Occupy Ottawa "Tent City" in Confederation Park - Photo by Obert Madondo

Who’re these activists driving the global Occupy movement? Without a single coherent message, what exactly do they want? And their agenda? These are just few of the oft-repeated questions about the hundreds of thousands of world citizens currently occupying key public spaces in major cities around the world.

Occupy Ottawa "Tent City" in Confederation Park - Photo by Obert Madondo

The Graduate Students’ Association at Carleton University will donate $300 to Occupy Ottawa to create a new a “Learning Commons” tent in the park. A representative of the association announced the donation during the movement’s General Assembly on Sunday.

Occupy Ottawa "Tent City" in Confederation Park - Photo by Obert Madondo

The global Occupy Movement arrived in Canada nearly a month after the first Occupy Wall Street protest. But, the movement is a made-in-Canada thing.

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The General Assembly (GA) of Occupy Ottawa last night resolved to join Air Canada flight attendants’ rally on Parliament Hill at 12:00 noon on Friday, Friday, October 21, 2011.

From Occupy Ottawa, unedited:

Friends,

We’re pleased to inform you that Occupy Ottawa will hold a protest march and rally outside the Sheraton Hotel (O’connor and Albert) on Wednesday October 19th.

We will be protesting a foreign policy event on “Canada-US political and economic integration” taking place at the hotel. The event is hosted by the Canadian International Council (CIC).

Occupy Ottawa started as a solidarity movement in support the Occupy Wall Street movement. On Sunday, the movement defined itself as truly Canadian.

Authors: Juan E. Méndez and Marjory Wentworth

Palgrave Macmillan, September 2011
ISBN: 978-0-230-11233-9, ISBN10: 0-230-11233-1,
156.000 x 234.000 inches, 256 pages

Juan Méndez has experienced human rights abuse first hand. As a result of his work with political prisoners in the late 1970s, the Argentinean military dictatorship arrested, tortured, and held him for more than a year. During that time, Amnesty International adopted him as a “Prisoner of Conscience.” After his release, he moved to the United States and continued his lifelong fight for the rights of others, and the lessons he has gleaned over the decades can help us with our current struggles. Here, he sets forth an authoritative and incisive examination of torture, detention, exile, armed conflict, and genocide, whose urgency is even greater in the wake of America’s recent disastrous policies. Méndez offers a new strategy for holding governments accountable for their actions, providing an essential blueprint for different human rights groups to be able to work together to effect change.

BIO:

Juan Méndez is the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture. Previously, he served as the first Special Advisor to the Secretary General of the United Nations on the Prevention of Genocide and is the former president of the International Center for Transitional Justice. He spent 15 years at Human Rights Watch, then served as executive director of the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights in Costa Rica and was president of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States. He is currently a visiting professor of Law at Washington College of Law. He lives in New York City.

Marjory Wentworth is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet whose has worked extensively in human rights for organizations such as the UN High Commission for Refugees in Geneva, Switzerland; The Whole World Institute of Boston; and Church World Service in New York. She lives in Charleston, South Carolina.

The media gave her scant attention. But that didn’t stop Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath from proving that she’s the best person to lead Canada’s economic and social heartbeat after October 6.

Ontario Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty and Ontario PC leader Tim Hudak dominated the news throughout the campaign. Here and there we got flashes of Horwath. Adjectives and phrases that variously described her include: fearless, passionate, good instincts and rebel.  Close to the true Horwath, but not quite.