City
Head of TD Bank offers advice to Occupy Toronto
On Wednesday evening, around about the time that rain and high winds were making life at St. James Park miserable for participants in the Occupy Toronto movement, Ed Clark, the head of TD Bank, was awarded with the Ivey Business Leader Award at the Four Seasons Hotel in Yorkville. Prior to the ceremony, a Toronto Star reporter conducted a brief interview with the CEO, the last question of which asked what advice he might give to the protesters. Here's his answer:
"My main advice is stick to your guns. When people say, 'You don't have a solution,' say, 'Of course we don't. If there was a solution, don't you think people would be doing it?' To ask the people who occupy Wall Street or Bay Street to have a full answer is absurd. They're doing their job which is to say, 'If you think this [system] is working for everyone, it's not.' Now they have to figure out how not to get captured by special interest and keep the pressure on. We need people to talk about these problems and how we're going to solve them."
What's interesting about this response — beyond its overall positiveness, which a cynic might chalk up to good PR skills — is that Clark takes to task the common criticism that the protestors aren't offering alternative solutions to the economics they disagree with. This was a common refrain in the comments section of our guest contribution from an member of the Occupy Toronto movement on Wednesday, but perhaps it's not a particularly good knock against their actions. Or, could it be that Clark is offering advice that, if taken, will only further rob the protesters of credibility?
Hmmm.
Photo by Tom Ryaboi
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Rob them of credibility? you are trying to make news. He said what he believes.
Credibility in whose eyes is my question:
The democratic system that relies on elected representatives?
Look at our voter participation, I think it clearly demonstrates the lack of confidence the majority of Canadians have towards those elected.
The Occupy movement is credible. Credibility is the quality of being convincing or believable, and the fact that Occupy Wall Street has had such a global effect should speak for itself. People everywhere in the world are standing up to say that something isn't right. Toronto is such a place.
The Head of TD put it adequately, the system is not working for everyone. Of course, it is impossible for it to operate for 'everyone', however, it should for the greatest number.
Is the leader the one who stands up and tells everyone what they should do, or is it the one who operates backstage, quietly convincing people, via charisma and persuasive ability, to move in a certain direction? Some people are extremely good leaders. They can get results by having other people say their ideas for them. I don't mean this cynically. "Special interests," the way Ed Clark uses the term, is a loaded term, and even though I think his advice is sound, the movement would be well to be wary of its implication. Yet the movement absolutely should be asking itself: when we disclaim the idea of leadership, are we really correct in believing that our movement is leaderless. From my perspective, that would be a naive conclusion. I don't think the movement is naive in this regard, but I suspect it's not fully facing how easy it is to fill a leadership vacuum.
Anyway, Ed Clark's speech is patronizing. Lots of people are patronizing this movement. The police, the politicians. Most leftist thinkers and leaders. If the movement grows up, it might very well find itself guided by these people. The leadership vacuum will be filled somehow. A lot of the criticism from people who generally agree with the ideals of this movement probably has to do with this issue: if you don't focus your arguments, and if you don't come up with a credible way to deal with leadership, you are opening yourself up to a hostile takeover. Saying your ideas work doesn't mean they in fact do.
Apparently I'm really interested in this whole thing and keep wanting to discuss it, but I'm still quite critical of it all.
Besides, in my experience, as soon as they say something like "We want X" everyone will either say X is too specific or not enough, or they should have a "realistic" plan to bring about X (in which realistic = magically changes everything without really changing anything), or they'll start nitpicking about the particulars of X instead of engaging with the great problem in all of its complexity.
Economic justice is a complicated issue with diverse effects and diverse experiences, and trying to wrap it up into a single punchline (if "we are the 99%" isn't good enough for you, that is) will reduce their efforts to yet another "cause" instead of the movement they want to be. Not to mention that I think they are disinclined to beg for help from the social structure they're hoping to dismantle, and recognize they will not be helped unless there's a massive economic imperative to do so...
In any case, in my experience, there are so few protests that people are willing to call "credible" that diluting one's work to earn the title of "credible" is a waste of everyone's time. I'm pretty sure that if we polled the nation to determine what a "credible" protest might look like, it would be white soccer moms and men in business suits with short hair writing dignified letters to government officials about property taxes.
In any case, I'm not one of the protestors and never will be - it's really not my thing - but frankly, I respect activists more when they are neither shamelessly catering to, nor shamelessly reacting against, people like you. It's a waste of their time if their goal is a movement (i.e., more than just getting higher-ups to implement a cosmetic change).
As to saying "bring our troops home", they had a simple, singular goal and they pursued it accordingly. This is not the same issue and can't be dealt with the same way.
Also, leaders are overrated. Sure, they can be effective, as any PR tactic can be, but there are considerable downsides to having a leader as well - it can create hero worship, if the leader fucks up or dies it can capsize the greater movement, it can create hierarchy within the movement, it can wipe out or silence diversity within the movement, the leader is usually whoever is most palatable to the mainstream instead of whoever truly deserves to lead, and so forth. A lot of modern activist methods call for collective action or cooperative "cells" instead of the conventional leader/followers set-up. As we saw with Anonymous vs. Scientology, you can still get press without a posterboy.
As to dismantling from the outside versus (or in tandem with) tirelessly changing it from inside, that's a matter of opinion. I'm sure it takes a bit of both.
The solution, to me, seems to be around the rules and regulations of the capital markets. Can we make it 'fool proof'? Do elected officials have the balls and the brains to stand up to the most powerful companies in the world? Time will only tell.
We have some pretty big issues to deal with and i commend the actions of those that take part in the occupy movement, who are trying to make people stop and think. Perhaps i do not agree with aspects of their occupation, but the fact that they are doing something is a start. Your really either a part of the problem or part of the solution... Id like to see everyone become part of the solution.
Perhaps something will come from all this that will reshape things as we know it for the better?
http://danishanwar.com/2011/10/21/why-occupy/
There's nothing wrong with that at all - I applaud it.
IT'S ALL BEEN DONE BEFORE. But we're still here. The banks are greedy. This is hardly news.
If these occupiers are looking for a message, how about they target voter apathy? For a democracy, that is the biggest challenge. Politicians do what they want because people don't care anymore. Politicians lie and we let them.
(Or we don't have enough imagination and we vote for the status quo, like Wong-Tam.)