The Santa Deception:

[William Prest]

An Instrument Used to Attack the Occupying Working Class

 

In some of the corporate media of Nov. 3^rd, 2011, we learned that the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Assoc. (DVBIA) that businesses were livid over the rerouting of the Santa Claus parade. We have since learned that there were plans to reroute it anyway even if there was no occupation. But, the DVNIA in its so called infinite wisdom has decided to attack the very people they claim in their hand wringing public relations exercise to be in support. We know from this deflection of blame from the banksters to the unemployed, underpaid, overworked and homeless workers that the DBVIA is nothing more than a gang of hypocrites and mendicants (bald two faced liars). Let us look at this point by point.

 

The very first point is the Santa Claus parade that is an exercise to whip up the children into a frenzied fever pitch in lusting after toys and electronic gadgets. Child is set against parent who has no budget for the desires of their charges because that budget has been methocially removed over the decades by a cooperative cabal of banksters, corporatist and government puppet who do not actually want to pay any wage at all. If they, could manage to pay nothing and get people to live completely on credit card debt, they would. For them it is a cost cutting exercise in order to boost profits. They have crashed the casino economy in wild speculations since the deregulation of Reagan's voodoo economics. That collapse that ensued in the fall of 2008 put tens of millions on the street and produced the condition where one in five children in the richest country on the planet are now malnourished. This is what the DVBIA are attempting to fasten onto the Occupy movement at large and Occupy Vancouver in Particular as they see Christmas profits vanishing into thin air. But these credit card profits were already evaporated due to the economic collapse that began before anyone had a concept of an occupation movement including the one in France in 2010. Santa Claus is a fiction that we have far to long coddled in the working class mindset and the sooner this is ended for the sake of the truth, the better. Christmas spirit that is typically a frenzy of vulgar mass consumerism is fuelled on the false premise of one day a year generosity, while being a selfish pig every other day.

 

The Santa Claus parade is also an exercise in blind and directionless consumerism that wrecks havoc on the planet. Are the working people at Occupy Vancouver laying waste to the planet? The answer to this is most recently found in Libya, but can also be found in places like Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Here in the past and very recent past we see hundreds of billions of dollars wasting the planet and resources in the mass murder of children and civilians in these countries so we can have resources and growing space. In fact, the Occupy movement is dead set against these imperialist adventures that have committed mass crimes against humanity and nature. Waste of resources is also found in various “free trade” acts that allow the corporatist to ship raw resources all around the planet to have them worked into commodities to be shipped back all around the world to waiting consumers, whether that commodity is a car of a toy. The whole shipping back and forth impacts with a huge carbon footprint that is now manifesting in global climate change. We very much doubt that a handful of people in Vancouver in the Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG) tent city have contributed all that carbon. In fact, all of the 99% Occupy movements all over the globe in some 1,500 locations have not contributed a tiny fraction of 1% that just one mega company providing tools of war and weapons of mass destruction has on the environment and people.

 

Over the last few years, the Santa parade ended at the VAG, but there were plans in the works to reroute it anyway. But this fact was not brought out by the DVBIA that chose instead to make an acidic attack on the Occupy Vancouver “eyesore”, blaming the Occupation for the forcing of the reroute. The fact of the matter is, is that this news speak was issued to fan anger against the working people who are waking up to just how much the DVBIA has been working quietly against them for decades. The VAG is alleged to be the gathering place for Santa and his enterage after the parade in order to hype this years expensive toy offerings for beleaguered parents to max out their credit card upon. Santa Claus is a fiction that has very real psychological effects of pitting child against parent in a rotten economy. This strikes at the very core of parent-child relations where the parent by very natural influences, provide for the child. This relation has been perverted by the corporatist to get the child to cry out for all sorts of clap trap as it it were the very life giving breast milk of a caring mother. This is hence the heart of the matter is that the Occupy movement has allegedly torn the child's sucking lips away from the corporatist teat. But this relationship does not bestow life to the child or parent so much as taking it away in contradistinction to the real relationship of mother and child. This feared loss of profit that actually materialized from a shrinking consumer base due to escalating unemployment, is what they do not want to materialize. Thus, knowing that Christmas 2011 is going to be a huge dud, Occupation or no Occupation, they seek to deflect blame away from themselves to the very working people they victimized in a mass fleece back in 2008.

 

Austerity is a word that we have all become all too familiar with in this era of cutbacks, increasing taxes and devaluation. Austerity is the Friedmanite answer to the loss of profitability where the working class is supposed to shrink their expectations to the point of oblivion. And if they are not willing to absorb this punishment, then the armed police state is there to make them absorb this as well as tear gas, batons, rubber bullets and tasers. Apparently, we are supposed to accept this bullying and torturous abuse while revelling in that illusory charade called the Santa Claus parade. We propose a solution! That solution is the extension of the Occupy movement right into the Santa Claus parade while it makes pit stops at all the banks in the route for all the cash they have and that this held back wages be distributed to everyone along the route including all the inhabitants of Occupy Vancouver at the VAG. Does the DVBIA wants a Christmas? Then stop disrespecting your workers and pay up and then the workers will do what comes at Christmas anyway. If they do not, a general strike to stop Santa in his tracks is another consideration.

 

The DVBIA has a recent, not so well publicized, of mistreating working people, setting an abominable record for other businesses to follow. The DVBIA runs a two pronged security program that oversees the protection of the businesses and assets under its charge. Thus dual security force is made up of loss prevention, low profile officers and high profile Downtown Ambassadors. It is a force of bad cops – good cops in plain clothes and flashy red suited drag. Recently, citing shrinking contracts, half of the Ambassadors were terminated and shown to the street they once patrolled, after providing services for their client. The remaining half were then forced to up their hours from 8 to 12 hours a day with no increase of base pay. The typical day of an Ambassadors is to walk the streets of the downtown including the VAG tent city to make sure that there is no theft from auto and to assist the loss prevention team where necessary. They also serve as tourist guides to help lost tourists and to assist the compliant homeless people that dot Vancouver streets. They are also charged with emergency medical assists as first responders. They also perform DVBIA specific functions on demand. They have a 50 % heavier load now that half of the staff has inherited the streets along with the homeless and the remainig half have to make up for the lost staff support.

 

We commend and unconditionally support the heroism of all the Occupy Vancouver people and all other occupations, especially in the tent city that have lived there in fourth world conditions since October 15^th last. We commend supporters and volunteers of the movement. We condemn the livid and frothing attack by a rabid DVBIA that can see nothing beyond ringing cash registers and high interest credit card swipes, most of which are charged at interest for little more than pure rubbish. We say anathema (let them be condemned) to the banksters and corporatist cabal that serves as the misguiding darkness that is descending upon the world and humanity as the resultant and erupting class struggle manifests. We demand that the armed police cease and desist from attacking unarmed protestors exercising free speech and freedom of assembly constitutional rights! Down with domestic terrorist charges against people who criticize government, corporatist and banksters policies! We demand that all the books are thrown open for a working peoples' investigation and judgement! We demand true justice and economic democracy! We will not step aside for a bald faced lie perpetrated to collectively steal from families by pitting parent and child into opposing camps.