Utterly, hopelessly, biased analyses centred in, around, and beyond, the Loyalist settler enclave known as Kingston, Ontario.

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Some People _Are_ Above the Law


Not surprisingly, Kingston City Council voted last night to evict the Occupiers from their camp in Confederation Park. Despite some lively interventions from Councilors Schell, Downes, Neill, Osanic, and Hutchison, the local right wing triumphed by one vote, using the dual rhetoric of ‘fairness’ and ‘respect for the law’ that has been deployed in this context by city authorities throughout the world. We support your cause, they declare, but we can’t stand idly by while you break the law. By golly, what would happen if everyone were to start acting like that?

In fact, it doesn’t take much imagination to work this out. Canadian corporations break all kinds of laws, all the time, all over the world. Our mining companies, for example, ignore environmental regulations, hire paramilitaries to take out local opposition, and refuse to pay their taxes.

Canadian governments, at all levels, are no better. Each and every one of them is in violation of the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which required that we not ‘take possession’ of the indigenous territories that constitute most of what we now call Canada. We settlers are all living on stolen land – Confederation Park belongs to none of us, and therefore needs to be unoccupied in a way that is surely beyond the comprehension of the Mayor’s Office.

If these examples seem too distant in space and time, then I might point out that it’s not just the (apparently) unemployed, unwashed, and manger-displacing Occupiers who routinely bend the bylaws. There’s another park not far from City Hall, for example, in which a horde of local trouble-makers gather each afternoon to flaunt the leashing regulations by allowing their dogs to run wild and cavort in some highly lascivious ways. If I were the type to call the cops on my neighbours, I would sick Councilor George on them right away.

Despite their professions of support for the cause, and their belief in ‘fairness’, the mayor and his allies are sending a disturbingly mixed message. First, they are telling us that states, corporations, and good solid citizens can break certain laws when doing so suits their individual and collective self-interest. And second, they are telling us that if you are not in one of these categories, tolerance of  your activities will stop precisely at the point where they might start to make a difference. This is hardly ‘fair’ at all; indeed, it massively reinforces existing lines of power and privilege.

If they have achieved nothing else, the Occupiers have succeeded in bringing to greater mainstream attention fundamental questions about capitalism, inequality, and the democratic deficit in supposedly ‘free’ societies. Although many people are hoping otherwise, I am confident that this is not the end of the Kingston Occupation, nor of the Occupy Movement as a whole, nor of the global currents of social change in which this movement is embedded. We live in interesting times, times that not even the staid Limestone City can make go away by selectively burying its collective head in the law books.

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