#OCCUPYVANCOUVER

Participating in democracy is not voting once every three or five years. Self-governance requires engagement, daily, with real-life issues. 

To this end, every day, at the heart of Vancouver, in the shadow of skyscrapers that house some of the world’s most powerful multinational corporations, your neighbours, buffeted by rain, wind and sleet, come together and talk. They are talking about our collective moral vision for Canada. 

 “What kind of society do we want to live in?” 

Do we want one where our ruling politicians move directly from the legislator to the boardroom as soon as their term is up? Do we want one where corporate welfare is more important than human welfare? Do we want a society where there is no point running for elected office unless you have been approved and sponsored by developers and big business?

No one person has all the answers. But downtown, at Occupy Vancouver, we’re asking the questions.

We use the consensus model to govern ourselves. It requires patience and participation. We use this because it is too easy to let other people do your thinking for you. It is too easy to elect someone and then expect them to deal with everything.

Occupy Vancouver and the Occupy Movement are at their core a call for deep and meaningful social change. We are solely not interested in presenting a list of demands to individual people or governments. The problems we face are bigger than any one administration can solve. We are mobilizing; mobilizing all people of all ages to wake up, think critically and start taking part in civic life.

The rich are getting richer. The poor are getting poorer. Some will tell you it has always been this way; some will say that things will never change. But we have more faith in humanity than that. We have more faith in you.

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”

- Dr. Seuss