Activists retool protests amid limits on gatherings
Before mid-march, the Making Peace Vigil hadn’t missed a Thursday on the F.W. Hill Mall in nearly 13 years.
“COVID-19 made us break our record,” said Florence Stratton.
On May 3, the group’s anniversary, Stratton and its other members were in isolation, instead of handing out pamphlets about social justice on Scarth Street downtown.
If anything, COVID-19 has “shone a spotlight” on one of the major issues the group speaks against.
“Homelessness has been one of the recurring themes of our pamphlets,” said Stratton. During a pandemic, “How can you shelter in place when you don’t have a home?”
While COVID -19 has kept Stratton’s community of fellow activists physically distanced, they are still in regular communication — phoning, emailing and Zooming with each other, and sending letters and calling in to municipal and provincial officials.
“We’ve simply lost the in-person protest element and it doesn’t feel very good, but we must carry on; it’s too important not to.”
Marta Bashovski has been watching “solidarity building measures evolve” in recent times, when it comes to issues like food and housing insecurity, and health-care.
An assistant professor of political science at Campion College (University of Regina), Bashovski has watched protest and social movements for the better part of two decades.
During COVID times, she pointed to activists filling in the gaps. For example, a prison solidarity group in Hamilton, Ont., “ran an in-car protest, honking horns outside the prison” to press for release of prisoners at high risk of contracting COVID -19, Bashovski wrote in an email from her current situation in Northern Ontario.
Members of a housing insecurity group in British Columbia took up a writing campaign in newspapers and online media, she added.
“Bodies in the streets,” said Bashovski, “has historically been a crucial tactic to gaining attention and effecting change, whether this is in terms of public support, policy change or otherwise.”
But she sees “potential” as movements are moving online.
Rob Humphries of No Business In the Park — another Regina group of which Stratton is part — said his group is using Facebook to engage the public to keep business out of Wascana Centre.
Bashovski added, in some of the largest-scale protests in recent decades — including anti-iraq War demonstrations and Occupy Wall Street — “significant political change has not taken place despite unprecedented numbers. This might be an opportunity to reconsider how we understand protests as aimed at effecting significant change.”
Simon Granovsky-larsen is “very impressed” by what he’s seeing of gathering-less social movements.
“I’m really optimistic about social movements going forward, seeing the amount of creativity and networking and movement building that’s happening during these times, even if it’s not happening in person,” said the associate professor in politics and international studies at the U of R.
He has seen an “explosion” in online connection, with webinars easily bringing together international parties that would previously take a year or more to organize.
He recently attended a webinar featuring people from Northern British Columbia and Guatemala.
“Now we’ve seen that it’s productive in another way to have those same people come together from their homes, and I think that’ll be a lasting impact,” said Granovsky-larsen.
Alex Flett has taken a step back during COVID-19 isolation, to consider the activism that has dominated his life for the past year — specifically, youth climate strikes that drew anywhere from a handful to hundreds of people at the Saskatchewan Legislative Building.
An organizer of Fridays For Future Regina, 18-year-old Flett has spent a lot of time reflecting on the strikes’ effect — on himself and others.
He laments a lack of hope in their message, one rife with “fearmongering ” and encouraging people to “panic.”
He believes this has saddled young people with “emotional baggage” that they don’t know how to handle — for example, children as young as five years old believing they have no future.
“It can be very stressful … We’re pushing toward a sustainable planet, but we’re not pushing ourselves in a sustainable way.”
Further, he wonders about the impact of their efforts on making meaningful change: “It just does not necessarily seem worth it.”
In isolation, Flett has been writing music. He sees music and art as a way of inspiring others to positive change, and believes it’s a more effective route than entreating politicians.
“With inspiration comes open-mindedness and willingness to change. And if we can get the majority of people on board with this, then in a democratic society, our political leaders would simply change,” said Flett.
“I don’t think we should focus on trying to tell somebody who has no interest in what we’re on about that he needs to change something, or she needs to change something, because that has proven to me to be very ineffective.”
While Stratton, Flett and their colleagues have taken a break from in-your-face activism, one prominent movement has tried to keep up momentum in spite of gathering bans.
Unifor Local 594 in the past couple of weeks has undertaken some untraditional methods of trying to picket the Co-op Refinery Complex that locked out workers five months ago.
It has had car rallies several times a week.
Unifor family members on Wednesday left 100-and-some decorated rocks on the steps of the Legislative Building.
Last week, one person took to Wascana Lake with a big union flag displayed from his canoe.
Until these alternative demonstrations, there has been an element of “out of sight, out of mind,” said local president Kevin Bittman.
“The first couple rallies that we had at the Leg, there were lots of people that were commenting, ‘Oh, I thought you guys were back at work; we didn’t even know that was going on still,’” Bittman said.
“COVID, obviously when it popped up, the No. 1 thing is to keep people safe, but we still were without jobs,” he added.
“So when the community started not even realizing that we were still locked out, it makes it very difficult to get back into the mindset, but ... you still can’t get on the lines with numbers or anything like that. So it’s been very challenging.”
Aiding the community has been on Bittman’s mind.
Unifor members have donated blood, and supported Carmichael Outreach and the Regina Food Bank.
“We’re all going through a tough time right now and this is our community as well,” said Bittman, “so we haven’t forgotten the people that need us.”
A sense of unity is also on Sydney Chadwick’s mind. A member of Fridays For Future Regina, she has been awed at the way people have pulled together for a common cause, to fight the effects of COVID -19.
“Seeing how people come together and make change overnight has actually been really inspiring, and I hope we can put that towards the climate crisis,” said Chadwick.
While, like Flett, Chadwick’s activism has been on the back burner these days, she has thought a lot about the conversations she hopes to have with the environment minister, mayor and city councillors “once the pandemic has settled down.”
She hopes to point out, “Look what we just did together, we can do this again ... Let’s put our ideas together and fight this other existential crisis that is currently happening.”
Flett agreed.
“The pandemic has gone to prove that we have all the means necessary to take the action that is necessary” for climate action.
“COVID -19 has definitely helped to understand the … sacredness of life,” he added. “When life is threatened, people are willing to do what they have to, to protect it.”
While they are rare in Regina, there are those who have opted to counter the public health order and physically gather for a protest.
At the Legislative Building on May 2, a small group toted signs touting “all jobs are essential” and “enough of the police state.”
When five police officers responded that Saturday afternoon, informing protesters they were breaking public health rules barring gatherings of less than 10, “the group was co-operative and stated they would go somewhere else,” said police spokesperson Elizabeth Popowich.
She added, the group was following social distancing rules, keeping at least two metres apart.
This gathering came on the heels of larger, non-distancing protests in the United States.
Bashovski noted the “individualistic nature of the protests — for instance, making claims around the infringement of individual rights, and demands around individuals’ access to services that have closed to protect the public.”
Granovsky-larsen said a debate dates back nearly a century, surrounding society as a collective, versus society as a horde of individuals.
“I think that the social and political conditions that give rise to those protests are a lot stronger in the United States,” he said. The “fringe right-wing protests” are on a smaller scale in Canada, reflecting an American view where society and social justice have been “more thoroughly discredited.”
“Canadian governments and Canadian society as a whole hold onto a belief in collective society and a belief in importance of social justice more than our neighbours do,” said Granovsky-larsen.
Bashovski and Stratton share optimism that, POST-COVID-19, our society may further address social justice issues.
“In my neighbourhood, in quite a few neighbourhoods ... there’s been a lot of pot banging for front line workers and that, I hope, is reminding us all of how poorly some of them are paid — the people in grocery stores, the cleaners,” said Stratton. “Maybe pot banging, too, is a kind of action that people are taking that may remind people of the inequalities in our society.”
“I am hopeful that the questions raised by the pandemic around the effects of economic losses, service closures and political instability ... may crystallize in some of the changes that have long been called for,” said Bashovski.
Granovsky-larsen credited social movements with pressuring governments to freeze rents and ban evictions while people are out of work.
They were “entirely virtually organized series of social movement campaigns that mobilized really quickly, really effectively,” he said — another sign of online connection at work.
However, he pointed to some possible lasting negative impacts as a result of COVID-19.
“Right now we’ve given government quite a bit of authority … to increase surveillance, to increase data surveillance, control of movement, curtailing of civil rights, in a way that in Canada has been used very responsibly to combat in very necessary ways the spread of the pandemic,” said Granovsky-larsen.
“But it is always possible that once we’ve accepted limitations on our civil rights and an extension of surveillance, that that stays as a part of the political landscape.”