I-Week debate on Occupy movement raises heated questions
Scott Fenwick
Gateway Staff
Feb 05, 2012
An International Week debate on whether the Occupy Wall Street movement should adopt a distinct set of policies led to heated exchanges between panellists and audience members Thursday evening.
The debate came just hours after protesters, which included some Occupy Edmonton members, marched through University of Alberta buildings to rally support for postsecondary education.
Edmonton Journal columnist Paula Simons, who spoke in favour of the motion, argued that the Occupy movement would earn more credibility if it engaged in a larger conversation about policy, instead of focusing on camp sites.
“Right now, the Occupy Wall Street movement is undercutting its own credibility with the public, the media and politicians by using the language of demands, threats and extortion,” Simons said, noting the difference between giving ultimatums and policy alternatives.
“If you want more thoughtful media coverage or time, if you want more thoughtful public response to your protest, you have to offer people something to think about to engage them in conversation — not just provoke them into a reaction.”
However, Chelsea Taylor, a panellist who spoke against the motion as an Occupy Edmonton spokesperson, was concerned about over-simplifying the movement’s message and suppressing other valid ideas. She also questioned the idea of writing policies for a “broken system.”
“A lot of people believe that the system is fundamentally broken. The monetary system, the democratic system — it’s all been hijacked,” Taylor said. “We want to be non-hierarchical — all analysis is relevant analysis. That’s why we’re all over the place.”
Comparisons to the American right-wing Tea Party movement were also made. U of A political science professor Greg Anderson, who spoke in favour of distinct policies, noted that the Tea Party members transformed the politics of politicians elected to Congress. As a result, they’ve halted President Barack Obama’s policy agenda.
But Michael MacDonald, a U of A music professor who argued against the proposal, emphasised that having distinct policies is akin to “administration,” and different compared to engaging in “politics.”
“Politics happens when the system gets upended, when it gets pulled apart, when we engage in conversation — not in systematic and bureaucratically-controlled processes that articulate finite points,” MacDonald said. “This is politics — figuring out what kind of life we want, figuring out what kind of world we want.”
Both sides grew passionate at certain points, with panellists interrupting each other, and audience members interrupting panellists during the question and answer session and closing statements.
General criticisms raised included media coverage of Occupy, the tone of the movement’s messaging, and the capitalist system in general.
The final vote taken following the debate indicated that 60 per cent of the 200-person audience supported the distinct policies motion, up seven per cent from the poll conducted prior to the event’s start.
Comments
The debate question was flawed because even now if they were to decide what policy to adopt, how do you do that in a movement that is designed around reclaiming public space and equality. If the movement was conducive to adopting a policy then they would have already, but when a movement is designed to create a discussion on important public issues, in adopting a specific policy…you change the foundation of the movement and it no longer becomes ‘occupy’.
In debating whether or not a policy should be adopted, is assuming ‘occupy’ is making a decision not to. This is why the tea party analogy fails, they don’t care about ‘taking back the public space for the public good’ because they privatized and want to keep it that way. They work well ‘in the system’ because they (or a less extreme version of them) created the system.
Posted by Nat Row on Feb 11, 2012
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