OCAP is a militant group of activists dedicated to mobilizing and advocating for the poor in ontario, particularly against harmful government policies in areas such as welfare and housing.
direct action
direct action casework
blocking the movement of goods, capital, etc.
destruction of property
protest
clac
Web homepage: http://www.ocap.ca
Email: ocap@tao.ca
Snail mail: 517 College St. Suite 234, Toronto, Ontario, M6G 4A2
Spokespersons: Media often quotes John Clarke (founder), Sue Collis, Shawn Brant, Sarah Vance, and Gaetan Heroux.
Toronto, Ontario, Canada, with affiliated groups across the province of Ontario.
“OCAP is a direct-action anti-poverty organization based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. We mount campaigns against regressive government policies as they effect poor and working people. In addition, we provide direct-action advocacy for individuals against eviction, termination of welfare benefits, and deportation. We believe in the power of people to organize themselves. We believe in the power of resistance.” (from website: http://www.ocap.ca/index2.html )
OCAP’s founding member, John Clarke, says: “As a militant, anti-capitalist organization, we reject the notion that we have any set of common interests with those who hold economic and political power. We also reject the rituals of token protest that confine movements to the level of futile moral arguments…” (From “A Short History of OCAP”, posted on website: http://www.ocap.ca/archive/short_history_of_ocap.html.
Defending the rights of the poor from abuse by landlords, employers, or government policy through direct action. This includes everything from face-to-face confrontation with individual landlords, employers, or welfare offices to city-wide campaigns of economic disruption. The general thrust of the group’s approach is an attempt to force the agents of an oppressive system to change their actions by hitting them where it hurts either politically or economically.
They aren’t very 'academic 'and don’t tend to cite anyone on the site, however a quote from jean paul Marat currently adorns their site.
The rich and powerful. OCAP’s activities over the past several years have primarily targeted the Ontario provincial government (the Progressive Conservatives under Mike Harris and Ernie Eves), who are seen as the puppets of corporate interests intent on dismantling any semblance of a social safety net.
Internet: website; e-mail list-serve with weekly announcements.
Print: sporadic newsletters; “June 13 ?” a fundraising book by ‘Queen’s Park Riot’ defendants. Audio: “Fight to Win! A Benefit for OCAP” - fundraising CD.
Can be broken down into three main categories:
1. Protest mass displays of public discontent (marches & demonstrations) and media stunts used to draw public attention to the problems of poverty.
2. Defense direct action casework; individuals “having problems getting social assistance or disability payments, being mistreated by [their] landlord or employer, facing detention or deportation, being harassed for panhandling or squeegeeing by the police or business owners” are invited to call upon OCAP’s support in pressuring the employer/landlord/ bureaucrat through face-to-face confrontation.
3. Disruption targeting the profit margins of businesses in Ontario, so that the business community will in turn put pressure on the government to scale back its attack on the poor. This can take the form of disrupting tourist events, picketing specific businesses, blocking traffic on major roads or highways, etc.
1. ‘Dave’s Discount’ supermarket action
When: 1995 Where: Loblaws store in downtown Toronto.
What: In response to the 21.6% cut to Ontario’s social assistance rates, and Social Services Minister David Tsbouchi’s subsequent suggestion that welfare recipients who can no longer afford to feed themselves should haggle for discounts, 50 OCAP members filled their grocery carts at the Loblaws store, then attempted to pay for their purchases at check-out counters using “Dave’s 21.6% Discount” coupons.
Effects: The media coverage presumably drew further public attention to the welfare cut and Tsubouchi’s callous remark. The fiasco in the store backed up lines for an hour or two, causing profit loss for the store (this result is considered desirable by OCAP on the assumption that profit loss encourages Ontario businesses to back less heavy-handed governments). (from pg. 161 of “Fighting to Win”, 1997, by John Clarke, pg. 157-164 in Mike Harris’s Ontario: Open for Business, Closed to People. Edited by Diana Ralph, André Régimbauld and Nérée St-Amand. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing.)
2. ‘Queen’s Park riot’
When: June 15, 2000
Where: Ontario Legislature, Queen’s Park, Toronto
What: 2000 demonstrators marched to the legislature to register their grievances regarding the provincial government’s handling of social assistance, workers’ rights, and housing. A delegation of OCAP members demanded entrance in order to address the assembly in session about these concerns, and were refused. Police were called in to clear the crowd and violence broke out. Demonstrators and police were injured; 40 demonstrators were arrested. Effects: The mainstream media played OCAP up as violent thugs. Meanwhile, a significant portion of OCAP’s resources have been channeled to legally defending their members who were arrested and charged (with serious criminal charges against 3 members still pending as of May 15, 2003). On the other hand, some would argue that there is value in the sense of community and assertiveness that was fostered among the poor and homeless, and in the fact that the brutality of the police and their relation to the state was dramatically illustrated by their actions that day.
3. Eviction of the Ontario Minister of Finance When: June 12, 2001 Where: Constituency office of MPP Jim Flaherty in Whitby, Ontario What: Several OCAP members entered the office and removed Flaherty’s furniture, dumping it on the street outside, in a symbolic ‘eviction’ meant to resemble the evictions with minimal warning that Ontario residential tenants had been facing ever since the government had changed rental housing laws. Effects: Largely unsympathetic media coverage. A few arrests and criminal charges.
4. Shut Down Bay Street
When: Oct 16, 2001
Where: Downtown Toronto What: As part of the province-wide economic disruption campaign called in 2001, OCAP members and supporters marched in Toronto (using the snake-march tactic) in order to disrupt the flow of traffic and people in the city’s downtown core, specifically the major financial district surrounding Bay Street. This action was accompanied by a deliberate slow-down of the 401 Highway, a major route for manufacturing transport in southern Ontario. The idea was to disrupt the flow of business-as-usual and attack the profit margins of the corporate business world, which had gained from the Tory government’s policies. Effects: OCAP desribes the action as “a massive shut down of Toronto’s financial district.” (pg. 8 of liner notes for CD “Fight to Win! A Benefit for OCAP”, 2001, The G-7 Welcoming Committee Records.) While it certainly wasn’t reported by the media as a full-scale ‘shut-down’ (rather, what little media coverage there was focused almost exclusively on the burning of an American flag during the march), there was no doubt some degree of profit loss, or at least annoyance, for businesses in the Toronto area.
5. Welfare Casework
When: May 2002
Where: Toronto
What: OCAP was approached for help by a woman who had been denied social assistance based on unreasonable grounds; she was told she would only be eligible if she left a volunteer position that she held with an agency (the volunteer position was seen as proof that the woman was not looking for employment). However, she had been offered a future paid position at the agency in the coming year; leaving the volunteer position would likely threaten this prospective job. She needed some sort of assistance to get her through the next few months until the paid position opened up. OCAP sent a letter of complaint to the welfare office, threatening public action if the grievance was not resolved. Effects: Assistance was shortly thereafter provided to the woman, with no requirement that she leave the volunteer position. OCAP concluded: “… it is clear how OCAP's well established readiness to use direct action methods to confront such injustices has by now created a situation where the mere threat of a response often brings results.” (source: 23 May, 2002 email from "Ontario Coalition Against Poverty"
6. The Pope Squat
When: July-November 2002
Where: 1510 King St. West, Toronto
What: In response to the rise in evictions and homelessness following changes to the rental housing law and massive cut-backs in social housing, OCAP took over and squatted an abandoned house in Toronto’s Parkdale neighbourhood. The march and take-over of the building was timed to coincide with the Catholic Pope’s visit to Toronto, in hopes that the media spotlight on the city would discourage a brutal police crackdown, as had occurred at previous squats. OCAP occupied the building for 3 months, during which time extensive repairs were carried out by volunteers, with the aim of establishing a self-managed social housing building and community centre. OCAP also used the opportunity to present the following demands to the municipal and provincial governments:
- A city-wide inspection and repair blitz
to inspect and order repairs on all unsafe and substandard housing in the City of Toronto
- Raise the minimum wage to $10.00/hr and restore the cut to social assistance, to put an end to economic evictions
- Restore rent control
- Build 2000 units of social housing a year in Toronto
The house turned out to have an ambiguous legal position (the corporate owner having ceased to exist), and was eventually determined to be property of the Province of Ontario. OCAP and supporters called on the province to transform the house into official social housing; instead, the squatters were evicted in November of 2002, and the house was boarded up and surrounded with private security guards. Effects: Up to 25 people were housed over the course of 3 months. There was fairly extensive and often sympathetic media coverage in Toronto. The Pope Squat appears to have inspired other similar housing actions; the Halifax Anti-Poverty Institute, for example, initiated a squat accompanied by a list of demands almost identical to those of the Pope Squat. Since the tenants of the Pope Squat were evicted, there has been no word about what the province intends to do with the building. None of OCAP’s other housing demands have been met.
(source: http://www.ocap.ca/ocapnews/popesquatbroadsheet.html and http://www.ocap.ca/ocapnews/pope_squat.html )
7. Immigration Casework
When: December 2003
Where: Immigration offices in Toronto
What: In solidarity with a Nigerian woman whose refugee claim had been rejected and who now faced deportation after having lived in Canada for 7 years, OCAP members brought delegations to two immigration offices and demanded that the deportation proceedings be stopped. They also called upon their membership to write letters of complaint the minister of Immigration. Effects: The deportation was cancelled and the woman was granted permanent residency in Canada. (source: February 13, 2003 email from "Ontario Coalition Against Poverty"
Here is an OCAP member’s description of their basic strategy for stopping deportations: “[We take] the kinds of actions that make us such an embarrassing, disruptive pain in the ass, that it’s easier for the State to grant a family landed immigrant status than attempt to follow though on deportation.” (from pg. 14 of liner notes for CD “Fight to Win! A Benefit for OCAP”, 2001, The G-7 Welcoming Committee Records.)
OCAP is linked to other direct action community groups in Ontario though a loose network called the ‘Ontario Common Front’. These groups include the Peterborough Coalition Against Poverty, the Kitchener-Waterloo Youth Collective, the Sudbury Coalition for Social Justice, and the Tenant Action Group of Belleville.
A similar group is the Anti-Poverty Coalition of Victoria (APOV). These guys take a similar direct-action approach and have been particularly active on welfare and homelessness stuff since the Campbell government in BC has aggressively cut back on social assistance much like Harris did in Ontario a few years earlier.
OCAP receives some financial and public support from, and often participates in events alongside, labour groups and unions like the Canadian Union of Public Employees, the Canadian Auto Workers, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, and the Ontario Federation of Labour.
The OCAP web-site also features links to the following local groups:
- Toronto Video Activist Collective ( http://www.tvac.ca/ )
- Psychiatric Survivors Archive of Toronto ( http://www.psychiatricsurvivorarchives.com/ )
- Toronto Disaster Relief Committee ( http://www.tdrc.net/ )
- Toronto Tenants ( http://www.geocities.com/torontotenants/index.html )
OCAP’s ambitious plans for a province-wide campaign of economic disruption (Fight to Win!) in 2001 never seemed to pan out. Apart from the October 16 action in Toronto (which arguably caused some immeasurable degree of profit-loss), I have found no other reports of economic disruption by the Ontario Common Front.
OCAP’s real strength seems to be the individual level casework it carries out. One important question is whether the time, energy, and money involved in staging massive public demonstrations or media stunts (which inevitably trigger litigation and resulting legal defense costs) might be better channeled towards the casework.
OCAP has an interesting ambivalence towards the state. On the one hand, its anarchist leanings entail an irreverent contempt for authority/government/the state. On the other hand, however, it leaps to the defense of state welfare programs.
I think this stems not from inconsistency or ideological confusion, but rather from a fundamental concern with the immediate goal of meeting people’s concrete needs for food, shelter, and security under whatever system prevails. While the welfare safety net may be a fundamentally flawed institution, tied to the oppressive capitalist state system, it may also be the only security available to some people in our actual, present reality.
Mainstream media tends to be dismissive; OCAP is painted as a violent, unruly bunch of anarchists.
The following excerpts from a Toronto Star article sum up their media image fairly well: “When anti-poverty protesters invaded Ontario Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's Whitby constituency office and threw his furniture out the door last week, most reaction was predictably negative. ``Outrageous,'' said Education Minister Janet Ecker. ``Nothing short of anarchy,'' fumed Labour Minister Chris Stockwell. ``We call it pillaging,'' thundered the National Post, which demanded maximum jail sentences for those arrested.
The Star's editorial board, while sympathizing with the protesters' aims (the action was designed to draw attention to Toronto's alarming eviction rate), denounced what it called a ``display of orchestrated violence'' and suggested that, in the future, critics of Premier Mike Harris' government confine themselves to passing out leaflets.” … An eclectic band that includes not only poor people, but students, retirees and the odd university professor, OCAP doesn't play by the usual rules. It is direct, in-your-face and occasionally rude.
Where other protest groups try to make their points by holding demonstrations in authorized public spaces such as Nathan Phillips Square, OCAP tends to take the fight right to where its enemies live. …. In 1997, when middle-class ratepayer groups protested against hostels being established in their neighbourhoods, OCAP picketed their leaders' homes. The tactic was not well received. The Globe and Mail chided OCAP for its bad taste. Others compared the protesters to a gang of Nazis…”
(Walkom, 2001, from http://www.ocap.ca/archive/labour_gearing_up_for_battle.html)
The Globe and Mail writes: “OCAP is a radical fringe of publicity-seeking, left-wing punks using poor people as an excuse for the thrill of civil disobedience, or it is a fearless, if at times overzealous, band of activists, whose in-your-face tactics have made a difference for the downtrodden in hard times.” (from liner notes for CD “Fight to Win! A Benefit for OCAP”, 2001, The G-7 Welcoming Committee Records)
Feltes, Norman. 2001. “The New Prince in a New Principality: OCAP and the Toronto Poor.” In Labour/Le Travail. 48: http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/llt/48/06feltes.html
Canadian Dimension articles:
http://www.canadiandimension.mb.ca/extra/x0516jc.htm
http://www.canadiandimension.mb.ca/extra/x0217oca.htm