99% - Everywhere

Since Google does not give the same information everywhere, and for those who want to go a little further in understanding the "We are the 99%" movement--we call ourselves the "Indigné(e)s" in Montreal-- here are a couple of sites about the wider movement:

http://occupywallst.org/ (The New York occupation)

http://www.occupytogether.org/ (info about the movement in general)

http://www.occupytogether.org/directory/ (A listing of 200 occupations throughout the USA and elsewhere)

The 1% is getting nervous and beging to make preparations to eliminate these occupations. That will problably only broaden the struggle.

This is a movement that is certainly going to change as it grows. No one really knows what turns it will take -- But, one thing is sure: it has already inspired huge numbers of people throughout the world and has already made a significant difference in several countries.

A world march is being planned for Saturday October 29. Millions can be expected to turn out.

More on the 99%

Celebration

General Assembly

It is now more than a week since the 99% invaded Square Victoria in the heart of Montreal and established the People's Square. They began with a few tents and a great desire to build another world that is possible, one very different from that of the 1%. The "village has now grown large in every sense. There are more than 200 tents -- it was necessary to occupy additional space to accomodate all the tents and more space may still be required. There is a kitchen that serves two meals a day, a small library and daily general assemblies where direct democracy is both very real and  inclusive. There is even a large tent marked "hospital" with at least one bed and qualified personnel. The relationship with the city and with the police continues to be good. They are learning from those who have expericence, to prepare for "winter camping" with a view to staying throughout the bitterly cold months ahead. There are signs everywhere reminding people to be clean, non-violent and inclusive. Next Saturday there will be a march in solidarity with all the other groups around the world who are expressing the voice of the 99%. Thousands are expected. What I have seen of the media in Montreal is fairly positive. The community has excellent media capacity: a really good web site (http://occupymontreal.tk/), a facebook site, a forum site, and so on.

Shared Kitchen

I speak of all this because it leads me into a reflection on liberation theology. If liberation theology was initially "invented" to attempt to discern the presence and path of God's liberating Spirit in the struggle of the excluded "non-persons" of society, then the experience of the camps, like the one in Montreal and others around the world, is certainly an irruption of the poor (the 99%) into the social, economic and political scene of 2011. This irruption deserves profound reflection. When I am on the site, when I witness the general assemblies, when I see their initiatives to build community, when I hear them struggling to express the values and directions they want to move in, there is no doubt in my mind that the Spirit is at work here building something radically new, something that draws deeply on our faith traditions. It is a phenomenon that will mark history and that builds on the struggles of many other peoples in many other places -- today and in the past.

Theology is a very pretentious word: it claims to engage in discerning and interpreting the path of liberation in the here and now. In the past liberation theology  tried to give "voice to the voiceless." Theology no longer needs to do that.  The voiceless have found their own voice and are giving powerful expression to their own path. There is no need for philosphers, theologians or social scientists to help them analyze the current situation; those on site in the camps are extremely articulate and connected to those analyses. There is perhaps not even  a need to provide a word of support and hope since the artists among them (musicians, poets, graphic artists) are providing a powerful cultural expression of the vision that animates and directs their presence. While I am not advocating "slogan" theology, there is nevertheless much for a theologian to reflect on in the signs displayed in downtown Montreal . There is also much to be reflected on in the way the camp functions, in the way decisions are made, in the way food is shared, in the way people are welcomed, in the way the "word" in honoured.

At this point it seems to me that what theologians need to do is to be PRESENT. This is one of those times when the theologians (and other professional religious folk) need to physically displace themselves in order to grasp the situation. We need to go there, spend time there. Theologians need to become the defenders of this movement for those sectors of the wider society who practice what the religious institutions dictate. There are broad sectors of the Churches that are sympathetic to what is happening in these camps but who have very little access to know how to understand it. While the people in the camp are doing a wonderful job, it is up to those of us who are close to the movement to make sure that the message gets through to our circles. Those circles can be crucial to the future of the movement. If we truly believe that this is an expression of God's Spirit

in our world today, in 2011, then we surely need to reflect deeply on the ways in which this phenomenon embodies our tradtion and make absolutely sure that the religious sector (at the base and in the hierarchy) understand and support it. It is what liberation theology has attempted to do for more than forty years. We cannot do less today. If the religions of the world get behind this, it is clearly unstoppable.

(All the pictures are taken from the Occupy Montreal web site. The credits are given there.)

David Suzuki interviewed at Occupy Montreal: 

http://youtu.be/rUTDxUicSmo

Michael Stone at Occupy Montreal : Taking Care of Yourself

http://vimeo.com/31007476 

Michael runs the Centre of Gravity in Montreal.

Les Indignés

     So the movement to occupy the public squares and demand change has finally come to North America and Europe. The turn-out yesterday was remarkable: More than a thousand cities around the world. The institutions are listening carefully, not so much to make major changes but rather to adjust the structure to accomodate the level of protest and to give the impression that something positive is happening. Meanwhile, at the stock exchanges and in government, it is still business as usual. The level of response would have to be much greater for anything significant to happen. Perhasp the movement will grow. That certainly was the case in Tunisia, in Egypt, in Yemen and in Syria, to mention only a few examples. Gradually there is an awakening.  However the dynamics are not the same here as in the South.      In any case, there are hundreds of people camped out in public parks in hundreds of cities around the world. As the slogan goes here in MontreaL the 99% is telling the 1% that thjey have awakened.
It will be an exceptional time to talk about things like participatory democracy and an ecological  economy on a human scale.
      This could be an important awakening. And, like all history, it could also be just a bubble.  That depends on all of us. 
A powerfull comment on the movement in the USA :  http://front.moveon.org/the-most-powerful-occupywallstreet-clip-you-will-see-this-month/#.TpttX9PHbS5.facebook

The Montreal occupaton  is going well. Visit their site on facebook: Occupons Montréal

Liberation Theology - Peru in the 1980s

This video provides an excellent view of the context within which liberation theology developed. It is also the context in which I lived daily during the 1980s. Many of the people, events, places in the video were and are well known to me. Viewing it was like turning the pages of a personal photo album. (21 minutes)
(I still haven't figured out to embed videos. However, the link works.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPQGFSBGYQo&feature=player_embedded

Latin American Agenda 2012

The 2012 English edition of the Global  Latin American Agenda is now ready.

Please address requests to
Dunamis Publishers, 6295, rue Alma, Montréal, QC, H2W 2W2, Canada.

$20 in Canada*
$23 elsewhere*

* includes mailing

Please make checks payable to Dunamis Publishers

...

Introductory note by Bishop Pedro Casaldáliga:

The liberating phrase, the Good Life [el Buen Vivir] in the Andean translation called Sumak Kawsay, comes forward to greet us as a Gospel of

Life that is possible and dignified for all persons and all peoples. It is the Good News of  the Good Life  in face of the bad life of the immense majority and which confronts that insulting and blasphemous “

good life” [la buena vida] led by a minority that is trying to be the only
group allowed into the common house of humanity.

The Agenda proclaims the “Good Life-Good Life Together because we cannot imagine a good quality of human life without a good co-existence among humans. We are relationship, sociability, communion, love. It is abundantly clear that a good personal life also has to be communitarian; but it is better to bring it out explicitly so as not to fall into assumptions that don’t pay attention to what we need to understand and embrace vitally, radically. I am myself and also the whole of humanity. There are two problems and two solutions: other people and myself. This cannot just be “taken for granted;” we need to shout it aloud.

CIMI, the Indigenous Missionary Council of Brazil, in its Week of Indigenous Peoples 2011, launched a three-part document of conscientization and commitment to the Indigenous Cause with its theme: “Life for All and for Always.” They then added: “Mother Earth cries out for
the Good Life .”


CIMI in Brazil defines it this way: “The concept of the Good Life goes in the opposite direction of a model for development that considers the Earth and Nature to be consumer products... It is a system of life set against capitalism, because this latter has become a model of death and exploitation...We need to think about  the Good Life  as a system for a viable life, taking into account the historical dimension and the possibilities that it offers for the future. To bring this about, we need to consider the Good Life  as an alternative to the capitalist model, creating a historical memory by taking life and hope into account, precisely not from the perspective of the conquerors,” but rather always and radically
from the perspective of the life, hopes, lamentation and blood of those who have been conquered. “In order to practice the Good Life  we need to listen to what those who struggle each day for a more fraternal and just world have to say.”

Professor Dávalos says that “social movements, and especially the Indigenous movement, have proposed a new paradigm of living and living together that is not based on development or the idea of growth but rather on different concepts such as of conviviality, respect for nature, solidarity,

 reciprocity, complementarity.”

CIMI’s document calls for “life for all and for always.”
It is the “always” that walks with the anxiety and hope of mortal humanity throughout history. We cannot think about living well without simultaneously considering dying well. Death is the last great particularity of life, the ultimate verse of the sonnet. If there is no response to death, there is no response to life. By being grateful for and by drawing on everything that philosophy and science can offer by way of “quality of life,” we make a definitive call to hope. Good Death-Good Life.

Jesus of Nazareth, prophet of the great Utopia (”Be good as God is good, Love as God loved us, Give your life for those you love”) proclaimed with his life and death and with his victory over death, the Sumak Kawsay of God’s Reign. Jesus is, in his own person, a lasting and universal paradigm of  the Good Life,  the Good Life Together and the Good Death.