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TORONTO – The Occupy protest is the most important democratic social movement of the last two generations and demonstrators who have taken over parks and other public spaces should be left alone, an expert in social movements said.
As civic authorities across Canada and the U.S. move to end the various occupations, Vincent Mosco, professor emeritus of sociology at Queen’s University, said the “extraordinary” movement had created a rarely seen coalition.
“When you see trade unionists, students, minority groups and others coming together, locking arms across sites in North America, what we have here is something unprecedented — at least in recent memory. It’s everywhere — not just in large cities, but in small towns throughout Canada, the United States, Europe and elsewhere.”
Cries of ‘Occupy San Antonio!’ ring throughout downtown
« click for Occupy SA site
Mosco’s study of social movements began outside the Pentagon in 1967 when 100,000 anti-Vietnam War protesters began changing the course of history. Back in the 1970s, he said, construction workers beat up anti-war students in the streets of New York City.
More recently, construction workers went with their own protest signs and joined the Occupy Wall Street demonstration in Zuccotti Park.
Latino and black protesters march from Washington Heights to Occupy Wall Street
Ability to morph and adapt will keep Occupy movement going
MONTREAL – On a spring day of 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama, at the crest of the civil rights movement, protest leaders were faced with dire problem: Hundreds of marchers had been arrested in a massive show of police force and they had no one left to take to the streets.
So the leaders took a highly contentious decision: They sent in children and high school students.
Birmingham police chief Eugene “Bull” Connor, surprised by their numbers, did the only thing he knew how to do: He turned the firehoses and dogs on them. This event, broadcast across the U.S., turned the tide against racial segregation.
If the Occupy movement has a chance of surviving after the last tent village is dismantled, it will be with this kind of tactical creativity, say sociologists who study social movements.
Movement will morph into Occupy Your Neighbourhood type activities …
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
