Occupy Vancouver

Vancouver’s version of New York’s Occupy Wall Street protests took place October 15th at the Vancouver Art Gallery. The media said 5000 people showed up to support the message being conveyed, which I guess could be generalized into a message against corporate greed. Being a message that I believe in, I went downtown to make it a crowd of 5001!

I packed my bag full of protesting equipment (beer, J’s, iPod, towel… “don’t forget to bring a towel”) and made my way to my favorite people watching location in the city… The VAG. But before I got there, I was greeted by a mass of people marching the streets chanting the expected “This is what democracy looks like!” or “Who’s streets?”,”Our streets!”. One kid yelled “Get a job!” at the crowd only to be called a sheep by some other kids, but before that argument escalated into further useless words, one older union worker in the march calmly and wisely said “I have a job that pays way more than yours.” (In my mind I amended, “.. and for longer than that kid has ever worked.” But for some reason my telepathic antenna wasn’t transmitting.)

So after that introduction to the protest, I made my way to the Light Side of the VAG (the south facing steps… the good ones!) to watch some people dance around while a live marching band played.

But to my disappointment, the party didn’t stay here too long and migrated to the Dark Side of the VAG (not only named this because of the constant shade, but because of the street kid population that usually dominates those steps) where there was a make-shift stage set up with speakers and speakers (get it? speakers that project sounds and speakers that speak) and the rest of the 5000 people.

In between speakers (ha… again this can be applied to the object and the people… so witty!), the DJ would drop some political beats and the hippies would all swing their arms and bodies around in a way that only hippies can.

… and yes, if left alone long enough, the dancing hippies congregate into a hand-holding dancing hippie circle.

The Raging Grannies showed up and sang a song or two…

… and even some corporate pigs attended as well…

… and anyone who waited in line got 5 minutes on the open mic, even this guy got up to sing his awful rock ballad (everyone was patient and gave him his time before the sign language for “boo” became too overpowering!)

Dueling drum kits were entertaining the East side of the building (one of the guys was really good too!) with a bongo drum welcoming anyone to join in (and I wish they didn’t, but that offbeat sound being drowned out by the real drummers is the sound of freedom and who can argue with that).

And a protest ‘aint a protest without tent city…

So the sights were aplenty, but the real entertainment was reading all the signs. My favorite one, and only one that I would ever hold as it was really the only one that spoke for me, said…

“GENERALLY FRUSTRATED WITH THE STATE OF THINGS”

And of course, as I am taking pictures of all the beautiful signs, the most amazing sign showed up right next to me, held by the craziest looking lady ever! (look at that eye in the lower left-hand corner … that’s just a glimpse of the craziness! I thought it would be rude to take her picture as someone just asked her to take her picture before he even saw the sign she was carrying!)

Yes, all of this sounds exciting and I’m sure most of you are regretting being there as you read this. But the most exciting thing of all happened later that night…

I stumbled upon a Decentralized Dance Party in the rink under Robson Street that came out in support of the protest! What’s a Decentralized Dance Party? It’s gotta be one of the coolest things ever… One guy has a backpack FM transmitter connected to an iPod while a crew with boomboxes (aka ghettoblasters) follows him around. The guy with the transmitter would also have a microphone and would move the party from one location to another… “Alright everyone, let’s take this party into the Skytrain Station!” With 90s dance tunes and 80s pop songs pumping out of the circling boomboxes, the party was completely mobile and would get any bystanders involved. When the transmitters “batteries died” (meaning the guy with the transmitter only had half an hour of sleep the night before and wanted to go to bed… I guess his batteries were draining!) the party ended. I returned to the protest and hung out until 1230AM before calling it a night.

But these pictures really do no justice at all to what these guys are all about so have a look at this clip:

DAY 2:

I was able to sucker some people into coming downtown with me and seeing how the protest was fairing without the hype of announcers, sound systems, media, bands, DJs and all the other items of interest. The crowd had greatly dispersed and looked basically the same as it did at midnight the night before. But after standing around and making those with me feeling uncomfortable by being so close to homeless poor hippies, a parade of protesters returned from a march and stopped for a sit-down in the middle of the Georgia/Howe St. intersection. The police helped block the traffic and congregated near the intersection. The tension here seemed to be thicker than before (but this just may have been me projecting my uncomfort at what the protesters were doing … blocking the roads was the excuse the NYPD would use when beating, running over and arresting the protesters at Occupy Wall Street).

Thankfully I wasn’t the only one who thought hanging out in the middle of the street was a bright idea and the protesters eventually got up and went back to the safe and peaceful protest zone at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

DAY 3:

I returned to the scene Monday after work to find that tent city had actually increased in size! There was about 30+ tents setup and the crowd seemed even larger than the day before. With no sound system available (but yet I saw people moving speakers in and never using them…huh?), everyone was happy doing the human microphone thing (one person says “Mic check” and everyone repeats “mic check”. The initial speaker then says one line and everyone repeats him so everyone can hear what is being said… it’s quite the in thing to do within the protesting community) and having brainstorming sessions. But I could see problems arising… when you get a group of people together that don’t want leadership, consensus is rare. There were plenty of ideas proposed, but no one would ever agree. One person would want to march to gather attention while others would want to talk about how to solve the world’s problems (both seem a little futile to me, but I don’t have any better ideas. And thankfully so as I would hate to be in the middle of the human microphone circle!). The General Meeting took place at 7PM and the same disorganized brainstorming continued, but with word from Occupy Wall Street! Everyone got excited to hear this and after 20 minutes of repeating a message that should take only seconds to convey, everyone was proposed a new form of sign language to be used to vote on topics. But first the group needed to vote on whether or not to use the new gestures or the old ones. This went on and on before finally deciding to break up in smaller groups to discuss on voting on the new voting process. And this is when I left (830ish)…

DAY 4:

I’ll be back there today, please come join me!

by DJ Mikey Bones on Oct.18, 2011