Here's a 🧵 before I log off for the rest of the afternoon and eventually head down to check out the installations set up for the truck convoy that's promised to arrive today.
What we are seeing in Ottawa is a fascist tactic, aided by police. And so I ask --- where is labour?
In the Steward's Handbook made by the Canadian Labour Congress, it states that labour is the only real line of defense against fascism. That when democracy fails to protect people, labour is their only hope. A very lofty goal that has been true in the past.
In 2017, I wrote this for The Walrus. I argued that labour needs to step up and lead if it hopes to have any relevance for average people and, importantly, to fulful the goal of fighting fascism: thewalrus.ca/its-time-for-u…
And yet, days into this ridiculous stunt in Ottawa, labour has been nowhere. No flatbed trucks, no speakers, no rallies, no covert civil disobedience, no stunts, no press conferences ... nothing.
Why should they be there?
Labour leaders have access to resources (money, trucks, ear plugs etc). They can be bailed out of prison. They have profile and legitimacy.
And so now that it's needed, it's an absolute shame that there hasn't been a concerted counter attack staged by labour.
When @Sandela and I call for The Left to do something, we aren't talking to you, individual, necessarily. We are usually talking about mobilizing the structures of the institutional left into doing something.
Instead, we have progressive city councilors calling for more cops.
(And folks -- I cannot stress this enough -- that is a totally and entirely fucking obvious dead end).
The good news is that they're still there. There's still time. Come on labour, be relevant!
If you've ever seen this image and were inspired -- remember that you too can do this. bbc.com/culture/articl…
And in case painting by numbers is your thing:
Pull together a coalition, fast.
Send the police an ultimatum (you clear them within 24h or we will).
Plan bothersome acts.
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I've seen from a few people that there's a belief that the truckers in Ottawa have guns.
From the start, Ottawa Police played up how dangerous these guys were to both justify police inaction, and scare people out of counter-protesting. A very effective tactic!
I think that leftwing people need to be very skeptical of such claims. At almost a week, there's been no guns brandished, nothing shot -- the vandalism seems to have been committed with bricks or rocks or whatever.
I think that the real danger is in scaring the hell out of people from going outside and taking back their city (in whatever form that might look like) and that it's mostly thanks to cops and politicians using fear to control the crowd.
This is only reporting from Quebec, Manitoba and, finally, Newfoundland and Labrador. The latter province doesn't name the facilities where these deaths occur -- folks you need to push your province for this!
We are finally seeing the impact of the previous wave in deaths -- in just over 2 weeks, Canada's over all deaths have risen by 3000. This last 1000 took six days. To put that into context, read this. I'll update this data and send out tomorrow.
I never got an explanation from anyone at Maclean's about why they decided to so publicly denounce me in 2018 -- they had never done that before to anyone. I asked Alison many, many times.
I know that the decision came from above. Or, I imagine it did. But then why ignore me? Who does that?
For the first time, I think I added five unnamed entries of residential care deaths -- I don't usually have unnamed entries but it is very obvious that data is getting even worse.
I also realized that Revera, one of the few residence chains that has been reporting deaths throughout this pandemic, has stopped doing so. There goes my window into Alberta and Saskatchewan, two places where reporting is particularly bad.
My kids go back to school tomorrow like so many others. Twitter is full of all the reasons for why this is bad and we should be very worried. And lots of the reasons are fair and good.
Here's a thread about why I'm far more nuanced on whether this is good/bad.
First, here are the mitigation protections we've been promised: masks at all times, CO2 detectors in every classroom, distancing where possible, cleaning etc. The basics.
Active cases in our half of town? 899 per 100K (with all the caveats of poor testing).
That is lower than it's been in 2022 but it's still very high.
Two things are notable about these numbers: 1. the overall number of deaths was a massive increase from what we've seen in a year. The bulk of that is Quebec's reporting.
2. Very few deaths then as a percentage of residential care to report. ..
Part of that is fake: the official lines are not reported on weekends, so we sill see a bump on Monday. But part is also just how this wave is playing out: there are fewer deaths in residential care.
You can see this with the overall percentage of deaths in residential care ...