Story Species

I was a fan, supporter, learner, and motivator of community art action during the Adams Mine protests.  Unless you call making speeches and writing to the press an art.  If so I was playing a key role.  Oh, and I guess if sleeping on the railway tracks that run by the Adams Mine and on north into Mining country, if that can be seen as Guerrilla theatre, then yes I did that.

At the time I was one of 7 people who volunteered to sleep overnight on the rails to prevent trains from supplying the mines north of us.  One of our volunteers dubbed us the Seven Sacred Sleepers, with a deliberate poetic reference to railway sleepers.  To me this seemed like an act of civil protest in the face of the most unbounded plan to destroy the water system in Ontario, from the headwaters of the Ottawa River down to the Capital.  This plan to fill the Adams Lake with garbage from Southern Ontario, most notably from Toronto, Canada’s largest city, was the scheme of a conglomerate made up of waste management corporations and political opportunists.  The leading face of support for this appeared to be that of Mike Harris, the Premier of Ontario.

So we spent the night on the tracks, guarded by our supporters and Native Warriors.   Our protest kept the trains from running on those tracks for 4-5 days.  In hindsight I see that what we did was a highly visible, dramatic acting out of David versus Goliath.  This raised the struggle to a new high of confrontation, which in turn garnered new levels of media attention.   It was certainly a story written and acted out on the public stage.  This should also be seen as Extending Our Community.  These kinds of Art are part of disseminating a story or reaching, creating an audience.  Works of art like Rodin’s Thinker, or Picasso’s Guernica, become part of a culture’s mind forming heritage. A culture is a community writ large, informed by history, values, and beliefs which members share.

The process of visible, audible protest helped me to become more connected to my community, absolutely. Communities are sewn together by Communication as the two words indicate.  People look for expression and art is expression. Language is critical and symbols are critical and together people continually search for common ground through our expressing the internal,   emotions and thoughts made visible, shared and thus forming bonds

I discovered that saving the natural world where l lived became the most compelling task in my life.  The waters and trees and wildlife grew very large and present for me.  I felt urgently connected to them as though saving them was saving myself.  I did not want to live in a destroyed landscape.

I found a real power and talent in myself to speak for others, to see and experience my feelings and values by expressing them.  In creating community I was creating a home for myself and sharing with others what we held in common.  This could only arise from finding out what we did hold in common by means of putting expressions out there to explore and identify what those common feelings and thoughts were.  We broke down our isolation and separateness so we could join around what we valued.  Without our Art, that is our expression, we could not have found our connections.

I think this is worthy of a major study of how, by means of Art and Expression, we form community and community values, empathy and acts of compassion; this in turn generates more creativity and more art.  We change minds and we teach by modeling so that every work of art is an act of genuine creation and education.

My experience of opposing the Adam’s Mine dump was formative in composing my sense of community and this community included the natural world that fosters us, gives us life.  So we can see that we were formed millions of years ago to evolve and grow into complex beings who are an integral part of the natural world.  Our bonds to the rest of this world are indissoluble and indispensable for our well-being.  This story of our Connection to our World through evolution is the primary story upon which all other stories need to be grounded. This is what is meant by The World of Experience. The Mine experience was one of the great learning periods of my life, about my world, my community, and my fundamental values, what I cared about so much that these values informed my life and gave it meaning.

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There are two seismic faults splitting Canada apart right now. These two fault lines are preventing social progress, common justice, economic growth, community peace and this country’s ability to be a force for good in the world.
The first is the current government under the leadership of Stephen Harper. This ruling group are really the agents of resource extraction industries, especially oil interests headquartered in Alberta. Their period of power is characterized by an effort to bypass true parliamentary debate and cooperative discussion and accommodation between parties; to ignore interaction/cooperation with Provinces; to build a huge apparatus of alternative government within the office of the PMO; to ram through legislation by means of Omnibus Bills which bury law changes within so much legislation that much of it never hears debate; to sideline and disempower First Nations by means of smear campaigns akin to thinly veiled racist propaganda, by means of ignoring treaty rights and by schemes to use assimilation to break the Native-Land traditional connection, now that the Residential School policy has failed to wipe out Indigenous culture as was its goal; to end debate and discussion by scripting or programming spokespersons for Government policy defenses with “talking points” or propaganda points and repeating them without shame or embarrassment signifying shut down minds refusing to engage in thought. A game called “Be a Robot”. Minister Tony Clement predicted some time ago that we would not recognize Canada under his watch and under Haperism. He was right-I don’t.
The second Fault line is even more dangerous. It made possible the first Fault line, and it requires immediate action. I am not a constitutional lawyer versed in such matters, but either the Political system is broken or it was never guaranteed since we brought it home. All of the devices we deplore, omnibus bills, Senate Packing, use of Public funds to Advertise government policy, misappropriation of assigned funds (see Gazebos), Robo Calls, Proroguing Parliament—my list is not exhaustive, but all of these abuses were available to any government in this country. Indeed, some of them were used, though never to this degree. When I was an adolescent I was taught that laws and rules that are loose and sloppy enough to be abused by ruthless people, rules that depended on honour and gentlemen’s agreements, were no real protection at all. Decent, fair and principled conduct could not be guaranteed. There can always be loopholes; and now we see our Colonial creed of Governance is not merely full of loopholes, but is one great leaky sieve. We need a total reform of Parliament, of the electoral system, of guidelines for ethical conduct of MPs and for complete separation of Church and State, not yet achieved in this country.
So what to do? This dangerous Government, totally and unwaveringly attached to Harperism, to power by any means and at any cost, to ignoring environment damage in quest for profit, no matter what the consequences to health, safety and survival, this Government I am saying must be defeated at the earliest opportunity. How to do this?
Well one way would be to bring it down by helping to create an economic depression. Since this Government is created as a pro-Mega Corp agency and since it conducts a continuous ad campaign in favour of something called an Economic Plan, a failure of this plan would be hard even for this Government to recover from. The key social action initiative would be a voluntary consumer strike involving everything from national diet, to make your car last, to self imposed austerity, avoiding paper towels, using rags and hand washing them, boycotting restaurants, pooling cars, avoiding travel where possible, not buying new clothes, using old clothes, they still look great and who cares, this is a national crisis. There are hundreds of ways not to spend money. Of course, I am well aware that there will be much pain attached to an anti-spending campaign. People in retail may lose their jobs, the retail and manufacturing sectors may decline temporarily. I think the economy is very shaky anyway. So I am unsure about the cost of this action, though I am sure it would be effective and legal. The mere hostility and anger of such a movement would help restore our world reputation as a thoughtful nation.
The other immediate action that is required is to take out a Liberal Party Membership right now and vote for Joyce Murray as Leader. There is no voice in Canada at this moment more sensible, more authentic, more honest and more important to our survival than Joyce Murray’s. The main plank, the very centre of her policy is government and electoral reform. Without this we are simply kissing our democratic dream goodbye. After you have voted you can of course leave the party and return to any doctrine or ideology you wish. And if the NDP can overcome its forever fixation with its own obsession to govern, and instead think about Canada as a complex of interests being exploited by a failed system of electoral practices, we might get rid of Harperism without hardship.