Author Archive for Paul Aitken

Big news. Inspirational.

A 21-year-old page lost her job Friday after walking onto the Senate floor during the speech from the throne to protest against Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

This act by such a young person has caught the attention of the media across the country, and rightly so. It was an act of bravery by a member of a generation that have been variously labelled as apathetic, lazy, politically disengaged, etc. Not that miss DePape is necessarily a voice of her generation, but certainly we can no longer make such sweeping generalisations about the under 30 set.

In typical fashion, much of the uproar has focused on the style and form of the protest, and not on the content of her (and many others’) objections to the Harper regime and it’s anti-democratic policies. Green leader Elizabeth May has called the protest “inappropriate,” Conservative blowhard senator Mike Duffy dismissed it as a “stunt,” and Bob Rae – in language that echoes the types of conservative resistance to African American integration and women’s rights – has noted that such ceremonies (the throne speech) are sacred and ought not to be disrupted. (watch the accompanying videos on the article).

Such a non-partisan  reaction to DePape’s act is evidence of the supine attitude of today’s entrenched political class; and this is precisely why actions such as DePape’s are needed. How else is dissent to be voiced if it first must conform to the “proper” expectations of the ruling class? There is no such thing as “legitimate protest;” such an oxymoron fails to account for the greater necessity to challenge the sedimentation of procedure and “legitimate” process – what is allowed and what is not. A protest that is sanctioned by ruling elites does little to undermine and drill down to the root cause for the existence of and adherence to such procedures/processes/traditions: the establishment and maintenance of hierarchical power relations; the institutionalisation and perpetuation of power for the few over the many.

DePape’s tremendous act, combined with the focus on its disruption of procedure and the ruling class’s uniform dismissal provides further evidence that dissenting views (or, in DePape’s electoral/mathematical language, the 3/4 of us who do not hold “conservative values”) are spoken in a language that simply cannot be understood by the ruling elite. This is a dissent characterised by, among other things, voter absenteeism (not always a case of apathy) and disregard for proper procedure. And  ruling elites have no investment in or means for communicating with such dissent: why would a government able to form a “majority” by winning 60% of 40% of all the eligible votes be interested in enticing all of those who didn’t vote to come join in? Why would a parliamentary system that hinges on the idea that one can represent the many be interested in hearing the voices of those who speak themselves and not through their appointed representatives? In this sense, dissent is speaking truth to power in a way that power simply cannot and will not understand. But does this mean that dissent needs to change its language to match that of the dominant? I’d argue no.

Could it not be the case that the political establishement’s reaction to DePape’s protest is informed by some sort of (subconscious?) acknowledgement that, in fact, her message was not directed at them at all? And by not directing it at them, could she be effectively undermining their authority as arbiters of right and wrong? Indeed, since parliamentary chambers are places of tradition and “proper procedure” a simple placard would have little effect in such a space. Her means of protest will find and has found greater resonance in the media and across the discursive terrain of the Internet than it will/has in any parliamentary registry or minutes sheet. Thus, like tired old kings whose decrees fall on deaf ears or are blatantly ignored, the ruling elites scream “foul”: she’s not playing by our rules…and we don’t like it! They fetishise “rules” and process as a means of distracting us from the illegitimacy of their power.

Forms of civil disobedience, like the rejection of staid parliamentary procedure, not to mention damaging corporate property and the subversive use of technologies (pirate radio, media piracy), serve to highlight the inability and unwillingness of ruling classes to live up to their empty promises of “democracy” and “freedom.” They further highlight the necessity of such forms of protest in an era where dissent has been commodified in the form of increasingly divisive and hyper-individualised PR campaigns such as Product RED or “green” profiteering. Moroever, such acts reinforce the need to carve out and expand spaces for voicing  dissent; spaces that are not determined in advance by law enforcement and safely placed far from the eyes and ears of power, subject to strategic anti-democratic modes of surveillance, scare tactics, and punitive discipline.

Democracy and freedom are not embodied in 19th Century regalia and tradition any more than they are in Greek statuary, Romanesque columns, Stars and Stripes, battlefield memorials, or checkboxes on ballots. They are acts, continuous disruptive events that make and remake the world. What better place to do this than in the seat of Canadian democracy?

Bravo!