Prorogation vs Canada's Pro-Democracy Movement

From The Real News Network : an excellent summary of the issues behind Steve's latest prorogation of democracy and how Canadians are pushing back.

Meanwhile, south of the 'longest undefended border in the world', Chris Hedges discusses 'inverted totalitarianism' in Democracy in America Is a Useful Fiction .

How successful the Harpercons are at quietly shifting the state of democracy in Canada from the tenuous grasp described in the first link to the 'useful fiction' of the second is entirely up to us.

Vancouver Rally For Democracy photos

Pix from me and West End Bob -click 'em to enlarge
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Canwest : Thousands turn out for Vancouver rally to protest PM Harper's decision to prorogue Parliament.
"Thousands", says Canwest, with 25,000 nation-wide.
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Look at all those handmade signs!
Very upbeat mood throughout, passing cars honking their support, people cheering us on out of office windows. Felt great to be out on the street with Canadians who give a damn.
Notable that of the speeches given at Victory Square, the loudest and most sustained applause greeted Fair Vote Canada Shoni Field's call for electoral reform.
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Many thanks to University of Alberta grad student Christopher White who started the whole thing rolling with just a page on facebook, now numbering over 213,000.

And to all those talking heads who assured us nightly on the snews that Canadians could care less that a single MP who happens to be the PM dismissed parliament via one phone call to the GG - you helped more than you know.

All in all a great day for democracy in Canada.

"No Prorogue" Day

Antonia Zerbisias in The Star :

Canadians can win at numbers game

"It was Woody Allen who said that 80 per cent of success is showing up.

As CBC's Rick Mercer, who gets it, ranted Tuesday, "Yes, we (Canadians) are apathetic but, the minute somebody tries to use our apathy against us, suddenly we start to care – big time."

Canadians will show up.

See you there. Back later with pix.

'No Prorogue' Rally For Canada Tomorrow!

Meet up on Georgia St. and march to Victory Square

Bring a Canadian flag !

And cookies - I quite like cookies.

Rallies at 63 other locations across Canada

each one with its own wee facebook page of info.

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Boots in the streets, people.

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Update : And for heaven's sake don't forget about this!

Facebook Wars - by the numbers

Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament - 155,000
Canadians Who Don't Care if Harper is Proroguing Parliament - 163
I Support the Prorogation of Parliament and the Prime Minister of Canada -713

Stephen Harper - 29,452
Michael Ignatieff - 28,822
Jack Layton - 27,697

and just to be a cow about it :
Canadians Against a Liberal/NDP Coalition Gov't - 126,681
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When Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament started up on Facebook last week, supporters of last year's Canadians Against a Liberal/NDP Coalition Gov't were all very dissy about it : We got 127,000 members in less than a week - crowed BloggingTory Stephen Taylor - the largest Canadian FB group evah!
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Of course now that CAPP membership has topped 155,000, they've gone all 'well fuck facebook then', with the National Post plumping for the 163 Canadians Who Don't Give a Rat's Ass About It.
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As CC has already pointed out, it's the prorogue FB support group that are of course the actual competition to CAPP and not the old anti-coalition group, but Susan Delacourt highlights an important difference between anti-prorogue group and the anti-coalition group for us anyway (h/t Dammit Janet) :

"This new Facebook group is counting on people to educate themselves about parliamentary tradition, practice and principle. The old Facebook group was organized around the notion of 'never mind parliamentary rules about majority/minority and confidence, this thing is wrong.'

In other words, you have to understand basic rules of Parliament to understand why this prorogation is unusual; you had to ignore parliamentary rules to argue the coalition was wrong."

And right there Susan Delacourt nails the basic difference between progressives and the ReformaTories.
Well, that and the lying.

EDIT : Perhaps the Con supporters happily joining the Don't Care FB group should take another look at the Admin's statement. I hadn't and have now edited this post accordingly, taking out my snarky renaming of his site as "Don't Give a Rat's Ass About Democracy".