Fear of Conflict Enabled Occupy Vancouver to be Established

City's initial plan to prevent tent camp altered after fear of street chaos

By Zig Zag; November 20, 2011 - Vancouver Media Co-op
http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/story/fear-conflict-enabled-oc...

With Occupy Vancouver facing a court injunction ordering their removal by Monday, November 21, at 2PM, it is worth reflecting on why OV was able to be established in the first place. An article in the Vancouver Sun two weeks ago reported on the original plan by city officials to squash any effort to set up tents and other structures at the Art Gallery on October 15 (when OV was set up during a rally of some 5,000 people):

“The City of Vancouver opted not to stop Occupy Vancouver from setting up a tent city downtown during the initial protest march on Oct. 15 because it feared that police action could spark a riot, Mayor Gregor Robertson said Thursday [Nov. 10].

“A committee of senior city officials, including city manger Penny Ballem and police chief Jim Chu, concluded that intervention could backfire based on intelligence received in the lead-up to the protest attended by 4,000 people, added Robertson.

“They made the choice in that immediate 24-hour period before the protest that an intervention would be high-risk and could provoke a conflict as serious as a riot,” the mayor told The Vancouver Sun.

“Robertson said he was not on the committee but was briefed on the assessment.

“Earlier in the week before the Oct. 15 mass demonstration, the city had intended to dismantle an Occupy tent city as quickly as possible, the mayor added. Indeed, the city’s fledgling Large Events Oversight Committee (LEOC) was told by Deputy City Manager Sadhu Johnston on Oct. 11 that the city would not allow an encampment to be erected on the lawn of the Vancouver Art Galley — four days before the protest began.

“But the management team was following the (Occupy Vancouver) organizing in the days leading up, basically hour by hour, and their assessment shifted through that week,” recalled Robertson.

“In the few days before Oct. 15, the scale of (Occupy Vancouver) organizing was very significant and we realized that thousands of people would rally and that, as with other cities, it would be much more difficult to intervene than anticipated.”

(“Riot fears stopped city from squashing Occupy Vancouver, mayor says,” By Doug Ward, Vancouver Sun, November 11, 2011):

http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Riot+fears+stopped+city...

Two days earlier during a mayoral debate, Robertson had also publicly stated why action was not taken against OV:

“Tents were erected in the midst of up to 5,000 people being at the Art Gallery Square, which made it very difficult for police or city engineering staff to intervene and try and stop tents from being erected. They did not try. Their best judgment was that would've caused real problems, potentially violence. Our bottom line all the way through this is to prevent violence and chaos.”

(“A Monday-morning matchup,” by Phylicia Torrevillas, Metro Vancouver, Nov. 8, 2011)

In fact, the last attempted tent city, back in February 2011 (the Olympic Athlete's Village tent city), was immediately squashed when a city official read out a proclamation ordering protesters off a public plaza inside the Athlete's Village complex. A large police force — including the public order unit in soft hats — was deployed and ready to enforce the order. The tent city packed up before it began and retreated to an empty lot across the street from the Village. The police contacted the property owner and within an hour or so were prepared to arrest those that remained on the lot. The tent city effort was over after just 3-4 hours.

Some of the OV participants have misinterpreted the city's inaction as a sign of its benevolent, loving nature, itself a manifestation of the transcendental global awakening that is now occurring. In another reality, it is the balance of forces and the potential for conflict that forced those in power to retreat from their original plans for repressing the movement.

Other statements from the mayor and city officials reaffirm this: they have observed and been in communication with officials in other cities facing Occupy movements. Robertson himself publicly stated he did not want to see what happened in Oakland (where rioting has occurred with property destruction and looting) happen in Vancouver.

Robertson's appearance as a benevolent ruler is undermined by the fact that, under his administration, Vancouver police have used violence, or the threat of violence, against literally thousands of citizens since he took power in the fall of 2008 (i.e., the 2010 anti-Olympic movement and numerous other protests over the previous three years). Thousands of citizens were subjected to large-scale police violence during the 2011 Canucks Riot. Clearly, Robertson's “bottom line” is not to prevent violence, but rather to use violence to protect the bottom line of the corporate elite (i.e., their profits, including protecting them from losses incurred by property destruction).

While this may come as cold water to the hippy pacifists in the ranks, ultimately it was a fear of rioting, of property destruction in particular, that enabled Occupy Vancouver to establish itself in the first place.