In 2015, I was a student at Concordia University, a school among many in the university city of Montréal, and I was surrounded by conversations about government austerity and the lopsided distribution of wealth that would result in the poor getting poorer. Large student protests were marching in the streets, directly inspired by the 2011 Occupy Movement and 2012 Maple Spring that had occurred a few years prior. The rhetoric of the 1% — the topmost layer of our social divisions, who benefit disproportionately from their control of governmental and economic machinery — was in stark contraposition against the chants in the streets: “we are the 99%!”.

I have always been uninspired by such warlike sentiments. It seemed to me that there was some nuance missing in these sharp slogans and the imagery of a lizard-like cabal enslaving the whole world in a deliberate and covert master plan. The violence inherent in the cries to guillotine and eat the rich seems to be like an ingredient in the batter that spoils the whole cake. There is a much bigger wheel turning that captures all of us in its motion, and no one class of people has sway over its direction.  

It was with these thoughts in my head that I stumbled upon a fellow student in the stairwell connecting the department of arts with the school of business. He was strumming a guitar and singing a song I could only imagine he had composed himself.

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