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		<title>Beyond the Rituals of Class Compromise</title>
		<link>https://www.midnightsunmag.ca/beyond-the-rituals-of-class-compromise/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=beyond-the-rituals-of-class-compromise</link>
		
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		<pubDate>Wed, 04 Jan 2023 06:14:00 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Features]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CUPE Ontario]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Education workers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[John Clarke]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Labour]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ontario Days of Action]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Organizing strategies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Organizing tactics]]></category>
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					<description><![CDATA[<p>John Clarke on the need to move beyond the demobilizing compromise between capital and organized labour that developed in the post-war period, with its rules of engagement that no longer serve the working class.</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://www.midnightsunmag.ca/beyond-the-rituals-of-class-compromise/">Beyond the Rituals of Class Compromise</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.midnightsunmag.ca">Midnight Sun</a>.</p>
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							<h3 style="text-align: right;">1. 4. 2023</h3><h1>Beyond the Rituals of Class Compromise</h1><h3 style="text-align: right;"><strong><span style="color: #000000;"><br /><a style="color: #000000;" href="https://www.midnightsunmag.ca/tag/john-clarke/">John Clarke</a></span></strong></h3><hr /><p><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br />Working-class people face intensified attack on a range of fronts. The inflationary upsurge that has produced a major global cost of living crisis is considerably more stubborn than </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">was </span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/13/business/economy/high-inflation.html"><span style="font-weight: 400;">initially expected</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">. If “supply shocks” underlie this economic instability, we must suppose that there are a great many more of them to come. </span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Intensifying global rivalry will undermine the flow of trade to an ever greater extent. Moreover, the efforts of the United States to defend its hegemonic position dramatically increase the risks of major armed conflicts. The rivalry that marks this period is already producing results that are profoundly economically disruptive. It is likely that much worse lies ahead.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The pandemic has had dramatic impacts on the world’s economy, and it is clear that the factors that created this global health emergency are entirely unresolved. The scientific mainstream has now fully accepted that we live in what can be referred to as the </span><a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(20)30305-3/fulltext"><span style="font-weight: 400;">pandemic era.</span></a></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Over and above all of this, we face the sharpest of all expressions of capitalism’s inability to develop a sustainable relationship with the natural world: the accelerating climate crisis. Its effects are already being seen in a variety of ways, including the proliferation of extreme weather episodes. This element of the present multi-layered crisis brings with it the most destructive impacts and the most economically disruptive results of all.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Such conditions of crisis in society starkly pose the question of who will shoulder the burden. The driving up of interest rates by central banks internationally makes clear that the hawkish advocates of class war and “</span><a href="https://springmag.ca/the-class-war-of-interest-rates?fbclid=IwAR31oADAo_BZkH0_o14E--KohMDAl4Wh7kCDXwz4vqVKOMxTBgi7bVmCu2s"><span style="font-weight: 400;">creative destruction</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">”</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> are dominating policy directions, and that they see wage cuts and reduced living standards, even at the risk of a major global slump, as the route to stability for their system.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">At the same time, hopes for a turn away from the agenda of austerity have been cruelly dashed. A recent study by a group of NGOs looked at 267 International Monetary Fund (IMF) country reports that map out plans for a major</span> <a href="https://www.counterfire.org/article/the-intensification-of-global-austerity/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">international austerity assault</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">. Unquestionably, this attack is playing out here in Ontario, as the Ford Tories take the knife</span> <a href="https://socialistproject.ca/2021/06/doug-ford-and-the-pcs-plan-another-decade-of-austerity/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">to public services</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Those who would characterize this period as one marked by working-class passivity are quite wrong. The last few years have seen a rising working-class anger struggling to find effective expression. The killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis sparked an upsurge</span> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/03/us/george-floyd-protests-crowd-size.html"><span style="font-weight: 400;">of historic proportions</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> on US streets, one</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> that reverberated internationally. A rebellion in the workplace is brewing: here in Ontario, there has been a dramatic increase</span> <span style="font-weight: 400;">in</span><a href="https://socialistproject.ca/2022/07/growing-turmoil-ontario-labour-relations/"><span style="font-weight: 400;"> strike activity</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">. The recent struggle </span><a href="https://breachmedia.ca/doug-ford-underestimated-the-power-of-workersbut-so-did-union-leaders/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">taken up by education workers</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> in this province, its massive contradictions notwithstanding, is further evidence that working-class people are looking for the means to fight back.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Yet these inspiring indications shouldn’t be a source of unrealistic optimism. There is a huge reservoir of anger and an appetite for effective resistance, but it is not yet taking the form of durable movements and winning struggles. This problem must be overcome, if the leap in thought and action that this period demands is to be achieved. People learn relatively little by getting kicked and a great deal more from fighting back.</span> <span style="font-weight: 400;">Such positive lessons are urgently needed.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">For masses of people to take the path of social mobilization, they must be convinced it can prevent cuts in real wages and the gutting of vital public services. This means moving beyond the rituals of token protest and embracing forms of resistance that are defiant and hugely disruptive.</span></p><p> </p><h2>Mechanisms of compromise</h2><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Though vital struggles take place at the community level, the greatest power of working-class people lies in our ability to shut down the production and flow of goods and services by employing the strike weapon. For this reason, trade unions remain decisive. </span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">After World War Two, employers and the state fought hard to prevent an organizing breakthrough by workers in North America, but it could no longer be held back. In this situation, a strategy of containment rather than direct confrontation was adopted. The state-brokered mechanisms of compromise between capital and labour that developed in this period constituted a tactical retreat. Unions were recognized and granted significant rights that, in the economic boom years following the war, ensured gains in wages and working conditions. However, the system of legally enshrined “labour relations” that was put in place set limits that had been unknown in the more rough-and-tumble class struggle conditions that had previously existed.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Now, in return for their new rights, unions negotiated with employers in a regulated process that limited and compartmentalized workers’ struggles. Strikes during the life of collective agreements were banned, and the bulk of disputes were now settled by way of a legalistic process of grievance and arbitration. Solidarity strikes to support other groups of workers and united struggles around broader political demands were also prohibited by law.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">It is hardly surprising that such a regulated and tightly supervised form of class conflict had a major effect on the unions themselves. Though strike battles were still fought, a great deal of the representative role that unions played was now in the hands of experts and specialists. Bureaucratized forms of struggle engendered bureaucratized unions and significantly demobilized their rank and file.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">These mechanisms of compromise were developed in a period of relative economic buoyancy, when employers and governments were making concessions to working-class people. Economic downturn and falling rates of profit in the 1970s, however, led to a changed strategy that would become known as neoliberalism. This included an assault on unions to drive down wages and the gutting of the social infrastructure.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In this situation, the class compromise arrangements of the post-war years became an impediment. Workers were still adhering to agreements that limited their ability to struggle, but the other side was no longer ready to give anything back in return. The ruling-class attack, while severe, was nonetheless incremental enough for the “deal” to hold while union membership and working-class living standards declined.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The present crisis-ridden period is accelerating the pace of the attack to such a degree that the consequences of limiting working-class resistance have become dramatically worse. To confine the strike weapon to individual contract disputes is a recipe for disaster that renders effective working-class struggle impossible. Breaking out of these limitations becomes a life-and-death question.</span></p><p> </p><h2>The need for defiance</h2><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">During the neoliberal decades, working-class defiance has sometimes emerged when governments have seriously accelerated the ruling-class attack. The Ontario </span><a href="https://www.blogto.com/events/remembering-metro-days-action-toronto/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Days of Action</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> against the provincial Tory regime in the 1990s were a case in point. Faced with an unprecedented assault on workers and communities, there was a limited effort to break out of the constraints of regulated class compromise.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">While the campaign involved city-wide strikes that broke the rules and provided an inspiring indication of working-class power, the union leadership of the time engaged in these tactics with considerable reluctance. No plan to escalate the struggle to winning levels was ever advanced, and after the momentum of the actions had been lost, the whole effort was abandoned.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Very similar factors played out in Ontario education workers’ recent struggle. The Ford</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> government’s </span><a href="https://breachmedia.ca/doug-ford-underestimated-the-power-of-workersbut-so-did-union-leaders/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Bill 28</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> created a situation where CUPE and its Ontario School Board Council of Unions (OSBCU) could avoid the humiliation of an imposed concessionary contract only by responding defiantly.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">With this blunder, Ford brought on an “illegal” strike by education workers and the threat of a wave of sympathy actions by other unions. That such a fightback could be made ready is no small matter, but the rapidity with which CUPE accepted Ford’s offer to repeal the legislation, in return for the suspension of strike action, was enormously telling. </span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Once the union leaders had something on the table that could justify a return to the mechanisms of compromise they had been schooled in, they were ready to grab it. This retreat led to a deal that failed to address the cost of living crisis, and that ended the generalized movement of working-class resistance that was emerging in that moment.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Certainly, the top leadership of CUPE carries the major responsibility for that concession, </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">while</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> the OSBCU leaders were </span><a href="https://breachmedia.ca/the-inside-story-of-how-education-workers-beat-back-doug-ford/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">obviously more reluctant to concede</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">. However, no force within the union was able to resist the pressure to draw back. The tragic curtailment of this struggle poses huge questions about the kind of movement we need at this time.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">It is of decisive importance that the strike weapon be freed from its present constraints. It must become a form of generalized working-class struggle that advances broad political demands. As Rosa Luxemburg stressed in her study of the mass strike, such a course is capable of inspiring and mobilizing a huge portion of the population.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">As Luxemburg </span><a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1906/mass-strike/ch06.htm"><span style="font-weight: 400;">put it</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, “Every real, great class struggle must rest upon the support and cooperation of the widest masses, and a strategy of class struggle which does not reckon with this cooperation, which is based upon the idea of the finely stage-managed march out of the small, well-trained part of the proletariat, is foredoomed to be</span> <span style="font-weight: 400;">a miserable fiasco</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">.” Clearly, such a course of action would have to be taken up over the indignant objections of the Ontario Labour Relations Board.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Though strikes are of central importance, it is also true that very powerful forms of community-based action are entirely possible. In Canada, the lessons to be drawn from Indigenous-led resistance are particularly vital in this regard. The country-wide wave of solidarity action </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">with Wet’suwet’en</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> land defenders in 2020 </span><a href="https://spectrejournal.com/the-global-supply-chain-neoliberalisms-weak-link/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">unleashed major economic disruption</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> and created a deep political crisis for those in power. Linked to massive strikes and advancing fighting demands, such forms of resistance could be incredibly powerful.</span></p><p> </p><h2>Rank-and-file independence</h2><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Obviously, the mass action that the present situation demands will require organizational forms that make it possible. Trade unions have a vital role to play, but for this to happen, a rank-and-file movement is indispensable. The</span><a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1941/04/stewards.htm"> <span style="font-weight: 400;">shop stewards committees</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> that were formed in Britain during and after World War One are instructive as models of this form of organizing. They were able to challenge collaborationist union leaders, initiate independent action when necessary, and forge links with community-based forms of working-class struggle.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">While such major rank-and-file initiatives are not in place today, we are seeing initiatives that are building power at the base within unions. Teachers in the US have provided particularly compelling examples, raising the level of militancy among their fellow workers </span><a href="https://rethinkingschools.org/articles/you-need-rank-and-file-to-win-how-arizona-teachers-built-a-movement/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">through their organizing</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">. Biden’s recent attack on rail workers was rendered possible because of the collaborationist leadership within the rail unions. However,</span> <a href="https://www.labornotes.org/2022/12/what-would-it-take-rail-workers-win"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Railroad Workers United</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> (RWU), rooted in the rank and file, has emerged as a force challenging that leadership.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">There is a great need to take such forms of organizing within the unions much further, but also to look for broader organizational forms that could unite workplace struggles with community-based resistance. The stubborn struggle that has been waged in Sudan against that country’s military regime and its harsh social spending cutbacks has been advanced considerably by</span> <a href="https://spectrejournal.com/the-future-of-the-resistance-committees-in-sudan/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">the resistance committees</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> that have emerged. The development of such dynamic, participatory forms of local organization can contribute enormously to a sustained and effective capacity to fight back in the present period.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">During the 1930s in Canada, the interventions of the Communist Party played an enormous role in taking forward the militant struggles of the unemployed. Though much was wrong with the way those interventions were carried out, the existence of a significant left party at that time supported powerful working-class action during the Great Depression.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Today, there is no single socialist organization that could match the influence of the CP in the ’30s. An effort to organize at the base and create conditions for winning forms of struggle would likely require a working alliance of leftists and rank-and-file militants. While it is much easier to propose such an undertaking than to set it in motion or sustain it, the need for such forward movement is clear and obvious.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">It would be preposterous to try to provide any organizational blueprints or detailed plans of action for such rank-and-file initiatives, but it would be worth considering the role they could have played in two of the situations I have described.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">During the Ontario Days of Action, there was a strong sense among leftists and militants that the momentum of the campaign was being held back. As those who lived through the period will doubtless recall, “City by city is way too slow. Let’s shut down Ontario,” was a chant commonly heard at rallies. There was, however, no means of making this vision a reality.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Such was the top-down form of the movement’s organizing that a relative handful of union leaders were able to haggle and improvise as they saw fit. When another city was eventually chosen as the next site of struggle, a local committee of unions and community organizations was nominally given the power to direct the events of the day. However, they could really only follow a tight script addressed to their own community and had no say over the provincial initiative as a whole.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Had those communities and the rank and file of the unions been organized and properly orientated, the local committees could have developed a capacity to act beyond their one-day mandate, ensuring actions would be taken on a wider front than the city-by-city approach permitted. A campaign that escalated to the level of a province-wide strike was possible, but the union leaders clearly wished to prevent it.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In the case of the recent education workers’ strike, things are even more clear-cut. A major united working-class struggle was emerging, and it was called off once the union leaders decided that it was possible to do so. A rank-and-file movement with a solid influence among those workers would have made an edict to demobilize impossible. The membership’s strong reluctance to accept a substandard deal could have been transformed into a determined effort to defeat it.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">It is important to understand how deeply entrenched in the union structures are the failed rituals of compromise, and how committed to them are the bulk of the leadership. An effective rank-and-file movement will certainly have to be very much more than a means of applying some pressure on those at the top. It will have to make demands and, where necessary, act independently and defiantly to ensure that the necessary methods of resistance are taken up.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">We are now in a situation where, to contain the present inflationary surge, a systematic global effort is underway to reduce the bargaining power of workers and drive down real wages. This attack may very well generate conditions of global slump. We are dealing with a class-war offensive by employers and governments, and yet the rules of engagement that we are expected to observe don’t allow us to fight fire with fire. If we are to avoid crushing defeats, breaking free of outmoded rituals of class compromise is an absolute necessity. Finding the means to do this is the most pressing political task we face in these extraordinary times.</span></p>						</div>
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							<p>John Clarke is a writer and anti-poverty activist in Toronto. He was an organizer with the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) for almost 30 years.</p>						</div>
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		<p>The post <a href="https://www.midnightsunmag.ca/beyond-the-rituals-of-class-compromise/">Beyond the Rituals of Class Compromise</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.midnightsunmag.ca">Midnight Sun</a>.</p>
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		<title>OCAP and the Power of Disruptive Action</title>
		<link>https://www.midnightsunmag.ca/ocap-and-the-power-of-disruptive-action/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=ocap-and-the-power-of-disruptive-action</link>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Midnight Sun]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Wed, 08 Sep 2021 05:10:03 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Living Histories]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Anti-poverty activism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Direct action]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[John Clarke]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[OCAP]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ontario Coalition Against Poverty]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Poor people&#039;s movements]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.midnightsunmag.ca/?p=3118</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[<p>John Clarke reflects on nearly 30 years of organizing with the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP), and suggests how that legacy might inform struggles unfolding today.</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://www.midnightsunmag.ca/ocap-and-the-power-of-disruptive-action/">OCAP and the Power of Disruptive Action</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.midnightsunmag.ca">Midnight Sun</a>.</p>
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							<h3 style="text-align: right;">9. 8. 2021</h3><h1 style="text-align: left;">OCAP and the Power of Disruptive Action</h1><h3 style="text-align: right;"><b><br /></b><span style="color: #000000;"><a style="color: #000000;" href="https://www.midnightsunmag.ca/tag/john-clarke/"><strong>John Clarke</strong></a></span></h3><hr /><p><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br />The founding meeting of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP), in 1990, featured a sharp debate between two opposing concepts of a poor people&#8217;s movement. A significant portion of those in attendance believed poverty could best be tackled with convincing arguments and moral appeals to those in power. The contending perspective, thankfully that of the majority, held that governments would address poverty only to the extent that they faced a powerful challenge. Accordingly, this side argued for an organization that would build a base in poor communities and take up militant forms of collective action.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">I was first elected as an organizer with OCAP in 1990 and stayed in that role for some 28 years. Though the conclusions I put forward here are my own and I’m not trying to speak for the organization or its members, I believe there are lessons to be drawn from OCAP’s decades in struggle – and that the model of resistance OCAP created has much to offer those organizing today, in this greatly changed period that the pandemic has ushered in.</span></p><p> </p><h2>Disruptive militancy in difficult times</h2><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The challenge facing the newly formed OCAP was to create a counterpower for those on the receiving end of the war on the poor. To do so, we acted in the way that activist sociologists Piven and Cloward described </span><a href="https://libcom.org/files/%5BFrances_Fox_Piven,_Richard_Cloward%5D_Poor_People's(Bookos.org)(1).pdf"><span style="font-weight: 400;">in their book </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Poor People’s Movements</span></i></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">: using disruptive actions against the institutions oppressing the poor, so as to create levels of crisis that could force concessions from them.   </span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">OCAP adopted the slogan “fight to win” to distance itself from approaches that were based only on moral pressure or ritualized protest. This bold perspective, however, was advanced in a decidedly challenging context. Throughout the entire period in which OCAP has operated, major victories for working-class movements have not been plentiful. The organization has looked for winning forms of struggle during decades when trade unions and social movements have been largely forced onto the defensive.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Neoliberalism, the dominant political and economic program during those decades, emerged at the end of the postwar boom years as an attempt to restore falling rates of profit by intensifying the exploitation of the working class. This global initiative included an assault on unions and the gutting of social infrastructures. Income support systems, like unemployment insurance and social assistance, were seriously degraded, to create a climate of desperation that would generate a low-wage precarious workforce. This regressive and destructive agenda was already well underway by the time OCAP was formed, and would accelerate considerably in the years that followed. Our militant perspective proved effective within definite limits, but our struggles unfolded in a broader context in which the societal balance of forces had shifted dramatically against working-class and poor people.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Still, the class struggle continues even during an unfavourable period, expressed through both regular skirmishes and periodic larger conflicts with those in power. OCAP took up such struggles in a number of key ways. First of all, in order to build a base among people impacted by poverty, we understood we would have to prove that collective action could make a practical difference in their lives. Just like working-class and poor people’s organizations of the 1930s, we mobilized to challenge individual, day-to-day injustices with what we came to refer to as ‘“direct action casework.” The majority of these actions were “mass delegations” directed at social benefits offices that were denying assistance to those in need. Frequently, actions of this kind were bolstered by union activists in “flying squads,” with members of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW), the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) playing a particularly active role. Bureaucracies have a natural antipathy towards disruptive tactics, and these “mass delegations” soon proved to be an enormously effective means of obtaining redress and demonstrating the power of united action. The kind of movement we sought to create, however, would have to employ disruptive tactics on a broader scale than simply challenging individual abuses.</span></p><p> </p><h2>A history of occupations and confrontations</h2><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The gutting of social provision during the neoliberal period has been accompanied by intensified levels of state repression, to assert control over the poor. Early in OCAP’s existence, the Toronto Police Chief announced that his force would begin a major crackdown on those asking for spare change on the streets. He made it clear that big merchants were demanding the sweeping away of “beggars.” OCAP responded with a mass panhandle that saw hundreds of people march through the downtown malls with tins and cups, asking shoppers for money. The police crackdown was averted because we showed that we could generate a bigger problem for the retail companies – a greater disruption – than the one they had been complaining about.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">During OCAP’s first five years, the NDP formed the provincial government in Ontario. That party’s abandonment of progressive campaign pledges, in the face of pressure from business interests, is well established. Towards the end of the NDP’s time in office, its Minister of Community and Social Services announced the hiring of hundreds of investigators to crack down on “welfare fraud.” Even worse, he planned a provincial speaking tour to whip up public support for this vile measure. In response, OCAP held a supper outside his kickoff meeting in Toronto. With a turnout that greatly outnumbered the minister’s supporters inside, we invaded the event, took over the stage, and conducted our own meeting about resisting the crackdown. The minister fled and cancelled his provincial tour.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">After taking power in Ontario in 1995, the Mike Harris Tories played a role comparable to that of Ronald Reagan’s government in the US and Margaret Thatcher’s in the UK. By 1999, the Tories’ austerity measures, including brutal welfare cuts, had caused an explosion of homelessness and a rash of street deaths. With Toronto’s homeless shelters overflowing, OCAP took over Allan Gardens, in the city’s Downtown East, and operated a </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrsK4IDLFEY"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Safe Park</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> that provided a place of shelter for homeless people. Over 1000 community members attended the opening event. With Harris and Toronto’s mayor calling for us to be driven out, we held the park for three days and nights. A massive police raid was unleashed to disperse the Safe Park, but our occupation significantly advanced the building of resistance to the Tory agenda.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The following year, with the homeless disaster still intensifying, we assembled 1500 supporters, over half of them homeless people, to march on the Ontario Legislature. We had a series of demands to present, and our mass delegation called for its representatives to be allowed to address the assembled provincial parliament. When riot cops with horses tried to drive the crowd from the grounds of the Legislature, a fierce confrontation ensued. It became known as the </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7DGBBUuJMc"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Queen’s Park Riot</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">. Many were arrested during the action and more were picked up in the days that followed. However, the police attack, the legal persecution, and the slander campaign in the media all failed to crush us. On the contrary, the Queen’s Park Riot was one of the key events of the fight against the Harris Tories. It won OCAP much wider support.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">When the Liberals returned to power in 2003, they stealthily consolidated and deepened the austerity of their Tory predecessors, taking advantage of reduced levels of political confrontation on the part of trade unions and social movements. Where the Harris government had cut social assistance rates by 21.6 percent and then frozen them for the rest of their time in office, the Liberals provided increases below the rate of inflation – a policy that continued to drive people deeper into poverty. Seeking new tactics for these changing times, OCAP came across an obscure social assistance benefit called the Special Diet. The benefit provided up to $250 a month per person if a medical provider deemed it necessary. Between 2005 and 2010, we ran a systematic campaign to get this benefit to huge numbers of people in poverty. </span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">OCAP organized “hunger clinics,” where medical providers filled in forms for people wanting to access the Special Diet. Social assistance offices predictably rejected these forms on various shabby pretexts. If people wanted to get the benefit, they were going to have to fight for it. Hundreds of actions were organized to confront bureaucrats and officials, and win the provision of the Special Diet. Toronto’s </span><a href="https://socialistproject.ca/leftstreamed-video/ls32/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Somali community</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> was the leading force in many of these actions. Again and again, we broke down the resistance of the system’s gatekeepers. The Ontario Auditor General </span><a href="https://torontoobserver.ca/2010/04/16/protest-serves-up-anger-over-cuts-to-special-diet-allowance/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">estimated</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> that the Special Diet benefit went from paying a mere $6 million a year to providing $200 million. Though the Liberals later changed the rules to restrict access to the Special Diet, it continues to this day to provide far more than it did before OCAP took up this fight.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">  </span></p><h2>Balance sheet</h2><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">These examples of OCAP’s struggles demonstrate the organization’s characteristic approach, rooted in calculated disruptive tactics. But how well did we apply this method, and with what results? </span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Though some might say that OCAP has been able to punch above its weight, a small poor people’s organization could never have reversed, or even halted, an austerity agenda in an unfavourable period of largely defensive struggles. Nonetheless, we’ve won important victories. Our challenges to income support bureaucracies and public housing authorities have ensured that thousands of people obtained resources that would otherwise have been withheld. The Special Diet campaign alone directed nearly a billion dollars to those in urgent need. Squatting actions led to the creation of housing in buildings that had been left empty. Toronto’s shelter system is wretchedly inadequate, but hundreds of bed spaces are available that the authorities would not have opened up but for relentless community pressure that OCAP has played a leading role in building.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">One measure of OCAP’s success is the extent to which our resistance may have limited the ability of those in power to proceed with their agenda of social cutbacks. For example, OCAP’s huge 2012 campaign against the Ontario government’s cut to the </span><a href="https://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/johnbon/2012/10/anti-poverty-activists-demand-ontario-government-save-community-start"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Community Start Up Benefit</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, a program assisting with housing costs, led to $54 million being put back into it. In 1995, we were not able to prevent the Harris Tories from reducing social assistance levels by 21.6 percent, but we put up a serious fight that helped raise the level of anti-Tory mobilization. We know that some members of the government favoured eliminating benefits outright for single employable people – following the example of several US jurisdictions – but they didn’t proceed with such a measure. It is likely that, in this and other areas, our resistance limited the scale of the attack.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">OCAP’s record of fighting back was influential across Ontario and beyond. There are organizations of the poor </span><a href="http://edinburghagainstpoverty.org.uk/?page_id=216"><span style="font-weight: 400;">in various countries </span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">that acknowledge that the example we set helped to orientate their struggles. In the decisive Mike Harris years, the trade union movement didn’t rush out of the gate to challenge the Tory agenda; community organizations, OCAP prominent among them, were quicker to the fight. These first challenges to Tory austerity were vital in building momentum towards the citywide strikes and mass protests that became known as the </span><a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/11/ontario-days-of-action-canada-workers-unions-strike-mike-harris"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Ontario Days of Action</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The question of greatest importance, however, is OCAP’s contribution to building a mass movement among poor people. Clearly the creation of such a movement still lies ahead of us. Tens of thousands of poor and homeless people have been part of OCAP actions over the years, but we have never mobilized on a scale that would compare to the enormous protests of the unemployed during the 1930s. </span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">OCAP’s structure has always been democratic and participatory, with regular membership meetings open to all who wish to participate in our work and set the course for the organization. However, the level of involvement by poor communities has never been high enough to create a movement truly rooted in them. While major actions have continued to bring out significant numbers from those communities, sustained involvement of such communities’ members in OCAP’s day-to-day work and decision-making has been much harder to achieve. For a period, an OCAP Women of Etobicoke office functioned, run by women from the Somali community. Dozens of Indigenous people have taken part in struggles against the brutal impact of homelessness. Yet OCAP’s active membership, as opposed to its supportive periphery, has not adequately reflected the deeply racialized reality of poverty in Toronto. I mentioned earlier that half of those who marched on the Ontario Legislature on the day of the Queen’s Park Riot were themselves homeless, and that counts for a lot. It speaks to OCAP’s serious, sustained effort to build trust and respect among homeless communities, involving constant outreach and countless interventions at shelters and in the streets. But it is still short of the dynamic self-organized model that must be created.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">These problems are not attributable primarily to OCAP’s organizational choices and structure. OCAP has made its share of mistakes, to be sure. The organization has worked to improve how it intervenes and builds its base in poor communities, adopting tactics that have included information tables outside benefits offices, town hall meetings, and community meals. Still, the main difficulties OCAP has faced can be traced to the political problems that the neoliberal period has generated or intensified.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The last several decades have not offered an abundance of evidence that collective action is the way forward. Trade unions, the most powerful form of working-class organization, have lost ground, and the defeats they have suffered have tended to demobilize their members and reinforce conservative, bureaucratic leaderships. A healthy union movement can support resistance among the poorest part of the working class; with some precious exceptions, in recent decades this kind of support has simply not been there. At the same time, while many vital grassroots initiatives have kept resistance alive, our strong and vibrant community-based movements lack the scale that is needed today. A critical mass of effective resistance has not yet been reached. This has impacted peoples’ thinking, fostered a sense of defeat and powerlessness that has made social mobilization very challenging. One woman on disability benefits put it rather starkly: “I respect how you fight back,” she told me, “but, let’s face it, governments are going to do what they are going to do and there’s nothing we can do about it.”</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Yet perhaps there are some lessons learned while swimming against the stream that may prove useful when the tide turns.</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br /></span></p><p> </p><h2>The pandemic era</h2><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The pandemic takes us from an extended period of relative stability, albeit on capitalism’s terms, into one of multifaceted crisis. As the virus has moved along the lines of class and racial inequality laid down for it by the neoliberal order, governments have been forced to implement partial economic shutdowns. Even in a rich country like Canada, this has led to considerable hardship, with the </span><a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2020/12/15/toronto-tenants-facing-eviction-crisis-due-to-combination-of-pandemic-and-provincial-legislation.html"><span style="font-weight: 400;">threat of eviction</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> hanging over a mass of tenants and the </span><a href="https://centre.support/most-canadian-cities-facing-homeless-pandemic-crisis-head-on-report/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">crisis of homelessness</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> greatly intensified.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Even if the worst of the pandemic is behind us, which is far from certain, we will emerge from this global health crisis with what the IMF calls “</span><a href="https://blogs.imf.org/2021/03/31/slow-healing-scars-the-pandemics-legacy/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">economic scarring</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">.” We may expect an effort by employers and governments to restore profitability by ensuring, through </span><a href="https://jacobinmag.com/2021/07/liberal-party-canada-trudeau-covid-post-pandemic-return-to-normal-employment-insurance-tech-entrepreneurship-supercluster-initiative-cerb-crb?fbclid=IwAR1L05KhNSmwIm8xzPuc9W8prDVwJUZW6Gs0-FBDv_Y846Z417_zMIjYC7E"><span style="font-weight: 400;">intensified exploitation</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> and reduced living standards, that working-class people pay for the crisis. One ominous indication of this impending drive to restore “business as usual” is the brutal police operations to drive out homeless people seeking to survive by camping </span><a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/8046320/toronto-homeless-encampment-clearing-lamport-stadium/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">in public parks</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Above all else, we must appreciate that a rapidly intensifying climate disaster hangs over the other elements of today’s social crisis. Recent weeks have seen heatwaves, drought, and wildfires bring death and dislocation to </span><a href="https://www.counterfire.org/articles/opinion/22437-killer-capitalism-climate-change-and-the-north-american-heat-wave"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Western Canada and the US</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, and flooding has </span><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/22/europe/germany-belgium-europe-floods-death-climate-intl/index.html"><span style="font-weight: 400;">occurred in Germany</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, Belgium, the Netherlands, </span><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/20/heavy-flooding-hits-central-china-affecting-tens-of-millions"><span style="font-weight: 400;">and China</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">. Capitalism’s failure to develop a sustainable relationship with nature is causing terrible destruction, distributed along the lines of </span><a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/07/14/1015983700/extreme-heat-is-getting-worse-for-low-income-non-white-americans-a-new-study-sho"><span style="font-weight: 400;">social inequality</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> the system generates. It is clear that the frequency and intensity of the ravages of climate change are going to increase considerably and will add a devastating new element to the war on the poor.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">If the period ahead is marked by increased levels of social conflict, mass social mobilization in response will be a real prospect. Disruptive collective action, fighting to win, may unfold on a different scale. Ever since the end of World War Two, trade unions in Canada have operated within a legal, state-regulated framework that has limited their capacity to mobilize and struggle. Despite the assault on organized workers that has been such a key element of the neoliberal decades, the rules and standards of this relative class compromise have remained largely intact. In the post-pandemic period, with a greatly intensified employer offensive, a rejuvenated militant trade union model will be essential.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">If they are to become the organizations of effective class struggle they urgently need to be, unions must break out of the constraints of compartmentalized, state-approved activity. For unions, fighting to win would mean the rank-and-file driving a renewed ability to strike on a wider front, beyond skirmishes over individual collective agreements. It would mean a massive effort to include low-wage and precarious workers, and to mobilize seriously in solidarity with communities under attack. It would also mean looking for methods of struggle against capital and state that are as disruptive and threatening as the </span><a href="https://socialistworker.org/2011/06/10/the-sit-down-strikes"><span style="font-weight: 400;">sit-downs of the prewar years</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">. The neoliberal era’s global supply chain has its choke points, sites of vulnerability that an unfettered trade union power could inflict hammer blows on. The blockades and other actions that took place across Canada in early 2020 to support Wet’suwet’en land defenders, a movement led by Indigenous peoples, gave a sense of what is possible with </span><a href="https://spectrejournal.com/the-global-supply-chain-neoliberalisms-weak-link/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">such forms of resistance</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">. When such powerful tactics are set in motion, however, labour relations boards throw up their hands in horror and courts issue injunctions, orders to cease and desist. The niceties of regulated, respectable class conflict will have to be left behind.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Such disruptive methods will become ever more necessary as the impacts of climate change intensify and communities face extreme weather, destruction, and displacement. Capitalist states will be only too ready to abandon poor and racialized working-class people to such horrors and tell them “</span><a href="https://www.citynews1130.com/2021/06/29/bc-premier-heatwave-deaths/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">fatalities are a part of life</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">.” The resources, the supports, all the measures needed in a time of worsening climate crisis will have to be won by ongoing mass action that is built and sustained through dynamic, participatory forms of organization. It won’t be enough to secure token representation on government advisory bodies. It will be necessary to confront power structures and develop a powerful solidarity for survival. </span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The spirit of fighting to win can also be expressed through the demands that movements make. The huge mobilization for Black lives that followed the police murder of George Floyd </span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abolish-defund-police.html"><span style="font-weight: 400;">advanced the struggle for police abolition</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">. The flow of people across borders, which will greatly increase under the impact of the climate crisis, requires bold demands to open those borders, rather than appeals for a few minor concessions. As the full horror of Canada’s genocidal residential “school” system emerges, the present-day colonial reality must be confronted and the Trudeau brand of “reconciliation” decisively rejected. This is a period when the stultifying mechanisms of compromise and containment must be overcome, and a movement built that expresses that defiance in action.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">OCAP has long taken the view that because it is an organization that fights poverty, it must also be anti-capitalist. The organization has been guided by a sense that we should demand and struggle for what we need to survive, rather than reconciling ourselves to an oppressive, exploitative system that can’t meet those needs. If such a system is unable to provide what’s necessary, it deserves only to perish.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">This is a perspective that can be fully developed only in a period of working-class offensive. The pandemic may have opened up such a situation – in which disruptive collective action, creating crises for those in power, might have far more decisive consequences. In such a moment, OCAP’s experience over three decades holds valuable lessons. It offers an important model of organization and struggle for the years that lie ahead.</span></p><p> </p><p><img fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" class="wp-image-3120 aligncenter" src="https://www.midnightsunmag.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Midnight-Sun-John-Clarke-1024x604.png" alt="" width="694" height="409" srcset="https://www.midnightsunmag.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Midnight-Sun-John-Clarke-1024x604.png 1024w, https://www.midnightsunmag.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Midnight-Sun-John-Clarke-300x177.png 300w, https://www.midnightsunmag.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Midnight-Sun-John-Clarke-768x453.png 768w, https://www.midnightsunmag.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Midnight-Sun-John-Clarke-1536x907.png 1536w, https://www.midnightsunmag.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Midnight-Sun-John-Clarke-2048x1209.png 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 694px) 100vw, 694px" /></p>						</div>
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							<p>John Clarke is a writer and anti-poverty activist in Toronto. He was an organizer with the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) for almost 30 years.</p><p>yumigou is a Chinese illustrator and graphic designer located on illegally occupied Algonquin territory. He welcomes possibilities for collaboration on political projects and can be reached on <a href="https://twitter.com/yumigou_">Twitter</a> and <a href="https://www.instagram.com/yumigou_/">Instagram</a> as @yumigou_.</p>						</div>
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					<div class="elementor-shortcode"><div class="crp_related  crp_related_shortcode    crp-text-only"><h3>Related:</h3><ul><li><a href="https://www.midnightsunmag.ca/moments-of-vast-possibility/"     class="crp_link post-5937"><span class="crp_title">Moments of Vast Possibility</span></a><span class="crp_excerpt"> Solidarity Winnipeg’s Jesslyn Best and Leslie Ep discuss utopias, popular uprisings, gender and sexual freedom, communist politics, and speculative fiction with M.E. O’Brien and Eman Abdelhadi, the authors of the new book Everything For Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052-2072.</span></li><li><a href="https://www.midnightsunmag.ca/what-we-mean-by-community-is-our-yearning-for-communism/"     class="crp_link post-7485"><span class="crp_title">What We Mean by Community is Our Yearning for Communism</span></a><span class="crp_excerpt"> M.E. O’Brien on family abolition and the communizing of care as political horizons worth fighting for. A conversation with Midnight Sun editor David Camfield.</span></li><li><a href="https://www.midnightsunmag.ca/protest-and-pleasure-a-revolution-led-by-sex-workers/"     class="crp_link post-3820"><span class="crp_title">Protest & Pleasure: A Revolution Led by Sex Workers</span></a><span class="crp_excerpt"> A conversation with Monica Forrester, Toni-Michelle Williams, and Chanelle Gallant about why trans women of colour sex workers are the leaders we need, lighting the way to revolutionary horizons.</span></li><li><a href="https://www.midnightsunmag.ca/festivals-of-the-possible/"     class="crp_link post-4080"><span class="crp_title">Festivals of the Possible</span></a><span class="crp_excerpt"> Megan Kinch on the Occupy movement, which erupted 10 years ago: its particular blend of spontaneity, organization, and technology; the forms it took in Toronto and elsewhere in Canada; and its mixed legacies. A personal and political reflection.</span></li></ul><div class="crp_clear"></div></div></div>
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		<p>The post <a href="https://www.midnightsunmag.ca/ocap-and-the-power-of-disruptive-action/">OCAP and the Power of Disruptive Action</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.midnightsunmag.ca">Midnight Sun</a>.</p>
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		<title>Resisting the Attack on Toronto&#8217;s Encampments</title>
		<link>https://www.midnightsunmag.ca/resisting-the-attack-on-torontos-encampments/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=resisting-the-attack-on-torontos-encampments</link>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Midnight Sun]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Mon, 26 Jul 2021 18:41:54 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Interventions]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Encampments]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Eviction defence]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[John Clarke]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Municipal politics]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.midnightsunmag.ca/?p=2813</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[<p>Former Ontario Coalition Against Poverty organizer John Clarke on the escalating fight to defend our unhoused neighbours.</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://www.midnightsunmag.ca/resisting-the-attack-on-torontos-encampments/">Resisting the Attack on Toronto&#8217;s Encampments</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.midnightsunmag.ca">Midnight Sun</a>.</p>
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			<h2 class="elementor-heading-title elementor-size-default"><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/mmmswan/50724703143/" target="_blank">Photo: Michael Swan</a></h2>		</div>
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							<h3 style="text-align: right;">7. 26. 2021</h3><h1 style="text-align: left;">Resisting the Attack on Toronto&#8217;s Encampments</h1><h3 style="text-align: right;"><b><br /></b><span style="color: #000000;"><a style="color: #000000;" href="https://www.midnightsunmag.ca/tag/john-clarke/"><strong>John Clarke</strong></a></span></h3><hr /><p><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br />As Toronto City Hall sends in massive squads of police to </span><a href="https://toronto.citynews.ca/2021/07/21/homeless-encampment-lamport-stadium-park/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">drive unhoused people</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> from encampments in public parks, the question arises of how best to resist this brutal attack. Based on my own experiences as an anti-poverty organizer, I think there are some strategic considerations that must inform this struggle.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">It should be understood that municipal government is the level of state power that most directly serves the interests of the capitalists who invest in property. In recent decades, Toronto City Hall&#8217;s main role has been to facilitate the creation of a “neoliberal city” in which an agenda of upscale redevelopment and extreme </span><a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/06/canada-housing-rising-rent-real-estate-property-market-bubble-landlords-investment"><span style="font-weight: 400;">commodification of housing</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> is pursued relentlessly. This course of action has resulted in massive profits for developers, construction companies, and bankers. It has also provided a lot of luxury housing on prime urban land for those wealthy enough to afford it. At the same time, it has led to gentrification of working-class communities, soaring rents that have caused immense hardship for poor tenants, and an ever-worsening catastrophe of homelessness. </span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The triumph of this profit-driven agenda has been so complete that it has reduced political differences within Toronto’s City Council to a very narrow range. A dominant grouping on Council that includes Mayor John Tory enthusiastically embraces the redevelopment drive and works to take it as far as possible. A queasy group of ”progressives” finds this agenda sad and regrettable but considers it to be inevitable. These councillors are reduced to begging for small concessions from the developers and financiers, so as to make the process slightly less harmful. For them, “victories” are won if they can ensure some additional park space or a few more housing units within upscale developments that are described as “affordable” but that poor people can’t actually afford to live in. This means these “progressives” will do very little to support community-based resista</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">nce </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">– only </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">as much as they feel is necessary to preserve their progressive credentials. In the present context, though they won’t speak unequivocally in defence of encampments, several members of this group on Council have come out against the </span><a href="https://www.toronto.com/news-story/10442620-advocates-several-city-councillors-demand-toronto-stop-violent-encampment-clearings/?fbclid=iwar3rqejtp4cmibhzcbberi9c_lysvjtbf2tn2cm42cww1tawxxttvkmdwhm#.YPuCBNaOzkU.facebook"><span style="font-weight: 400;">use of police violence</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> to shut them down.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">For the politicians and senior administrators in Tory’s faction, the public outcry over encampment raids is disturbing, but they calculate it will subside. Their overriding goal is to open up a path for investment and development. Homelessness and the human suffering it involves are not a problem for them as long as these things are not too visible. If homeless people can be crowded into hellish shelter facilities or otherwise made to sleep somewhere out of sight, the neoliberal city will function more smoothly.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The only effective means of resistance in this situation is to ensure that the visibility of the homeless disaster is increased, rather than diminished. This is the key to convincing the municipal power structure that their present course causes more problems than it solves. It is vital that on-site resistance to encampment clearings be maintained and intensified. The process of removing people from parks has been more than the mayor and his senior planners bargained for, and resistance to it has the potential to undermine their resolve, forcing them to call off their cops and offer serious housing solutions. </span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The use of a wide range of tactics is healthy. Keeping the issue alive on social media is very helpful. There is nothing at all wrong with lobbying members of City Council, including making use of official channels to register community concern: deputations before Council standing committees and suchlike. However, such tactics will not be enough to convince the most influential politicians and administrators that the political price tag for their present course is more than they want to pay. To take things to that level, disruptive forms of collective action will be absolutely necessary.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">There are places where politicians and the business interests they serve would be even more distressed to encounter “visible homelessness” than in public parks: their condo showrooms, their fancy gatherings, their favourite restaurants, and outside their luxury homes (Mayor Tory is especially sensitive in this regard). All disruptive actions that place unhoused people and their allies where the grandees of redevelopment don&#8217;t want them to be can be enormously effective.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">City Hall itself must also be a focus for such action. Council and committee meetings can be confronted; visits can be paid to the offices of key politicians. High-profile municipal events can be interrupted. The more disruptive the challenge that is set against them, the more that officials are likely to opt for concessions in place of their present repressive course. The more pressure that is applied, the more the “progressives” on Council will want to distance themselves from the group around the mayor, and press for viable solutions. Tory himself, while he diligently serves the redevelopment agenda, has his own pretensions to “inclusiveness” and “social compassion” that he tries to preserve. Substantial concessions from City Hall are entirely winnable.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The present effort to sweep out encampment residents takes place as municipal politicians develop their goals and priorities for a “post-pandemic” Toronto. That they are ready to serve the needs of wealth and property in so brutal a fashion sounds an ominous note for all of us. This is an attack that urgently needs to be defeated by a broad, united movement of community resistance. The effort to push homeless people from view, along with the entire agenda of profit-driven social abandonment, must be met with a defiance that is loud, glaringly visible, and utterly impossible to ignore.</span></p>						</div>
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							<p style="text-align: left;">John Clarke is a writer and anti-poverty activist in Toronto. He was an organizer with the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) for almost 30 years.</p>						</div>
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					<div class="elementor-shortcode"><div class="crp_related  crp_related_shortcode    crp-text-only"><h3>Related:</h3><ul><li><a href="https://www.midnightsunmag.ca/festivals-of-the-possible/"     class="crp_link post-4080"><span class="crp_title">Festivals of the Possible</span></a><span class="crp_excerpt"> Megan Kinch on the Occupy movement, which erupted 10 years ago: its particular blend of spontaneity, organization, and technology; the forms it took in Toronto and elsewhere in Canada; and its mixed legacies. A personal and political reflection.</span></li><li><a href="https://www.midnightsunmag.ca/what-we-mean-by-community-is-our-yearning-for-communism/"     class="crp_link post-7485"><span class="crp_title">What We Mean by Community is Our Yearning for Communism</span></a><span class="crp_excerpt"> M.E. O’Brien on family abolition and the communizing of care as political horizons worth fighting for. A conversation with Midnight Sun editor David Camfield.</span></li><li><a href="https://www.midnightsunmag.ca/moments-of-vast-possibility/"     class="crp_link post-5937"><span class="crp_title">Moments of Vast Possibility</span></a><span class="crp_excerpt"> Solidarity Winnipeg’s Jesslyn Best and Leslie Ep discuss utopias, popular uprisings, gender and sexual freedom, communist politics, and speculative fiction with M.E. O’Brien and Eman Abdelhadi, the authors of the new book Everything For Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052-2072.</span></li><li><a href="https://www.midnightsunmag.ca/one-year-after-lamport-stadium/"     class="crp_link post-5698"><span class="crp_title">One Year After Lamport Stadium</span></a><span class="crp_excerpt"> A year after the brutal eviction of encampment residents at Toronto’s Lamport Stadium Park, members of Encampment Support Network Parkdale reflect on the transformative power of community resistance.</span></li></ul><div class="crp_clear"></div></div></div>
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		<p>The post <a href="https://www.midnightsunmag.ca/resisting-the-attack-on-torontos-encampments/">Resisting the Attack on Toronto&#8217;s Encampments</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.midnightsunmag.ca">Midnight Sun</a>.</p>
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