OCAP
VIDEOS
TVAC & JONATHAN CULP
Sometimes
the presence of a video camera will stop an officer from beating
the shit out of an old man who has no shoes. Fighting To Win,
the Toronto Video Activist Collective's (TVAC) document of
the June 15 riot in Toronto shows us just the opposite, that
sometimes cops just want to make Reality TV…
…(Satan
Macnuggit is) a distribution conglomerate owned by punk video
artist and fellow TVACtivist Jonathan Culp. MIX asked Jonathan
to tell us what he's been up to for the past few years. He
sent us this e-mail:
"In
1998 I helped found the Toronto Video Activist Collective,
which aimed to mobilize video workers around specific social
issues and movements. Our first project, VideoActive #1, was
an hour-long compendium documenting 1998's direct actions.
"As
I became sensitive to the philosophical and organizational
limitations of conventional "protest" tactics, I
gravitated toward the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, which
continues to deal with the most fundamental and grave social
issues in a way that empowers actual at-risk communities,
while necessarily challenging much of the mainstream Left's
reformist/pacifist dogmatism. In November 1999, I joined OCAP
on their journey to Ottawa as they demanded that the Liberal
government put their multi-billion dollar surplus to better
use than a tax cut for the wealthy. Homeless and anti-poverty
activists from Toronto, Kingston and Montreal, natives from
Tyendinaga, Akwesasne, and Gananoque converged on Parliament
Hill in Ottawa to demand action on the homelessness crisis.
It was no surprise to end up with pepper spray in my eye,
but it did provide me with firsthand evidence of the scale
and the stakes of the struggle I was aligning myself with,
and I channeled my newly kindled commitment into the resultant
video, 'Homeless on the Hill: OCAP Goes to Ottawa' (which
screened at the Anarchist Free Space, September 24, 2000…)
"Then
on June 15th of this year, OCAP marched on Queen's Park to
address even more immediate concerns, namely, the calculated
continuum of welfare cuts, streamlined evictions and police
brutality that is, quite directly, killing people in Toronto
and across Ontario. This time, accompanied by TVAC members
Siue Moffat, Lindsay Kearns, Judy Koch, David Hermolin and
David James Fernandes, I bore witness to a display of cop-induced
chaos and brutality that could not be ignored. Reviewing our
tapes as I prepared to edit 'Fighting to Win,' I asked myself,
if the Ottawa action breached a fortified, three-deep barricade,
then why did Toronto cops only erect one, then allow it to
fall with cries of "Let 'em go?" The only possible
answer is that they wanted to escalate the confrontation in
order to create a legal pretext to destroy OCAP and anyone
who would publicly and effectively challenge the bullshit
that is rampant in this stupid province.
"Since
that protest, the police have engaged in an intimidation campaign
against both OCAP supporters and a timid media, who object
to having their tapes seized only because it reveals them
as the accomplices to power that they quite regularly are.
Yes, I am scared shitless to be in the cops' scopes, but I
recognize that the communities I am choosing to align myself
with have been similarly targeted since time immemorial, and
to be there myself is nothing more than a necessary reality
check." - Jonathan Culp
(Kika
Thorne, MIX Magazine, Fall 2000)
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