Occupied Vancouver Sun

The February 1st, 2012 issue is available. Subscribe to the newspaper....

WISH LIST…PLEASE DISTRIBUTE

Currently there is a camp set up behind Osgoode Hall. There are MANY donations that would be greatly appreciated by the occupiers. Please see the list below and feel free to drop off the items at the camp at any time! WISH LIST: Water Tarps Blankets Tents Poles ropes/twines books Gloves Wheeled cart/Trolly Building Material Hammer & nails Recycled Bicycle Parts Cardboard Food Skids We are also looking for someone near by who has a dryer available to dry their clothing....

#solidaritysunday #J29

Occupiers everywhere! TODAY IS SOLIDARITY SUNDAY! In response to brutal police repression in Oakland this evening (including tear-gas, “flash” grenades, projectiles, mass arrests, and a pregnant woman hit in the belly by a policeman’s baton) direct action working groups from at least Occupy Wall St, Occupy Boston, and Occupy Philly, have stayed up late to craft a massive coordinated response. Continue Reading »...

Update on the Activist Assembly!

This weekend is the Activist Assembly taking place at OISE. The weekend is packed-full of great speakers, talks and workshops. The revised schedule is below and more information is available at: https://www.facebook.com/events/270078499716966/ If you would like to assist the food committee by providing a kitchen to cook in, donations or prepared food please contact: [email protected] **Registration for this event is REQUIRED (it is free!). Please register by emailing: [email protected] We look forward to seeing you there! SCHEDULE of EVENTS: Friday: 7:00 – 10:00 -Opening Panel – Discussion of why Occupy was effective. Panelists all represent groups who were inspired by the Occupy Movement to fight harder then ever. Focus on the importance of outreach, protest, mass mobilisation, and of constant recruitment of new people. Strucure of the opening event will be speeches from the panelists followed by a facilitated, open discussion among atendees. Finally break out groups to get to know each other and answer the question “Why are we here?” Speakers: Carolyn Egan – is the president of the Steelworkers’ Toronto Area Council and United Steelworkers Local 8300. She is a long-time pro-choice, anti-war and social justice activist in Toronto and a leading member of the International Socialists. Judy Rebick – is a veteran activist, on feminist, democracy, anti-racist and international solidarity issues. She is also a writer, teacher and sometime journalist. She has a new e book coming out in March called Occupy This!. She is the founding publisher of rabble.ca and a regular on the Q media panel. Syed Hussan – is an organizer, activist and writer based in Toronto. Hussan has been involved with anti-colonial, migrant justice, feminist, anti-racist, environmental justice, anti-war and prison abolition movements and is active in No One Is Illegal – Toronto and Toronto Stop the Cuts Network. As part of his involvement in the Toronto Community Mobilization Network, Hussan was charged with Conspiracy. Though his charges were dropped after 18 months, 6 activist and community organizers have been jailed for the Anti-G20 protests. Saturday: 11:00 – 12:15 – Auditorium – Discussion of Committee / Decision-Making Structure – Michael Rosenburg, Octavian cadabeschi 12:30-1:30 lunch 1:30-2:45 – Auditorium – Discussion of non-Toronto experience – Roundtable discussion, many speakers 3:00-4:15 – Committees and Campaigns Room 1 – Occupy Gardens – Jacob Kearey Moreland Room 2 – Accessability Committee – Loretta Lime Room 3 – Occupy The Rainbow – Jordan BG                                                                                                                                                                                  Room 4 – Occupy UofT/Occupy Ryerson – Ryerson & UofT Rep. 4:30-5:45 – Discussion of issues Room 1 – Environmental Justice – Someone from Environmental Justice Toronto – Megan Kinch Room 2 – Canada’s occupation at home and abroad – Sid Lacombe Room 3 – Financial Bubble Collapse – David Mcnally Room 4 – Austerity – Neoliberalism – Nigel Barriffe and Victoria Barnett Room 5 – Colonisation, Militirisation and Attacks on Unions – Nadia Saad Room 6 – Indigenous – Randy Kapashesit 6:00-7:00 Dinner 7:30-9:30 General Assembly – OISE courtyard 10:00-2:00 Social – Duke of York – near OISE and St George station, in their Cellar space which hosts 150+ people. 19+ $0-$99 reccommended donation ($0 perfectly acceptable) – To help cover space rental costs for weekend. Sunday: 11:00-12:45 – Classroom part 1 Room 1 – Speaking to the Media – Dan Speerin, Adam Slinn, Syed Hussan Room 2 – Facilitation Training – Peter Bromley Room 3 – 10 steps to effective campaigning – Steve Stallhorn Room 4 – Direct Action Training – Aspa + Dave Vasey + Eryn Wheatle Room 5 – Marshal Training – Martin Sneath, Anna Sneath Room 6 – Medic Training – Trish Mills, Kristina McGuire, Ed Lutz LUNCH 1:45 – 3:30 Classroom part 2 Room 1 – Speaking to the Media – Dan Speerin, Adam Slinn, Syed Hussan Room 2 – Facilitation Training – Lee McKenna Room 3 – 10 steps to effective campeigning – Steve Stallhorn Room 4 – Direct Action Training – Aspa + Dave Vasey + Eryn Wheatle Room 5 – Marshal Training – Martin Sneath, Anna Sneath Room 6 – Medic Training – Trish Mills, Kristina McGuire, Ed Lutz 3:45 – 5:15 Committee Discussions Room 1 – Outreach Shanger/Sean Robinson, Katie Berger/ Room 2 – Action – Dave Vessey, Lana Brite Room 2 – Room 3 – Mischa Saunders Room 4 – Finance – Lex Room 5 – Marshal – Trey Winney 5:30-6:00 Closing Ceremony – Main Room...

OCCUPY THE BUDGET

On January 17th Occupy Toronto will Occupy the Budget and stage a three day over-night occupation outside of City hall. Our three-day occupation requires all committees to reactivate! Specifically, we need more volunteers for food, info and logistics! If you were previously a member of these committees or if you would like to join these (or any) committee now, please contact [email protected] and come down on January 17th! Join us! Occupy the Budget! Occupy City Hall! – For more info on Ford’s cuts, and on the Rally at City Hall at 5:30 on the 17th, check out:www.torontostopthecuts.com – Even if you can’t stay overnight or have to work, your support during the day would be highly appreciated! Bring blankets and tents. Bring baked potatoes and hot chocolate. Bring a hot meal to the kitchen. Hang around for an hour or two serving food or helping with logistics. It all helps! Spread the Word!...

All out for a three day outdoor occupation of City Hall during the city budget meetings!

Tuesday the 17th, Wednesday the 18th, and Thursday the 19th of January 2012! Bring your tent, stay the night! Show Rob Ford and his corporate backers that our city isn’t theirs to dismantle! On the 17th of January, Rob Ford and his cronies are going to try to pass a budget full of service cuts, attacks on workers and ordinary people as part of his austerity agenda. Ford – a millionaire business owner himself – doesn’t care about ordinary people (neither 905 OR downtown,) he only cares about filling the pockets of his corporate buddies. Like other politicians around the world, he’s cutting services, firing workers, downloading costs to other people and telling people to “tighten their belts” while banks and corporations make record profits! Occupy Toronto is drawing a line in the sand and saying no more! We are supporting Stop The Cuts and their 5:30 rally at City Hall, and we are sticking around for 3 days after to keep saying No More! Join us! Occupy the Budget! Occupy City Hall! – For more info on Ford’s cuts, and on the Rally at City Hall at 5:30 on the 17th, check out:www.torontostopthecuts.com – Even if you can’t stay overnight or have to work, your support during the day would be highly appreciated! Bring blankets and tents. Bring baked potatoes and hot chocolate. Bring a hot meal to the kitchen. Hang around for an hour or two serving food or helping with logistics. It all helps!...

Analysis of Occupy movement (three articles)

Three very good articles – two specifically about Occupy and an old article from the women’s movement: A Movement Without Demands? by Marco Deseriis and Jodi Dean “The question of demands infused the initial weeks and months of Occupy Wall Street with the endless opening of desire. Nearly unbearable, the absence of demands concentrated interest, fear, expectation, and hope in the movement. What did they want? What could they want? Commentators have been nearly hysterical in their demand for demands.” Three Complaints About OWS by Charles Lenchner “We can’t accuse ourselves of being well organized. And this lack of organization, championed by so many as a key ingredient of Occupy Wall Street’s success, continues to trip us up.” The Tyranny of Structurelessness by Jo Freeman “During the years in which the women’s liberation movement has been taking shape, a great emphasis has been placed on what are called leaderless, structureless groups as the main — if not sole — organizational form of the movement. The source of this idea was a natural reaction against the over-structured society in which most of us found ourselves, and the inevitable control this gave others over our lives, and the continual elitism of the Left and similar groups among those who were supposedly fighting this overstructuredness.”...

BuddyPress layout is Up… & What’s YOUR Vision for this website going forward?

Occupy Toronto 04 January 2012 by Michael Holloway   I think we want to create something I don’t think I’ve seen anywhere else — essentially we want a Blog, a Forum and a Wiki — all in one place. At the last web development meeting on January 3, 2012, we agreed to fire up the new BuddyPress software that will enable many of the functionalities I talked about in my last post on this (29/Dec/11- http://occupyto.org/2011/12/whats-up-at-the-web-development-team/). By the weekend (07/Jan/12) Committee ‘Group Pages’ should be up for the General Assembly and 16 active Committees the WebDEV team is aware of.  Each Group page in the new BuddyPress layout has it’s own Forum and Blog space. The front page of the OccupyTO website will be a listing of most recent posts and comments from all 17 group pages. We’ve decided, as a starting place, to mirror the www.nycga.net site – but soon, many features not on the the New York City General Assembly site will be rolled out here – stay tuned… We’ve also decided that instead of playing god developer – we would ask YOU, the users what YOU want out of the new site! Bev Leroux has some ideas… ( Comment from Bev Leroux, 16 December 2011 on the occupyto.org post “Welcome Back! Please Excuse the mess…” http://occupyto.org/2011/12/hello-world/#comment-5 ) “I really hope this site is going to be interactive and user friendly. Where one can comment on posts and post ideas, opinions and announcements. “I hope it will gather all of the various committees and working groups, activities and future plans, announcements and requests for assistance–all under one big umbrella. “Please let it be the go-to place for all Occupy Toronto needs and activities. “Right now, most of the communication takes place on Facebook and I have heard a lot of people say they don’t even follow Occupy on Facebook. So what does that mean for communication? It means there’s a huge information gap and a great deal of mis- and dis-information floating around. “Let’s get a central virtual online hub for all activity. That’s doable even if we are failing, so far, to find a long-term physical home. “Let me know if there is any way I can help to make this happen. “Love you all… in solidarity Bev “PS: From my own experience, the chat portion of Livestream is a very sad place and definitely unqualified as a communication tool.” ——————— Thanks Bev. Nicely said.   “Mari” said, ‘Love the new site so far! I wish I could make technology work instead or just posting things on it! lol…Keep up the good work.’ Thanks Mari. Bang-on in my opinion. The www is a 2 way conversation, an interactive collaboration space, and an old school broadcast portal.   Please leave more feed back in comments … and please remember, this is Day 1 of the New BuddyPress layout — we’re just learning all the in’s and out’s too!  :] mh...

CCPA report – the 0.01%

There’s no contest when it comes to CEO compensation The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ annual look at CEO compensation looks at 2010 compensation levels for Canada’s highest paid 100 CEOs and finds they pocketed an average of an average $8.38 million in 2010 – a 27% increase over the average $6.6 million they took in 2009. Even in these turbulent economic times, the average of Canada’s CEO Elite 100 make 189 times more than Canadians earning the average wage. The full report, Canada’s CEO Elite 100: The 0.01% is available here. Source – CCPA website...

DONATE TO OCCUPY

Occupy Toronto welcomes non-charitable financial donations to assist with hosting and development costs for the website. To donate for all other costs including committee management, please use the contact us for here. No one working with Occupy Toronto is paid.







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