Stand Up and Do Something - Be an Activist
What's the point of protesting? In fact, what's the point of protesting ever? I mean, does it change anything? Look at the war in Iraq. It still went ahead despite world-wide protests. What's up with that? Are certain things beyond our ability to change?
Years ago, protests seemed to get a measure of success. Didn't the civil rights movement achieve something through massive rallies and marches? Didn't the woman's liberation movement gain by - among other things - burning their bras in protest? Didn't the Vietnam war end in part at least because of large scale protests by citizens from all walks of life?
Mainstream mythology would have us believe that things are not going change with protest. So why do we protest?
We protest to affirm our own spirit and to give life to our beliefs about how things should be. We protest to slowly try to change other people's views. We protest because we haven't got any other viable option to change the way things are. To not protest is to say that we prefer to get screwed by the existing order time and time again. A lot of people are stuck in this rut. They tell themselves there's nothing they can do about the way things are so they accept it. They're deceiving themselves.
You always have a choice: To act or not to act. To do something or to do nothing. To stand up or to roll over. Some people have just tuned themselves to a dull survival frequency where living for money is their one and only objective. They're oblivious to anything wrong going on around them that doesn't directly influence their money - whether it's a paycheck, an invoice payment or a shareholder's dividend.
Fortunately, not all of us are on the survival frequency. Growing numbers of working people are standing up, speaking out and protesting the existing order of things. People like Chris Arsenault. Chris is a protestor at heart.
Most staunch protestors, live by a different playbook. They like living on the fringes. It doesn't trouble them that their shouts may be shouts into the wind and won't change the course of anything right away. What matters to them is that they are taking a stand, that they are doing something. That's important, because it provides something that sustains them through the difficult moments - the moments when they wonder if anything will ever change. Even if their words or actions on a particular issue do not change one mind, they reaffirm their own spirit to effect change through taking a stand.
Chris, a native of Halifax Nova Scotia is a 20 year old activist, freelance writer and a dues paying member of the Nova Scotia Union of Public and Private Employees (NSUPE). He is also the co-founder of Students Taking Action in Chiapas (STAC), a grassroots organization created to promote peace and solidarity with the indigenous peoples of Chiapas, Mexico, and is active in anti-poverty and independent media movements.
He has worked in both online and mainstream media outlets ranging from rabble.ca and indymedia.org to the CBC and the Halifax Chronicle-Herald. He's a firm believer in online activism's potential to effect global change and is currently studying history/economics at Trent University in Peterborough Ontario.
Arsenault is known for taking a stand and doing something about the injustices he sees. In one of his more recently public adventures he participated in actions against the G7 Finance Ministers Meeting June 14 and 15, 2002 in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
The Finance Ministers of the seven richest countries in the world were meeting in downtown Halifax in preparation for the G8 meetings in Kananaskis, Altberta, Canada later that month.
Police arrested 31 people after the G-7 protest, but only a few were charged, one of them was Chris. He was charged in June 2002 with unlawful assembly. His trial only got under way on December 15, 2003. He was already under a court order to stay away from demonstrations after an incident in Toronto in October 2001 and authorities are trying desperately to prove that he violated that court order.
Authorities are also trying to prove that Arsenault played a leading role in the demonstration against the G-7 finance ministers when they met in Halifax in June 2002.
Outside the courtroom, Arsenault said police are trying to criminalize dissent.
"What we're seeing are activists, not just in Halifax but around the country, being railroaded for being activists and going through the courts. Then the charges are ridiculous so the charges get dropped," he said.
To fellow comrades, Arsenault summarized his thoughts in this way:
"The whole thing was actually very anti-climatic. On Thursday morning, December 18th, after my lawyer and the prosecutor tried to apply all the evidence to specific legal rulings, the judge decided that he couldn't make a ruling without further reviews of the evidence. There is another hearing scheduled on January 30th, 2004. Basically we are in the same place we were a week ago-waiting.
When both lawyers had finished their closing arguments, the judge's decision was obviously pre-scripted and political. He thanked everyone who had been attending and made it quite clear that this trial will set some sort of precedent- which I find quite worrisome. I don't think the judge can accept a 'not guilty' verdict because he thinks it will allow protestors to throw water balloons at riot cops during future demonstrations.
The whole situation is silly and strange. The crown is arguing that I was just supposed to know the assembly became unlawful once protestors started jumping on overturned steel barricades, and at that time, I should have left. During the protests, the police never asked us to leave or said we were part of something unlawful.
One of the coolest moments of the trial though happened just after lunch on Tuesday; my lawyer got the 'unlawful assembly' charge dropped on a technicality. The crown had stated in its papers that an unlawful assembly took place on Lower Water Street between 1-5pm on June 15th. The majority of the protest, and all the crown's evidence, related to actions at the corner of Carmichael and Argyle Street, so the unlawful assembly charge had to be dropped on this lovely technicality. It seems that even the state can get entangled in bureaucratic spider webs.
However, I am still being charged with breaching my bail conditions because of the alleged unlawful assembly which happened at the barricades on Carmichael and Argyle.
Thus far the state has not been able to convict organizers for attending protests where other people break the law. Comrades like Jaggi Singh, Stephan Pilipa and others have fought hard and won to keep what's left of our right to demonstrate.
If the court can convict me, there will be somewhat of a new precedent. Granted, the right to organize and speak at demonstrations where others may break the law has been maintained in institutions higher than Nova Scotia Provincial court, but still this is one more legal attack on the right to assemble.
The trial wasn't all bad though, as it gave us a soap box to speak about the 'criminalization of dissent'. On Tuesday there was an amazing and well attended panel with John Clark from OCAP, Aaron Kolezar, a member of the blood workers union (who are currently facing harassment from private security while they were walking the picket lines) and myself. In a developed imperialist state like Canada, it seems as though progressive forces are very reactive; thus the trial gave us a rallying point or a cause to organize around.
The closing arguments on Thursday morning revealed a lot to me about the reality of our legal system. Prior to closing statements, I truly felt I'd get off, and in cocky rhetorical flourishes, told people that there was no way they could convict me. Really, my arrogance should be justified, as I did nothing illegal and certainly nothing immoral. But to the state, protest ought to fill the same social role as a loud petition. We are meant to lobby rather than confront; beg rather than demand. In a world as violent as this, we don't need loud petitions which appeal the rationality or morality of those in power. We need mini-revolutions; real challenges to the status quo.
In closing, it seems clear that the state is trying to waste activists' time and effort by prolonging this absurdity. Clearly, justice is not something which can be doled out by an unjust system. Morality has little to do with lying cops, technical legal interpretations or lack luster rulings. Law and justice are fundamentally different ideas; different concepts and different values. Law is imposed on us from above, while justice can only be created through community, empathy and self-examination. Unfortunately, it seems this trial will only further the growing disconnect between the two ideas."
More of us need to stand up and do something and protest the injustices that we encounter in every day life in an effort to improve our lives. In fact a study by psychologists at the University of Sussex has found that as well as potentially changing the world, participation in protests and demonstrations is actually good for you.