Meow everyone. In my last article, i started off with giving a small overview of who and what OCAP really is and what they really enjoy doing. I added some screen shots of their own words and the words of others who have seen this organization in action. However, a group, as good, or as bad, as they are, is going to gets its reputation based on the persons who make up the organization and are , the front men , so to speak of it. This article will take a look at those front men ( and women ) who make the core group of OCAP .
The person to start with is the person who is at the very top of OCAP, John Clarke.
John Ronald Clarke, who likes the humble title of OCAP organiser, but is their defacto leader and owner. Born May 16, 1954. (Some reports claim he was born on May 26) John emigrated to Canada from England as a sponsored immigrant by his sister. He worked from 1976 to 1982 at the London Westinghouse Plant (Ontario) when he was laid off. His labor union which he was quite active in, hated him would not support him. He subsequently formed the Union of Unemployed Workers and in 1989 created the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty. John Clarke was a worker factory, laid off in 1982. After losing his job, he helped form a union of the unemployed. In 1990, this organization helped out in the campaign that led to the formation of OCAP. In the autumn of 1990, the founding conference of OCAP took place. After some debate, it set a course for the organization that committed it to mobilizing poor and homeless people to fight back through militant, direct action and rejected notions of basing the organization on methods of consultation and compromise with those in power. The emergence of OCAP coincided with the election of an NDP Government.
Politically, OCAP works with a number of leading members of the local branch of the International Socialists, albeit somewhat begrudgingly. The International Socialists seemed more interested in making money off of causes, as examples, volunteering to do the fundraising at the Labour Day Parade on behalf of the Toronto Disaster Relief Committee, back in the Harris government years, collecing 3 blue plastic barrels of money, but only handing one over to TDRC. Similarly the International Socialists collected money at the various memorials over the death of Otto Vass, saying the money was being collected for his wife and five children, but keeping all the money. It was people like John Clarke who many years ago who split from the International Socialists to found the New Socialists as he / OCAP found the IS to be too pacifist.
Let me show you just what sort of ” non-violent ” group the International Socialists are . Here are some of the books they love to read:
Light Reading ? The last image was from a member of the International Socialists as he was getting ready to attend the IS conference at the Ryerson Student center over the June 01, 2013 weekend. Remember as well that John Clark : ” … split from the International Socialists to found the New Socialists as they found the IS to be too pacifist. … ” Sorry John, but in my humble opinion, things like terrorism and violence are far from what i would call pacifist.
The New Socialists are generally the elite of OCAP and other local intelligensia, many from local educational institutions particularly York University and some local legal aid clinics. They are marxists with a strong anarchist influence. ( i will be doing a detailed story on the anarchist movement as part of this series ) This is a very secretive group and little is known about their meetings and activities.
John Clarke known for his fiery, inflamatory rhetoric. He likes to talk about “bleeding the beast” as justification for defrauding the government any and all of which he has a severe hatred of. In 2010 for the G20 here he is whipping up a large crowd at Allan Gardens before the riot http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oE5Mc2CA5fY Listen to what is said after 1:15 when he says “we’re not looking for war but they have given us war and we’re looking to give them war back… things are not going to be peaceful”. After acting as an agent provacateur he went home to safely watch the aftermath on the telly with no threat of him being arrested. Afterwards he was interviewed by CityTV’s Gord Martineau where Clarke expressed that vandalism against property was fully justified. Here is a screen shot of a twitter message regarding his TV interview where he condones violence :
In my opinion, Clarke is so bent on lawlessness that he will place others in danger and expect others to break laws in support of his actions. Here is a recent image taken right around a recent court appearance of a bunch of OCAP supporters who were arrested, a group mug shot if you will :
In part one of my OCAP story, I showed some new recruits that will become the newest cannon fodder for OCAP . Well, here, as shown above, is what they will be doing a lot of , sadly.
Violence is not the only tool that John Clarke has in his tool box. Hate speech is part and parcel to his political ideology. Here, in the image and screen shot from his twitter feed, we see his feelings made very clear:
Next, let us take a much closer look at another one of the top three persons at OCAP, Lisa Schofield ( aka : Lisa/Liisa Schofield/Sko ) Lisa Schofield who often goes by Liisa Schofield and even Liisa Sko is presently OCAP’s part time organiser. She joined OCAP in the early 2000’s when OCAP was having financial difficulties and takes credit along with Ali Moustafa, who OCAP arranged a job for at the Parkdale Activity and Recreation Centre) for getting OCAP involved in pro-Palestinian issues which coincided with a sudden increase in OCAP funding from unknown sources. She then moved on to head up OPIRG at the University of Toronto. While there, she refocused them on activism and supporting Palestine. She is on the Programming Committee of the Toronto Palestinian Film Festival. She claims she has part Jewish, yet, has been heard singing the praises for Hitler. One source told me that she went so far as to say that it was a shame he didn’t live another couple of years. More info http:
Like John Clarke, Lissa seemed to have no trouble with the G20 violence. Here is what she was saying :
It appears as well that civility, or it’s lack thereof is not exclusive to John Clarke. Ms. Schofield seems to thinks that, well, see for yourself:
Lissa Schofield is not the only member of OCAP who enjoys good old hate speech. Here partner Jenny Peto is also a well known hater and anti semite. For those who enjoy some good drivel, you can read her thesis here: https://drive.google.com/?tab=mo&authuser=0#my-drive.
Here we have Jenn Peto in action delivering her brand of hate :
She is also not one to shy away from questionable activities as shown here during some OCAP events.Jenny Peto, is the spokesperson for Stop the Cuts Toronto, to fight city cuts to nonprofit groups, and was appointed to that position by OCAP. Stop the Cuts Toronto is an OCAP front organization with a few additional supporters, that is groups who have employees who are top OCAP members.
Jenny Peto at Metro Hall :
And here she is with Zoe Dodd, Gatean Heroux and Lissa Schofield :
Next we look at Zoe Dodd. She hails from White horse Yukon and is as rabid a hater as they come. She recently went on a trip to Lithuania and I hope she learned some manners on the way there. Here is Ms Dodd getting escorted out of a meting for disrupting it :
Here is Ms. Dodd yelling and screaming because she was arrested, even though she was given plenty of opportunity to leave on her own with arrest. Zoe, Listen, save your voice for the judge, however, if you don’t want to get arrested, here is a novel idea, yes, I kn0ow, its out there but here it goes: DON”T BREAK THE LAW.
I wanted to save the best for last. Mark ( Marque ) Robert Brill> I can tell you many stories about this guy but rather than me share all my stories about this neanderthal, here is what others have to say about him and some of his antics. Oh, yes, he likes to ask strangers for their credit cards too.
Mark Brill sometimes known previously sometimes going by Marque Brill is presently OCAP’s part time office manager and webmaster. He was part of a group takeover of CKLN, leading to the loss of license for the Ryerson student funded radio station. He claims he is an audio engineer. For more see http:
He is on the board of directors of Street Health and wanted them to hire two more of OCAP’s elite members though hiring is not the duty or responsibility of the board. Because Laura Cowan their Executive Director says there is not the budget for 2 more staff members and won’t fire long time employees to hire Brill’s friends, Brill has been unsuccessfully trying to organize a takeover of the board to fire her. His response to his failure has been nasty rhetoric at OcAP meetings with a few people responding with suggestions of violence. Brill’s response is that while he does not condone violence, it would be understandable, but that he is not responsible for the actions of others.
He says he has now gone “underground” and can’t be touched which means he can “up the ante” against the enemy. Sounds ominous to me, but clearly he is a coward if he encourages others to commit the violence. He is also known to stalk these “enemies” to take pictures of them at home and work to distribute to other radicals.
As with the rest of the OCAP neanderthals, Brill loves to spread his brand of hate at every opportunity as shown here where is is participating in spreading hate speech against Israel. This seems to be a very common theme for these guys :
As I said, I can write about Brill for a long time but it is always better to hear from others . here are some examples :
Both of these stories are available here at :
http:
” … received January 2013
I love your Mark Brill page.
Looking online he mostly uses the spelling “Mark Brill” and not the other spelling very much which he seemed to use for only a couple of years.
Mark Brill’s late father Donald Brill and the family ran a small chain of luxury furniture stores called Brill Interiors. They were the Art Shoppe of the jewish community where all the professionals and well to do shopped.
They had several stores in Toronto, one in Vaughan and another one in Ottawa.
When Donald died, each of the five children had a nice inheritance, which Mark Brill by his own admission blew on partying and from the sounds of it when he described it including substantial amounts of drugs. Mark tried to get more out of his siblings and when they wouldn’t enable his habits he denounced them all as zionists as they were all successful and involved in the jewish community. He barely helped in the store unlike his other four siblings.
His sister and possibly one of Mark’s brothers still run a furniture store or two up in Vaughan.
Mark went to work for the Post Office but that didn’t last because of his laziness and vindictiveness without reason against his coworkers as I know firsthand.
He sure has aged poorly over the years from the look of the picture you have.
From your description he never did get better and is still the whack-job he always was, full of hatred and blaming everybody else for his many shortcomings.
adendum
Mark is a first class asshole and lunatic and CUPW kept him in his job for months beyond what any of us could stand.
If we didn’t go as a group to to CUPW and demand they stop supporting him we would have all been forced to quit and Canada Post had wanted to get rid of him after just a few weeks.
It seems he had some connections with the union so they didn’t care about all their other members until we said we were going to go to the Toronto Sun if they didn’t put an end to his harassment. … ”
Here is where he wants a total stranger to simply hand over to him their credit card:
” … Here is the latest report about OCAP received November 29, 2012.
BTW Mark Brill is now dying his hair dark and not the weird color in your picture.
Talking to someone in the OCAP office he said there has been a big turnover in members the past few years with only the executive and some old timers sticking around. The rest of us come and stay for a few months or maybe 2 years and then go.
He also said the woman who claims you and your friend stalk women is AJ Withers and loves to make false claims against just about anybody.
I quit OCAP after attending their last meeting and what happened there.
Mark Brill asked another new member if he had a credit card and he answered yes. We both thought it was about the politics of credit cards or some warning about rates. Instead Mark said he needed the person to register a couple of websites for him. He said he wouldn’t do it and Mark should do it himself.
Mark said he couldn’t do it himself and it had to be in someone elses name. He said he had to put back up the Tim Rourke Watch and another site against another fascist friend of his. He wanted the sites to have their names as the address for them and thats what he needed the credit card for to register the websites.
Again he said he would not hand over his credit card to anyone.
Then a woman got into the act and was just kept hammering at him saying that if he cared about justice he would hand over the credit card, it wouldn’t much money and they would give him the money up front that would be charged to the card for the 2 websites. It wouldn’t cost him anything he just had to hand over the card. She said you and your friend are both mysoginists who have a long history of stalking women. You don’t have her on your cause pimps website but looking through it Toby Whitfield could be her younger brother he looks so much like her.
Nobody stepped in to stop this and being a new member I am sorry to say I did not either.
Talking to him later he said he was going to quit and I am never going back either.
I could not believe the pressure there was to hand over a credit card to a stranger! Who would do such a thing. I have to wonder if they do this to all new members.
We had both gone to only 2 meetings and they say they are for the people but all they seemed interested in was getting use of his credit card and asking me to do things I would have been sure to be arrested for.
What sort of group are they? They sure don’t care about poor people! … “
OCAP has several other players who are less visible, showing up only for selected events. Gatean Heroux is a well known OCAP member. Gatean Heroux is the second longest continuous member of OCAP. He works as a street worker for city of Toronto funded Street Health, but when they wanted to expand their services to Cresent Town, near Victoria Park and Danforth, he refused to head up that office nor demands for more accountability for the hours he worked. He wanted the downtown contacts with the homeless so he could bring them out to OCAP’s protests but in the end he did move to the new office. He is well known for being repeatedly arrested, for lawsuits and for breaking out crying when giving deputations on increased funding for service providers to the poor. Here we see him in action:
As this article has shown, OCAP is far more than just an organization that claims to advocate for those less fortunate. They clearly have no problems with breaking the laws, having themselves arrested and have clearly shown a willingness to engage in violence when ever it suited them. In the next article, I will show you the money. yes, OCAP needs fund to operate, as does every organization and I will do my best to show you in some detail just how OCAP gets its funding. You won’t want to miss it…..
