We are
not paying these nebulous amounts of money to our governments so that
they would turn around and tell us that they need to make us pay even
more for our children education, pay more for our health, pay more to
have the infrastructure fixed, pay more for politicians to come up
with laws that further diminish our basic human rights in the name of
security while organized crime runs deep and rampant with tentacles
intrenched in government and the security forces. Are we (the
protesters) the only ones who see that there is something wrong with
this picture? I am wide spectrum dyslexic, math is not my
forte, yet even I can tell that the numbers just don't add up. Yet
still I get mind-boggling responses to the effect of "that’s
the way things are".
Is this the Quebecois
way? is this the Canadian way? To just allow the corporate owned
governments to continuously suck us dry of everything we have, and
with our own connect to boot? What is wrong with people? Is it
necessary to have a major catastrophe for people to realize that
their comfort zone is not at all comfortable? That their comfort zone
is cheaply and artificially maintained and that it could fall apart
on them at a moments notice, without prior warning, and with no
recourse, because citizens have all been to sedated by the main
stream corporate media that feeds them the pill that they so
desperately "need"? I-pods, i-phones, luxury cars, the
latest and greatest of everything, online games, and many more
distractions.
What has become of
people? At what point did they turn into selfish, self-centred,
uncaring egotistical creatures? Do they really think that just
because they are relatively comfortable compared to others that they
will not soon feel the heat? Have people not yet woken up to
the stark naked truth that the world has become intricately connected
by a web of economic systems that is not that different from the
ecological system; if the parts of the ecological web starts to fall
apart the rest will follow. likewise, if parts of the world wide
economical web starts to fall apart the rest will follow. No
one is safe. no one's zone of comfort is impervious. If they wait
until the trouble begins it will be too late (not late for those whom
are already poor and homeless and whom have already lost everything).
It will be too late for those who think that they “have it all”
and choose to remain “comfortable” while everything falls apart.
Is it that common in Canada to ignore the proverbial big pink flying
elephant in the room? It is as if the economic turbulence of
the great depression of 2008 has gone by with those who where lucky
enough not to be touched by it be completely oblivious of the amount
of misery it created? is this the Quebecois way? Is this the
Canadian way? To just simply accept a great injustice against all
society as if it was normal? And then people have the temerity to ask
why the protesters are so indignantly protesting against corporate
greed and the great hibernation of the public morality. I am an
indignant human being who will not stand silent anymore.
For decades many of us
who originally came form the Arab world have been predicting a
pan-Arab revolution because of the socioeconomic situation that
prevailed throughout several generations. Many of us where
baffled as to why people just kept silent while the boot of
oppression was weighing heavily down on their necks. The more
one bottles up their indignation the more powerful the eruption of
the volcano of outcries will be. Just look at Syria. The
Syrians have been quiet for such a long time (more than 40 years)
that at the beginning of the Arab spring it was thought very
unlikely that they would also rise-up. Yet rise-up they did,
peacefully at first, but the illusion of a peaceful resolution in
Syria has long since past. This is the outcome of being silent
and accepting injustice for too long. keeping ones head in the sand
will not make the fast approaching steamroller vanish into thin air.
It is time to wake up from your hibernation. Smell the horrible truth
and go out there and do something about it, there are many peaceful,
nonviolent and democratic ways in which the tide can be turned, but
the tied will not turn on its own if it continues being ignored. The
fate of the world is in every persons individual and collective
hands.
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