People gathered around colourful signs taped to tents explaining the protesters’ message.
Before the National Capital Commission decided to shut them down, Occupy Ottawa protesters had taken to drawing and chanting their messages to keep the movement going.
They didn’t just write down their wishes, they drew them and hung them on their tents to get as much attention as possible. They didn’t only tell the media and passers-by why they were protesting, they composed songs and poems about it and chanted them during open mic sessions.
“We need art everywhere. We need art in any thing in life, any activity,” said Sebastien Bacharach, an Occupy Ottawa protester.
To keep up their visibility in the public arena and morale among themselves, occupiers at Confederation Park instituted an arts and culture department. Like many other aspects of the movement, it was not well co-ordinated – an email sent to them bounced back, for example – but its members still organized some activities.
Twenty-five-year-old occupier Kevin Donaghy, said they had been organizing open mic sessions, drumming circles, recitation of poems, and small concerts at the camp to boost morale.
“We want to keep people’s spirits nice and high,” Donaghy said in early November. “It’s getting cold, it’s getting chilly, and people are getting kind of tired. They have been here for a long time.”
James Smith had been at the camp for nearly two weeks and said he had been enjoying the various activities. The 24-year-old’s first experience of drum beating happened at the camp.
“You get this really cool bond between everybody who is there,” Smith said. “I always feel so much better and so much more peaceful when I am there because I can really feel the brotherhood that everybody has here when I am doing the drumming with everyone.”
The protesters communicated with the public through their colourful signs and drawings.
Bacharach, who had been at the camp for more than two weeks, drew hearts and people between three slogan sentences he wrote on pieces of a broken box. Using red and black markers, he wrote: “Care for the earth, care for the people, share the surplus.”
Capital letters and black and red colours were used in writing the message so that “people could see it better,” he said.
“I think these are things that are important for the Occupy Movement, it’s kind of encompassing everything we are here for,” Bacharach said. “I drew some hearts because I want to send a message of love, so I think this movement is about love, inclusivity, and all that.”
When visiting the Confederation Park-based camp for the first time in early November, 19-year-old Caitlin Balsh couldn’t stop looking at the drawings.
“It’s very appealing,” she said with a laugh as she checked them. “The writing is very bold, I like it.”
One of their posters featured words of cultural icon and American children’s author Dr. Seuss.
“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not,” it read.
The author’s words may have been spoken decades ago, but they were displayed at an Occupy Ottawa tent and they meant something for Balsh.
“Everyone I know at least grew up reading this,” she said. “It sort of makes you see that this isn’t just something that’s happening now, it’s been around for a while and now it’s everyone coming together and speaking about it.”