Non-violence, campements et jardins

Occupons Montréal - Novembre 2011

Suite à ma réflexion (plus tôt en anglais) sur la direction prise par le mouvement, je vous offre maintenant un deuxième volet.

   Dans la dynamique de la « praxis » (action-réflexion-action) du mouvement Occupons Montréal (OM), j’essaie de participer surtout en encourageant la réflexion tout en m’impliquant aussi dans au moins quelques unes des actions.

   Par cette essai, je prétends ouvrir une réflexion sur trois thèmes que j’ai l’intention, avec temps, de développer plus en détail.  Ici, ce ne serait que pour indiquer une hypothèse sur le sens de l’interrelation de ces trois éléments pour le mouvement. Les thèmes, annoncés déjà dans le titre, sont d’une grande actualité à ce moment de l’évolution du mouvement OM. J’espère que mes ruminations aideront à les situer mieux mais aussi à provoquer une prise de conscience généralisée chez les occupants.

   Pour Gandhi, grand pratiquant de la non-violence et celui qui a aussi le plus marqué la théorie, le cœur de ce chemin se trouve dans deux mots hindis : satyagraha et ahimsa. Le premier fait référence à la force de la vérité cachée par l’oppression et qui est mis en clarté par une action directe.  Ahimsa souvent se traduit par « amour », c’est-à-dire l’effort de chercher le bien de l’autre, surtout de l’autre qui est exclu et opprimé.  Il faut dire tout de suite que la vérité et l’amour cherché dans la non-violence ne sont ni des éléments abstraits ni de l’affection sentimentale.  Ce sont toujours des réalités vécues dans l’action et dont on découvre le sens et la profondeur au moyen d’une réflexion postérieure sur l’action. L’exemple le plus connu dans la vie de Gandhi a été la marche du sel. Les Anglais avaient mis une taxe sur l’achat du sel. Gandhi a convoqué une marche vers la mer pour récolter du sel le long de la plage. Ainsi il a révélé à la population indienne le pouvoir qu’elle avait de prendre la vie entre  ses propres mains et gérer ses affaires sans besoin de l’empire britannique. En même temps, il a révélé l’impuissance de l’empire, ce qui a encouragé la population à aller encore plus loin. Dans son action, il était très important d’aller directement, publiquement et massivement contre les directives formelles du gouvernement colonial. C’était ça qui faisait l’impact de son action. La vérité derrière l’action de Gandhi était que la population indienne, sujet de l’empire britannique, était en réalité un peuple fort de dignité, de savoir et de pouvoir pour gérer ses affaires sans besoin de l’empire.

   Si le mouvement OM a décidé de prendre la route de la non-violence, il fallait donc chercher la vérité cachée par le système dominant  de telle façon qu’on pourrait, par une action directe, convoquer la population à trouver sa propre force.

   Le mouvement a commencé avec un campement à la Place du peuple (anciennement connu comme Square Victoria). En situant leur campement en plein milieu du secteur financier de Montréal, il envoyait un message aux super-riches de la société que leur pouvoir était vide. Il ouvrait une piste d’action autonome et libre. Il annonçait à la société qu’il est possible de trouver une autre manière de vivre sans dépendance à l’empire de la monnaie. 

   Les trois réalités qui préoccupent le plus les pauvres et les exclu(e)s de la ville de Montréal sont une combinaison de soucis de logement, de nourriture et d'appartenance. Grand nombre de citoyens de la ville souffrent de l’insécurité de trouver un logement abordable et d’avoir une sécurité alimentaire, surtout d'aliments sains. Il y a aussi énormément des personnes à Montréal qui souffrent de l’isolement et de la solitude.

   Par la seule action de camper sur la Place du peuple, le mouvement répondait à ces trois soucis. Même sans jamais le dire clairement, le campement mettait ces besoins en évidence pour tout le monde et pointait vers une piste pour y répondre : vivre ensemble, en communauté heureuse et solidaire, en se nourrissant de façon communautaire. Pendant quelques semaines, le mouvement, par sa présence seule, questionnait tout le système de logement, d'alimentation et de vivre ensemble qui régit la ville. Et, en même temps, le campement ouvrait une espace où déjà il y avait moyen d’avancer vers des solutions pratiques.

   En choisissant un campement en plein centre-ville, le mouvement prenait parti pour les exclus mais aussi forgeait son identité en tant que mouvement. À partir de là, c’est la question du logement, de l'alimentation et de vivre ensemble qui marquera l’identité du mouvement.  C’était une action directe qui allait contre les normes officielles de la ville et qui mettait en question la capacité de la ville de gérer ces trois éléments. Aller à la Place du peuple simplement pour passer la journée ensemble en partageant un repas n’aurait pas eu d’impact. Ce genre de rassemblement se fait partout dans la ville—au Parc Lafontaine, Parc Maisonneuve et Parc Jarry, par exemple—tout au long de l’été sans problème et sans présence médiatique. Ce qui faisait la différence, c’est qu’on est allé beaucoup plus loin : Contre toutes les normes pour vivre ensemble dans la ville de Montréal,  le mouvement a prétendu établir une communauté permanente et vivre ensemble en plein milieu d’un espace public. En faisant leur rassemblement de cette façon-là, le mouvement a remis en question le pouvoir de la ville de régir la façon dont les citoyens trouvent solution à leurs besoins d’avoir un toit, de se nourrir et de vivre la solidarité. C’est ça, la force du mouvement. Si le mouvement veut continuer il faut bâtir à partir de ce qu’il a initié le 15 Octobre 2011.

The Original Praxis of Non-Violence

   Even if the coining of the word “non-violence” is attributed to Gandhi, the sources he turned to in order to give meaning to the word go back in history through people like Tolstoy, Thoreau and especially Jesus,    who appears to be the original source of the “praxis” (action-reflection-action) of non-violence (in the sense of ahimsa and of satyagraha).

   It is important to note that the most salient characteristic of Jesus’ practice is his attention to the sick and excluded. It was a question of the heart. We are told a leper approached him and said, “If you want to, you can cure me.” (Mark 1, 40-45) The Gospel writer goes on to say that Jesus replied, “Of course I want to” and, contrary to a very important norm of his time that forbade all contact with lepers, he touched him, thus making himself as “unclean” as the leper. In another place, we read that Jesus felt compassion for the crowd because they wandered without direction. He is also said to have wept at the tomb of his friend Lazarus before calling him out of the cave. Jesus was filled with compassion for those who were rejected by society and condemned to poverty and solitude. Everything he did flowed from that unceasing love for the people who had no place in the society of his time.

   Jesus was a Galilean, progeny of a people who, at that moment, lived under a Roman military occupation that had established a local puppet government and were supported by a sector his own society (the Pharisees, Sadducees and, above all, the Scribes, who were the lawyers of his time). This sector conspired with the Roman authorities to assure their privileges.  He was wise enough not to attack the empire directly or his public life might have been even shorter than it was. Galilee was a zone of revolt against the occupation but also against the temple religion. There is nothing strange in the fact that Jesus rejected the temple and its rules as maintained by the Scribes. While he cast doubt on the legitimacy of the imperial authority, he reserved his anger and his direct actions for the temple and its defenders.

  His manner was to approach the excluded and to treat them as full persons, worthy of his attention and perfectly capable to participating fully in society. To demonstrate this conviction, he went against all the social norms that posed an obstacle to that participation: he “cured” the blind, the paralyzed, the deaf and the lepers; he “pardoned” those who had no means to comply with all the rules imposed by the authorities; he refused to recognize the legitimacy of norms that prevented doing good on the Sabbath. In so doing, he publicly opposed the authorities who interpreted these gestures as a personal insult.  He went so far as to chase the vendors from the temple. His was a life of classic “direct action.”

   Jesus placed enormous importance on the truth: “The truth will make you free,” that is to say, will liberate you. It is the same word in Hebrew as what religion terms “salvation.” For Jesus, the truth that counts here is that the excluded are persons who deserve recognition for their dignity and who can fully and freely participate in society. It was a fundamental commitment and he accepted the consequences. When the Gospel of Mark says that the people were awed by the fact that he spoke “with authority,”   It points to the inner power that radiated from his conviction of the value of the poor and excluded.

   Those who followed Jesus tried to do the same and paid a great price for being an open and inclusive community. For decades, that first community tried to dialogue with their own Jewish people until finally they were expelled from the synagogue. For two centuries after that, they remained distance from the dominant power of the empire refusing to recognise its demands. Thousands were executed.

   Even after the Christian authorities made a pact with the empire—for motives we can only imagine—there were always those who sought to be faithful to the initial inspiration. The best known of these is Francis Bernardoni, better known as “of Assisi.” It is well to remember that Francis took in hand the great conflict of his time between the state power of the Christians and that of the Muslims. He went, all alone, to ask for a dialogue with the Sheik on the Muslim side and after quite an adventure managed to meet him on Muslim territory. There is no document recounting the details of their conversation but we know that they had a meeting of hearts. Following that the Sheik ordered that Francis be given safe passage back to his own land.

   So then, when Gandhi developed his practice of non-violence, he had before him the example of Jesus and that whole history of the communities who followed him.
   What might that mean for today? The empire and the complicit religion are all too clear and yet it would seem most people have no "eyes to see or ears to hear."  The political empire is led by the "highly industrialized nations" led by the United States. The religion complicit with it is that of money led by the banking system and the major multinational corporations. The great handicape for change today is that the vast majority of the population (certainly of the countries of the "North" are in a situation of life-idebtedness to the system. Most depend totally on that economic religion for their survival, involved in "selling" their freedom in order to have a job and a livelihood. In this respect, the population of the countries of the "North" are in a situation of serfdom, of ecnomic slavery. They cannot imagine, at all, stepping outside the lines that provide their only imaginable option.
 It would seem to me evident then that a non-violent approach would probably follow much of that employed by Jesus in his time. And for that I leave it to your imagination since the power of non-violenct action has always relied on its capacity for inventivent, creativity and surprise. 

Where is the Occupy Montreal Movement Headed?

Occupy Montreal hit the streets running on October 15, 2011 as part of a global moment to begin creating a better world through the occupation of public spaces. The movement in Montreal has its similarities and differences from that in the Rest of Canada, the United States, Europe and the Middle East. It would be important to be able to elaborate these similarities and especially the differences--separately in another essay. Certainly the political, social and cultural context of Quebec provides the movement with its unique identity and challenges.
 In Montreal the movement came to notice thorugh a tent village in the financial district that lasted more than a month. Since then it has expanded and deepened both its organizational capacity and its vision. These winter months are crucial for the future of the movement. It is being taken up as a time to focus the energy and develop the structures that will allow for intense coordinated action for the rest of the year.
 At this point, no official document (that is to say, approved by a General Assembly) outlines the specific goals for the movement during 2012. However, the movement has begun a series of concerted assemblies moving in that direction. From my own personal point of view, there are four major areas of concern that appear to focus the energy of most participants. I list them in no particular order. The movement rejects the oligarchy that currently veils itself as democracy in Quebec (and Canada) and it proposes the creation of direct, participatory democracy at the local level. The movement rejects the financial tyranny that currently dominates world capitalism and proposes an economy of sharing in which no one is excluded and everyone’s needs are met. The movement rejects the damage being done to the environment and proposes a way of living in society that is in harmony with all living creatures who inhabit our Mother Earth. (Currently this includes an effort to provide locally cultivated food to those who need it.) Finally, the disinformation provided by the mass media is rejected and an extraordinary effort is being made to provide alternative sources of both information and analysis. In this respect also a large amount of creative artistic energy is being developed. This list is not exhaustive. There are many other issues being taken up by various groups in the movement but I think most of them would fall under one or another of these major categories.
 The question that naturally flows from this effort to understand what it is that the movement is proposing is how to address these issues. Here too the practice is instructive. First of all, the movement proposes that we begin now, actively to address the issues by “occupying” their spaces with our creative energy. The primary concern, so far, has been to occupy those spaces in a way that encourages other citizens to set aside their fear that nothing can change, to become aware of their own power to make a difference and to begin also to act. The actions tend to create spaces in society for real democracy, inclusion, sharing and sensitivity to Mother Earth. However, there are also those in the movement who are aware that we cannot simply ignore the fact that major systems of government, finance, industry and social organization exist, are diametrically opposed to the goals of the occupy movement and not at all indifferent to its presence. Resistance to the forces of domination are central to the movement.
 ([i]I have placed this also on Atrium and Facebook. It will also appear on my blog--richardrenshaw.blogspot.com[/i])

The Occupy movement is nonviolent and thus inserts itself within the long history of nonviolent movements and nonviolent direct action around the world over many centuries. Every action undertaken by participants in the movement in inscribed within that call to take the issues into our own hands and make a difference, especially at the local level through using that inner power that connects us with one another.
 Challenges are not lacking in this first year of Occupy Montreal. Much of the energy during the winter is focused on improving internal and external communication, that is to say, within the movement in Montreal( and elsewhere) as well as with the larger society of our city. A considerable effort has been made to counter the image of the movement created by the mainstream media by a public presence to provide citizens with specific examples of who is part of the movement, what it stands for and how it operates. Finally, local groups have been established in several Montreal neighbourhoods and evidence considerable vitality and commitment. Those who make up the mouvement, at this point, tend to be largely young (20-40) with a significant representation of those who are somewhat older. They tend to be well educated and engaged already in community groups, NGOs or working professionally.
 When Spring arrives a few weeks from now, Montreal will witness a flourishing of public activity supported by the movement. How this develops and is received will be an important factor in laying the foundations for a long-term presence in Montreal that makes a difference and that impacts on the global scene.  ----- Richard Renshaw

Threats to society

A report on threats to the global society has just been released for the Davos group. It is certainly worth a read in the light of my earlier reflection on Societal Breakdown and its sequel.  I found  the link on the front page of Le Devoir today.

A brief note about death

From www.layoutsparks.com

     These January days, riding out into the country, I observe the bare trees along the sides of the roads. Black trunks send out blacker branches into the grey sky. They appear to be quite dead, ready for the fireplace.  And yet, in few weeks they will be drawing sap up into the tips of their buds as they prepare to burst back into life. Their death is but a moment in a longer cycle of life, of resurrection.

As I grow into the later chapters of life, I find that the “death dimension” takes on a larger role. This is far from a question of nostalgia or moroseness. I am simply paying more attention to how the factor of death reshapes, colours and provides significant perspectives on what I experience here and now and what I feel when I try to make sense of my life at this point.

     I begin to loosen my grip on the projects and achievements of my personal life and attend more to another dimension that provides a deeper flavour and richness.

As my life becomes more ephemeral and as I take stock of the fact that the colony of cells that constitute my body begins to show signs of becoming more fragile and frayed, life also turns to a dimension that I can only call more “eternal” in the sense of being freed from the need to show a pay-off. Death helps me see that the illusions of the ego are just that, that the “great leveler” is a gift to put everything in perspective and that the call is increasingly to give thanks and to let go so that life in all its splendour can flourish in its own way, a way that goes infinitely beyond my ego.  

More on Magic and Myth

     I fear I was a little too hard on magic in my last entry. In fact, I love magic and have always been fascinated both by the productions of magicians and by the magic of a good story well told. (Quebec has an excellent storyteller in the person of Fred Pelerin. You can find him on Youtube.)

     Magic (and fantasy as well) opens up the world to new possibilities not imagined before and invites us to question the limits of our perception of reality. Fantasy and magic serve important functions in our search for the truth, the divine, and the good. They are indispensable. Story-telling is absolutely fundamental to society and magic is the very fabric of any really good story. It moves story from being just a recounting of events to the immeasurably more significant role of opening up those events to their meaning and mystery.

     If, in my last entry, I said I was getting tired of magic and fantasy, it is because all too often we stay at the level of curiosity about the magical or fantastic dimensions and do not to the work of transformation I tried to outline there. And this is indeed tragic.

     In the work of Michel Tremblay, the Chronicle of the Plateau-Mont-Royal, the author introduces us to the magic of  three sisters (and their mother) who sit quietly on their second-floor porch knitting mittens. He then introduces the magical element of their knitting—over more than a century it appears--as a weaving of the thread of life that will tell the story of the various characters in the novel. Initially, this leads us to dismiss the characters as illusions; yet we are never allowed to trivialize them. They represent something very important and that is the very stuff of Tremblay’s story. We have to work with the magic to get at the meaning of the story.

     The same is true for much of what we find in religious stories. There is almost always an element of magic in the stories. Initially we are drawn to the story because of its magic; then we have to dig deep behind it for the treasure it contains. Life itself is not very different.

Magic and Myth

     One of the challenges faced by anyone who has passed through studies in philosophy is that one is led eventually to set aside magical explanations of the world and to try to figure things out rationally. The task is not solitary but each one has to do the work him- or herself. The set of explanations that have been handed on to us are called before the tribunal of reason to be weighed in the balance. This does not allow a whole lot of room for romance!

     As I grow older I find less and less place for the magical fables that abound today and that lead us to escape from the real world into fantasy. 

Paradoxically, I also find myself increasingly drawn to the territory of stories and myths as bearers of the deeper meaning of the human quest. The paradox is only apparent. Stories and myths are filled with images and imagination but are far from fantasy and magic. The stories of Noah and of the Wise Men are anything but magical explanations of the world; they are full of meaning without falling into magic or fantasy – unless of course as far too many people are prone to do, they are interpreted literally. At that point they become quite fantastic and magical. They also lose all meaning – at least for me.

     Religion is, of course, a goldmine of myth and story. For those so inclined it is also an abundant source of magical explanations of the world that render life utterly superficial, however reassuring.

     All of us who were introduced to religion as children clearly embraced the world of religion and its stories in a profoundly magical mode. This is both inevitable and understandable. The world of the child does not distinguish, yet, between myth and fantasy and it normally takes years of patient inquiry to arrive at the point of making the distinctions. Most don’t bother: they continue with childish fantasies or throw the whole bucket out the window. Neither leaves much room for profundity in the grasp of the challenges of life.

     So, the move from child to adult is a move that distinguishes, discerns, between the explanations that are magical and those that offer some grasp of reality that push us to engage with the deeper dynamics of life. The prosaic explanations of academics are seldom sufficient nourishment and history would seem to indicate that those who go the deepest and the furthest are those whose discernments are rooted in stories and myths that move us to a profound engagement with reality without abandoning the search for—though perhaps not the achievement of—rational explanation.

     This means that those adults who want to make some sense of religion inevitably much make an arduous journey through the religious stories they have heard as children in order to arrive at an understanding of their deeper significance. This cannot be done without the harrowing rejection of their magical interpretation.

     Catholicism is particularly filled with all sorts of stories open to magical interpretation that can hide their deeper meaning. The list is long: the Garden of Eden, the original sin, the story of the flood, of the exodus of Moses, of the birth of Jesus, of the shepherds, the wise men and their star, the multiplication of the loaves and finally the resurrection of Jesus, his ascension and then the Pentecost.  The sacraments are in general a rich source of magical interpretations that hide their real meaning: the mark of Baptism, the descent of the Spirit in Confirmation, the consecration in the Eucharist, the forgiveness in Reconciliation.

Ultimately the very notion of Church that and of God, of heaven, hell and finally of salvation are called forward for re-examination. God and Church itself are “put on trial” without any predetermined outcome. The same is true for the celebrated notions of heaven and of hell.

To affirm that many of the explanations of these stories and rituals have magical tones is to open a veritable can of worms especially in the current context of Church politics and theological thinking. Yet the only way into adulthood and the only possible future for religion today is to engage it as adults with all the risk and effort that this implies.

     I remember having the thought, when I was studying theology, so many years ago; that there was something they weren’t telling me. Now, some fifty years later, I think what I didn’t catch was that everything they were saying was a code for telling me, “There is something important here, but you will have to figure it out for yourself.” We are not alone in doing so; many theologians are working feverishly at it. Still, in the end, only we can do it for ourselves.