Occupy: Canadian media turns its back on the homeless, the marginalized, the disenfranchised

While many of us progressives like to think that the Occupy movement has awakened Canadians to the 99%, the reality is different. Editorial boards across Canada have seen to the marginalization of Occupy by concentrating on its weakest and most vulnerable members.

By accommodating the homeless, the disenfranchised and the marginalized, Occupy has played into the hands of the media. Gone are the cold hard facts that concerned citizens of all classes, races and sexes are working overtime to improve the inequalities in world and local governments and financial systems. Instead, Canadians are treated to daily articles and editorials slamming the movement as one full of hippies, rapists, drug addicts, and trouble makers.

It’s a wonder Canadians still support the movement - at least according to the polls - in light of the barrage of chumped-up charges from the media, peeping into tents, taunting the grinding process of defining goals, pissing in the #Occupy pools on Twitter and making up wild claims never corrected when the truth is revealed.

By including the less fortunate, Occupy has without intention allowed the media spotlight to shine on the most visible residents of the Occupy locations. What the media does not mention is that the residents of the Occupy parks are most often our youth, an obvious fact that the cold and wet of winter would be too hard for most older Canadians to physically withstand.

So what we get in the papers and on the news are the same icons of poverty and hard times – youth, Aboriginals, homeless – spotlighted by the media as Occupy, when they are actually only a part of the impetus of a bigger movement. Instead of offering substantial, helpful ideas for the inclusive movement to help all of our citizens, the media has chosen to mock the unfortunates as the essence of Occupy.

We are not just the poor. We do not hate money or the gathering of riches. We want a better sense of equality in our lives. We want to help the less fortunate. We want Aboriginal rights to be honoured.

What we don’t need is a media complicit with big business and the Conservative government doing everything in its power to diminish and mock what Occupy is trying to accomplish. The goals are obvious if not yet fully defined.

It’s only been two months since a group of loosely organized people all over the world took inspiration from the Arab Spring and began to demand our government and financial institutions better accommodate all of us, not just the rich and powerful. That we are virtually leaderless and honour all the voices in our movement, instead of respect, our media mocks those very principled and honourable processes.

But most of all the media takes lightly the Occupy movement not for what we are about to achieve but by the visuals of our Occupy parks. While disasters have occurred, especially south of the border, and the parks are being dismantled, the media concentrates on the more sensational aspects of the Occupy parks themselves. They forget – or can’t understand – the larger implications of what is going on here. It’s bigger than all of us.

We will go on and fight the fight now without the glare of the media spotlight shone by those too pampered and wealthy to open their minds to even acknowledge that Occupy is in its infancy and a harbinger of a bigger movement about to happen. History is happening big time with Occupy and it is not just the tents or the park occupants who will be the story in years to come. But they will be a big part of it.

What history will tell us that the victim of the media in all of Occupy are those who relied on Occupy for a mostly safe place to sleep, food and an ear to the plight of all. With the dismantling of the parks, many people will be left again with no support, on the streets to fend for themselves. They will once again disappear into the night and the media will no longer daily mock them but worse forget about them again.

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Cross posted at Let Freedom Rain