Who is the mystery man in the blue coat?
Remembrance Day was last week, a non-holiday (most people work) where Canadians take a brief moment to remember people who have fought and died at war. Despite his having just admitted lying to the whole city, Mayor Rob Ford showed up to preside over the ceremonies. This of course meant that Ford had to endure another walk of shame in front of the TV cameras.
A video by Blogwrath.com caught the action that day, showing the media mobbing around Ford as he quietly made his way from Old City Hall. It being Remembrance Day, the media were quiet- none of the reporters asked Ford any questions. Then a heckler showed up…
He began his rant by yelling at Ford, “Hey Rob, how much you pay for half a bowl?”, assumedly referring to a crack pipe. He then yelled “Your driver the black guy, you knew he’s a crack dealer?”, and followed up saying “your driver is a [unintelligible] crack dealer sir?”. All of this was yelled out loud enough to be caught by the neighbouring TV cameras.
Some of the people in the crowd were upset by the mystery man’s attacks. They pulled him to the rear of the pack and explained how it was improper to behave this way at a Remembrance Day ceremony. At this point Sigrid Kneve comes onto the screen- telling the upset people not to touch the mystery man, taking the same protector role she takes at many protests; “Don’t touch him”, “you’re not allowed to touch him”.
Kneve is a rising star at OCAP. After graduating from their activist training course this spring she’s taken a prominent role in many of their protests. She’s also been a highly visible member of the Occupy Toronto Livestream broadcast- including the infamous day when she tried to cover up for Taliban Billy on the day he broadcast his violent, racist, anti-Semitic hate speech from the campus of Ryerson University. Back in June, Kneve was arrested for her participation in the #SwampLine9 occupation of an Enbridge pumping station.
Two days later, Your Humble Narrator ran across Kneve at an anti-Ford protest in front of City Hall. When asked what her relationship was with the heckler; she smiled nervously, turned away and refused to provide an answer. A few minutes later the mystery man was spotted drawing anti-Ford slogans with chalk. The chalk was provided by Kneve- who was writing messages, and encouraging others to take some chalk and write their own.
At this point Your Humble Narrator went up the stairs to talk to the mystery man- asking him, “was that you in the video yelling at Ford?”. He responded saying, “yes, my picture was in the newspaper!”. When asked if he worked with OCAP, he nervously looked away and denied any connection. He was then asked about his relationship to Kneve- he stopped talking at this point.
OCAP has been both funded and supported by a number of militant Ontario unions including CUPE and the Ontario Federation of Labour. They’re often used as the dirty tricks arm of the unions- OCAP members have less to lose than the union workers who support them, and are more likely to take risks that may result in their being arrested. Meanwhile, the union executives are laughing all the way to the bank…
Here’s the video:
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2 comments
Of course OCAP is doing that.
Under Rob Ford a group that employs OCAP executive members, funnels some money to OCAP and gets almost all of its funding from the city was cut from over $500,000 to $370,000 a year. And that sister group to OCAP was founded by the Communist Party of Canada as a recruitment tool back in 1974 and is still closely connected to them. But here is another example of these groups interrelationship http://www.causepimps.ca/FMTA/latest%20FMTA&OCAP.html and http://www.causepimps.ca/Bentley-Kelly/B1.pdf
http://www.torontosun.com/comment/columnists/sueann_levy/2010/11/18/16209761.html
http://www.causepimps.ca/FMTA/OCAP-FMTA.html
http://www.torontosun.com/2011/12/08/ford-compared-to-the-grinch-by-parents-in-need-of-child-care
http://www.causepimps.ca/FMTA/latest%20FMTA&OCAP.html
http://www.causepimps.ca/Bentley-Kelly/top.html
http://www.causepimps.ca/kristin-schwartz/top.html
http://www.causepimps.ca/sarah-vance/top.html
After all OCAP’s John Clarke deserves a good pension plan. He even says so http://www.causepimps.ca/ocap/poverty%20pimp%20pension.html
For both of these groups their financial statements are private and even for the city funded one the city doesn’t care what gets done with the money as long as they don’t attack these politicians during election time. I wonder if that is what the money is for?
Janet Davis who back in February 2010 during OCAP’s city hall second floor mini riot publicly on TV supported OCAP just on Friday was appointed to the city’s budget committee something Rob Ford would have opposed but there was no opposition to her on Friday. She in city meetings when that group closely interrelated to OCAP was still getting over $1/2 million a year in taxpayer funded she stated she was going to double that annual funding!
Lots of other government funded groups and apparently city welfare office employees were directly paying OCAP annually to be on their weekly mailing list. Why was that permitted?
Here comes the gravy train