Calgary skies are being occupied by surveillance military choppers. Every day they fly low over empty streets, shaking homes with the sound of war. They peruse the public at low altitudes without call or cause. It’s as if we are under martial law.

Meanwhile, CBC and CTC report that Occupy Calgary protesters have gotten the boot and TransCanada will continue getting the loot. A few social justice awakeners down at city hall have to go to court and yet the dirty pipelines of oil are presented as viable and necessary business deals.

In the heart of the knowing at the belly of the beast, Nicole Running Rabbit reports that, “Damages to Olympic Plaza have been paid back to the ‘city of Calgary’ in advance, to the tune of billions of dollars in oil royalties & other non-renewable resources that are scraped out of our mother earth & off the backs of Siksika/Kainai/Peigan/TsuuTina/Nakoda People, while some of us have no clean water to drink in our homes, if we are lucky to even have homes on reservation”

A sea of white men in corporate suits met to invest in computer technology. I decided to talk to a woman but she was representing Ernst and Young. So I went to the second floor where an avatar on a screen was mimicking a person moving round with a motion sensor suit; an intriguing design by Colin Curwen and New Machine Studios.

Most of the booths at the 12th annual Innovate Calgary were improving already existing technologies. There was NexTeq Navigation upgrading the accuracy of GPS equipment through the Geomatics Department as well as iconnectivity Midi systems enhancing the interfacing of phones and pianos. Accountants, investors and creators drank wine for United Way and flung cards for a better day.

One of the companies promised to speed up the ability of the military and police to respond to emergencies through a technical upgrade. Do half of their profits go to supporting the prosperity of communities and reducing the possibility of emergency? I asked this question and got laughed down the line. So I talked to an organizer of Innovate Calgary who was wearing a “support the troops“ ribbon. Are racism and theft of resources the real reasons we are bombing Afghanistan? I asked this question and was told no.

We are the 99%. A microcosm of the revolution, Occupy Calgary is lead by a leaderless consensus. They say that the gap between rich and poor can narrow. Corporations can be held to moral account. Internet and phones can be free. Governments don't have to let banks gamble and pillage. People here are speaking truth to power. Unfortunately the rest of the city is glum, even hostile about those standing for a new wavelength of reality where people come before profits and the me is really the we.

The police are putting pressure on the people to move the 42 tents that now inhabit small parcels of grass. Most of the concrete plaza is empty and yet the city has pressured the occupiers to leave so that a few trees can be trimmed. It looks as though they will hold their ground at least to the end of the month. They’ve been clean and respectful, helping to educate anyone passing by with a booth of films and books or a meal. “Freedom and equality for all, not just the rich” adorned one side of a tent with the other reading, “Love and peace always."

For the most part, Nenshi and the alderman are tolerant of the occupiers. They even lifted a decade’s long ban on camping at St. Patrick’s Island, where many homeless are occupying the land with strong messages against corporate greed. Instead of hiding in the trees, people can now come out and legally sit by an open fire 24 hours a day in solidarity.

Some 300 friendly people packed a library theatre to hear Mayor Naheed Nenshi and community choreographer Dave Meslin yesterday. They espoused the rights of Calgarians to do more than work hard and keep to themselves. Nenshi encouraged entrepreneurship in the public sector to great applause, and Meslin carried the message of people power throughout.

If there were windows in the theatre we would have seen the small showing of young people at Occupy Calgary. When asked about this, Nenshi was bemused, noting that those people were occupying their own city. However, most of us feel that City Hall is a place where politicians look over a privatized shopping mall hell. It’s almost impossible to just be in public. We go out to work, buy things and come home. It’s not our city yet.

Nenshi’s incredulity about the occupiers is odd because I couldn’t picture them sitting in a lecture hall for an hour and half instead. We are responsible for ensuring that youth are actually creating their own realities unencumbered and supported to live free. Too often there’s little for young people to do but stand in lines at chain stores to keep the “economy going," or crowd into classrooms to get theory.