Generation NOW
Four young activists speak about their work to shape Canada’s political future
Who says young Canadians are disengaged, apathetic, not voting? Not these four youth leaders: activist Brigette DePape, best known as the “rogue page,” Jamie Biggar, executive director of LeadNow.org, climate justice organizer Ben Powless and Emma Pullman, political campaigner with sumofus.org. They’re part of what the Ottawa-based Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives calls “Generation Now” — and they were the stars of the progressive think tank’s annual David Lewis Lecture on Thursday in Toronto. Named for the late federal NDP leader, the lecture series was launched in 2010 with author-activist Naomi Klein as the speaker. Its second year featured David’s son, Stephen Lewis, and his spouse, former Star columnist Michele Landsberg. Thursday’s lineup was all about Canada’s political future. Here’s what its stars had to say.
BRIGETTE DEPAPE, 23
The image of the young Senate page is indelible: dark suit, bow tie, white gloves and a rope of hair framing a stop sign bearing the words “Stop Harper.”
Brigette DePape, wide-eyed and defiant, faced the TV cameras in the Senate on June 3, 2011, throwing the country into an uproar. Within hours, she was a national icon, at least among progressives. Many of them replaced their avatars on Facebook and Twitter with the famous photo of what she calls her “action.”
On the phone from her Ottawa home, where she recently graduated with a BA in international development and globalization, DePape details the turns her life has taken since being tossed from the Senate.
She’s been writing, organizing and speaking to activists across Canada. She co-edited a book of essays by young people called The Power of Youth, and she’s still protesting.
“It has been such an incredible time to be an activist,” DePape says. “There have been incredible social movements: Occupy, the Quebec student movement, these movements against the (Enbridge) pipeline, and it’s been incredible to meet the people organizing on the ground.”
DePape insists that today’s youth are not apathetic and despite what the mainstream media claim, they want to get involved. The problem, she believes, is that society has shifted to the right in ways that discourage youth from participating in the political process.
“A lot of us grew up in the ’80s and ’90s, and all we have seen is neo-liberal governments that don’t represent us and aren’t good for the society that we believe in or for the environment or for issues of equality,” she says. “We haven’t seen social movements changing things, like in the ’60s and ’70s, when young people went into the streets and stopped the war in Vietnam.
“But we are seeing it now. We saw it with the Quebec student movement. We saw them mobilize. They have really shown young people across the country that protesting and striking and direct action, and being persistent about it, works — and we all need to engage in those forms of political action in order to achieve the progressive society that we believe in.”
EMMA PULLMAN, 27
LeadNow.org research director Emma Pullman proudly calls herself a “muckraker.”
Last January, in a much-talked about post for DeSmogBlog, she connected the dots between the Harper Conservatives, the oil industry and the so-called “Ethical Oil” organization. It exposed the outfit as little more than a front for promoting the Alberta oilsands. Since then, she’s been part of SumofUs.org, which tries to hold corporations accountable for their misinformation and misdeeds. For example, SumOfUs got 637,000 signatures on a thank-you to Starbucks, which refused to capitulate to a U.S. boycott by a rightwing organization because the chain supported same-sex marriage rights.
“I actually went to Starbucks headquarters dressed up as a gigantic latte and delivered the petition,” she laughs, on the phone from Vancouver.
Pullman rattles off a list of victories: convincing Tim Hortons to eliminate gestational crates for sows in its food supply chain, getting corporations to withdraw $1 million in funds to the climate change-denying Heartland Institute in the U.S., and persuading grocery chain Trader Joe’s to sign a fair wages agreement.
BEN POWLESS, 26
You could say that for Ben Powless, a Mohawk citizen of Six Nations, activism is in his blood. The climate justice organizer and sometime writer learned about protest from his parents.
“I used to get dragged around to rallies when I was a kid. I learned very quickly that to be born native in this country is a political act,” he emails from the train on his way to Toronto from his home in Ottawa. “First time in the newspapers was when I was about 7. I think I thought that was normal.”
Powless, while not employed by any activist organization, works closely with the Indigenous Environmental Network, blogs, mobilizes people and publicizes actions. His Facebook page and his flickr stream are loaded with hundreds of his protest photos. As for politics, Powless has thoughts on Canadian democracy.
“I don’t necessarily think it’s ‘broken,’ ” he says. “I happen to think it was designed this way. It was never really about enfranchising people and getting them directly involved. I mean, originally most of the population couldn’t vote. Aboriginal peoples and women didn’t get the vote until very recently. But that doesn’t mean I don’t think we should work to correct it.”
JAMIE BIGGAR, 29
It was Canada’s performance at the 2010 global warming conference in Copenhagen that turned Jamie Biggar from an environmental activist into a political organizer.
“To watch your own government do everything it could do to prevent a global agreement that could have stopped catastrophic climate change and saved millions or hundreds of millions of lives was such a profound injustice to witness that I personally felt that I should work to help ensure that nothing like that ever happens again,” says the executive director of the Vancouver-based LeadNow.org.
Founded by Biggar and his friends in the aftermath of the conference, the donation-supported organization now boasts some 200,000 members, and that number is growing.
LeadNow.org made its mark during the 2011 federal election when it mobilized university students to produce “vote mob” videos, many of which went viral.