Sowing the seeds of community

Matthew

It seems that much of the organised left - in its zeal to address issues of structure, respectability and acceptance, office space, and staffing - often loses the innocence and power of a good idea. In the process, also lost are some eager participants, a strong moral focus and the get-up-and-go momentum that gets crushed with the slightest hint of bureaucracy.
In a rejection of such politics, a Torontobased group organises around ideas rather than spending its time building coalitions or examining its structure. Toronto Action for Social Change (TASC) is a quirky collection of souls who come together around specific actions designed to nonviolently resist institutional violence in all of its forms.

A broad church

The group has a lengthy record of direct action around issues ranging from welfare cutbacks and squatting of abandoned buildings, to protesting at militarism and hastily organising anti-sexism pickets outside of clubs or restaurants whose advertising is particularly obnoxious. From its Wiccan/Old Catholic Priest nonviolence training team combo to its embrace of the flamboyantly theatrical, the group tends to set itself apart from those who engage in a politics more rooted in the "building and keeping together the labour/ student/church/women's group coalition" approach to protest. At the same time, however, TASC will work with such coalitions, and welcomes all who want to join in their own quirky form of nonviolent resistance.
TASC was born shortly after the election of the Thatcher-like government of Ontario Premier Mike Harris in 1995. It grew out of the sense of isolation and powerlessness which many felt with the ascendance of Harris, and responded to a real need to provide training and experienced nonviolent resisters to the burgeoning anti-Harris movement. Most of its members are proud followers of King, Gandhi, Cesar Chavez, Barbara Deming, Dorothy Day, and the suffragists, among others, and make ongoing attempts to relate current activities to their historic predecessors. (TASC publishes an ongoing newsletter, TheLong Arc , which chronicles nonviolent resistance around the globe, publishes the annual annotated bibliography Resources for Radi-cals , and this autumn will be launching a radical history video project.)
The group was officially born when its first rally required a sponsoring organisation, and the name was thrown onto the poster to make things look legit. TASC has evolved into many incarnations -- Country Music Fans Against the Cuts, which attempts to reach out as activists to fans of twangy music by pointing out the strong social justice tradition in much of the music; the Queen's Park Agricultural Diversity Team, which plants vegetable gardens at the legislature to protest hunger; the Corporate Hypocrite Picket, which protests outside of evil corporations which try and make hay with their minimal contributions to charity; and SNASSI, the Saturday Night Anti-Sexism Squad, Inc. All are free-form groups with no formal structure other than a commitment to active nonviolence and getting like-minded folks together to build loose-knit community through direct action.

A catalyst for change

TASC sees itself as a catalyst for social change, which introduces ideas and what it hopes are creative forms of protest to create a moral climate of nonviolent resistance to injustice. Each action is a metaphorical casting of the net, the spread of the idea that one can resist oppression without hating or doing violence to one's opponent. It's an idea which tends to widen our circle with each action, as many tire of the old-style shaking fists/namecalling/"we'll hurt you because you hurt us" approach to changing the world. And because we're an all-volunteer group with no ongoing need to justify our existence as an organisation, members can come and go and return depending on the group's particular focus.
The group has historically used costume as part of its repertoire, and given that many of its members come to it with prior criminal records for years of anti-war, native solidarity, and anti-poverty protests, there is little left to be embarrassed about. Hence, Santa Claus and two elves were arrested when TASC took cartloads of food off the shelves of corporate chain Loblaws to protest at the corporation's solid support of the Harris government, whose policies increased hunger. Since Loblaws makes a profit from food drives (by selling goods to be donated at retail, not wholesale prices) and looks good for hosting donations bins, the mischievous Xmas crew deposited the cartloads of food directly into the food donation bin without paying for it, resulting in their trip to the slammer. In subsequent protests, Loblaws brought carloads of police in to arrest the Easter Bunny, Robin Hood, and the Great Pumpkin. TASC was pleased to find out that similar protests began occurring in other Canadian cities as a result.

Promoting alternatives

TASC actions try to promote not just their disgust at the status quo of corporate greed but to promote alternatives in the course of the action. Hence, a blockade of Canada's financial district on Bay Street on 1 May 1996 consisted of an alternative skyline of credit unions and free childcare centres, stuffed animals, dancers, musicians, Raging Grannies, and Groucho masks. In November 1999, an attempt to protest against militarism and poverty resulted in the construction of a civil society consisting of a house, daycare, free school, women's shelter and community garden, and an attempt to transform Canada's War Dept into the Housing Dept. Protests against hunger have resulted in plant-ins (public guerrilla gardening in which vegetables are planted at the legislature, actions which have spurred the creation of at least two community gardens by those who read of the actions) and build-ins (construction of a house in front of the legislature).
    One very practical outgrowth of TASC's efforts is the St Clare's Multifaith Housing Society, which was born as part of attempts to work with squeegee kids and other homeless youth in downtown Toronto. After repeated direct action attempts to squat abandoned buildings and to pressure the city to turn over property for innovative housing and skills sharing programmes were met only with police repression, TASC worked with a radical housing consultant to come up with a proposal to house those whom most social service agencies found too difficult to deal with. After three years of effort, St Clare's was finally able this year to purchase an abandoned building, and will be among the first organisations in Ontario to provide nonprofit housing since Harris came to power.
    Again, this was a result of persistent political work on the part of a small handful of individuals who believed the immediate needs of housing homeless youth could be met using non-traditional approaches, and while there is no huge structure for St Clare's, its idea has definitely caught on, and will, we hope, become a model for similar projects.
    For the safety of all TASC has been informed that, along with a handful of other groups, it remains a focus of major surveillance by the police forces of Toronto and Ontario, with e-mail, fax and phone monitoring publicly admitted to, "for the safety of all". Members of the CounterIntelligence and Anti-Terrorism Unit of Toronto police first introduced themselves to us in the middle of an interfaith service.
    Given TASC's spirit of openness, however, it hopes that this surveillance results in a good education for the officers listening in.
    Far more threatening to the group's existence, many felt, was the well-intentioned but ill-aimed attempt by some newer members to put a formal structure over the group, to endlessly discuss its goals and long-term strategies, and to self-examine until we turned blue. The minute such discussions began, membership fell off dramatically, actions suffered a dry spell, and some members simply mutated into other groups in the quick and easy fashion in which TASC itself had been born. (One outgrowth of this was the province-wide Homes not Bombs, which has organised major civil resistance actions at Canada's War Department and at numerous war shows in the province over the past year.)

Setting a fine example

In the meantime, TASC attempts to organise around whatever group members feel would provide a good opportunity to express moral indignation and nonviolent resistance to whatever we find particularly unjust or annoying. This philosophy has led to such actions as the attempted Citizens' Arrest of war criminal Henry Kissinger, a two-week Hike to End Hunger and Homelessness, fasting against hunger, blood pourings to protest the deaths of the homeless, endless occupations of political and corporate offices, prayins, and ongoing public witnesses (such as a one-year campaign against Andersen Consulting, a multinational which profits by cutting welfare and a five-year-old weekly vigil at the Ontario legislature to protest against poverty).
Ultimately, TASC actions strive to promote the idea that we should try to live our lives as if the revolution has already occurred, and that the stark contrast between this effort and the way we normally live our lives in a very violent world provide enough of a contrast to set a good example. Susan Sontag once remarked that anyone who has ever experienced a reprieve on the inhibition against love and trust that society places on us is never quite the same. TASC believes it is through nonviolent direct action that we begin to feel those feelings of tenderness and togetherness that sow the seeds of true community.

For more information, and a free issue of The Long Arc, contact TASC (or any of our affiliates) at PO Box 73620, 509 St Clair Avenue. West, Toronto, ON, M6C 1C0, Canada (tel +1 416 651 5800; email tasc@web.ca).