It was about 9 years ago that it happened. I realized that I had been sleepwalking through life and didn’t even know it. I finally got it. I woke up.

I had gone through life knowing something was really wrong, but I could not verbalize it. When I heard Fake Plastic Trees by Radiohead I was blown away that other people thought like that. I had always just kept those thoughts to myself or had banished them from my head for fear of being crazy.

It was only during the 2001 Quebec Summit protests that I started using the Internet. I was fascinated that the newspapers said one thing and then Internet sites like Indymedia said something completely different. I had read newspapers with the belief that I was informing myself with facts and balanced opinions. The press was free. I finally realized that nothing was further from the truth. I was stunned. I felt I was lied to. At the same time I felt alive and liberated. A whole new world of new thinking was opened up to me. It was a real life saver.

Last night (June 25) was the Council of Canadian’s ‘Shout Out for Global Justice’. At first I was pretty uninspired by the line up of speakers. Many were the same speakers I was listening to 9 years ago. Over this time period the social justice movement went from thriving to a bare whimper. Millions of activists have dropped out of the movement because they are discouraged that change is never going to happen, they are burned out or depressed, or they finally ‘grew up’ and are working for the ‘enemy’ so that they have enough money to raise their families in the consumerist manner (mini-van or SUV, McMansion, toys for boys) that they were once so opposed to etc. They are defeated.

The ‘Shout Out’ was at Massey Hall in Toronto, but was streamed live over the Internet on rabble.ca. I watched it at the Arusha Centre in Calgary with a group of 20, mostly older folks. There were many speakers, but I am only going to summarize the speakers who really reignited the magic, who made me remember why I was so interested in social justice to begin with.

Pablo Solon, Bolivia’s Ambassador to the UN, spoke about Bolivia’s World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, which was the alternative to the Copenhagen Summit. The Rights of Mother Earth Summit was about what the indigenous in Bolivia want - access to the necessities of life, like water. He recanted the tale of Cochabamba, where the indigenous drove Bechtel out of the country when they privatized water and drastically increased the price. This is one of my favourite bedtime stories of all time. Up until that time pretty much everything in that country had been privatized. It gave hope that things can be reversed. Solon said to much applause that we need to nationalize our governments.

John Hillary, from War on Want, spoke about how Canada is the G20 poster boy for how to slash services and not raise taxes on those who can afford to pay more, but do not want to. Paul Martin, the Finance Minister in the 1990s here in Canada, is touring Europe to spread the word on how to do this. Some governments in Europe are decreasing their government services by 25% and are competing with each other about who can cut the fastest and deepest. The financiers who got bailed out, who gave themselves massive bonuses, are now asking those who gave them a lifeline to live without. Hillary warned that this tragedy will soon be coming across the Atlantic.

Naomi Klein reminded us that it was Lawrence Summers who in 1999 repealed the Glass-Stegall Act that prevented banks from merging with other financial institutions. The Glass-Stegall Act was created to prevent banks from over leveraging themselves, creating speculative bubbles and putting the world economy at risk, something that occurred in the 1920s.

Klein also told us how preposterous the bailout was. When countries go to the World Bank with their cap in hand for a loan, the World Bank/IMF give only with strings attached. Those receiving loans must go through structural adjustments like decreasing government spending, decreasing taxes for rich people, and the privatization of public assets. Yet when the big banks around the world got bailed out, no such strings were attached. We didn’t tax speculative investment. We didn’t raise taxes on banking profits to fund our education, health, housing, transitioning to a green economy etc. The bailout that the banks received was used to lobby governments to ensure that there were no strings.

The highlight bar none of the evening was Vandana Shiva. She is the shining light on earth. She reminded us that Lawrence Summers was the brute in 1991, who in the ‘Memo’ suggested that rich countries should export their pollution to poor countries because it would be cheaper, plus the lives of the poor are not worth as much when they die from this exported waste. Of note, Summers is the President for Economic Policy and Director of the National Economic Council in the Obama administration. This is who is calling the economic shots in the White House.

Shiva reminded us what the G8/G20 Summit was really about - enriching rich people. They are meeting to privatize public services, to repeal protective legislation, and to exploit indigenous people around the world, to drive them off their lands so that rich people’s corporations can exploit these lands for a handsome profit. (Yet the mainstream press falls every time for the aid bait, that the Summit is primarily about improving the plight of the poor, like maternal health.)

In only the way that Shiva can, she reminded us that we need to create a G6 Billion Summit that speaks and acts for the rest of us, including the 300 million other species on earth. To end she said that the corporate rule will one day end, it will disappear. Of course it will.

Last night I fell in love again with the social justice movement and those who keep our spirits high. Another world is possible. We need to keep dreaming and to keep fighting for the world we want to live in, the world we need to live in.