Quote:
Originally Posted by pylon
To me the straw that broke the camels back was the occupy protesters. I was starting to warm up to him until that. They should have been removed in days, not months. He allowed trespassers to defecate, and squat in a public park because of his pacifistic attitude and demeanour. I think I speak for most Calgarians when I say they should have removed them much sooner, regardless of if the City ended up with a legal bill or not. I would have been more than happy for my taxes to contribute to it. Sometimes the right choice, can be an expensive choice.
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Fair enough, that's a
legitimate critique from your point of view of leadership and how the situation with Occupy was handled.
However, I would counter by saying that the situation with Occupy was far more complicated than it likely appeared. Trust me, there were many people at the City, including the Mayor, that at many points wanted to just get them the hell out - consequences be damned. However, it was just not that simple. First of all, it's the Calgary Police that are the ones that have such a responsibility. The Mayor (and Council) has NO authority at all to command the police to do anything. They are NOT the Mayor's personal strike force - and that's for very good reason. They are governed by the Police Act, and are not governed by Council. The police had very legitimate reasons for the approach they took and handled the situation very well.
Second, there were very good legal reasons to take the approach that was taken through the warnings, court injunctions and court orders to ensure a similar protest was not taken again. It was unprecedented in a legal sense where the occupation of public space was the expression. Very tricky and took time (more than anyone wanted) to sort out. In the end, Calgary took the same approach that practically every single other major city in North America took - and that is not by accident.
Third, what would have been accomplished by dragging out the protesters kicking and screaming in cuffs - since this is exactly what they wanted, would it have been good to give them that satisfaction? Instead they plopped down a peice of public art and left peacefully.
Although it might have felt satisfying to some to go in there and crack heads, it would have been extremely short sighted. In this case, the real courage was to NOT do that.