My Open Questions for the Occupy Toronto movement

1. Recognizing that “revolution is in the air,” but that Canadians have not suffered nearly as deeply or rapidly as Americans since the 2008 economic and mortgage meltdown, is the Occupy Toronto movement a show of solidarity? Opportunistic? Long overdue? (It’s no lapse of judgement to recognize that Canada does still have a semi-functional welfare state, yet that doesn’t mean many aren’t still suffering terribly.)
2. Parks and permanent structures have a long history of being integral to free speech (as Judge Brown remarked), but now that eviction has been served (and will surely commence) is “occupation” essential to the movement? How can the momentum continue without occupation?
3. What kinds of micropolitics are available to concerned individuals? Are they as effective?
4. Is it Marxist revolution, or radical democracy? Does it matter, and can it be both?

My worry is that since the 1999 Seattle WTO protests mass, non-violent protests are met with increasingly military oppression. Certainly the optics can be bad (viz. G20 or UC Davis more recently), but the effect rarely rattles the cage of democracy. At this point, are the protestors and the police merely acting out a high-stakes game? A kind of dance?(And in a cruel twist of irony, vindicating increased spending on militarized police weapons.)

The Occupy movement, with its creative appropriation of space, has made unprecedented traction as many (including those that are not young) have joined. The movement is now being met with (predictably) militarized force. What resistance is next? Have we been hemmed in?