For the second time in about a week, activists with the Occupy Thunder Bay movement held a rally in protest of corporate greed but this time outside city hall.
Only a handful of people attended the start of the scheduled Occupy Thunder Bay rally on Sunday but once the rain let up the crowd grew to more than 50. It was the second time activists in Thunder Bay mimicked the Occupy movement phenomena first started in New York.
Similar to last week’s rally at Waverly Park, the discussion remained open regarding issues of concern. Participants took turns at the microphone to shout out what they believed needed to change in Thunder Bay and in Canada in general.
Some of the concerns included water, food and energy security, climate change, the economy, resource management, government accountability and corporations influencing politics.
Some carried signs that wished for no laws and no leaders, others wanting human need over corporate greed.
Nate Joseph was one of the protesters at the rally. Joseph, who runs the Lakehead University political science club, didn’t attend the rally last week because he didn’t know about it. He said there needed to be a change and for him the best place to start was with the political system.
“There’s not just one reason but for me personally my biggest issue is campaign financing,” Joseph said. “I know we have always had a split of public and private campaign funding. Unfortunately, what happens here is a large portion of that donation has to come first from corporations and Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been talking about making it completely private. What this in turn does make it so corporations have a much larger say than other people do because they influence campaigns. It is almost a bribe.”
He said he hoped the Occupy movement would become so large that elected officials wouldn’t be able to ignore them and then would have to listen to what they were saying.
“If we have these movements and they happen at enough places, eventually somebody has to pay attention,” he said. “They want votes so they have to appease the population.”
What makes the Occupy movement stand out is that it doesn’t have a set list of demands and doesn’t discriminate against anyone from joining, he said.
Kim Russell, who started the Facebook group, said she thought the movement would be a good opportunity to bring everyone together in person instead of online to discuss issues they felt were important.
“This has been a big learning experience for me,” Russell said. “I’ve learned a lot and I’ve met a lot of people and it’s great to bring the community together. The corporations are completely taking over, it’s really sad how the rich are getting richer, and we’re all getting poorer. People can’t even afford to go to school and people can’t afford to do too much.”
While more than 300 people on the Facebook page had planned to attend the rally, Russell said she was happy with the amount of people who did show up and more could arrive throughout the day. She said she heard a lot of negative feedback about the earlier rally but felt that was because they were ignorant to the cause.
“A lot of people don’t know the information that is being spread around and don’t know what’s really going on in the world,” she said. “They’re just living their day-to-day lives like they normally would.”
Russell added that they planned to host more events in the future to make sure their message continues to be heard.
MP Bruce Hyer (NDP, Thunder Bay – Superior North) spoke briefly at the rally. He said he was proud of the people who attended and took a stand because it was all part of the democratic process.
“Democracy is a messy business, it’s a hard business and people get engaged in a variety of ways,” Hyer said. “To stand up, speak up and march with a sign is a start. As you can see some of them think they are revolutionaries, some of them think they are anarchists. I’m neither. But that’s a start. At least they are engaged. They realize that we have an economic system and political system that is not as fair as it could be. We’re all on the same page on this.”
Hyer said he hoped the movement was being noticed back at Parliament Hill but he couldn’t know for sure if the protests have had an influence on the Conservative party. He said they aren’t going to change Harper but they could always remain hopeful.
The rally is expected to wrap up at 8 p.m.
