“The failure of electoral politics to address what’s really at stake means an increasing number of…issues are destined to be resolved through various forms of protest and civil disobedience”
Before photographer and essayist Christopher Grabowski moved to Canada in 1992 he was part of “a social movement that started as a protest and that successfully transformed the society by non-electoral and mainly non-violent means—the Solidarity movement in Poland.” Grabowski writes in The Tyee that “Although I’m not exactly experiencing déjà vu, much of what I am seeing and reading now is beginning to look familiar. And that makes me hopeful.”
The protests that have seemed to spring up around the world—and in Canada, for example, during the recent Idle No More campaign—have something in common. Christopher Grabowski observes:
And so in Canada, as in many other places in the world, crises of the environment, social justice and economic equality loom larger every day, while the failure of electoral politics to address what’s really at stake means an increasing number of such issues are destined to be resolved through various forms of protest and civil disobedience.
Christopher Grabowski’s Tyee article, Today’s Democracy Revolts, Through a Polish Lens, is accompanied by a group of his photographs taken at Occupy Vancouver, Idle No More and other protests (see some of them below).
We speak with Christopher Grabowski in an interview first broadcast in July 2013.
491_july_11_2013_sm Left-click to listen; right-click to save.
Image above: Occupy Vancouver, October 2011, photo by Christopher Grabowski
images
