Did Occupy Vancouver’s Current ‘Leaders’ Steal Their Playbook From The NDP?

David Eby should have done this when they exiled him from the Vancouver convention…

I’m here in Cortes, doing a little research on BC’s political history- ran across an interesting story about Dana Larsen’s experience with the NDP. I’d write-up my own synopsis, but I’m feeling a bit tired today after my journey…

In February, I created a Facebook group for the NDP Convention. I made sure it was clear that it wasn’t an official page. In June, I received a message on Facebook from Jen Anthony, who said she was organizing the convention. She said that they were going to make an official Facebook page for the convention, and then they saw that I had made a page already.

Jen asked me to make her an admin on my page, and then to delete myself as admin and turn it over to her. I agreed to make her an admin but not to delete myself.

Shortly thereafter I saw that she had instead created an Official Facebook Page for the Convention. That seemed like a good idea, and so I linked to it from my Facebook page and sent out a message to everyone on my event page notifying them that there was now an Official NDP page for the convention.

My convention event page is here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=42586397764

The official event page is here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=92933656333

In late June and early July I made posts to their Facebook page wall, and all of them were deleted within 48 hours or less.

The first post was made around June 29 and said:

  • If you are an NDP member who supports drug policy reform and wants to come to the Convention, contact info@endprohibition for information on how we can help to get you there.

The second post was made on July 9 and said:

  • Why are the Resolution Priority Panels being held BEFORE the Call to Order?

The third post was made on July 11 and said:

  • Long live the NDP! Jack Layton for Prime Minister.

Although there are many other posts from NDP members on the Facebook wall, all of mine were deleted within 48 hours or less of being posted.

I sent a Facebook message to Jen Anthony and Marena Winstanley, who are the two admins on the page, and who are both “Convention Organizers” in some way. I politely asked if they knew why my posts were getting deleted.

Jen didn’t reply, and Marena sent me a Facebook reply which said simply:

“I’m afraid I don’t have much to say in response to your messages. These are not my decisions to be made.”

I replied asking politely who it is that is making these decisions, but I received no further response.”

So, for all those of you who wondered where Occupy Vancouver’s current ‘leadership’ got ideas about censoring people without explanation- they got it from the NDP!

Permanent link to this article: http://www.genuinewitty.com/2012/01/04/did-occupy-vancouvers-current-leaders-steal-their-playbook-from-the-ndp/