Occupy London’s politics has become fundamentalist. The public expression of opposition is treated as treasonous. Anyone who challenges the creed of the camp is shouted at (as I have been several times, most recently in a telephone call last night from a key activist inside the media team), mocked, asked to leave and even threatened. I have been personally threatened a number of times inside the camp. Someone even threatened to kill me. At the time I thought I had inadvertently challenged the status of the young Arab man who made the threat. Understanding something of North African culture I thought perhaps I should have conducted myself more wisely and braved the situation out. Looking back and having heard the fearful conversations of many activists, I think my experience is relatively commonplace. Even one of the key activist witnesses in the High Court case is no longer prepared to give evidence, because he was physically attacked.
Some people disagree with me in Brighton but they don’t threaten my life. There is a decent community atmosphere down here on the Sussex coast. We take our politics seriously; witness us having elected the most radical MP in the country, Caroline Lucas, the leader of the Green Party. As with any political grouping, there are occasional rows inside the Greens but I’ve never heard of anyone issuing threats. Yet inside Occupy London threats and actual violence have become commonplace. Unfortunately, this encampment has created a dangerous community. The problem stems from the founding principles of the camp, which are:
- the sovereign body is general assembly, which anyone may attend and fully participate in
- everything will be completely transparent and public
- nothing is agreed until everyone agrees
- there will be no leaders
- no-one will have any form of individual enforcement powers
The upshot of these principles combined is dithering and an intense distrust of anyone who takes responsibility for anything. I took responsibility for the legal team early on in the Occupation by personally instructing counsel and, later, solicitors to defend the eviction proceedings. (Please note, they represent Occupy London for free.) When I did this, I was criticised heavily and widely for “taking over” and accused of trying to usurp the general assembly. Particular anger was vented towards me for refusing to freely share the legal advice I received from counsel. Anyone with experience of legal proceedings will know, legal advice should not be shared. If you do this you waive your right to the confidentiality of that advice, past, present and future.
I instructed Mr Cooper QC myself on behalf of Occupy London Stock Exchange, so that I could taken objective expert advice. I had to make careful choices about who should be privy to that advice. It could not become properly public. This basic legal principle clashed with a principle of Occupy. From that moment on, I have struggled with the conflict, attempting to justify myself holding back some information in the face of increasing hostility. The problem was not resolved by the general assembly eventually approving the instructions I had given. Despite the activists clearly enjoying watching Mr Cooper QC cross-examining witnesses for the City of London Corporation in the High Court on our behalf yesterday, there remains plenty of criticism of the decision to instruct lawyers at all!
Other working teams inside Occupy have had similar experiences. The media team in particular has been heavily criticised. In my view this criticism has been hugely unfair. Naomi Colvin and Ronan McGivern have been outstanding. Without their expertise, their total commitment and them giving every waking hour (and probably some of their unconscious ones too) to Occupy London, much of the attention and success the camps have enjoyed would not have been possible. Given the scale of their commitment, I’ll forgive the former for shouting at me and the latter for not returning the odd text message! These two in particular have taken responsibility for organising the Occupation’s media output. Consequently, they are hated by many people inside the camp. Absolutely hated, by people who have become accustomed to disliking anyone with a specialist skill.
Occupy London’s third Occupation is the Bank of Ideas. The building is owned by the failed investment bank UBS. UBS’s attempt to evict the Occupationists was incompetent. UBS obtained an injunction to remove the activists but the method by which the injunction was obtained looks so flawed that the Bank of Ideas activists have won the right to have a full hearing in the Court of Appeal, with the result that they can remain in the building until well into the New Year. These are seriously well organised squatters!
The Bank has been a terrific success by all accounts (I haven’t been there myself), with daily events and it now hosts approximately 30 community groups which would have been closed down because of the government’s spending cuts. Although the Bank of Ideas was not set up as a residential camp, people have been sleeping in it. The most organised people have been living there. Hardly surprising, given that the alternative is an icy tent. Despite their obvious commitment to the cause, their enjoyment of the bank’s protection from the elements has caused a deep division within Occupy London. Those left outside complain bitterly that the bank dwellers are an elite group who benefit from special conditions and no longer see the value in the people outside the window, looking in.
The people working in the night watch crews, formally known as “Tranquility”, have repeatedly quit the scene. Several times, the crew has stood down because they could no longer cope with the social problems they faced. Specifically, they bore the brunt of the violent threats. Whilst wider society may not regard security teams as having any particular expertise in the way that lawyers and media people do, in reality they perform a particular craft. Occupy London was blessed to have a festival security expert create the night watch, who goes by the name of Bear. His experience benefited the entire Occupation. Without it, doubtless it would have been swept away by the police by now. He has been widely criticised for taking individual responsibility, threatened and attacked, with the result that he has now quit the scene. Who can blame him?
This distrust of anyone with expertise is a paranoia about anything connected with the realms of power. It didn’t help set up the Occupation, it didn’t help maintain it and it isn’t going to help it build on the successes so far. It goes nowhere. Rejecting any form of success is bound to lead to failure.
A few years ago, I took chess lessons from Luke Rutherford, who is currently Sussex County Chess Champion. He taught me to resign a game that I knew I had lost, rather than pointlessly fight on. His reasoning was that the more time I spent concentrating on failed positions, the more familiar failure became. If I resigned a failed position and played again, he argued, I would spend increasing amounts of time concentrating on winning positions and my game would improve. This turned out to be true. As with chess so it is in life. Some have only ever tasted failure but rather than quit when they lose their advantage, they drink from the well of despair too deeply. Consequently they never stop drinking from it. They imprint their consciousness with the feeling of failure, they recognise it as an old friend.
Living without a leader is possible but living without leadership is not. A life without direction is a disaster. Occupy London is a part of a wider political movement, which seeks to become the mass movement created by the Spanish earlier in the year. The Spanish movement (15-M or The Indignants) counted its activists in the millions. They raised their standard against the power of the banks and corporations, occupied public spaces for months and then left at a time of their choosing. Theirs was a peaceful movement promoting an alternative vision for society. They recognised when the immediate advantage was waning, when it was time to retreat and take stock and quit before losing control of the situation. Occupy London must find the same sense of direction. The alternative is to lose all the advantages won and the people who won them, myself included.
Two months under the shadow of St Paul’s Cathedral has hardened the interpersonal views held there, activist and alcoholic alike. Leaving to one side the hardcore street drinkers, directed to the camp by the Metropolitan Police, there are plenty of other people with alcohol and drug problems inside the camp. It would be surprising if it were otherwise: we are a nation that hits the sauce hard, especially around midwinter. There are also plenty of genuine activists who do not intoxicate themselves each day, unless you count the coffee served up by the local Starbucks.
This is the critical moment. The original camp must find direction anew to keep the movement alive. To some extent it matters not what the decision will be. Occupy London’s general assembly must decide its own future, rather than having it decided for it. Over the last two evenings, the general assembly has failed to settle its direction definitively, despite having weeks to think about it and hours in formal debate over it. It has neither accepted nor rejected a plan to remove all the residential tents from St Paul’s Churchyard. This is said to be a complicated decision. It is not, it is a simple decision.
It is made complicated because of the social structure that Occupy London has created for itself to deal with. On a chess board there are pawns and pieces. Whereas popular culture describes the pawns as expendable, a serious player will tell you that they are not. They are “the soul of chess”, said the mighty Philidor. Many games are won or lost on pawn structure but not without the support of the pieces. Each piece has a specialist function. The King is almost incidental to the game, in terms of its power. The other pieces perform specific roles. They must be utilised in what they do best. Consequently, knights play best in the centre of the board, wielding power around them in circles. Rooks are most suited to end-game play and work best when united with each other. In any battling force you need two types of fighter – the specialists and the generalists. Neither can win without the other.
This is as true in the life of a group of political activists as it is over the glorious chess board. Occupy London needs its specialists and needs to let them take charge of their tasks. Cursing them as an elite is to play without them. It is playing to lose. Equally, the specialist activists need the body of people who keep the movement alive. Without them, there is no legitimate claim to represent the 99%. This was why Occupy London welcomed everyone and when the street drinkers turned up, why welfare initiatives were created for them.
On the famous checker-board, there is a clear set of rules. The game has to progress according to them. Occupy London doesn’t play according to any agreed set of rules. It allows itself to constantly change instead. Consequently people seized a major bank building and declared that they would not inhabit it but then living there anyway. Everybody repeatedly declared, in general assembly, that drugs and alcohol would not be tolerated on site but nobody was prepared to enforce that rule either. Fixed rules are perceived as a threat to the liberty of the players by camp culture. This caustic attitude must be remedied before the movement splinters completely.
Occupy London has just announced the seizure of a fourth site: an abandoned court house, which is going to be used to stage mock trials of the 1%. To the converted it is yet another brilliant move. To outsiders it is starting to sound like a lawless rabble running amok around London. To the people in tents, there will be much rejoicing at the general strategy and demands for bricks and mortar accommodation. It could be that this is the beginning of a general move indoors over the winter.
The seizure of new sites is not agreed by general assemblies. To even mention them there would be to lose the element of surprise, which is of course crucial to the successful cracking open of a new squat in commercial premises. Whilst few insiders would disagree about the need for specialist activists to plan these adventures, they dismantle the idea that a general assembly is in charge of anything much. Only the original occupation was agreed by a general assembly. The three following occupations have been planned by an elite group.
The fact is that Occupy London does not adhere to any of its stated rules. Formally I am in the legal team and have been since the first day of the first occupation. The membership of this team has changed many times, usually without my knowledge. Once I convened a meeting of the entire team. Various people turned up, including one man who refused to remove a face mask! The team divided itself into two parts and I remained in the part dealing with the eviction proceedings. When the division was made, an agreement was made by all the people at the meeting, including the masked man, that the eviction team membership would be locked down to three people. Immediately after the whole team meeting broke up, the other members of the eviction team welcomed another person into the team. A few days later they allowed another to attend a meeting with the solicitors! These are the chaotic consequences of the camp culture. At various times since then I have been locked out of the eviction team’s email account. One explanation given was that someone else, who I had never heard of, had been given access and the password had changed. Three times I have been locked out of this official account. I am currently locked out. Yet I am still treated as being part of ‘the team’. Whoever else is in it, I can only hazard a guess at.
Political success requires proper organisation. Whilst I’ve been devoting my energies to Occupy London, my comrades in the Brighton & Hove Green Party have been preparing for a local bye-election. I’ve not been involved at all but I have been sent every email relating to the efforts made by my local party. They’ve run an impressive campaign and high hopes are held for Thursday, the day of the vote. The Green Party runs itself according to a constitution and local rules, which make participation fair for everyone. People do not get locked out of accounts, meetings or working groups. Masked people are not allowed to attend meetings. There is no fear and intimidation. Many people throw their weight behind this radical party but our energy is not wasted by continuously discussing core issues. Instead we make decisions and move on. Our local councillors were brave enough to support Occupy when it made sensible peaceful protest a reality and brave enough to close down our local camp when the inhabitants set it on fire and attacked the fire fighters who turned out to tackle the blaze. The residents of Brighton & Hove respect us for taking the business of politics seriously. That’s why they have elected our people to run their City and to represent us in parliament. For all the talk inside Occupy London of standing for office, everyone knows it will come to nothing because no-one has agreed even some basic principles of organisation.
Doubtless Occupy London will continue to organise more and more media stunts. This is no substitute for the mass movement it wants to be. It is incapable of recruiting many more people to its ranks because it doesn’t offer a coherent vision. After 66 days of Occupation, it’s policy pronouncements are restricted to three proposals for corporate law reform and a general mission statement. It has done well to raise consciousness, granted, but it isn’t going anywhere new. It is mired in financial arguments. For myself, I have never made an expenses claim, although I did spend money on legal research. Plenty of working groups have made claims on the expenses account, comprised of funds donated by Londoners and supporters generally. The lack of any sort of formal structure has inevitably led to allegations that someone has run off with the money! The finance team hasn’t even set up a bank account to hold the money; there are no proper accounts.
Occupy London’s reply to any complaint is this is what democracy looks like. It isn’t democracy at all. It is utter chaos. The people in the movement are not in charge of it. This movement does not offer a solution to society’s economic and political problems, it offers chaos, fear, confusion and violence.
Perhaps I have been naive to become so closely involved with this anarchist experiment. I had high hopes that it would turn into a mass movement. I am now convinced that it will not. It sucks the energy out of anyone involved in it and wastes it. It has wasted inordinate amounts of my time. Today my involvement stops. My parting gift has to been to convince a particular witness to give evidence in the High Court. His personal testimony will be worthy of us all.
Being brilliant at raising complaints does not equate with offering practical political solutions. We need political answers to the current crisis, not more crises. Today Occupy London used a tank to seize its fourth site. How many of us want our capital City to be led by soldiers driving tanks? This is not a peaceful gesture, this is gesture politics.
I enjoy reading your posts. I think it is very healthy for the movement to read constructive criticism. However, Occupy is not an anarchist experiment. It is a movement that is open to anyone and most of those in it have little/no understanding of anarchism. Indeed, my own understanding of anarchism has been deepened by my experience of occupation in seeing what anarchism is NOT. I’m sorry to hear that Bear has left – he is a fair man – perhaps he is just taking a break which is advisable unless you’re homeless which makes it very difficult. Thanks for speaking your mind; you are receiving a lot of criticism at the moment for doing so, but it is better to be criticised for your truth than to be adored for propaganda.
A camp which denies leaders and has no method of respecting any rules is anarchist by the normal definition.
that’s anarchy (chaos) not Anarchy. Anarchists have no problem with leadership, organisation or rules, all of which are required in any community. However, depending on how each of these aspects of community are created and organised, they can be used to serve the best interests of the community, or an elite few.
I didn’t realise that capitalising the first letter made a difference
come off it, this camp is a type of anarchy, whether you like it or not!
Anarchy is supposed to mean personal responsibility, but we look to have the spoilt children variety in camp.
I am working with various people in #OccupyLSX who regard themselves as Anarchists, who possess the self-discipline.
I also regard myself as an Anarchist in phylosophy and my personal sense of responsibility, entails getting up in the morning to sweep the walkway towards St. Paul’s tube station and volunteer for latrine duty on weekends.
The spoilt children looks to regard anarchy as do what they want and complain when the breakfast is not ready.
As to the article. I am sorry to see you go, but I do not see it as too late to keep the movement.
I reserve judgement on the fourth site, but they should have asked whether an #OccupyJustice was desired or needed for the moment.
EDIT: Philosophy…apologies…:)
The problem surely is that the good anarchists could not keep out the bad ones within the framework set up by Occupy London?
the framework was never anarchist… so why would you expect it to be an anarchist commune? liberalism seems to dominate the politics and just as you have allsorts in society, you’re going to have allsorts on occupation. living so closely with people in a communal way requires maturity, understanding and communication for that community to thrive in a harmonious way and nothing will ever be as perfect as you want it to be…
I wasn’t expecting perfection but an environment where people took action against death threats and violence would have been nice. It’s all very well and good arguing about which precise label we pin on Occupy London’s political framework but the fact is that there isn’t any sort of obedience to any fixed rules whatsoever, with the result that I have described. Maturity, understanding and communication doesn’t go far enough. There needs to be a formal recognition of who is involved and what the rules of engagement are. Otherwise, in central London at any rate, you get the situation on the ground I have described.
Lots of activists leave shortly after dark. If you haven’t camped out in St Paul’s Churchyard, I’m sorry but you don’t know what it can get like. Frequently. Must emphasise here that I’m not commenting on whether Christine has camped out or not – I’ve got no idea. However, the fact is that all these idealist visions of how people can get along amount to jack shit because we didn’t ever adopt any form of meaningful enforcement policy for the very few domestic rules we created. It might even have been better to put a large sign outside the camp which said, “Anything Goes!”.
I would have preferred: OccupyLSX welcomes all people, but not all behaviour.
You want to smoke, then pick up your cigarette butts.
You want to eat, then you better be working to provide for the camp.
Like most people, I like to party as well. I do prefer brandy for a cold night with my coffee or glass of red wine with dinner, but not every single night.
People who need intoxicants to function, apart from caffeine, and spoilt brats need not apply.
I’ve also found out that I have been barred from the OccupyLondon Forum. We are supposed to be working towards transparency, yet we keep devolving to the old ways of obfuscation and censorship.
I have camped at St Paul’s… I lasted only a few hours and left in the early hours of the morning to return to OFS where I’ve camped for 3 weeks. But it was nothing to do with the occupation… it was to do with London’s Saturday night wanderers and revellers doing whatever they liked, including wandering into and sleeping in my tent!
Life is also less than perfect at OFS and we’re more vulnerable in our tents than people living behind brick walls, as well as colder and damper. It’s a challenging situation, I’ve seen some people ‘lose it’, our TT takes a lot of crap, undeservedly, and theirs is a very difficult and essential job. So no, anything doesn’t go, violence is not acceptable and if it were, I wouldn’t have lasted that long. I think you are focussing on the negative and forgetting the positive.
It does rather sound as if you haven’t witnessed any of the bad trouble. Am pleased for you. I have worked relentlessly for OccupyLSX since the beginning until today. I haven’t forgotten the positive. However, it has become clear that this camp is no longer controlled by its residents, which was one of the themes in my post.
I do think OFS has always been a little more chilled out and relaxed than St Paul’s which is quite intense. There are lots of factors in that, that I’m sure you would already appreciate and understand. That said, we have been threatened with murder, our TT has been punched and someone slashed a tent with a knife while an occupier was sleeping in it… but none of these individuals were occupiers. Our occupations are very vulnerable to this type of violent social behaviour of a scale that is unknown to most people locked up safe in house, but which the police are all too familiar with. London really is quite anarchic of a Saturday night!
With reference to your statement about the camp no longer being controlled by its residents, that was never the purpose of the occupation. Indeed, the GA, in being open to the public, as well as the Info, TCU and Library marquees, have all been crucial in preventing the occupations deteriorating into little more than exclusive travellers’ sites. Occupy, the campuses included, was always intended to be inclusive. And inclusivity means everybody and their auntie, so there will be a certain amount of chaos and unpredictability in a setting that’s not as highly controlled as most workplaces, or an army encampment. It’s definitely an interesting experiment.
Hi Christine:
Hope we’ve met…lol
One good reason for OccupyLFS was the green space and quieter surroundings. I know people who ended up moving there due to too much stimulation from the bells, the traffic and noise pollution from people.
Our Tranquility Nighwatch team have been threatened a number of times and always need more support. I do agree with Bear of becoming a Fascist Hippie.
We have been working on the women and children’s tent and hopefully the noise will lessen. We are solving problems, and we are ending up with leaders for the working groups. Team Leaders should be in place, before the camp fails under the anti-social behaviour, the sabotage from the City of London Corporation, and the general antagonism of some city workers.
I just remembered… one of our permanent occupiers did threaten to murder everyone in the camp and ran around screaming with a hammer at night. TT persuaded him to give it up and return to his tent, which he eventually did. He apologised for his behaviour the next day and everyone was happy to forgive him because he suffers from combat stress. Subsequent to this, he lost his temper again, but this time it was just shouting and he went to his tent himself to cool off. So his behaviour is actually improving in the camp as a consequence of empathy; had the police been called, he’d not have had any of that.
I think that, to a large degree, your experience of this kind of experiment will depend on how you approach it. If you see it as a learning experience, which would be the most reasonable thing to do in such unusual circumstances, then I think you get a lot out of it. I think it’s time to scale down St Paul’s to just the marquees, and those who want to continue occupying can snuggle up with the Finsbury Square people so everyone stays warm through winter!
It’s been great talking with you today. Thanks.
Erm, you’re making it sound worse, not better! Why do we need a learning curve like this? What’s to be gained by it? Society has already got a method of dealing with these people – a police force and social services. Deliberately ignoring those agencies just allowed the problem to persist. It could have been nipped in the bud early on but no, the Occupationists thought they knew better and turned on anyone who spoke if reporting extreme antisocial behaviour to the authorities. How on earth does this persuade anyone that we offer a new vision for how to run society?
I’d agree with that.
We are not the social services that can take care of all societies troubles. Our protests entail being against the closure of community centres and the NHS, but we cannot act in their stead.
#OccupyLSX ended up with a man who was in prison, two weeks beforehand, and was advised to come to us for assistance. The advisor was supposedly from someone working in the hostel he was staying in as a halfway house. I think he wanted to see what he could get, but was put off by the weather.
We are activists, not trained social workers out to heal everyone. That way lies failure of the movement and burn out.
It’s that business of specialising in what we do best, which is political activism, not welfare provision. Our activists failed to recognise the limits of their expertise.
For me, the gain is that any alternative society we want to build isn’t just the result of reading books but of actually seeing how people live together when you alter the circumstances. You don’t learn anything about either yourself or other people unless you leave your comfort zone. You think you do, but that level of learning is very low compared to what can be learnt when the context changes.
I find the militarisation of the police a very disturbing phenomenon and we know, with the sheer numbers of people who come to us needing help and support, that many vulnerable/needy people are being let down and it’s going to get worse and so will crime as the public sector cuts hit harder.
It’s always best if the police don’t have to be called but sometimes they do for our protection and a sensible person would seek to understand the reason for calling them before making judgements or silly-name calling. But in a broad-based movement such as ours, you can’t expect everyone to be sensible all the time; are we even sensible ALL the time? I know I’m not! If this is a problem with individuals, then you’re as well to just shrug your shoulders and move on… but if you’re saying that this is a CULTURAL problem endemic to St Paul’s, then yes, I’d say lessons should be learned and the operation scaled down. The fact this is NOT a cultural problem endemic to other occupations suggests that it was unique to St Paul’s… perhaps there is something in smaller communities having greater potential for harmony… but at the same time they can also have potential for abuse… The dynamics of human interaction are sometimes inexplicable.
I don’t think Occupy is here to offer a new vision for how to run society. I think Occupy is about asking the questions, learning from the experiences and finding solutions together, and this process will inevitablytake time. What is also inevitable, in any MOVEment, is that things will constantly change at a very rapid rate and we are definitely not here to lay claim to territory but to operate strategically to restore and maintain democracy for ordinary people, from which mainstream politics largely excludes us.
I will end now by offering you this which was my report on my 3 weeks at FS, some of which other people weren’t particularly impressed by in terms of some of the content. In terms of style it is very boring, I’m afraid, because I am not as good a writer as you yet, but I will keep practising.
Hi Duncan.
Your explanation and exposition of the issues here was very sound. Also never forget you did an excellent job and put in massive amounts of work and whatever happens, don’t regret what you did. You have also kept your integrity and your beliefs, possibly in the face of much criticism, which is a rare thing these days… I think the Occupy movement is bigger than all of us and our political persuasions and what happens at St Pauls is not the be all and end all of it. It is something that so many people feel inside themselves and no one in a sense can put a label on it or control it for too long according to their sometimes misguided or incoherent agenda (which looks like what happened here ), which is its strength, which also means it may yet evolve, but possibly is also its potential downfall at times? What struck me that first day (15th Oct) was people’s self-authority. They would not tolerate violence or provocation from the police and this gave them an inner instinct about what to do for the good, even a cohesiveness, bigger than their personal opinions and wishes even. To me that was as much a political statement, which impacted people who came to see the Occupation, as a defined manifesto was (although I am not saying that was not needed). It’s a shame that appears to have gone… The General Assembly was an extension of that resolve, but that resolve was there first. It will rise again, in another form, if not in this one…
All the best
Sarah
Did my comment get deleted or treated as spam?
Never heard of you before.
http://occupylondonfinsbury.blogspot.com/2011/12/goodbye-discotents-hello-discontent_11.html
Thank you for sharing your page.
Attempted to write about my experiences. I would like to write more, but sometimes feel too tired.
http://www.pinoyworld.eu/2011/12/occupylsx-occupy-london-and-old-street-magistrates-court/
i have seen sexual harassment during the jesse jackson speech
and multiple assaults from the tranquility team
thank you for not being afraid to share your truth
do not be dissuaded from your character by the groupthink peer pressure people
If you saw it, then you should have reported to the police. Sexual harassment is a crime and should not be tolerated.
We have enough problems with police ignoring sexual harassment when the women in #OccupyLSX complain, we do not need the same from ars*holes staying inside the camp.
Reasons why I have advised businesses in the local area to call the police, if they are harassed in their premises. There are those turning a blind eye, because they believe those people are part of #OccupyLondon.
My experience with Occupy in my city taught me two things. The first is policy/process over personality; a failure in both my city and the OccupyWallSt media at large. The second was eloquently laid out in the article here; human beings are hardwired to connect and organize, a failure to do so stifles growth and healthy development in the individual and in community.
Earlier on in the American version of occupation, as I scrambled to understand a developing phenomena, I read many GA meeting notes and reports. I was astonished to find the very proposals, confusion and conflicts we were considering were also being considered in places far from us prior to the deep communication network now evolving.
The demographic I represented, female, middle-age, was grossly under-represented. The dominant demographic is under thirty, male, single. So much so, that at many GA meetings I was one of three females, none over 25. We three or four represented more than 50% of the population at large but had only a 20% stake in GA.
We saw recently the shakeup of the Occupy Wall Street media team due to the secret meetings held between one member and a wealthy benefactor. In my city there is a minority anarchist contingent which is able to dismantle any proposal aimed at organization by a disarming technique of opinion plus “but that is just me” isms. No facts need be considered.
Paraphrasing two independent videographers in the States, “I cannot support a movement who’s decision making process is not transparent, nor can I support a cause that is not explicitly non-violent.”
It’s late/early so my comment is brief, and I have a full day of occupation ahead, more coherent remarks may follow.
I find your post disappointing for several reasons. You focus mainly on the negative and seem to want this very new kind of socio/political organisation to be fully fledged. In reference to your earlier blogs, how long did it take the Green Party to sort it’s shit out? I am also saddened that having made a big commitment and contribution to occupy, you appear to have written it a death warrant and marched off because it does not fit your model. Yes there has been difficult and unpleasant behaviour from some people, however they remain a very small minority and you seem to tar all with the same brush, where is your solidarity for the many who remain and have, with you, changed the national debate?
Surely the better tactic would be to step away but continue to contribute and see where Occupy takes us.
In a horizontal movement, which you, like many, seem to struggle to grapple with, some people will become leaders or drivers because that is what they are good at, however their value/contribution is the same as anyone who steps up with their time to do anything. It is so easy for us to fall into our societal norms of heirarchy, indeed it is very hard not to.
And as for your parting “gift”, don’t think it is fair or accurate for you to take all the credit for that.
After the first day of the case, and thanks for John Cooper who is a brilliant if ruthless advocate, I returned to camp, apprehensive as the judge who sounds just like Bill Nighy said something like.. well I have been away on circuit so think it is only fair to let you all know that I have never been the St Paul’s camp. I think I will go for a stroll around after court has risen… I was astounded. Lots of people, including some of the most challenging people I’m told, had clearly slogged their guts out in every tent and alley to make the whole place look incredible. The atmosphere was transformed and we had a full, positive and rather beautiful GA including the return of the lovely Venus who declared “camp is great, it feels like the first week all over again” . Last shout out from a woman from Occupy Bournemouth saying how much of an inspiration/beacon OLSX is. This after some inspiring feedback from the national Occupy meeting in Edinburgh about joining the occupy dots and moving forward together.
So scrapper, dont’ put us all in the dustbin. This is an experiment on many levels and at least have the decency to give us time to work things out. Which we are.
Look at the bigger picture of Occupy worldwide and using your forensic analysis consider what is “news” now compared to 4 months ago.
Don’t be a stranger. Solidarity
Hi Saskia,
Your comment may be brief but it also neatly falls within the 500 word limit for comments here – you only had one extra word to play with! Thanks for containing yourself appropriately. I wish other commentators could also manage to follow this blog’s basic rules, which are going to be enforced far more strictly from now on.
You make some good points but on your central issue, you fall over badly, sorry. You seem to equate all the experiences inside Occupy London’s camps as being capable of being assessed equally, as if they can all be weighed in some enormous set of scales. As with other commentators, you make the point that I have focused on the negative and not remarked upon the positive. Read back through my blog over the last two months. The balance of my reportage has been overwhelmingly positive. Until very recently I have held back from discussing the nasty side to the camps. I have gone public now because these experiences have not been contained by the other people in the camps. Instead of tackling the problems of threats, violence and sexual harassment head on, Occupy London has set up welfare initiatives it was not qualified to do and which were almost certainly unlawful in my humble opinion. It felt the need to create a safe space tent for women and children! What is the point of that last initiative unless you are prepared to tackle the antisocial criminals within the ranks?!
You ask how long it took the Green Party “to sort it’s shit out?”. As we all know the Greens were originally called the Ecology Party which was born in 1975. The answer to your question is immediately. There has never been a time when the political party I support allowed threats, violence and sexual harassment to exist within our ranks. Why would we?
Whereas Occupy London began with a serious political idea to set up a mass movement which engaged everyone including the emergency services, it has deliberately transformed itself into an organisation which stands against all forms of authority. Residents at Occupy Brighton even attacked a fire-fighter, as explained in a previous post. It’s no use saying that the genuine activists had left and blaming that crime on someone else. You have to take responsibility for what you set up. Saskia, you facilitated the GA in Brighton when the schism happened but despite your wise words of wisdom, you didn’t warn our local council that the camp was no longer a political affair. Neither did I. We failed our local community by not speaking the truth we knew. After I heard about the attack on the fire fighter, I changed my mind about Occupy. I posted the story of Occupy Brighton as a Lesson for Occupy London. Bill Randall, the leader of Brighton & Hove City Council, a member of the Green Party and a hugely respected local character declared that the Greens would never again tolerate a camp of this sort in Brighton. He showed leadership by doing that. Why on earth would we want to recreate the conditions which allowed for that sort of behaviour? A couple of nights ago I was at a social evening with a friend of mine. A number of local Green councillors were there. I repeated the story to them. They were genuinely upset that they had not been told what was going on by the Occupationists. Mike Jones (a councillor for Preston ward in Brighton) that he had been down to the Occupy Brighton camp a number of times and had thought that he had established a good rapport with the Occupationists. The plain fact is that the apparently genuine activists who quit the scene the evening that I attended its general assembly did not tell the local authority which officially supported them about their fears. That evening they explicitly said they were leaving because they were too frightened to stay.
The upshot of all this is, yes, I do think we are all responsible for what we have created, which is a community in which certain individuals can threaten and damage others and know that they can act with impunity. We all have to take responsibility for this and I have done so, by quitting, when it became clear that Occupy London’s general assembly was never going to speed up its decisions making process. The camp culture of chronic dithering is part of the problem.
You make not think it appropriate of me to talk anyone around into giving evidence but you weren’t present in the phone call. When it began he didn’t want to give evidence. When it ended he did. Let’s say that I don’t take the credit. Whatever. Actually, today I’ve decided to give everyone one last parting gift, which I intend to publish at about 9:30am.
I’ve no problem with horizontal movements which work properly. For example, in the very late 1980s I was a hunt saboteur. That certainly did work. In a few short years the leaderless movement swelled in size. Our direct action awoke the public as to the barbarism of the sport and led to a complete and solid change in public opinion. A groundswell of opinion occurred and we sustained the campaign. Without going into all the details, we got to the point where John Cooper QC (he wasn’t a QC at the time) persuaded Tony Blair to personally lead a change in the law, even though Blair didn’t agree with the change (Let’s face it, he was a thieving Tory bastard wasn’t he?). The Hunting Act became law and now the League Against Cruel Sports and other organisations organises monitors to go out into the fields and catch the criminal hunters in the act. Whilst the media owners don’t report it, the fact is that these hunting criminals are slowly being rounded up and prosecuted. That is a very short summary of the whole picture but it serves to show that I absolutely appreciate the strength that a leaderless movement can bring about and am proud to have been an activist in one. Unfortunately Occupy can’t be generously compared to the animal rights movement.
I expect you didn’t realise how common site visits by judges are? Curious that so much effort was made to make the Occupation look clean and tidy for the Judge in their case but that level of domestic pride cannot be mustered on a normal day, don’t you think? It’s good that people rallied around. It’s a crying shame that they didn’t do the same some time ago with respect to the violence. I cannot understand why the atmosphere in which it flourishes is tolerated at all?
I’m not binning you all. As you know Saski, I lost the faith with Occupy a little while back but continued to help certain individuals who had won my respect, yourself included. However, I certainly have given the people in Occupy London plenty of time to work out some pretty basic stuff and they can’t manage it. I’m now convinced that the thing has gone wrong. Either the police hating camp continues with its antisocial elements given free reign or all the residential tents are removed and the entire ‘camp’ is turned into a media spectacle. Neither of these outcomes is what Occupy set out to be. Be honest with yourself, Saskia, in recent weeks events at Occupy London have only included faces we know very well in the crowd. The number of visitors has dwindled to the vanishing point.
So far as my analysis of the news is, you’ll have to wait for a proper post from me. Let’s get one thing straight though: Occupy London has been going for just over 2 months, not 4 months. Attention to detail is very important. Occupy Wall Street has been going for 3 months.
It was good to hang out with you Saskia. Without people like yourself – the greatest general facilitator I have ever seen – Occupy would have broken up long ago. Your emotional investment in the project cannot be doubted and I respect that. It would be nice to catch up again, sometime. I think I’ve answered the various points you have made in your comment. Now I’m off to post my final gift to Occupy London and all poor disadvantaged souls everywhere facing their day in court. Peace! This is a purely positive gift, which is mine along to give.
Sorry to nit pick but I didn’t say OLSX was four months old, I just said compare the news now to then, or I could have said between this time last year and now. more anon
Fair enough.
Hi
Uhm, are you the Saskia who sometimes facilitates in London and were facilitating yesterday in Sheffield
Please let me know one way or the other at andriae4@gmail.com
I have drafted a doc for Occupy and I wanted to share it with someone and see what they thing
Cheers whomever U are
Andria xx
Clearly not. I am Scrapper Duncan.
Saskia “Yes there has been difficult and unpleasant behaviour from some people, however they remain a very small minority and you seem to tar all with the same brush,”
Firstly, I don’t think SD did tar everyone with the same brush. Secondly, seeing as we’re talking about sexual harassment, threats and actual violence it would frankly be bizarre to think these are outweighed by some of the nice things people have done on site. These are behaviours that can lead to people being scarred for life and it’s clear they are tolerated.
“where is your solidarity for the many who remain and have, with you, changed the national debate?”
Occupy world wide and in London specifically has changed the national debate. I think that’s true and extremely impressive. It’s tailed off now but to hear the word anti-capitalist on the radio everyday for weeks was pure bliss for me.
It’s a debate that was waiting to happen and the actual character of the best part of that debate has been shaped by people outside of Occupy – plugging away at the issues they rightly feel passionate about. The St Paul’s protests have helped them get their voice heard and should be congratulated for that. I for one am very grateful.
But I’m also thankful that it’s not the debates I’ve seen articulated at LSX that have hit the headlines. They are sometimes interesting, but are often either embarrassing, misinformed or downright worrying. It’s been an inspiration – but one that is best seen from a distance while working in our own communities where we are not threatened with axes or have people wonder into where we’re sleeping.
I think that working in our own communities is extremely important. It’s not all about “occupation”. It’s about creating self-sustaining communities and you don’t need to go pitching tents or occupying squares or buildings to get community meetings going, to participate in grow-cook-share gardening or to seek funding for important community projects. WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER. And it is not a soap-opera. It is not a court case. It is not about capitalism vs labour. It is about human beings taking responsibility for their communities and doing what is right for THAT COMMUNITY in a share, democratic, local way. It is NOT ABOUT THE TENTS!
Which is pretty much what I did before joining Occupy London and what I’ll be doing from now on, except that I’ll help provide political direction by being a Green Party activist.
Christine you make your points well when you comment here and, although I don’t think we’ve had the pleasure (?), I look forward to your commentary. That said, no need to shout eh?
sorry about the shouting
Pingback: Occupy London: Journalists Let Me Down | Pete's Journal
Pingback: Occupy London 2.0 | Scrapper Duncan