Naomi Klein and 500 marchers crash party at tent city

[discocrisco01]

Source: Globe and Mail

The tame, 100-person tent city pitched by G20 protesters in downtown Toronto's Allan Gardens was jolted awake when nearly 500 marchers unexpectedly arrived to join them, led by celebrity author and activist Naomi Klein.

Ms. Klein and a cast of other high-profile speakers held a panel discussion earlier in the evening at Massey Hall, several blocks away.

She concluded her speech by asking the audience to walk to Allan Gardens.

Ms. Klein said the police “didn't expect a bunch of middle-class people who paid $20” for a ticket to the event to start a march in the middle of the night.

As the crowd cheered, organizers asked the audience to continue down to a temporary detention centre on Eastern Ave., where they said a deaf man was being held who had been arrested at a protest earlier in the day. They said he still hadn't


Read more: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/g8-g20/news/naomi-klein-and-500-marchers-crash-party-at-tent-city/article1619230/

[Goldstein1984]

1. Naomi Klein is the closest things to a

successor for Howard Zinn that I see on the horizon.

[Braulio]

17. Who is Naomi Klein?

I never heard of her. But I'm not a leftist type. Is she a politician?

[rhett o rick]

20. Try Google. nm

[socialist_n_TN]

24. Read "The Shock Doctrine....................

The Rise of Disaster Capitalism". She wrote it. It's WELL worth a look. That book (and current events) led to my reentry into politics a few years ago. What she described as the Monetary Cabal's conspiracy to destroy the social democracies in the Third World is what's being played out RIGHT NOW in Europe and coming soon to the USA.

One telling stat from that book that stuck with me through the years was that for every "new" millionaire created by disaster capitalism, almost a MILLION people went from working/middle class to poverty. Shameful and it's HAPPENING TO US RIGHT NOW!

[Captain Boomerang]

2. Naomi Klein is teh HOT!

I would be her man slut.


/\/\4|\| $LU7 Ph0r3\/3r!!!

[GreenTea]

3. Naomi Klein is my heroine!

[boppers]

4. Clever.

Does Toronto (or all of Canada?) have laws about parades without permits?

[JDPriestly]

5. This march symbolizes the solidarity between the middle class

and the young and lower class people.

The middle class is being hung out to dry at this G20 meeting. They've grabbed everything they could from the poor, right down to the dignity of a roof over your head. The foreclosures were the first attack on the middle class.

Middle class people don't demonstrate in a loud or destructive way. They aren't trying to take what they have never had. They just want to get back what they have lost. Naomi Klein is in the vanguard.

The sad thing is that we are being told that if we don't think that the fraud, the cheating and the greed of the Financial Industry, the CEOs and the born-too-rich-to-care crowd is OK, then we must be socialists.

That is false.

The vast majority of us are not socialists at all.

We are protesting against the perversion of capitalism that is now victimizing us, cannibalizing us, not to honest capitalism.

[Oregone]

6. "not to honest capitalism"

:rofl:

[provis99]

7. what's wrong with socialism?

I could care less if the fascist right wing called me a socialist.

[socialist_n_TN]

25. Obviously I agree with you

provis. :)

[truedelphi]

9. Well said, JDPriestly.

We are protesting against the perversion of capitalism that is now victimizing us, cannibalizing us, not to honest capitalism.

Great fighting words.

[readmoreoften]

10. What on earth is "honest capitalism"?

Okay, Marx's basic framework in Capital is that the ol' peasant way of exchange, the "honest" way was "C-M-C". "Commodity" (I grow corn) "Money" (I sell my corn) "Commodity" (I buy a wheelbarrow.) People confuse this type of market exchange with capitalism. It's not. It's peasant exchange under feudal conditions and, although it exists, it's not how the global economy works.

The global economy reverses the schema of C-M-C to M-C-M'. I have money to invest (M). I buy a commodity (C). I sell that commodity for more money (M). Rinse repeat. But the exploitation lies in how the capitalist gets from M to M' (M plus surplus)--or how he gets the "M" in the first place. He does so through suppressing the value of labor of working people so he can get more than the value of the product he sells. If it were all just some "buy high, sell low" exchange of "raw material" like land, then capitalism wouldn't have lasted long. The one commodity that all capitalists can make cheaper is the cost of human labor.

Then he buys more infrastructure (commodities like factories) to exploit more workers to get more commodities to sell to get more money, etc. It's not making commodities to get more commodities to fulfill human need. It's selling those commodities en masse to amass more money to get more commodities for more money. It's the sheer drive for profit for profit's sake. That's what it IS. And capitalists who disobey this law tends to go out of business.

Do you have a home business where you make stuff and sell it? Congratulations. But you're not a capitalist. The bank that made you the loan so you could buy your equipment? They're capitalists. You're the "small business" or the "petit bourgeois" the capitalist needs to invent innovative products before he buys them up and makes a fortune off you. Sometimes small businesses get a little payback. Most of the time they take the risk and the owners fall back into the working class.

And who is "the working class"? It's mostly the people we call "middle class" in the US. It's not solely industrial labor. It's people who labor for a wage. Because of unions, many of us make decent wages in the battle between us and the capitalists over the century. But we are losing that battle because they control more and more infrastructure (like communications infrastructure, for example.) The American middle class or what some derisively call "the labor aristocracy" is being decimated globally. Even the majority of the petit bourgeois (small business folks) will collapse into the working class or even into the underclass--which is a terrible, powerless place to be.

There is no honest capitalism. There are some nice people who are born into wealthy capitalist families. There are many people who "want" to be capitalists. There are many who will do the capitalists' bidding for a buck. But there are actually very few capitalists in the world and all of them are destroying it through exploitation and overproduction (aka: garbage, planned obsolescence, etc.)

[TomClash]

15. Excellent explanation as far as it goes . . .

So much surplus production has now taken place that there is nothing to do with it that makes more surplus. So the "working class" receives less while the capitalist and his or her minions trade paper in ever greater quantities in a search for more profits. It is basically gambling for the educated.

You must be a very good teacher.

[rhett o rick]

21. What the hell is "honest capitalism"? Capitalism by it's nature is preditory. nm

[socialist_n_TN]

23. ".........honest capitalism"...............

is what the PROPONENTS of capitalism say it is. And the REALITY of capitalism today is what policies that the SUPPORTERS of capitalism put in place when they have power. What we see today IS WHAT CAPITALISM IS, de facto.

Now we can argue all day as to whether what is called capitalism today is what capitalism REALLY is or not, but you can't change the REALITY of what capitalism of today IS.

[BrklynLiberal]

8. Naomi Klein and Medea Benjamin for women of the decade

[defendandprotect]

11. Good ...

[Truth2Tell]

12. Video on YouTube...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0HQtXxnQp0

Naomi Klein speaks to the crowd at the tent city... starts at about 4:40.

[alfredo]

13. Yeah, but Andy Kaufmann took his crowd out for cookies and milk.

[orbitalman]

14. Naomi Klein is not only smart, but she's also active!!!! nt

[Blue_Tires]

16. kick for Naomi

[kgnu_fan]

18. solidarity with people who protest out of comfort zone!

[WillyT]

19. HUGE K & R !!!

:woohoo:

:applause:

:kick:

[rhett o rick]

22. It's time for action. If we let the corporatists off without action we are doomed.

We need a movement now and a leader. Maybe Naomi can be that leader. We need specific actions. We need to protest on every street corner.