Michael Moore: The Evolution of An Activist

Having suffered one of my fairly frequent bouts of insomnia last night, the blog post I had hoped to make is not yet complete, so just a quick entry here. I recently completed reading Here Comes Trouble, Michael Moore's memoir that takes us from his childhood to the world premier of his first documentary, Roger and Me. It is a book I highly recommend.

Although I initially had no particular interest in reading it, I happened to see the book in my local library branch one day and was pleasantly surprised by its drolly amusing, self-deprecating and very informative content. I realized that heretofore I actually knew little about Moore, other than his success in the film world. That success, and the activism behind it, I discovered, were clearly presaged very early in his life, only one indication of which I will deal with here.

When he was 17, he was invited to take part in a mock state government. Housed in a dorm at one of the universities, Moore actually had little interest in partaking in the process, but one day when he was going to the vending machine for a snack, he saw a notice inviting entries into a contest sponsored by The Elks on the subject of why Abraham Lincolm was a great president. Knowing that The Elks, a private club, at the time excluded non-whites from membership, Moore, in a moment of teenage outrage, was truck by the hypocrisy of the essay topic. He therefore wrote an essay, not about Lincoln, but about the fraternal order's hypocrisy. Having to deliver the speech the next day with some trepidation in a room filled with other entrants, he was shocked to learn that the judge, a high school teacher and a non-member of the Elks, declared him the winner.

His victory required that he give the speech again at the awards ceremony, where he would be presented with the trophy by the Elks' president. When he gave the speech ...., well, you'll have to read the book to learn of the immediate result, but I will tell you that he next received a call from CBS requesting an interview with him, to be shown on Walter Cronkite's evening news. Moore declined the opportunity, but the event was a pivotal formative moment in what was to become his destiny, and the publicity resulting from his speech had a real influence on legislation that was later enacted outlawing racial discrimination in private organizations.

Many people frequently get annoyed or outraged by Moore's antics, but Here Comes Trouble does a very nice job in providing some real insight into the passions that drive the man.

The Star's Reader Reaction to Bill C-309

As promised in my previous post, I am reproducing letters from yesterday's Star in which readers offer their own trenchant insights on the implications of the abhorrent Bill C-309:

Re: Government backs bill aimed at masked protesters, May 7

This week the Harper government party threw its support behind Bill C-309 (Preventing Persons from Concealing Their Identity during Riots and Unlawful Assemblies Act) put forward by Wildrose MP Blake Richards. Owing to this support, Bill C-309 will almost certainly become law. But like so many recent Conservative initiatives, the bill is vindictive and manipulative.

Riding a public wave of unease after the riots in Vancouver and those in the U.K. in the summer of 2011, Richards drafted the bill in order to add ammunition to the police toolkit to respond to public assemblies. The bill aims to increase the punitive capacities of the law when reacting to people participating in the already illegal acts of rioting and unlawful assembly.

Let’s be clear: the deplorable behaviour of rioters in Vancouver was the act of vandals that should be punished. The problem, however, is the potential for this proposed amendment to the Criminal Code to be used in situations of legitimate protest, given the subjective criteria for determining riots and unlawful assemblies.

At the most basic level, a law of this nature will increase the risk of participating in even the most docile of events because all emotion-laden public gatherings, even of the most peacefully minded participants, hold the potential for violence.

There are many good reasons why people wear masks during public gatherings. To begin with, mask-wearing is a long-standing method of symbolic expression and political solidarity. Most often mask-wearing is innocuous and involves no risk to public safety such as when participants in Free the Children’s Vow of Silence Campaign cover their mouths with a small mask to symbolize the silencing of children or when Greenpeace activists don orangutan masks to publicize the destruction of rainforests. But Bill C-309 has the potential to criminalize those harmless acts.

Global protests, such as the G20 meeting in Toronto in 2010 have also drawn our attention to the fact that as the tension between police and protesters has risen in recent decades even the most peaceful protesters have been subjected to the use of pepper spray. In these instances, protective masks have become a commonly used method of protecting one’s physical well-being while expressing political views. Bill C-309 would almost certainly be used in these circumstances.

But there is also a question of political privacy and minimizing personal risk; for the same reason that we uphold the right of citizens to keep their vote private for professional and personal reasons, many people who engage in political dissent are not eager to publicize their political views. Canada’s legendary Cold War defector, Igor Gouzenko wore a hood covering his entire head during public appearances until his death in order to protect his family from the ramifications of his political choices.

Bill C-309 has very real consequences for Canadian civil liberties. At present, the bill conflates violent behaviour with mask wearing; the problem is that not all people wearing masks are intent on committing violent acts.

As a historical precedent, Britain’s Black Act of 1723 illustrates the dangers associated with such legislation. The Black Act was first designed to deal with poaching on private land. Being found in a park or on private property with a weapon and a disguised or blackened face could mean death by hanging.

The act became notorious however, because over time it was extended to cover an increasing number of behaviours, most of which involved the poor, including protest. As the historian E.P. Thompson wrote, the act “signalled the onset of the flood-tide of 18th century retributive justice.” Increasingly impossible to rationalize, the act was repealed in 1827. In as much as a democracy relies on a range of modes of engagement and expression, a watchful citizenry cannot leave undue powers in the hands of the police to decide when and how political assemblies will have their say.

By criminalizing legitimate political dissent, we can expect to achieve two things. First, we undermine a form of political action that is increasingly a favourite form of engagement among youth under 25. In an era where we decry the political apathy of youth, this is deplorable.

Second, we create an opportunity for greater extremism. For instance, the Black Bloc tactics — dressing in black, covering one’s head and face and causing targeted property damage during protests — have become an international phenomenon. The Black Bloc only gained momentum and notoriety after the German government banned masks in the mid-1980s as part of an effort to quash social movements.

News coverage treats the Black Bloc as a group of individuals, but more importantly it is an aesthetic and a credo symbolizing reactionary politics that escalates the tension between participants and police.

Police already possess the necessary power to deal with vandalism and violence. Make no mistake, this bill is not about crime. It is another attempt in a long line of conservative efforts to target the heart of our democratic rights to expression and to freedom of assembly.

Kathleen Rodgers and Willow Scobie, Department of Sociology, University of Ottawa

The Harper government is backing a back-bencher’s bill that would provide harsh penalties for protesters who wear masks at a demonstration. In considering this bill, I hope that MPs recognize that many protesters wear masks to protect themselves from tear gas.

I would also hope that, if this draconian measure should become law, it will apply equally to police officers who conceal their identities when policing demonstrations.

This practice by many members of the Toronto Police Service was much in evidence and well-recorded in Star photos taken at demonstrations against the G20 conference.

Bill Howes, Toronto

Does this mean the police can’t wear shields to conceal their identities as well? Or are they to protect their eyes? Maybe protesters should wear plastic face shields as well — tinted ones. Last time I checked, a plastic face shield does not a mask make. Protects the eyes though.

Richard Kadziewicz, Scarborough

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson announces that anonymous protesting leads to, “Destructive and reckless behaviour [which] damages communities and should not be tolerated.” Interesting, when you compare this to certain members of Toronto’s police force at the G20 summit, who executed their “duties” with faces hidden by masks, adorning shirts with no ID badges.

“Quelle difference,” indeed.

Edward P. Swynar, Newcastle

I applaud Stephen Harper Inc. for backing Conservative backbencher Blake Richards’ private member’s bill giving police the power to arrest anyone hiding their identity during a riot or unlawful assembly. There must be a clampdown on anarchists who disrupt peaceful protests.

But what about police officers who hide their identity while disrupting protests as was done during the June 2010 G20 Toronto summit? Or will this be yet another Harper Inc. case of “do as I say not as I do”?

Alan Pellettier, Scarborough

In speaking of the proposed new Conservative bill to make it illegal for protesters to wear a face-mask (though police who beat such protesters cover up their name plates), Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said, “Destructive and reckless behaviour damages communities and should not be tolerated.”

He’s just summed up his government’s daily effect on this country since coming to power. And he’s right — their behaviour damages communities and should not be tolerated.

Peter Dick, Toronto

I suspect the government will be able to count on broad support for this bill assuming: a) it only targets those masked protesters caught committing acts of violence; and b) it also deals with police officers who remove or cover their own identification tags during demonstrations.

Michael Lennick, Toronto

When Does An Assembly Become Unlawful?

Because we were rather busy yesterday preparing a small celebration marking my sister-in-law's retirement at an enviably young age, I am just getting caught up on my Saturday newspaper reading. One of the issues that caught my attention is the private member's bill making its way through Parliament as an amendment to the Criminal Code. Introduced by Alberta Conservative Blake Richards, Bill C-309 is the preventing persons from concealing their identity during riots or unlawful assemblies act.

While the proposed amendment presents itself as a strong response to the violent depredations of anarchists like the Black Bloc during the 2010 G20 Summit demonstrations in Toronto, many infer a more sinister motivation behind Richards' initiative. Curious as to the truth in this matter, I checked out the Criminal Code's definition of unlawful assembly:

Unlawful assembly

63. (1) An unlawful assembly is an assembly of three or more persons who, with intent to carry out any common purpose, assemble in such a manner or so conduct themselves when they are assembled as to cause persons in the neighbourhood of the assembly to fear, on reasonable grounds, that they

(a) will disturb the peace tumultuously; or

(b) will by that assembly needlessly and without reasonable cause provoke other persons to disturb the peace tumultuously.

You can perhaps appreciate the ominous implications of this definition, most notably the subjective nature of fear that demonstrators will disturb the peace tumultuously, an elastic definition if there ever was one. As my wife pointed out to me, does that mean that if three people were picketing their M.P.'s office, their behaviour, whether masked or not, could constitute criminal behaviour based on someone else's reaction to the assembly?

Bill C-309 does indeed carry ominous implications, epecially since existing law already gives police all the power they need to arrest rioters and those committing crimes while masked.

As outlined in Section 351 of the Criminal Code,

Every one who, with intent to commit an indictable offence, has his face masked or coloured or is otherwise disguised is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding ten years.

So yes, I think there is much merit in the argument that this private member's bill is just another move by the Harper regime to stifle dissent. That is also the view of many Star readers, who have responded to this issue with their usual vigour and thoughtfulness. I am posting a link to those letters here, but because access to readers' letters on the Star website is frequently of limited duration, I am going to later put up a separate post that reproduces several of them for your consideration.

Repression 2.0

Given its evolution, so to speak, the state of Tennessee's new attempt to control and criminalize people's thoughts and acts can hardly be seen as astonishing.

John Baird, A Friend Indeed

Want $1 million of taxpayers' money for a project that fails to meet government criteria? If he is your 'dear friend,' call Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird for intervention that hardly qualifies as 'divine'.

The Powerful Stench Of Obsequiousness At The CBC

With the polls revealing that the NDP, under leader Thomas Mulcair, is enjoying 34% of popular support while the Harper Conservatives languish at 30%, it is probably no surprise that the CBC is once again polishing up its apples in yet another desperate and misplaced effort at appeasing its political masters. Having recently had its budget gutted, I guess it was too much to think that the Corporation would have found its spine and at least proceeded with a measure of dignity and integrity toward its ultimate doom under the Harper regime. Last night's At Issues Panel revealed that to be a forlorn hope.

With the right ably represented by both Bruce Anderson and the National Post's John Ivison, challenged in small measure by Chantal Hebert and the Huffington Post's Althia Raj, we were told how much of a mistake it was for Tom Mulcair to be critical of the inflationary effect of the Alberta tarsands on the Canadian dollar, a high dollar making it more difficult for Canadian manufacturers to compete. There was much tut-tutting on the divisiveness of such a pronouncement, the subtext being, I think, that Mulcair surely can't be considered Prime Ministerial material. Of course, nothing was said of our current Prime Minister, the master of national division.

This panel was followed by Rex Murphy's screed against Mulcair which, I must confess after listening to for about one minute, I turned off.

Should you deem yourself constitutionally strong, you can watch the panel discussion here; mercifully, the Murphy jeremiad does not yet appear to be on the website.

UPDATE: I'm sorry to report that Mr. Murphy's tantrum is now available via The Huffington Post. This time I made it to the 1:30 mark. If Rex does not get a Senate seat out of his unrepentant toadying, there clearly is no God.

Memo To Peter Mansbridge: Peter, you really have passed your best before date.

Are Workers Paying For The Globe and Mail's Sins?

UPDATE/CORRECTION: While I strive to be as accurate as possible in this blog, the second paragraph of this post contained an inaccuracy, which I have since rectified.

I have to say that my heart rejoiced yesterday when I saw the news that Torstar, the parent company of The Toronto Star, has increased its quarterly earnings over the year by about 100%, an unequivocal confirmation that quality, in-depth journalism for the social good can still very much be a profitable enterprise in the 21st century.

I also have to admit to an almost equal delight in the news I received from my son that the Globe and Mail, by contrast, is not faring so well. The Earnings Per Share (EPS) profit that the Globe and Mail contributes to Bell Canada, its parent company, is off by 0.23.

I interpret this profit reduction as an indictment of the direction in which John Stackhouse has taken the paper since assuming the mantle of editor-in-chief. It is a direction that has seen such betrayals as unequivocal editorial endorsements of the Harper regime, an inhouse apologist for all things Harper named John Ibbitson, and the continued employment of unoriginal thinkers like Neil Reynolds and Margaret Wente who, one suspects, would have great difficulty recognizing an original thought, should one occur to them, an admittedly unlikely event.

The one group for whom I feel sympathy at the Globe is the rank and file, who are now being asked to take unpaid leaves this summer in an attempt to temporarily reduce costs.

Oh, and I almost forgot. In either a very desperate grasping at straws for financial salvation or a very public display of delusions of grandeur, The Globe announced today that it is instituting a paywall. If you read the article, I strongly encourage you to also peruse some of the readers' comments that follow, comments of such withering contempt that one might infer that this 'Hail Mary pass' from the Globe is too desperate by anyone's standards.