Emergency Act & Ottawa Occupation & ...

[agoodwinsmith]

I have a lot of noncohesive thoughts about all this.

I do think the Ottawa police could have done more than they did.

I am surprised that Ottawa police and Ontario RCMP together couldn't/wouldn't do more together than they did.

On the other hand, nobody was expecting an occupation. Protestors come, rant, and go. This was different. It was also different in scale.

I do think the Federal response has been slow because they were scoping out the bad provocateurs, etc, and the lacksidaisical approach meant that BPs relaxed. People know a lot more about the sorry web of authoritarian haters and rich people planning to stay rich by feeding off misfortune.

There's also the whole "but rational people don't think this way" nonplussedness - one doesn't think that these people will so non-thoughtfully continue.

I did notice in the news footage of the Paris copycats that people were behaving like it was Mardi Gras. I think a lot of the energy powering the followers (both here and there) is cabin fever - getting outdoors and wearing crazy flappy costumes.

I also don't think the application of the Emergency Act is going to be on a faster track. It will be slow, and probably concentrate on behind-the-scenes strangling by financial means.

Comments

[dewline]

I suspect the Ottawa Police Association leaders are slow-walking a disobedience campaign against Chief Sloly (and by extension City Council and the Police Services Board) here. The Toronto Police Association effectively had him purged in 2016 for not being harsh enough for their liking, after all.

[agoodwinsmith]

And purged again, I see.

[sabotabby]

I am just astounded that they can take so much time off work. Like, it's a whole different universe for me. I know a lot are owner-operators and well funded by donations, but these people live parallel lives where they don't have to worry about getting fired, or arrested, or if they get infected, be forced back to work with disabling neurological or heart issues. I've always known that, in theory, there is a substantial class of human beings with substantially more freedom than I (as a relatively privileged person! But still a worker and still disabled) have ever been able to enjoy in my entire life.

[agoodwinsmith]

Truly.

Some look olde enough to be "retired". Some look like they might "own" a farm (which means it owns them, and they take on other casual jobs to support it). Some have lost their employment - and at least at the occupation they are/were getting fed.

[sabotabby]

Yeah, but are there that many? Like employment is pretty easy to find these days, and big rigs are expensive.

[agoodwinsmith]

Yes. I never worked a job that permitted that kind of "freedom" (haha).

[jessie_c]

I am surprised that Ottawa police and Ontario RCMP together couldn't/wouldn't do more together than they did.
That would be because they're on the side of the protesters. Have you seen the footage of the RCMP hugging the protesters in Alberta and the OPP with the protesters in Ontario?

Now if the protesters had been First Nations, queer, POC or female, they'd have been beaten senseless, arrested and/or thrown out of Ottawa weeks ago.

[agoodwinsmith]

Truly.

Somebody pointed out that in Alberta, when there was an indigenous blockade of something or another, it took the courts ten hours to get an injunction, and it was implemented and completed while the ink was still drying.