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Page disrupts Throne Speech with unprecedented protest
Posted:
Fri Jun 03, 2011 5:11 pmby Jeff
What an inspiring sight this is.
Rogue page disrupts throne speech with Harper protest
OTTAWA—A young woman who spent the past year working as a Senate page was kicked out of the upper chamber for staging a protest during the Speech from the Throne on Friday.
Brigette Marcelle, 21, was removed from the Senate Chamber after she stood silently holding a red sign emblazoned with the message “Stop Harper” as Governor General David Johnston read the speech outlining the Conservative agenda for the upcoming parliamentary session.
Then she issued a press release.
“Harper’s agenda is disastrous for this country and for my generation,” Marcelle said in the release emailed to the media while she was still in the care of parliamentary security. “We have to stop him from wasting billions on fighter jets, military bases, and corporate tax cuts while cutting social programs and destroying the climate. Most people in this country know what we need are green jobs, better medicare, and a healthy environment for future generations.”
The statement notes that Marcelle is a recent University of Ottawa graduate who had been a page in the senate for a year but then realized working in the system would not stop Prime Minister Stephen Harper from doing things she disagreed with.
“Contrary to Harper's rhetoric, Conservative values are not in fact Canadian values. How could they be when 3 out of 4 eligible voters didn’t even give their support to the Conservatives? But we will only be able to stop Harper's agenda if people of all ages and from all walks of life engage in creative actions and civil disobedience [sic],” she said in the release.
Then she called for a popular uprising in Canada like the ones seen across the Middle East this year.
“This country needs a Canadian version of an Arab Spring, a flowering of popular movements that demonstrate that real power to change things lies not with Harper but in the hands of the people, when we act together in our streets, neighbourhoods and workplaces,” Marcelle said in the release.
Her profile on the Senate page website identifies her as Brigette DePape, which is the same name in the email address she used to distribute the press release.
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/arti ... otest?bn=1
Re: Page disrupts Throne Speech with unprecedented protest
Posted:
Fri Jun 03, 2011 5:16 pmby 2012 Countdown
Bravo!
Re: Page disrupts Throne Speech with unprecedented protest
Posted:
Fri Jun 03, 2011 5:23 pmby The Consul
Brigette...you make me wish I was a Canadian!
Re: Page disrupts Throne Speech with unprecedented protest
Posted:
Fri Jun 03, 2011 5:28 pmby 82_28
I wonder if Don Cherry is going to bring this up tonight during game 2?
Re: Page disrupts Throne Speech with unprecedented protest
Posted:
Fri Jun 03, 2011 5:47 pmby Canadian_watcher
.
I have goosebumps.
that is awesome!
edit: it looks like Santa is in the chair behind her. lmao.. Canada - red, white and fluffy.
Re: Page disrupts Throne Speech with unprecedented protest
Posted:
Fri Jun 03, 2011 6:01 pmby StarmanSkye
Bravo & HatZ oFF! A tremendous inspiration, what a cheeky, courageous, clued-in young woman. She GETS it, the whole bit about genuine, active, involved, informed, 'self-rule' that most of the public don't even realize has been totally perverted by the corporate plutocracy.
No doubt a comprehensive psyop action plan to sabotage her potential for inspiring and encouraging a whole generation of activists was quickly initiated;
DAMN the PTB for their rotton black souls.
(Mebbe I'm too damn cynical? Prob not cynical enuff.)
Re: Page disrupts Throne Speech with unprecedented protest
Posted:
Fri Jun 03, 2011 6:06 pmby Jeff
Brigitte marched against the G20 in Toronto and wrote that her father told her it was unproductive. "But my question for him and his generation is: what will change things, then? If protesting is meaningless, as he suggests, what can we do to create a more just society? Surely my parents and others are concerned about the same issues we are. But what are they doing about it? Too often they don’t challenge them directly and they don’t encourage their kids to do so either. My dad reminds me that some choose to work quietly at incremental change rather than taking to the streets. But has that worked?"
She wrote this for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives last July:
http://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/ ... 071410.pdf
Re: Page disrupts Throne Speech with unprecedented protest
Posted:
Fri Jun 03, 2011 6:09 pmby Fresno_Layshaft
That was pretty awesome actually. Go girl!
Re: Page disrupts Throne Speech with unprecedented protest
Posted:
Fri Jun 03, 2011 6:16 pmby Bruce Dazzling
Re: Page disrupts Throne Speech with unprecedented protest
Posted:
Fri Jun 03, 2011 6:22 pmby Jeff
She was interviewed afterwards by Evan Solomon on
Power & Politics:
http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/News/Politics ... 1967509111
Re: Page disrupts Throne Speech with unprecedented protest
Posted:
Fri Jun 03, 2011 6:45 pmby Bruce Dazzling
I kept wanting to see a 16 ton weight fall on that dillweed interviewer Evan Solomon, as he repeatedly tried to steer the interview towards what an awful, thankless rule-breaker she was for having the unmitigated gall to interrupt her ruler as he dictated the terms of the corporo-militarist rape of her future.
Re: Page disrupts Throne Speech with unprecedented protest
Posted:
Fri Jun 03, 2011 7:00 pmby 2012 Countdown
Respect! Rules are rules! What a parochial idiot.
Re: Page disrupts Throne Speech with unprecedented protest
Posted:
Fri Jun 03, 2011 7:05 pmby vanlose kid
respek!
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Re: Page disrupts Throne Speech with unprecedented protest
Posted:
Fri Jun 03, 2011 7:07 pmby Jeff
There's always a time and a place for protest, when no one is watching, where nothing is at stake.
Re: Page disrupts Throne Speech with unprecedented protest
Posted:
Fri Jun 03, 2011 7:08 pmby vanlose kid
am curious though, why do you all have a throne speech?
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