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The AIH Transcript for March 19, 2019

Hosts: Carol Off and Jeff Douglas

Prologue

CAROL OFF: Hello I'm Carol Off.

JEFF DOUGLAS: Good evening. I'm Jeff Douglas. This is As It Happens.

[Music: Theme]

JD: Tonight...

CO: Money talks -- but will it be loud enough? The new Liberal budget is a pre-election platform, an attempt to change the channel SNC-Lavalin, and -- oh yeah -- an actual budget as well.

JD: It's enough to make your masthead spin. For two weeks, Elecia Dexter was the editor of an Alabama newspaper -- before quitting because the paper's owner would not stop defending his racist editorial.

CO: The front runner in the back rooms. Even after allegations of shadowy campaign shenanigans, Jason Kenney doesn't seem concerned about his chances in the upcoming Alberta election.

JD: Get your activism together. Micah White kick-started the Occupy movement -- and tonight we have an encore of his conversation with Carol about the future of effective protest.

CO: She was there, now she's gone. Imane Fadil went public time and again about former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's "bunga bunga" parties -- and now she has died mysteriously.

JD: And suspended animation. The so-called 'Flintstone house' in California looks like a freeze frame from that old cartoon -- but the neighbours don't find it remotely comical. As It Happens. The Tuesday Edition. Radio the guesses they got up on the wrong side of bed-rock.

[Music: Theme]

Part 1: Federal Budget 2019

Budget: Conservative/NDP/Liberal

Guests: Pierre Poilievre, Peter Julian, Jennifer O’ Connell

SOUNDCLIP

BILL MORNEAU: Mr. Speaker just to reiterate...[loud crowd noise]

JD: The raucous sounds from inside the House of Commons as Finance Minister Bill Morneau delivered details of the federal budget. Or at least tried to. In this budget, gone is the notion of balancing the books. That has been replaced with money for everything -- from home ownership to pharmacare. The Liberal government says that this year's budget is a relief to Canadians especially those worried about retiring without financial security or being able to afford their first home. The Liberals may also have hoped that this budget would turn the page on the SNC-Lavalin debacle. Pierre Poilievre is not quite so keen to move on. Mr. Poilievre is the Conservative finance critic. We reached him earlier today in Ottawa.

CO: Mr. Poilievre the Liberals are saying that this budget is about giving Canadians the help they need in a changing world -- I think that's basically the headline. What's your take?

PIERRE POILIEVRE: Justin Trudeau is covering up his SNC corruption under 41 billion dollars of brand new spending that he will raise taxes to pay for -- if he's re-elected.

CO: And so you think that SNC-Lavalin is the story today?

PP: Absolutely. This is the Trudeau 2-step: massive deficit spending to cover up the scandal before the election, and then massive tax hikes to pay for it all after the election.

CO: When you say massive spending -- what are you referring to? There's no big initiative in this budget. So what is it that you think is so egregious?

PP: Well if you go to the overall spending table in the budget book released, it adds up to forty one and a half billion dollars of brand new spending initiated in this budget alone. That was already on top of deficits that had broken the prime minister's promise. So this 41 billion dollars in new spending will mean 41 billion dollars in higher taxes down the road. And any purported benefit will be wiped out as Canadians are forced to pay for it through higher taxes after the election -- if he is returned

CO: We saw a revenue bump, didn't we? In this strong economy of last year. We can discuss or dispute who was responsible for the strong economy -- whether it was us or the United States or Europe or whatever -- but it happened. And there was a nearly 28 billion dollar flood of money into the federal treasury over the next six years. That is large part of what they plan to spend. So is this such a major take of extra money?

PP: Well in the last quarter of 2018, the economy ground to a halt. It barely expanded: 0.1%. So this is a big taxing government. They've been squeezing more money out of the pockets of small business owners and workers. So it's no surprise they have a windfall of money they've collected. Nor is it any surprise that they're blowing it all.

CO: But again the deficit projections in Tuesday's budget will be about nineteen point eight billion dollars. So that's still less than 1 percentage point of Canada's GDP which is considered to be quite modest when you compare it internationally. The financial institutions aren't worried, the credit raters are not worrying -- so why are you?

PP: Well they are worried actually. Numerous banking economists have said this creates huge vulnerability for the next global downturn. We've obviously enjoyed a booming world economy and a sugar high in our housing market which have helped revenues. But that's all going to be gone one day -- maybe sooner than we think -- and we'll have a big pile of debt on our shoulders when we're [inaudible] with it. I have to go back in and vote now.

CO: Okay. Well we just got a little bit from you. But just one last question. What are you promising then? What can we hear from Conservatives that will counter this as we enter into an election?

PP: Conservatives will live within our means. Spend only what we have. Leave more in people's pockets. And let them get ahead. So I do have to return to the House of Commons now.

CO: All right we'll try and get you back later on. Mr. Poilievre thank you.

PP: Thank you very much.

JD: Pierre Poilievre is the Conservative finance critic. We reached him in Ottawa. Peter Julian is the NDP finance critic. We reached him in Ottawa.

CO: Mr. Julian the Liberals are accusing the opposition of focusing on SNC while they worry about what's important to Canadians -- which as they say -- is the economy. So are you worried that they may have a point?

PETER JULIAN: Not when I see the budget that they just tabled in the House of Commons. The Liberal government has really built up its reputation as a government that is willing to hand out money -- billions of dollars -- to Bay Street, into very profitable big Canadian businesses. We saw that with the full economic statement where they handed out 14 billion dollars in a variety of incentives to buy limousines and private jets and anything else -- corporate luxuries -- that people wanted to buy. And so when I see in this budget paper how tiny the supports are -- really crumbs for seniors who are struggling with poverty, nothing for child care of course, for people who are struggling with the affordability crisis that we have for housing right across this country. I just say, I am profoundly disappointed with the budget.

CO: What the Conservatives are saying about this budget is that this is just like throwing a bunch of money out there, this is the big spending Liberals -- that they're not reining in the spending as they should at this point preparing for a rainy day for the recession that might be just around the corner at this point. And so the Liberals are coming driving right down the centre. And isn't that exactly where Canadians might want them to be?

PJ: No. I think where Canadians want us to be is stopping to give 14 billion dollars to Bay Street in tax cuts, to stop the 15 billion dollar boondoggle which is Trans Mountain -- the Trans Mountain pipeline. It's simply money that can never be recovered. And then when you look at the size and scope of overseas tax havens -- the Parliamentary Budgetary officer is looking into that -- but estimates range as high as 20 billion dollars a year that is lost in terms of the ability of the federal government to invest in regular people. So the Canadian families are struggling under a record family debt load -- it's actually the worst among all western industrialised countries. And what we need is a federal government that actually understands the importance of investing to help those families that are crippled by these debt loads and crippled by an affordability crisis. We do not see this in this budget. It's profoundly disappointing. And one would have thought that the Liberals, as they're going up for election later this year, would have actually made those investments.

CO: All right. But there's no big budget item, there's no big spending item in this budget, but there's lots of things that people would want, are there not? I mean you have things for adjusting mortgage programs for first time buyers, you've got allowing them to withdraw from the RRSPs, you've got well some money in there for Indigenous services especially for the water quality which you know is crucial, you've got money for gas tax cash for cities. Aren't these the things that will help Canadians -- will ease their expenses?

PJ: Well that's a great example when you look at housing right. There are two measures in the budget. One is that people can borrow more out of their RRSP -- so that's not the federal government providing support. It's simply saying the federal government will allow people to borrow more against their retirement savings. Secondly there's a home incentive measure in the budget, but the amount that's budgeted for it in the first year which is the only year we care about -- that's the year that's actually impacted by this budget,15 million dollars, which means it may help a couple of hundred families. There again, what's uncertain is even the interest rate that those families will be paying. So the federal government is loaning some money to help those buyers, but it's unclear at this point what the interest rate is. And so we have a budget that is simply empty in terms of actual measures that help people. And when you look at the budget papers, what you actually see is that in the coming years the overall corporate tax that should be paid into the federal treasury is actually going to decline. The tax measures are going up for regular families, going down for the corporate sector. And what we're saying, and what Jagmeet Singh has been saying is we need much more balance. We need a fair tax system that actually makes sure that even wealthy Canadians and even very profitable corporations pay their fair share of tax. And with that we can make the investments that help seniors living in poverty, that actually help families access affordable housing including co-operative housing, that allows us to put in place pharmacare so that people who are struggling to pay for their medication actually get the supports they should get to pay for that medication.

CO: Just a question there. I mean from a political point of view though does it not indicate that this budget is to distinguish the Liberals from the Conservatives -- that what they see is the competition for them because this is an election budget -- this is a platform, and this is what they see as the competition and they've kind of written the NDP and Jagmeet Singh out of the conversation, haven't they?

PJ: I don't think so at all. In fact I think the Burnaby South by-election was one proof of that. That when we talk about affordable housing -- as Jagmeet Singh has done -- and when we talk of about universal single payer pharmacare on the Canadian model of healthcare rather than the American model of sort of a patchwork very expensive approach, people respond accordingly. And I think that's where we're seeing so much interest in the NDP. We're getting calls from people who want to be candidates across the country. We have a record level of membership. That's because people see that it's not the Ottawa bubble talking where the only issue is how much and how big the corporate tax cuts or the offshore tax havens will be, but rather really investing in people -- not just talking the talk, but actually walking. And with families making investments that will make a difference in their future. And that that's why I think this next federal election will be critical. People will be able to actually make a choice between the old policies that we've seen in Ottawa for years -- and real investments to lift seniors out of poverty, to help families struggling with postsecondary debt, and childcare, and affordable housing. Those are the kinds of choices Canadians I think want to make.

CO: Sorry to cut you off. Mr. Julian. Thank you.

PJ: My pleasure. Thank you very much.

JD: Peter Julian is the NDP finance critic. We reached him in Ottawa. Jennifer O'Connell is a Liberal Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance. And as you would guess, she as well is in Ottawa.

CO: Ms. O'Connell did the SNC-Lavalin controversy eclipse budget day as the Conservatives thought it should?

JENNIFER O'CONNELL: I don't think so. I think if Canadians are paying attention to the budget, they're going to see that we are focused on them. This budget is continuing our work in investing in the middle class, investing in Canadians. And unfortunately I guess the Conservatives just didn't want to hear about how we're going to help Canadians get ahead in this economy.

CO: An interesting line that Andrew Scheer had when he spoke just after the budget or during it -- he came out to the House Commons -- while you know a lot of shenanigans in the House today -- but he called this a 41-billion dollar corruption cover up that Canadians will have to pay for it. That sounds like a line he's going to be running with in this election campaign. It could stick. What do you say to that?

JENNIFER O'CONNELL: What I say to that is that the Conservatives have continued to demonstrate that they had no real plan to grow the economy. They has the worst growth in 40 years. We have seen our growth rate rise. We've lifted over eight hundred twenty five thousand Canadians out of poverty. We have lifted 57,000 seniors out of poverty. We're continuing to move forward. We are the first government to introduce concrete actions to move towards a national pharmacare plan. And while the Conservatives focus on attacking us, we're focusing on Canadians. And I think that's what Canadians are going to be looking for in their government in terms of how we can help grow the economy and invest in Canadian.

CO: But what the Conservatives are pointing out is that we could have a recession just around the corner. And yes the economy has done very well. More revenues than were anticipated -- that has allowed for a lot of the spending to come from that. But at the same time -- well we know the American economy is doing well, the European economy is doing well, we have been floating with that as well. This could all come to an end very very soon. So where is the preparation for that?

JENNIFER O'CONNELL: Well actually this is something the Minister of Finance has looked at quite closely and understands. But we feel quite confident that even if there was a slowing in the Canadian economy that our balance sheets are in good order, our debt to GDP ratio continues to go down, we have significant room that should the economy change that we can cushion not impact. But I just want to point out one of the most significant measures in this budget is something like thirteen point nine billion dollars in infrastructure funding. And this funding is going directly to -- or most of it is going directly -- to municipalities. This is going to help ensure that jobs are being created and the economy continues to grow. So by all means this budget looks at the overall economic forecasts and takes into account opportunities and changes in that economy so that we can deal with it.

CO: But there can be no doubt that this is an election budget. This is a platform -- the beginning of a platform -- the bones of it. And there is something I want to put to you that the (former) Saskatchewan finance minister Janice MacKinnon said. She said that the one thing the Liberals rode on a promise -- a fundamental promise -- to handle finances carefully, to limit deficits, to balance budgets. That is what the promise was almost four years ago. And that this looks like a broken promise. And that's something that's come back to haunt you in this election -- what do you say to her?

JENNIFER O'CONNELL: Well I think that what Canadians elected in 2015 and what we promised was to grow the economy, and create an economy that works for everyone. And we've seen with Conservative governments and what the Scheer and Harper Conservatives believed in was austerity and cuts. And that didn't grow the economy. Canadians wanted us to invest in them, and we did. And the results are showing for themselves. I talked about the hundreds of thousands of people being lifted out of poverty. But we also have historic unemployment rates, more young people working, more Indigenous people working, more individuals with disabilities working. Those are the types of things I think Canadians asked us to deliver on. And that's exactly the plan we are moving forward with.

CO: I am just going to point out I misspoke myself -- Janice MacKinnon is the former Saskatchewan Finance Minister -- but her quote is still the same. But again about balancing the books. When are we going to see that? Because that keeps getting kicked down the field, doesn't it.

JENNIFER O'CONNELL: Yeah but I think, as I said earlier, our focus is really on making sure that the economy is growing and that all Canadians are able to benefit from that. And what we've been hearing from Canadians over the last three and a half years, and why we are addressing these issues, is Canadians still has anxieties about their financial future. I'll just give one example. One of my roles is the Youth Economic Opportunity -- I've been hearing from young people who are very concerned about their economic futures, concerned about housing affordability, having good jobs, being able to save for retirement. And that's exactly what this budget works towards. By no means do we solve every problem in this country. But it's those economic anxieties that Canadians are worried about -- (is) why we feel these investments are needed, and why we feel that this plan is the plan that Canadians want us to move forward with.

CO: I know there are many people who want to speak with you. There's a lot going on there in Ottawa tonight. So I appreciate speaking with you. Ms. O'Connell thank you.

JENNIFER O'CONNELL: My pleasure anytime. Have a good night.

JD: Jennifer O'Connell is Liberal Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance. We reached her in Ottawa.

[Music]

Alberta Election

Guest: Keith Gerein

JD: The writ it has officially dropped in Alberta. And voters are going to go to the polls on April 16th. At a press conference today, Premier Rachel Notley took shots at her main rival Jason Kenney. All week, Mr. Kenny and his United Conservative Party has been or have been fending off controversies over allegations that his campaign collaborated with another candidate to secure him the party leadership. Here's part of what the Premier said today from Calgary.

SOUNDCLIP

RACHEL NOTLEY: Now if you consider yourself a conservative voter, let me speak to you directly. I hope to earn your support in this election too. A growing number of conservatives here in Calgary, and across Alberta, are coming to have very serious doubts about Jason Kenney as Premier. A nasty record of intolerance should have no place in the premier's office in this province. [Crowd cheers] And it's now clear that Jason Kenney's campaign betrayed the Conservative party -- by cheating to win its highest office.

JD: That was Premier Rachel Notley speaking earlier today in Calgary. And after the election was called, Jason Kenney -- the UCP leader -- had this to say in Leduc, Alberta. He was flanked by energy workers.

SOUNDCLIP

JASON KENNEY: Under the NDP policies, tens of billions of dollars of investment have fled this province. Monthly Payrolls -- that's the amount of money people are paid in this province -- is one point three billion dollars lower today than when the NDP took office. Albertans are poor because of NDP policies. Many small businesses are barely hanging on. The NDP is digging us into a hundred billion dollar debt hole that risks our future and our public services. The bottom line is this: the NDP has the worst economic record since the Great Depression nine decades ago.

JD: UCP Leader Jason Kenney launching his election campaign today in Leduc, Alberta. Keith Gerein is a legislature columnist for the Edmonton Journal. We reached him in Edmonton.

CO: Keith for a guy facing -- well -- maybe a lot of big problems this week, Jason Kenney sounds pretty upbeat today. How did he strike you?

KEITH GEREIN: He does seem upbeat. He probably is in a good mood due to some poll results that were out today showing that he's got an 18 point lead at the start of this campaign. I think I would be in a good mood too if I was him.

CO: But yet Rachel Notley sounds pretty pleased with herself. Does she have a hope or an inkling that things might tip because of all the news about Mr. Kenney and his party?

KG: She was asked that today, and she seemed to believe that their internal polling showed that things were certainly heading in the right direction for them. They are certainly boyed by some of the news about Jason Kenney's credibility, the fact that one of his star candidates had to resign today as well. So I think she's feeling a little brighter today than she did maybe a week ago.

CO: Let's review some of the things that the United Conservative Party and Jason Kenney is facing. And first of all I want to ask you about is what's now being called the 'kamikaze plot' that allegedly took place during the 2017 leadership race that Mr. Kenney won. What is the alleged plot there?

KG: It's a little complex. Back in 2017 when the UCP was deciding its leadership, Jason Kenney was a candidate. His main rival was Brian Jean who was the leader of the Wildrose Party at the time. And another candidate came in named Jeff Callaway. What's been alleged is that Jeff Callaway was not running to win but that a deal had been struck between Jason Kenney's campaign and Jeff Callaway's campaign that Jeff Callaway would run as a kamikaze candidate where he would attack Brian Jean -- that would be his main purpose in that race -- and then at a certain specified time he would pulled out of the race and support Kenney, and mission accomplished. That seems to be what has occurred because Brian Jean lost that race quite decidedly to Jason Kenney.

CO: There are a bunch of emails that were released, some recorded conversations. There's a detailed plan -- week-by-week -- as to how they're supposed to support Jeff Callaway, this stalking horse candidate. And well, there's even a suggestion of what date he might just decide he's going to drop out and show his support to Jason Kenney. What do you make of that?

KG: Yeah I mean the emails detail that there was a great deal of collaboration: draft speeches, talking points, strategic direction of various points, research, all kinds of things that you wouldn't normally see between two campaigns running for one leadership position. Jason Kenney has maintained this was all normal -- you know conventional kinds of communication that go on between campaigns. If this campaign -- if this kamikaze plot is a real thing and it does appear that it was, that's not illegal.

CO: Why is the RCMP investigating then?

KG: Well there is another side to this around how the Jeff Callaway campaign may have been financed. So there was an article in Maclean's that was released yesterday that suggested a corporate entity supplied one of Jeff Callaway's campaign advisers with a sixty thousand dollar contribution. And then that contribution was spread around among various fake donors. If that's the case, that is illegal and that's presumably why the RCMP is involved. Although they haven't detailed exactly what they're investigating.

CO: I just want to ask you also then -- you mentioned this star candidate for the UCP, Caylan Ford, who has now resigned over allegations of racism. How significant is it? And what did she say that has led to this resignation?

KG: Yeah it is fairly significant. Caylan Ford -- she was brought in as a star candidate from Ontario. She's been featured in the UCP's election ads. Laureen Harper -- the former prime minister's wife -- visited her at her campaign office last week. She has been touted as a potential cabinet minister. So in her case this was a story that was first reported last night by the left leaning group PressProgress. And they found some quotes from her Facebook Messenger exchange from a couple of years ago -- around the time of the Charlottesville riots -- and she suggests that there is kind of a double standard for white supremacist terrorists as opposed to Islamic terrorists. Some people have suggested that was a smack of racism. She denies that. She suggests that PressProgress has taken those comments and distorted them, but on their face it's hard to see how they're defensible.

CO: What does this all do to those poll numbers you started off telling us about -- this 18 percent lead that Jason Kenney has?

KG: It's a really good question. You know for Albertans this is a difficult sort of scandal to understand. We're talking about something that happened a couple of years ago. And for a lot of Albertans I think it may just confirm what they already know about Jason Kenney that he is a tough political operative and some people may even see that as an asset in some coming fights with perhaps the B.C. Premier, the Quebec Premier, and the federal government. So I suspect the economy and jobs are still going to be the number one issue for people when they go to vote.

CO: Is there anything Rachel Notley could do to turn this around?

KG: Well I think they'd like to see some more, some happier, economic news. And if more things start coming out that put Jason Kenney's credibility into question -- maybe they have some ammunition that they're waiting to bring out, I'm not sure -- that to me seems to be about the only path to victory for them at this point.

CO: All right well the race is on. And we will be watching Keith. I really appreciate speaking with you. Thank you.

KG: Thank you.

JD: Keith Gerein is a legislature columnist for the Edmonton Journal. We reached him in Edmonton.

[Music]

Part 2: Alabama woman who took over newspaper from pro-KKK editor quits a month later

Alabama Editor Quits

Guest: Elecia Dexter

JD: The saga of the small-town Alabama paper that made headlines around the world continues. First came the outrageous, racist editorial calling for the KKK to ride again. And then the newspaper's white owner stepped down and handed over control to a black colleague working in the front office. When we spoke to Elecia Dexter about her new post three weeks ago, she was hopeful that she could create positive change in the community. Now Ms. Dexter has quit. We reached her in Sweetwater, Alabama.

CO: Elecia the last time we spoke you were on a high -- you were full of optimism. What happened?

ELECIA DEXTER: You know I think some reality of Mr. Sutton stepping away -- I think some reality for him, what they truly meant contributed to my decision.

CO: To resign?

ED: Yes ma'am.

CO: And you agreed to take over from your boss, Goodloe Sutton, because you understood and you told us you were going to have editorial control of it -- that the buck stopped with you, that nothing was going to go out without you signing off on it. So that didn't happen did it?

ED: He did allow me to have that. But what was the problem was he would send out stuff outside of me as the owner. So it became a conflict of yes I you know wrote this editorial, I did these two papers, but then I began to discover that he was sending out separate things as if they were from the paper.

CO: And those were undermining what you were saying?

ED: Correct.

CO: Can you give us some examples.

ED: Yes. One of them was that he was very focused on what he felt the original person that kind of broke this story from the Montgomery Advertiser didn't actually quote him correctly. And she used the word 'lynch' in reference to the things he was describing. So he really wanted people to know that he didn't say that. And one of the things I talked him about was that you know we kind of couldn't hear or see -- it doesn't matter that you didn't say the word. You used language, you used a hate group to describe something that you wanted to do. So early in March, I did find out that he actually recreated a front page cover that was our first edition which was the twenty eighth and he sent it to media outlets as if it was the actual front page cover.

CO: And what did you say when you challenged him on these things?

ED: At first he said, I didn't do that. And I said, but you did. He said, no I didn't. It was you know like a little back and forth. And I said but you did, and you sent it out several times. And he's like but she lied on me. And I said well you as a journalist -- took a front page cover that was printed distributed on February 28. And I said you recreated it and sent it out to the media as if it was the front cover like it was true. And I said you've already lost credibility -- you already lost two Hall of Fame awards. I said how does this help anybody? And he really couldn't answer it.

CO: And just to remind people -- the Montgomery Advertiser which is the paper that he felt had misrepresented him; they were reporting on -- he had written an editorial saying that the Ku Klux Klan should night ride again and go to Washington. And then when he was interviewed by the Montgomery Advertiser he said that he urged a cleaning out of D.C. and says we'll get the hemp ropes out, loop them over a tall limb, and hang all of them. How could that not be interpreted as lynching?

ED: I'm with you. But he was fixated that he didn't actually say the word. He could not grasp that it didn't matter that he didn't say the word. And I told him I said it's almost all equally bad, it's all equally disgusting, and nobody wants to hear about it but you.

CO: This decision on his part to turn the paper over to you after doing this racist editorial -- making these horrendous remarks -- then choosing a woman, a black colleague, to run the paper...it was international news. It was well this is quite something -- this racist man has made this decision to have you. Do you feel you were used in any way?

ED: Actually I do not. And what I think happened was I think there's a part of him that really thought I could save the paper. But there's also a part of him that could not let it settle -- that he could not say what he wanted to say. So do I feel like I was used? No. Do I feel like he didn't realize what it meant to give up control? Absolutely.

CO: You said when you resigned -- in the release you put out -- you said that you had to step away to maintain your integrity and your well-being. What kind of a toll has this taken on you?

ED: It was very hard because you know that wasn't my background as far as journalism. And I began to feel the energy from the people there, being excited, that I could possibly take this into a different direction. You know I received a lot of support.

CO: The editorials that the paper had been doing for some time -- this was not unusual, this Ku Klux Klan editorial. There had been editorials about black football players who took a knee in sports events saying that well that's what black folks are taught to kneel before white people. And editorials mocking President Barack Obama. This has been going on for some time. You thought you could turn this around.

ED: Yes.

CO: Why did you think you could do that?

ED: What I'll say is initially energy and belief that you know I can take on this task despite everything that was going on, I really feel like my yes stopped his conversation. When I said yes, it stopped what was he writing, why was he writing. And it focused on, wow what are we going to do with this paper? So that's what I take from it. You know I was able to stop the conversation and change the narrative of what he was trying to create with that article.

CO: Is Goodloe Sutton back incharge of the paper then?

ED: As far as I know, yes.

CO: What are you going to do now?

ED: Carol that's a very good question. I'm taking my time. But of course -- I mean like anybody else -- I'm not independently wealthy by no means or stretch. You know I'm still living here with my parents so I am having to kind of go back to that, "like do I go back to my original field of human resources, do I continue with this great opportunity that I'm like 'wow' was really beginning to love. I had wrote down like some of things I wanted to be my first couple editorials." So I don't know actually, but I believe a good opportunity is going to come my way. And I have no regrets. And overall this experience has been one of the best of my life -- I cannot tell you -- I have no regrets at all.

CO: Everyone who's listening to is -- if you can hire this woman. [Laughs]

ED: [Laughs] Please I am available.

CO: Elecia I admire you. And I appreciate speaking with you. Thank you.

ED: Thank you so much.

JD: Elecia Dexter was briefly the editor of the Democrat-Reporter in Linden, Alabama. We reached her in nearby Sweetwater. We could not reach the paper's owner, Goodloe Sutton, for comment. We have posted more on this story on our website: cbc.ca/aih.

[Music]

The Woo Woo

JD: Next Monday, Canada's big battle of the books is back. Words will be exchanged, metaphors mixed, pages flipped, as five Canadians of note argue that their book is the one to move you. On this year's Canada Reads, fashion fixture Joe Zee will be defending "The Woo-Woo" by Vancouver writer Lindsay Wong. It is a memoir. It is a raw account of Ms. Wong's family -- who blame mental illness on the so-called "woo woo" ghosts that possess and mess with the mind. Her mother was a frequent victim of the "woo woo" and often abandoned her husband with their three young kids without warning for weeks at a time. Here is Lindsay Wong reading from "The Woo Woo."

SOUNDCLIP

LINDSAY WONG: At six on morning, my mother came back. It had only been a few weeks, but to a kid it felt as if it had been a year. It seemed that my life had an open door policy: adults magically appeared or reappeared. It was like Narnia or a two star motel where anyone could check-out whenever they pleased. During this period of my life I was embittered -- plagued with blistering spasms of anxiety which manifested in the form of dry-eyed insomnia. I'd lie awake on my mattress for hours. Heart thumping in zombie time, listening out loud the ways that my mother could die. This sounds very gruesome, but was bedtime meditation for me. And then she was suddenly back in our kitchen, curiously frying up green onion pancakes and pork dumplings. The plum milky fist ballooning and popping in a heated pan. She looked ghoulish. Her eyes engorge. Skin like our wallpaper -- florescent yellow green. Where did you go? my sister asked starting to whimper. Why did you go? What are you talking about? my mother barked looking stunned. She did not like crying because it attracted the ghosts. I knew my sister would get spanked if she continued to make that awful noise. You went away, my sister insisted sniffling buttery snot. And I was furious that she was acting possessed like this stupid girl at the hockey rink. Didn't she know that we had to be emotionally strong if we didn't want the ghosts to take our parents away? I decided then and there that I was going to punch her again if she did not immediately stop. Anything to prevent that woo woo from coming back. So emotionally disabled was I -- like a piece of plastic. It was a miracle that I didn't just give up and agree to be a dense psychotic thug of a hard gobstopper heart. You have too much imagination, my mother said shaking her head as if her neck were convulsing. I haven't gone anywhere. I cooked you guys a big dinner yesterday and the day before.

JD: That was Vancouver writer Lindsay Wong reading from "The Woo Woo." Joe Zee will be championing that memoir next week on Canada Reads.

[Music]

Bunga Bunga 'Poisioning'

Guest: Eric Reguly

JD: Even if you weren't there, Silvio Berlusconi's so-called "bunga bunga" parties are hard to forget. Much as you may wish you could. Imane Fadil was there however. And she spent the rest of her life speaking out about what happened there. Ms. Fadil even testified in 2012 when the former Italian prime minister was tried for allegedly having sex with an underage girl and then pressuring police to keep it quiet. Mr. Berlusconi is still facing charges stemming from that scandal. But now Imane Fadil -- a former model from Morocco -- has mysteriously died after reportedly claiming she had been poisoned. Eric Reguly is the Globe and Mail's European Bureau Chief. We reached him in Rome.

CO: Eric the speculation is that this young woman has died from poison. What's the official word on the cause of her death at this point?

ERIC REGULY: The chief prosecutor in Milan said that the preliminary tests found some presence of radioactive elements in her body and heavy metals. And one medal in particular -- cadmium -- it was seven times the normal level in her blood. So every Italian I've met in the last couple of days thinks she was murdered.

CO: She was a young woman -- wouldn't be a lot of reasons why a young woman would suddenly die I would presume.

ER: Well you know this is Italy, and we do scandals here that are a bit more intense than SNC. And she was a key witness in a very high profile trial so this is conspiracy theory country and the conspiracy theory says that she was whacked. Because it's been so mysterious. I mean even the prosecutors have not even announced her death -- she died earlier this month -- until a few days ago because they're worried about the toxicology reports being tampered with.

CO: And whose interest would that be? Who would have a motive to do that?

ER: Well she was a key witness in the witness tampering case against Silvio Berlusconi. She also claimed to be writing a book about Berlusconi and his so-called "bunga bunga" parties. So there's some suggestion that someone wanted to silence her.

CO: Just remind people about Silvio Berlusconi's "bunga bunga" parties which were considered to be orgies. Remind us about them and what role this woman played in those bunga bunga parties.

ER: Well the bunga bunga parties were sex orgies and they were -- in the early part of this decade -- at Silvio Berlusconi's glorious mansion outside Milan. Of course he was prime minister at the time. He was prime minister until late 2001. And several women -- a few of them Moroccan have testified against him. One of these young Moroccan women called Karima El Mahroug -- it was alleged that she had sex with Silvio Berlusconi, at the time she was 17 which made her an underage prostitute. Silvio Berlusconi was in fact convicted of having sex with her. Later he was acquitted.

CO: And she was known as "Ruby the Heart Stealer.".

ER: Yeah.

CO: She also is Moroccan. And the woman who possibly has been poisoned is Moroccan as well. Is there a connection between the two women?

ER: Well they knew each other. They attended some of the same bunga bunga parties. Imane Fadil actually testified in the underage sex case against Silvio Berlusconi years ago that Silvio paid her off -- gave her 2000 euros and gave her a watch and some jewelry, ostensibly, to buy her silence. It didn't seem to work.

CO: Does Silvio Berlusconi admit that he met her -- if she says that he actually gave her gifts and money -- does he recall this connection with her?

ER: He's not saying he doesn't remember. He says he did not meet her which no one in Italy believes because this young woman, Imane Fadil, testified that they did meet. You know most Italians would believe her, not him.

CO: Are there any assumptions or theories that her possible demise is connected to the bunga bunga parties?

ER: Yes possibly. Though you know we don't know what exactly she saw at these bunga bunga parties beyond what she testified. We don't know what's in her book if in fact she was really writing a book -- the speculation is rife. Italy is a country -- I've been here a decade -- that just bounces from one conspiracy theory to another. Now it's not out of the question Carol that she died of natural causes. So we won't know till the autopsy is out. But so far, given what the chief prosecutor in Milan said just only yesterday, so far it looks like something very deeply suspicious happened given the unusual levels of heavy metals in her bloodstream.

CO: Did she have a family? I mean has anyone come forward to put a person behind this scandal -- this subject of scandal and crime.

ER: Not that I'm aware of. But she was actually admitted in the hospital in Milan in late January with severe stomach aches. And she died more than a month later. As she was dying in bed, she actually claimed that she had been poisoned and believed that someone was out to silence her. So it was actually a very sad long painful death that this young woman went through.

CO: What happens next? What will be the next stage of this investigation?

ER: Well the key stage is the autopsy which is supposed to be released late this week. And that autopsy should prove conclusively whether she died of natural causes or whether she died of either heavy metals or radiation -- let's call it poisoning for the sake of argument. Now the chief prosecutor of Milan already opened an investigation into her possible murder. That possible could be erased this week and it would go into a full-fledged murder investigation.

CO: All right Eric we will leave it there. I appreciate your reporting on this. Thank you.

ER: Thank you.

JD: Eric Reguly is the Globe and Mail's European Bureau Chief. We reached him in Rome.

[Music]

Flintstones

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[Music: Flintstones theme]

JD: Alan Reed's mom used to say "a little dab'll do ya," which was a catchphrase for an ad for Brylcreem. Then later, when Mr. Reed was doing the voice of Fred Flintstone, he drew on that phrase to ad lib what would become his character's catchphrase: "Yabba Dabba Do." That's what Mr. Reed said, anyway. Do you find that fascinating? Disappointing? Or since it is 2019, do you have any feelings whatsoever about the Flintstones? If you do not, consider yourself lucky. Because if you lived in Hillsborough, California, you would have strong feelings about that 59-year-old prehistoric two dimensional show because of a three dimensional home known as The Flintstone House. It is a bulbous, cartoon-y, looking red and purple residence that was built in 1976. It's all gentle curves. But its cute roundness makes its neighbours edgy. More bluntly they hate it. Florence Fange -- a former owner of various media outlets -- paid 2.8 million dollars American for the Flintstone House two years ago. Some people hoped she would take it down. Instead she doubled down. She added colourful sculptures of mushrooms. Enormous sculptures of a woolly mammoth, three dinosaurs, and a giraffe? And a big sign that reads, "Yabba Dabba Do." The problem is she didn't have the permits to do these dino renos. And now the town is suing her, demanding she toned down her landscaping. In other words, her neighbours see all this Flintstone stuff -- and they want to reduce it to Rubble. That is a solid Flintstone's joke. Florence Fang would get it.

[Music]

Part 3: Encore: Occupy's Micah White calls for new vision of social activism with 'The End of Protest'

Encore: Micah White

JD: The email read: "Occupy Wall Street, September 17th. Bring tent." In 2011, the British Columbia based magazine -- Adbusters -- started a global movement with that single email. Micah White was the driving force behind that first simple idea, which saw thousands of people camped out in cities around the world demanding change. Well on Friday, students from around the globe gathered again -- this time demanding swift action on climate change. According to the campaign's website, Fridays for the Future, over a million students took part in the coordinated school strikes. But on Twitter Mr. White asked quote, "Why are we pretending like a youth led movement is going to save us on an issue as connected to power as the climate catastrophe?" In 2016, Mr. White offered a new playbook for these kinds of actions with his book: "The End of Protest." He challenged the way activists have pushed for change and even took the Occupy movement that he helped create to task for no longer being relevant. When that book came out Micah White joined Carol in the As It Happens studio for a feature interview. Here's an encore presentation of that conversation.

CO: Micah White welcome to the As It Happens studio.

MICAH WHITE: Thank you Carol.

CO: Now calling this new book of yours ambitious would be an understatement. It's quite an extraordinary declaration to make. What are you asking people to do with this book? And because of this book The End of Protest.

MW: I think this book is basically my attempt at doing a little bit of activism against activism. What I'm trying to get at is that we need to basically rethink the foundations of activist theory. We need to rethink our understanding and our storyline of what kinds of behaviours create social change.

CO: Why do you think that's necessary at this point?

MW: Well you know I think it's important to understand that we're going through a time in human history where we have the largest and most frequent protests ever. We have had protests -- and they have protests right now in Brazil (with) over a million people in the streets. And with Occupy Wall Street -- a movement that spread to 82 countries. And these protests though are not achieving the kind of social change that they set out to achieve. So I think it's very important to kind of take a step back and realize that protests as we know it is broken.

CO: You just said how this protest has spread around the world. There was a protest in Syria that began the war there. But there have been demonstrations, uprisings, everywhere. And then you write a book called The End of Protest. I mean when protest seems to be so hot.

MW: Right. And that's the paradox that I'm trying to get at. I think the end of protest doesn't mean the absence of protest. On the contrary the end of protest means the proliferation of ineffective protest. And we've always seen is that we have more and more protests than ever before. But they're not working. And so that's kind of the trick that we're in, and I think that sort of confuses people because they think well how can we possibly be in the end of protest when we see protests? But that's precisely what I am trying to get people to think about is like: are they working? And is it just merely like these kind of like almost unconscious thing happening is that we rush into the streets unconsciously but we're not achieving what we set out to achieve.

CO: And of course the protest that you based the book principally on is the one you are most intimately involved in which was the Occupy movement. Occupy Wall Street. And I want to talk about that for a bit because it became kind of ubiquitous quite quickly and people don't know its origins perhaps or they've forgotten them. So let's just remember how it all began and maybe you describe as you do in the book as well how that Wall Street protest began.

MW: You know so you go back to that time in 2011. And it was this magical historical moment. It started with a fruit seller in Tunisia who had his cart confiscated and out of you know anger he went down to the governor's office and said I want my cart back. And the governor didn't listen to him, so he set himself on fire. And that unleashed a kind of collective awakening among the Arab world that kicked off the Arab Spring which then spread to Egypt. And they went into the squares in Egypt and toppled (Hosni) Mubarak. And then from there it spread to Spain. In May of 2011 there's people in the assemblies all over Spain. So what we did at Adbusters at the time -- I was an editor Adbusters -- I was close a collaborator with the founder...

CO: Just remind people what Adbusters is.

MW: Yeah. Adbusters is a countercultural kind of anti-consumerism magazine based in Vancouver, but with a very strong international readership. And you know in the past, it launched kind of social campaigns like Buy Nothing Day and stuff like that. And I had been with Adbusters -- it was my dream job. I had been there for a few years. And in 2011 I had kind of gotten into the position where I was the founder's closest collaborator. And we were constantly talking on the phone and brainstorming about revolution. And so when we saw what was going on in Egypt and Spain, we knew this is it. And we basically just wrote a tactical briefing that explained to people that, 'hey guys if we combine the tactics of Egypt with the tactics of Spain and we take it to Wall Street well then we can break the stranglehold that money has of our democracy and kick off this kind of glorious revolution.' And you know the time was just so ripe for it. People were waiting for someone to call for something so audacious in America that it worked. And within 24 hours, people started rallying behind it.

CO: And they took to the streets first in Zuccotti Park. You want to talk a bit about that.

MW: Right. So our first encampment started in Zuccotti Park. And you know for the first week it was kind of interesting because it was largely ignored. The media didn't want to talk about it. Most of the mainstream left wasn't interested. But then through a series of accidents -- and this is one of the interesting things about revolutions that revolutions actually result from really like flukes and historical accidents. The first one being with Occupy is that police officer pepper sprayed some women. And that clip got onto like you know Jon Stewart's show. And people started talking about it. And then there was a second kind of weird thing which happened which is a mass arrest of 700 occupiers on the Brooklyn Bridge. And when that happened about two weeks after our movement started, that's when the movement really exploded and all of a sudden within 24 hours we had encampments in like 82 countries -- almost a thousand encampments all over the world. So social movements combine a contagious mood with a new tactic. And we gave people a new tactic which was to occupy these financial districts and we kind of you know locked it onto this contagious mood that had started in Tunisia and spread all over the world.

CO: You mentioned your Occupy Wall Street collaborator, Kalle Lasn -- very compelling man, the founder of Adbusters magazine. And we spoke with Kalle Lasn in 2011. I just want to play a bit of that interview. This is what Kalle Lasn had to say during the Occupy movement.

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KALLE LASN: You know some people will continue sleep in the parks and then sleep in the snow and inspired all of us. But in the meantime many of us will go home and we will resurface next spring and we will start fighting for Robin Hood taxes in the United States. We will try to ban high frequency flash trading. And we will basically try to get the money out of our political systems and start creating a new model of democracy that actually is exciting. And I predict down the road you know there will be third parties in America evolving you know, and that America will get beyond this kind of Pepsi/Coca-Cola kind of political system that they've had there for a long time and a third party will rise up. Permit me for being grandiose for a moment, but I think I can feel it. I can feel this movement -- is the beginning of a deep transformation of capitalism. It's a game changer. And down the road you know we're going to do things.

CO: That was Kalle Lasn in 2011 -- your collaborator. What do you make of that -- when you hear his enthusiasm, the excitement in his voice, about that movement?

MW: Well you know it's really great to hear his voice. I haven't spoken to him in a while. You know he's an amazing person. And I think he has an amazing revolutionary intuition. I think that people should tune in in particular to the last part of what he's saying which is the birth of a third party in this country. And I think that...

CO: In the United States?

MW: In the United States. Right. I think that's what we're going to see is social movements that are able to win elections. So you know that enthusiasm, it captures how we all felt. We all felt that we were on the brink of a revolutionary moment within America and we were going to -- just like they had overthrown Mubarak -- we were going to overthrow Obama. And you know we called it -- at Adbusters -- we called it a soft regime change. And all this kind of language. And I think that mood is going to come back for sure.

CO: But you write in your book that it failed?

MW: Right. I call it a constructive failure. It wasn't a total failure. You know it had a lot of positive things that resulted from it. You know it changed the discourse, inspired a new generation of activists, and all this kind of stuff. But it was a constructive failure because it didn't achieve the goal that we set out to achieve which was to get money out of politics. And the reason for that is it was constructive because it showed us that our story of change, our theory of change, isn't and wasn't true. And I think it forces activists to kind of take a step back and realize you can create something like Occupy Wall Street that spreads to 82 countries but it won't achieve your goals -- so then what do you do?

CO: Why do you think it didn't achieve those goals?

MW: Well I think it didn't achieve those goals because we were basing it on a wrong theory. The wrong theory being get as many people into the streets as possible unified around a central message. I think that in democracies our representatives do not have to listen to street protests. This is just something that activists have to accept. It's this yeah.

CO: But can I put to you that is it possible it wasn't the failure of protest and the idea of going to the streets -- it was that particular movement that failed?

MW: You know I don't think so. I think that it's more generalized because I think that in many ways Occupy was kind of a textbook example of a social movement that should have worked. And I think that also if you go and you look at earlier things like the 2003 anti-war march that went into the streets -- that was also a major failure. I think if you look at the mass mobilizations that have happened since then, they've also been failures. And so I think that what's really happened is that activists have been kind of dominated by this false positive discourse that never allows us to see failure and then therefore never learn from our failures.

CO: We had as mainstream media a very hard time covering Occupy. It was almost impossible to find anyone who would speak for it. And that was deliberate. It was impossible to discern what the point was, what was the principal, rallying manifesto, or objective. And I know that often when we try to find someone -- when we would find someone they said we don't want to speak to mainstream media, we don't have a spokesperson, we are all speaking with one voice, you put all of us on or nobody -- but we don't even want to go on here because we're anarchists. This is why I'm asking you -- do you think it was this particular movement that lacked leaders deliberately and lacked a manifesto?

MW: You know that's a really excellent question. I think that it's -- I guess what I would say is that you know each movement, each protest, is like testing a hypothesis. It's like an experiment. And we were testing a hypothesis about how social change happened. And you know the reason that was the hypothesis we had to test is because of historical situation. When Adbusters created the idea for Occupy, Kalle was in Vancouver and I was in Berkeley -- and we gave it to the world. And it was taken up by activists in New York City who believed in something called prefigurative anarchism, don't make demands, build the ideal society. Well that's just who took it up. And that's who ran with it. And that's the culture that it had. I think that we had to go through that stage -- like they had to in Spain as well -- we had to do the completely leaderless, can't any spokesperson's type thing in order to realize okay yeah it doesn't work. And I think the next time around we're going to see that we can go beyond that.

CO: But you and Kalle wanted to have specific demands concerning the 2008 and what had happened with the collapse of finances -- all of the mount of money that was invested, the people who got away with financial murder. You wanted to specifically go after that but you were opposed.

MW: Exactly. You know we absolutely did. And if you look back at the original Occupy poster at the very top it says what is our one demand? And we really wanted the Occupy movement to come up with one demand. The point of the assemblies was to come up with the one demand. That's what we said in the tactical briefing. But again you know once it got taken over by the participants themselves, we gave up control. And from that point forward they were unable to come up with one demand. And that's one of the failures of the Occupy movement is that the general assembly model didn't allow complex decision making processes to evolve. In fact it just led to a kind of a paralysis. And so you see that in the inability to come up with one demand.

CO: You are listening to As It Happens on CBC Radio. I'm Carol Off. And I'm in studio with Micah White who was one of the driving forces behind the 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement. And he has just published a new book called, The End of Protest. You mentioned how it didn't catch on -- it didn't go someplace else, but you mentioned also Black Lives Matter and other movements in Canada. Idle No More -- the movement of Aboriginals here in Canada who took the same idea of Occupy and ran with it. These were extremely powerful forces that people were ready to go into protest immediately when issues arose. Is it possible that that only happened because of the ideas that the Occupy movement had started?

MW: Yeah I think you know it's like an earthquake and its aftershocks -- and sometimes we don't know, it might even be a foreshock. Maybe Occupy is just an early foreshock of a major much larger planetary social movement that's going to come. But also part of it is the historical moment. You know like there's been some really interesting studies that show that you know when food prices break a certain threshold then the world kind of has more protests and more riots and this kind of stuff. So I think in a certain sense you know Occupy was part of it but Occupy was also symptomatic of a global revolutionary mood and the way that we inspire it is by giving it a new tactic which you also see with Idle No More. They created this kind of new tactic of doing the circle dances in the malls and in public places. And so you know when the historical moment is right and you can create it -- you know you have a contagious mood of kind of losing one's fear, then if you can come up with innovative tactics, then you're able to create movements very quickly.

CO: And let's talk about tactics because this is what is interesting about some of the kinds of protests we have seen. You mentioned of course Arab Spring which actually began that whole idea that Gene Sharp is you know the famous man who wrote the handbook for protest. He was the one who gave the ideas to the Otpor! Revolution in Serbia. It spread to Rose Revolution. And it spread to the Arab Spring. All of these had very similar qualities. They looked spontaneous. It seemed people just took to the streets at the drop of a hat. But in fact they were carefully planned, carefully organized, so that people could be taken care of in a peaceful way and that they could disrupt the authorities in a way that the authorities couldn't figure out how to get around it. I mean how important are new tactics in revolution and in protest?

MW: Yeah I mean I think one way of kind of responding to that question which is very insightful and very important is to kind of point at basically this phenomenon that I call kind of like social movement warfare. Which is the idea that social movements are being used as a way to influence geopolitics. And that social movements might actually even be a more effective way of influencing geopolitics than conventional war. So if you want to get rid of a dictator like Mubarak, the most effective way to do it might be to inspire a social movement. Or we're seeing now in Russia -- like if Russia wants to influence Merkel's policies well you know maybe they should you know fund leftist extremist or rightist extremists in Germany which is now what Germany has accused Russia of doing. So I think what's going on is that social movements are one of the weapons that are being used to influence politics right now.

CO: In all those cases they brought down the leadership. They were very effective. Now things follow that weren't what they wanted, but of course things followed after the French Revolution, the American Revolution, and the Russian revolution. But they actually brought down the leadership. In a peaceful way they disrupted the politics of their country. Were not these examples of protests that worked, street protests, that were effective?

MW: I guess where I would take issue with that interpretation is that it seems instead that what happens is that these you know -- at least in the example of the Arab Spring is that oftentimes the secular youth are used to kind of destabilize the regime but they don't ascend to the reins of power. So like we saw with the Arab Spring in Egypt they toppled Mubarak but then of course they stepped aside and they run for election. And the Muslim Brotherhood is the only force that can, and wins. But then they get toppled in a counter-revolution. The same thing happened in Serbia. Otpor didn't run for office. I think you're right that social protests seem to be effective against non-western regimes because they kind of justify a western geopolitical agenda. And sometimes the youth I think -- what I'm saying is that the secular youth can kind of become pawns within a larger geopolitical game that they don't understand. And I guess I would say that the next step is for protesters to understand that we're not just there to topple regimes just so someone else can get into power. We're there to topple regimes so that we can get into power.

CO: Why? I mean so much of revolution or protest radicalism has been consciousness raising. It brings people to someplace they weren't before. I mean you know when you look at civil liberties in the United States in the 1960s or the women's movement where lots of people wouldn't join the women's movement or the civil liberties marches. They thought that was too radical. But the radicals went too far to make an obvious point. And then you had ordinary people saying well you know I think women should be paid the same for doing the same work, I think that black people should be able to get onto buses. It brought people along. Is that not also part of protest?

MW: Yeah. You know again it's a really good question. I think what you're describing is the different theories of social change. You know one of the things I talk about or I think about in my book is this idea of a unified theory of social change -- unified theory of revolution. And what you're describing, this idea of consciousness raising, is one theory of social change, it's called subjectivism. This idea that to change the world we have to change our minds. And I agree with you. That's one aspect of revolution. There's another aspect which is kind of volunteerism -- the idea that we need to do direct actions in order to influence the material world. That's another aspect. And then there is the idea of structuralism -- that there is economic forces at stake. And I think there's a fourth idea which is kind of a divine intervention. I agree with you that it's all four of these kind of things.

CO: Well divine intervention is sort of a bad idea but I guess we can't really rely on it to show up when we want right. But you mentioned that you want to see the people not just bring down the governments, but able to put people in power. I wonder to what extent is the rise of people like Jeremy Corbyn in the Labour Party in Britain, Bernie Sanders running for president and doing so well all things considered -- socialist campaigning for the Democrat ticket. And they all use the same language as you started in Occupy. They talk about, we are the 99 percent. We are opposed to 1 percent owning and controlling all the wealth. Is that not an example of the very thing that you wanted Occupy to do?

MW: Yeah I think you're right. I think that you know if we look towards the future -- I see in Europe the rise of things like: Podemos in Spain, the five star movement in Italy, Diem, and Syriza to a certain extent. These are examples of social movements that are trying to build the capacity to win elections in order to carry out kind of a revolutionary agenda. I think that is the future.

CO: Are you at all worried at the same time the right-wing has developed the same tactics? Their protests, their street demonstrations, throughout Europe have been extremely effective in changing policies toward refugees and migrants coming into Europe?

MW: Right. Right. Protest is a form of warfare. It's also kind of like a tool or a weapon. And any side can kind of use the techniques of social movement creation to influence politics. And so you're right that social movements aren't inherently leftist or rightist. But I still maintain optimism that I do think that social movements will tend towards being positive forces because they will be controlled by the participants and any social movement that tries to control the direction of the social movement won't spiral and grow as quickly as a movement that's more democratic.

CO: Well they were much smaller demonstrations -- those right wing campaigns -- but more powerful and effective. Why do you think that's the case?

MW: I mean time will tell. It is a really tricky moment I think because in a certain sense you know what I see happening in America right now -- I see Trump actually doing probably what Bernie Sanders should have done. You know now Trump is saying well if I don't get the nomination, you know there's gonna be riots, there is going to be protests in the street. That is literally what Bernie Sanders should have said -- that he should have dropped out of the primaries, said this is a scam, pay all you occupiers and activists and protesters -- let's just build a social movement than have a bunch of protests between September and November and we'll win this you know on a ride in thing. So in a certain sense I think that the left -- and when I think why is this going on? I tend to blame the left for kind of losing hope in the desirability and possibility of revolution. Whereas on the right they still kind of believe that it's possible. So they're risking it all. They're going for it. Trump is risking more than Bernie Sanders is. I kind of blame Bernie Sanders.

CO: But Micah aren't you in that same group that has lost faith in the power of protest? You've just published a book called The End of Protest. Are you not part of those who have become disillusioned with this process?

MW: No. I'm not disillusioned. Absolutely not. On the contrary I think that the end of protest is part of the natural cycle of social change and that we break out of it. I think that Occupy Wall Street was an example of us breaking out of a period of sustained end of protests. Like if you look at from the decline the anti-war and anti-globalization in 2003 up until the birth of Occupy there's basically nothing going on in terms of protests in America. Eight years of the end of protests. So I think that instead I'm trying to hasten the breakout of the end of protest by kind of naming it and pointing to and say hey we're in a period where protest is ineffective, it is not going to be like that forever, but it could be like that for a long time and we need to get out of this as quickly as possible which is why I wrote a book about innovating new tactics of protest to break out of that.

CO: You're listening to As It Happens on CBC Radio One. I'm Carol Off. And we have Micah White in studio. We're talking about the Occupy Wall Street movement. What happened to that movement in 2011. And he's telling us about the effectiveness of protest with his book The End of Protest. Micah to some extent is this book almost subversive? Are you trying to stir people to get them to rethink activism as you have in the past when you have told them that you know you have to be spurred into action -- are you trying to spur people into action with this book?

MW: I absolutely am trying to spur people. I mean the subtitle is: a new playbook for revolution. I absolutely am trying to spur people because I believe that what's fundamentally going on within activism is a kind of laziness at the conceptual level about our theories of social change. I think people have become very lazy in thinking that well I disrupted, I blocked some streets, I got a few thousand people maybe even a million people to go into the streets...I must be victorious. No. No. I think it's really important that we become more sophisticated. And I think that one of the reasons why you know I wrote my book is so that the activists will read it and they'll become much more sophisticated in their way of thinking about activism and protest so the next time a social movement that spreads to 82 countries comes along, we will have a much more sophisticated and complex base of activists who can pull off something even bigger.

CO: But you warned against some other form of activism which is phony activism. You call it clicktivism. And that people sort of want to just sip their coffee latte and signed petitions online and re-tweet something that's interesting. What is the danger with that?

MW: Yeah you know in some ways and in a lot of ways I think Occupy Wall Street came out of this critique of clicktivism. And you know the danger in clicktivism is that it destroys our ability to have like a revolutionary intuition. If you went back in time and you looked at the Occupy Wall Street drafts of the tactical briefing and talked to people -- you know no one thought it was a good idea. No one liked it. No one thought it was a good idea. It wouldn't have market tested well. Well we've trusted our intuition -- Kallen and I. We knew, you know? I've been an activist since I was 13. Kallen has been an activist you know for so long. He has been doing Adbusters for 20 years. So we knew when we saw this (that) this is something that is going to take off. We didn't listen to other people and market test anything. And I think clicktivist are totally incapable of creating something like Occupy Wall Street. They never will be able to.

CO: Why do you think the Occupy Wall Street idea -- the movement -- came out of Canada?

MW: This is something I am thinking about a lot right now because not only did the Occupy movement come out of Canada but my book is published by a Canadian publisher. And it's like how can the greatest social movement of like 20, 30, 40 -- depends how you define it -- one of the greatest social movements in American history, why did it have to be exported from Canada? I think the biggest problem is that we have something in America that I'm kind of calling the protest industrial complex which is these risk averse metrics based activist organizations who aren't doing activism -- they're doing social marketing. It's very a different thing.

CO: An example?

MW: Of who these groups are?

CO: Of social marketing.

MW: I would call the People's Climate March social marketing. I would call basically any sort of large event whose purpose is to show our elected representatives that people care about an issue or to raise awareness around an issue -- you know any of these kind of things where the purpose is not actually to topple or challenge the status quo but instead to kind of make a spectacle that can be talked about you know safely.

CO: Get in the news.

MW: Get in the news. You know with Occupy what I think it's really interesting to remember as well that not only were 7000 occupiers arrested -- people had their bones broken and people died. And that is something that you know American activist organizations -- and when we called for it we knew, who knows what's going to happen here, you know? And those people died because of accidents. But still people died. And so American activists organizations to me seemed to be incapable of risking it all, and calling for an event quite frankly that people could die in. But that's the kind of unpredictability that creates a revolution scenario. And then sadly you know you look at like Trump and isn't he kind of risking it all. Yeah it does make me a little bit sad about the state of American activism but you know that's why I wrote my book. I think it's going to shake them up and inspire them and get them. Because in their hearts they want to create change. I know that. But yeah there's a model they've been following...and it is just broken.

CO: Micah White it's great to speak with you and have you in the studio. Thank you.

MW: Thank you. It was wonderful.

JD: From March of 2016 that was Carol in conversation with author and activist Micah White. His book The End of Protest: a New Playbook for Revolution -- is published by Knopf Canada. Mr. White is currently an activist in residence at UCLA.

March 19, 2019 Episode Transcript

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