Personal tools

Toronto, ON

From 99wiki

Jump to: navigation, search
Toronto panorama.jpg

[edit] Occupy Toronto

Today's Events

June 19, 2013
Template:Toronto/Calendar/June/19


May
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
8 9 10 11 12 13 14
15 16 17 18 19 20 21
22 23 24 25 26 27 28
29 30 31

[edit] Canadian Issues

[edit] Corporations

  1. Corporations should be transparent and accountable.
  2. Restrictions be placed on the rights of corporations. Corporations are not people and should not share the same rights of people.
  3. In order to bring jobs back to Canada, lower the sales taxes on items with a majority of components or construction that has been carried out in Canada. Rather than penalizing corporations who act against Canadas interest, reward those companies manufacturing in Canada by clearly marking them as Canadian products and let consumers vote with their dollars.
  4. International corporations must be banned from making political donations as they represent only their own business interest which could at any time change from the greater interest of Canadians.
  5. Excessive executive recompense has also become detrimental to Canadian business and should also be restricted by law.
  6. Legislation to prevent conflict-of-interest board appointments (CEO's serve on boards for other CEO's giving each other handsome remuneration packages and other perks whilst ignoring bad performance)
  7. Investigate possible corruption or conflict of interest in the issuing of no-bid contracts. Penalize the companies who profited from corruption with financial penalties. If the penalties are too large to be paid and the corporation too big to fail, make them pay off that debt in installments.
  8. For too long Corporations and the wealthiest income earners in Canada have not met their obligations to the rest of the country. The belief that giving tax breaks to this group creates employment is a fallacy. We therefore demand that policies be instituted that require large corporations and the top ten percent of income earners be taxed at a higher rate and that taxes for the rest of Canadians be reduced.

[edit] Universal Living Wage

[edit] Preservation of Universal Health Care

[edit] Resolution and Reconciliation for Systemic Mistreatment of Indigenous Peoples

[edit] Electoral reform

It is clear that our current system does not represent the wishes or needs of the Canadian people, therefore we demand electoral reform in Canada.

  1. Investigate alternatives to paper ballots -- the technology is expensive, error prone and obsolete -- move toward online voting.
  2. Create an electoral system that encourages participation instead of allowing political parties to discourage or misdirect opposing voters.
  3. Those affected by decisions should make those decisions.
    1. Provide information to the public on the issues.
    2. Allow voting/consensus on the issues
  4. if we must vote for an oligarchy:
    1. Lower the voting age to 15 or 16.
    2. Allow proportional representation
    3. Add a none of the above option to the ballot so that voters do not have to consent to electing a leader they do not approve of or waste their vote. 20% voting N.O.T.A. is grounds for a re-electon with new candidates.

[edit] Canadian sovereignty

  1. All policies and negotiations that threaten Canadian sovereignty such as CETA, SPP, and Border Security agreements are suspended immediately, and Canada’s participation in international agreements such as Codex Alimentarius and agenda 21 are put on hold pending review in a more public forum. Canadian sovereignty is to be considered the right of the people and not to be traded or bartered by our government.

[edit] Military intervention

  1. Peace should be promoted and wars around the world should be ended.
  2. An immediate end to all Canadian military intervention in all foreign countries.
  3. Stop supporting the US war machine through massive, overpriced purchases of new weapons and vehicles.

[edit] Criminal Code and Prisons

  1. People should evaluate and change their relationship to law, government and the police.
  2. The Canadian criminal code be reviewed and policing policies be examined to ensure the rights and freedoms of Canadians are upheld and that the charter of rights and freedoms be strictly adhered to by all police services across Canada. Furthermore all Canadian police services submit to the authority of civilian review committees.
  3. Review Harpers recent attempts to pour massive amounts of money into building more prisons and mega prisons. Prisons do not help decrease crime rate. They do the opposite.
  4. For those prisons we already have, provide access to proper medical and mental health treatment and counseling for in-mates.


[edit] Fourth estate

  1. A healthy fourth estate being essential to the democratic process, a return to stringent media ownership laws are necessary to insure a free press in Canada.


[edit] Natural resources

  1. The world has reached a turning point in which natural resource shortages may lead to material decline if nothing changes.
  2. Natural resources belong to future generations. We are all stewards and resources should be respected to avoid creating scarcity.
  3. Canada’s natural resources are to be reconsidered the public property of all the Canadian people. All harvesting, mining, logging and oil extraction to be reviewed and put to vote by direct referendum with consideration to environmental impact and benefit to the people of Canada and not solely the corporations that extract them.
  4. Additionally, though corporations lay claim on ownership of land they do not take the same due care and responsibility that a normal person would as owner in protecting the land, the air and the water. That the rights of native people in accessing their land super-cede above all else the development of that land away from traditional uses. That we respect that natural resources may seem at times of great success to be infinite but that the health of the land is a finite resource.
  5. The advancement and overuse of technology can create poverty by using up resources.


[edit] Climate Change

  1. Climate change is causing economic and environmental disasters and needs to be stopped and reversed.


[edit] Basic human rights and freedoms

  1. Basic human rights and freedoms of the individual are to be considered paramount, and shall supersede all laws passed by government.
  2. Every Canadian has the right to justice, food, health, shelter, information, transportation, spirituality / culture, equality, environmental sustainability, safety and the freedom to live unencumbered of excessive government intervention.
  3. Recognizing the violence and injustice that indigenous people have endured,indigenous land, people and sovereignty are to be respected and colonialism ended.
  4. We must recognize all nations as valid including those of the Native peoples of Turtle island and all other continents. We must recognize fairness and equality for all nations and must use our power in the United Nations to argue on behalf of all those treated unfairly or oppressed by the rule of might makes right. We must end the war on terrorism and acknowledge that it has caused more harm than good as we must also acknowledge that our country, Canada, has used terrorism against the Native Peoples who share this land which is rightfully theirs, both in our aggressive military action and also in the lack of due justice for those aggrieved of unpunished killings in the reserves."
  5. Bring welfare and disability payments in line with inflation and cost of living, especially rent, for which the current levels are not really useful.
  6. Freedom, individuality 'and personally—defined dignity should be considered essential to human wellbeing.


[edit] Economy and Inequality

  1. Profit as a primary motivator leads to harmful and unsustainable outcomes.
  2. Economic inequality and inequality of political and social power needs to be put into balance in order~to achieve true democracy.
  3. Outlaw naked short selling on the stock market.
  4. Bail out student debt.
  5. Social programs and social assistance should not be cut.

[edit] Banking Reformation

  1. We need to put an end to the fractional reserve banking system.
  2. The Bank of Canada can be used to avoid paying interest on debt. The government Of Canada should return to financing the public debt though the Bank of Canada, interest free.
  3. Give us the power to create our own currency away from the private banking system.

[edit] History

[edit] Occupy Toronto Evicted From St. James Park

When we looked at the system set up by the 1% we saw an unorganized disarray that is was set up to serve the corporations and to self propagate, but in no way set up to serve us the people.

Loading map...
Full-sized map

In an effort to navigate through this dissarray and change it or dismantle it so that it serves us, we occupied St. James Park in Toronto. We thought of park, as a blank slate.

The issues we faced in the park were not the same as their counterparts on a global or city-wide scale, but the bottom-up approach in which we examined and resolved these issues is exactly what was needed to replace the out of control top down way that is applied currently.

In a vicious effort to subdue us, Judge Brown of the Superior Court of Justice authorized an "eviction" from our park.

The lengthy and discursive document is on display here.

[edit] Reoccupation of Osgoode Hall

Several Months later some of us regrouped and recoccupied Osgoode Hall at 130 QUEEN ST W Right next to Nathan Phillips Square. As of January 2012 this was the site of the occupation. GAs were held just to the east of this site (in front of Nathan Philips Square). Police evicted this site not long after.


[edit] Action

Actions include anything from rallies, large marches, organized responses to eviction, creative and artistic direct actions, etc…

Marches are usually led by marshalls. There is a group responsible for marshalling.

There is a strict non-violence policy.

We also have a group dedicated to legal issues.

[edit] Communication

@OccupyToronto

Generally the Occupy Toronto communication system is set up to allow everyone hear, be heard, teach, and learn. No single person/small group of people should be allowed to hijack the means of communication.

There are ideas and processes in place for On-the-Ground Communication as well as Online-Communication among occupiers. We also have places for On-the-Ground education, and a repository of material.

In addition, as we learn we are creating a framework for identifying and dealing with the problems inherent to the top-down education system set up by the 1% to maintain a subservient and obedient population.

[edit] Contact Information

General Inquiries OccupyTO@gmail.com
Volunteer Inquiries OccupyTOvolunteers@gmail.com
Media Inquiries OccupyTOmedia@gmail.com


Occupy Toronto
69 Yonge St.
PO Box 17076
Toronto ON
M5E 1Y2
We only accept non-perishable food and money orders through the mail!




[edit] Related