May Day!

Samuel here.


A number of my friends have declared on Facebook that they are going to this (NOTE: the horrible people who made this horrible website have changed the page and left no record of what it was when I posted this. It was a thing promoting a "hand puppets for Occupy" event, I think), and it seems like as good a time as any for me to actually say something partisan. I haven't really expressed any political convictions on this blog since that one time I wrote 8 pages about libertarianism. It's time to make some enemies.


I wish I could protest.


I mean, I wish I had ever had the opportunity to protest for a cause I believe in.


Now I've got you all mad. But hear me out. The Canadian Occupy Movement sucked. May Day sucks. Anyone who talks about "the Harper Attack" definitely sucks.


Firstly, to The Right Honorable Stephen Harper, I wish a late but sincere happy birthday. I contend that you came to power through willful election fraud in 2006 when you knowingly violated the $18,300,000 federal campaign spending limit. You came to power through willful election fraud in 2011 when your campaign systematically and maliciously lied to liberal voters in tight ridings about where and when they were to vote, and I contend that whoever is responsible for that unprecedented breach of Canadian democracy should literally be exiled from human society. Perhaps by spaceship. Your harsh limitations on the freedom of Conservative MPs and your cabinet members to speak their minds represents an atrocious contempt for the maturity of your colleagues, and you habitually ignoring the press combined with your government's repeated refusal to give the House information that it requires (leading, I should add, to your government being the first committee of parliament in any commonwealth nation ever to be found in contempt of parliament) is genuinely frightening. I was disappointed and surprised by your crime bill, which is a rare combination for me in politics. In the year I graduate from university, we will spend twice as much on prisons as we did in my freshman year, and crime rates will have steadily fallen (barring unforeseen crime-inducing circumstances). I was shocked when we literally spent tens of billions of dollars on fighter jets that aren't built yet, during peacetime, during a massive deficit amassed during your administration. And I can't tell you how saddened and angry I am at the idea of redefining when life begins for the purposes of outlawing abortion. But ultimately, sir, I am grateful for how little your government has done. The fact is, it could have been a whole lot worse. I'm pretty fucking pissed about the election rigging, sure, but aside from the crime bill, the only thing you've done to advance any sort of socially conservative agenda is the fairly low-impact scrapping of the long-gun registry. That, and my respect for your office and my recognition of your humanity, are why I sincerely wish you a happy birthday.


I wish anyone had been complaining about any of that when I visited Occupy Toronto. That would have been nice. But instead they spoke, like this May Day website, in strange, obfuscated platitudes. I was told that we shouldn't be building a pipeline to the US because the oil is ours. I met communists and extreme socialists and we spoke about Marxism and that was pretty fun but pretty blatantly futile. It was not a protest. It was a circlejerk.


If I had lived in New York this past year, I would have lent my name and my hands and all my spare time to the Occupy Wall Street movement, because that was a genuine protest. I would have sat in Zuccotti Park because campaign contributions should be limited. Severely limited. I would have sat in Zuccotti Park because radical campaign finance reform is absolutely essential for the health of American democracy. I would have sat in Zuccotti Park because most lobbyists should have little influence most of the time. I went to the Toronto Occupy movement once and never again. When they told them to leave Oakland they rioted. When they told them to leave New York they came back half a dozen times. When they told them to leave Church Street they were gone by the morning. Because they weren't there for any good reason. Because they spoke in platitudes. They were bored and unfocused. You aren't a protester unless you are angry.


Friends. If someone is trying to change the world, and their rallying cry includes the phrase "criminalization and racialization of our communities", if their single biggest worry in this world is that "the corporate elite are deploying measures of austerity that is [sic] leading to the depletion of our much valued social and public services", if they don't give you a single damn example of what's making them angry, if they are asking you to make puppets, then stay home.


But


But if this private members' bill goes anywhere, or if Rick Santorum had gotten anywhere with his anti-contraception clusterfuckery


If The Right Honorable Stephen Harper decides he can turn Canada into a state where a woman must bear the child of her rapist, that he can do so on the backs of the MPs he has muzzled while lying through his teeth about where he stands, if we slip that one fatal inch back down the slope of women's liberty, then I will live on parliament hill. I hope you will as well. And we will scream at the top of our lungs. Because we will be angry. Because we will be focused. Because we will understand our cause and we will believe that it is right. Because that is how you protest.


Happy birthday, Mr. Prime Minister. And happy May Day to you all.