MonkeyPox Revelations, the Do’s and Don’ts of Real Life Activism

I wrote up my experience with the Vancouver PRIDE parade on July 31st, 2022. The video of this fiesta is below.

In that piece I wrote about the unfortunate case of our Daily Rake groupie, who shall henceforth be called Sister Meghan, who got left behind due to my carelessness. This was due to a chain of sloppy behaviour on my part.

First, I put out the call to go into Downtown Vancouver the night before, despite knowing about this event at least five days in advance. This lead to the audience not really getting a chance to show up, and made it pretty hectic the morning of, with Sister Meghan contacting me over telegram the night of and telling me that she wanted to go. 

SM: I may head there i love that guy what time u heading there?

I saw the time I will see if Paul wants to go he has to be out of his room by 11am so maybe? No promises if it were later id come 100% .Any idea how long you guys are staying?

Me: I’ll be there before 11 am. Probably getting there at 10:30, then hunting around for parking.

Anyway, goodnight. We’ll talk in the morning if you’d like to come.

So far, so good. Unfortunately I left the house by 9:30, and was in Vancouver by around 10:40. Telegram is also a horrible medium for DM’s, since there’s no DM page, and people sending you direct messages get lost in the crowd. As a result, I totally missed her sending me this.

So i will be free by 12:30 i am in [Redacted] so i can be there 1 :15 do you think it will work?

I will dress non offensively of course librarian garb of course.

Should I come out there? (12:37 PM)

I’m here I just can’t find you yet. (2:01 PM)

I’m on wrong side of parade I think I will wait.

Where are you guys.

I’m by the beach now can’t find you anywhere.

I have a hands off our children sign.

I’m not sure for how long i will have dang faggots.

I’m in front of cactus club now.

I lost my sign.

I’m in the park in the shade 😎

Poor girl. She showed up at the MonkeyPox Fiesta expecting some backup, and had to deal with these violent perverts all by her lonesome. And they were violent towards her as well, as you might expect from these creeps. If we skip forwards a bit…

SM: I got slapped too, but my mother hits harder.

My sign read keep your hands off our children.

Meanwhile she wrote a bunch of messages in the Daily Rake Chat, none of which I was checking while I was using my phone to film the atrocities towards beauty happening right in front of me.

Sister Meghan: Almost there my eyes are already on fire.

Not surprised in the slightest to hear that. That appears to be a common reaction amongst bigotphobes. Also everyone else.

Oh god please no.

Real life activism requires a lot more seriousness than online stuff. What I should have done was post the announcement many days in advance. Then I should have gotten the number of as many people as possible in the Lower Mainland who were interested, and texted them from there. We could have organized a carpool, figured out more detailed strategy, or at the very least have met up, and not had a man left behind. Or woman, in this case.

Sorry if it’s not embedding properly.

https://youtu.be/g7UrGzA5krk?t=1147https://youtu.be/g7UrGzA5krk?t=1147

The police are absurdly disinterested in actually doing anything, only putting up the barest of pretenses otherwise. To reinforce this, after emailing Officer John Roberts last night with the video of the assault on Ferenc. That’s not a misspelling, his name is Ferenc, something I miswrote in my email to John Roberts, and which he understandably repeated back to me in this email. Transcript below.

Mr. Coish,

Thank you for your email and submitting the video.

We will be forwarding this video to the Diversity, Community and Indigenous Relations Unit.

We would require a statement from you as a witness, and some more information from “Ference” as a victim and if they want to participate in the investigation.

I am not the lead investigator on this incident but would be happy to answer any questions I can.

Respectfully,

John

You see that peasant? The video is being forwarded to the “Diversity, Community, and Indigenous Relations Unit,” so you can just sit back and enjoy the wheels of justice turning on your behalf.

Nevertheless, the more incidents of this nature, the more the totally political Vancouver Police Department gets delegitimized. Everyone knows that the freak who assaulted Ferenc is not going to be charged with anything, but pushing the case forward does force the VPD and Crown Counsel to go somewhat mask off and just say “yeah, it’s okay if these perverts violently assault you, we’re cool with that.” 

Unfortunately Ferenc, just like the mother, is disinterested in pressing charges. This is totally understandable, since these are middle aged people who have jobs and families, and they don’t want to go through the time wasting process of being denied justice. But that’s also why it’s so crucially important to have professional activists who are willing to go through the lengthy and tedious process of being denied justice. It’s also why you need a political party, to turn said denial of justice into impetus for the people to vote for you.

But getting back to this little cunt, since I couldn’t film continuously on my phone, I didn’t capture her assault of the mother with the sign. That’s quite the shame, not just because it can be used as serious propaganda delegitimizing the VPD, and these groomers more broadly, but also because of what a LOLcow she is. She punched the sign into the woman’s face, but she did it with this comically exaggerated windup like she thought she was Captain America or something. It was one of the most uncoordinated things I’ve ever seen, and I didn’t get it on camera.

Likewise, I didn’t get this freak assaulting Ferenc on camera, only him moving from the crowd, and leaving with his sign. Another missed opportunity, and it really hammers home the crucial importance of camerawork. Had I not taken my phone and started filming, I would say that my day would have been pretty much wasted. Instead, I got some great stuff from the MonkeyPox Extravaganza.

But I could have gotten so much more. The problem is just that it’s impractical to be recording video constantly. It also might be impossible, as my phone battery almost died by the end. The internet, censored though it is, has given us a tremendous opportunity to spread our message. We don’t need to write page long editorials afterwards, or even go develop film and then figure out a way to get this in front of the public. Instead, we can livestream our events, or at least have cameras rolling constantly, with the video ready to be edited and shown to the masses. Yes, Twitch and YouTube aren’t options for us, but Odysee most definitely is, and if that goes away, we’ll figure something else out.

But what’s really needed is professional activism. It’s too much to ask these parents to potentially destroy their livelihoods to do the entirety of what needs to be done. And cameras, while cheap, still cost money, as does even the most barebones production crew. It’s a process towards seriousness that must be taken one step at a time.

In the short term having more people and more phone cameras should do the trick. For our next bit of activism, I’ll be organizing it well in advance, with the participants organized in a group chat, and a plan for filming duties to be shared, where we hopefully always have at least one person videoing the event. Even if no antifa losers show up, the videos can always be edited down later.