(joint statement from University of Ottawa Marxist Student Association [uOMSA] and PCR-RCP Ottawa)
Throughout the following statement, we’ll do our best to
keep things short and concise. It’s been a tumultuous few
days and even now piecing together a narrative out of the
events that transpired is difficult. Nonetheless we’ll try
and do the following: 1) give a background to our own
involvement in Occupy Ottawa; 2) give a narrative of the
difficulties we faced; and 3) offer constructive
suggestions as to what needs to be fixed in the camp.
We went into Occupy Ottawa knowing that this was not
going to be the movement that ended capitalism. What we
hoped was that out of this, movements that could end
capitalism would emerge. We also came with a handful of
critiques about consensus, the rhetoric of the 99%, the
class composition of the movement, and other aspects. We
later on developed these critiques more fully into
pamphlets and extended the critique to the hidden
leadership that was forming. But believing that critique
without action is useless, we threw ourselves into the
movement with the intentions of sticking it out to the end.
Our “agenda” was two-fold: 1) we wanted to bring
students into the Marxist’s student’s association (MSA);
and 2) we wanted to see if we could start a Proletarian
Revolutionary Action Committee (PRAC), modeled after
the one in Toronto.
In terms of involvement, we camped out at Occupy
Ottawa from the first day of the occupation. We held
meetings on the site. We attempted to run seminars on
topics like “Socialism and the Occupation”, and “What is
capitalism?”. We were involved in a number of nuts-andbolts committees like the food committee and the medic
committee, but we made a conscious decision to not get
involved in the leadership of the camp. As such, we were
not involved in any of the leadership committees (media,
facilitation, infrastructure, etc.) nor were we part of the
hidden leadership.
Our difficulties began one week into the occupation, and
centred largely around two individuals. For anonymity’s
sake, we’ll call them Individual #1 and Individual #2.
Individual #1 is a member of the hidden leadership, and is
on the infrastructure committee. He identifies as an
anarcho-pacifist and a Buddhist. Individual #2 is someone
who has spent a lot of time in the camp; we do not believe
that they are part of the hidden leadership.
After getting our own infrastructure together over the
course of the first week, we finally decided to set up a tent
from which we could conduct propaganda. We also
decided to hold a meeting around the statement of the
PCR-RCP Canada surrounding the occupations (it can be
found here: http://www.pcr-rcp.ca/en/ ). As such, we
handed out the statement as well as invitations to a
discussion that was to be held the next day.
We had the misfortune of handing an invitation to
Individual #1. After making a laborious show about
suffering the indignation of being given a piece of paper
from Maoists, he proceeded to spend a good chunk of the
evening mocking us, from a distance of course. In and of
itself this is not particularly damning; lots of people aren’t
Maoists, and we have no illusions as to our own
popularity in Canada. His actions, however, set the
baseline for what would be a constantly escalating anticommunist campaign.
On the next day, we finally put up our propaganda tent.
Before we had even finished setting out a literature table,
we were approached by someone on safety committee
who requested we take down our tent, move it away from
the central walkway, or make it less visible. We
adamantly refused; there had been nothing decided at a
GA which would limit our ability to conduct propaganda,
and therefore we found it absolutely nonsensical for us to
abide by an arbitrary decision. Heated comments were
exchanged over the next few hours between us and
members of the hidden leadership. It needs to be stated, in
the interests of fairness, that the individual who initially
told us to move our tent would later be incredibly helpful
and fair in dealing with other situations as they arose.
Eventually we came to an informal agreement that we
would designate one side of the main walkway as a
political area where anyone could come and conduct
propaganda. We were thrilled with this; political debate in
the interests of unity can never be anything but helpful.
We agreed to take this to the GA. However, at the GA, the
infrastructure committee put forward a counter-proposal
that would have had us relegated to an area at the back of
the camp; an effective ghettoisation of politics. We
believe Individual #1 to have been involved in this
derailment. We of course blocked the counter-proposal,
and eventually there was a vote of no confidence in the
facilitators and as such the GA was shut down. (This is a
simplified version of events; there were actually three
proposals put forward. We can go into more detail
elsewhere for those who are interested in procedure, but it
isn’t particularly relevant to the narrative of events.)
It’s worth noting that in the lead-up to the GA, Individual
#1 was heard going around to others in the camp and agitating against us. He told people that (some of whom
happened to be our friends), to paraphrase, “Historically
communists only join movements to split them”. This was
of course without ever talking to us about our politics or
our intentions; Individual #1 prefers to act in a sneaky
manner rather than having political disagreements in the
open. We believe Individual #1 contributed in the creation
of an atmosphere which encouraged violence toward us.
What followed the disastrous GA was altogether positive.
Many of the hidden rifts in the camp were forced open,
and there was plenty of political discussion. Some of the
hidden leadership began questioning the consensus and
GA structure that we had adopted at Occupy Ottawa. By
the next morning things seemed to have calmed down
quite a bit; our tent existed in a weird space of nonofficiality, but nobody (it seemed) was questioning our
right to be there and conduct propaganda work.
The next night everything changed. During the half hour
or so that we had left the camp to grab coffee, Individual
#1 decided to it would be funny to hang a feces, urine, and
blood covered blanket over our tent. Despite promoting
the leaderless nature of this movement, he had someone
carry this action out. After initially denying involvement
in this act, he later said he suggested it as a “joke”. It’s
worth noting that he stated to others that he said he
intended to do it but only for a short time where we
couldn’t see it because he thought it would be funny. He
also alleged that he thought that there was only urine on
the blanket, as if that makes things any better.
Individual #1 speaks out of both sides of his mouth; it
really isn’t relevant what justification he gives at any
given moment or to any given party. What is relevant is
that Individual #1 thought it would be a good idea to hang
a urine, blood, and feces soaked blanket on our tent. It was
later revealed to us that the blood on the blanket belonged
to an individual who may be infected with a
communicable blood disease. This was an incredibly
violent act on the part of Individual #1, which put all of us
in danger.
(As a brief aside, we want to point out that we don’t hold
any grudges against the individual whose blood was on
the blanket. Many people have different diseases for a
multitude of reasons; it’s up to us to build structures and
communities that can properly care for all people. This
being said, the fact that the blood was diseased
complicated matters for us.)
Because the blanket had blood on it, it was decided that
our tent be put under quarantine for 16 hours; the amount
of time the communicable blood disease takes to break
down outside of the human body. In order to maintain the
quarantine, we watched the tent until 4:30AM at which
point the medic committee was to take over. During the
quarantine process, Individual #2 continually used oldfashioned HIV scare tactics to suggest that the tent should
just be torn down. During the night, someone approached
the tent to tear it down, and when they were stopped, they
said that someone had given them drugs to do so.
Sometime between 4:30AM and 9:00AM Individual #2
tore down the tent using his bare hands. When questioned
that morning by someone not involved with us, he replied
“These people need to go. They are going to divide this
movement.”
We returned to the camp that morning in an effort to get
Individual #1 expelled for his actions. This still has not
been done; we were told by a member of the hidden
leadership that Individual #1 “does too much work to
leave.”
Later that day, the spot that the tent formerly had been
(which should have still been under quarantine), was
taken over by another tent. Individual #2 claimed that the
community had come to a consensus that we had to go,
that the location was too good to allow us to use, and that
we had failed the community by not enforcing the
quarantine throughout the night. By failing to enforce the
quarantine after 4:30AM, we were told that we had passed
our problem onto the community that that this was
unacceptable. All of this was decided, he told us, at a
secret morning meeting that we had been invited to but
had failed to show up at. Throughout the entire
conversation Individual #2 was attempting to physically
intimidate us. Everything Individual #2 had said was of
course false; there had been no decision beyond the one at
the GA two nights earlier that allowed us to conduct
propaganda work. We discovered this after taking to
people around the camp. Let it also be known that at no
time did Individual #2 attempt to tear down the media
tent, where the blanket had also been hanging for some
time.
The tent had been disposed of in a location that we are
still unaware of. All of our propaganda materials –
pamphlets, books, flags, banners, etc.– were left in a pile
with the contaminated materials. As of now we have still
not been compensated for either the tent or the materials.
Evaluating the safety of our situation, and the relative
effort and resources we were putting into the movement
VS gain we were getting out of it, we decided to leave.
We decided to have one final conversation with Individual
#1 and Individual #2 to try and get a more coherent
picture of what happened. The conversation with
Individual #1 ended with Individual #1 running away and
screaming “Fascists!” at us, a statement he maintains is
fact. The conversation with Individual #2 ended with
more physical intimidation, threats of violence directed at
us, and Individual #2 screaming “The communists are taking over!” It shouldn’t need to be stated that we are
neither fascists, nor were we trying to take over.
It was these last interactions that confirmed for us that the
attacks we had been facing were targeted and political in
nature. For a movement that claims to be inclusive and
non-violent, we faced both ostracisation and violence. On
the part of the hidden leadership, there was no willingness
to create a space that was safe for us.
Since we left we have heard reports of Neo-Nazis setting
up in the camp. One of our friends was threatened by
them, with the Neo-Nazis not only threatening to cover
her in urine, but also following her home (away from the
camp) for a short time. This is unacceptable.
We would like to underline that some of the experiences
at the camp were positive, and some of the people we met
and conversations we had were fantastic. However, until
these issues are dealt with, we cannot in good conscience
return to the camp. To this end, here are a series of
suggestions that could have prevented this from
happening, and they are the bare minimum required for
our return:
1) The lack of involvement of much of the left hurt this
movement. While no individual should feel obligated to
challenge things like racism, sexism, etc. the left as a
whole does have a duty to do this. Many on the left
refused to engage in the movement, and because of that,
right wing and anti-social politics were allowed to
manifest themselves in the movement. A chorus of “shit’s
fucked up” is not helpful; what is helpful, is people on the
ground making changes.
2) Individual #1 and Individual #2 need to be removed
from the camp. We cannot feel safe in this camp until they
are gone.
3) Occupy Ottawa needs to have some form of organized
force in order to remove anti-social elements like the
fascists.
4) Drug and alcohol use should be controlled within the
camp. This should be done in a way that recognizes that
many homeless people use Confederation Park as a place
for drug and alcohol use, and by no means should they be
prevented to do so or kicked out. Those on active duty
within the camp (medic, safety, legal, etc.) should be
sober.
Until these actions are taken, we will not involve
ourselves with this movement anymore. Here’s hoping the
real decision makers at Occupy Ottawa are willing and
listening.
October 28, 2011
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