You may have been hearing a little bit about the Occupy movement lately. Or maybe you haven’t, considering the mainstream media’s apparent refusal to discuss it with anything other than disdain. But what exactly is it all about?
Well, the Occupy movement started in New York as Occupy Wall Street, standing as a protest against the corruption and greed that’s become apparent in the New York Stock Exchange. Similar protests sprung up across America and now they’ve spread to Britain. Occupy LSX was naturally the first movement. They are currently camped outside St Paul’s Cathedral after being forced to move on from their original spot outside the Stock Exchange. But why?
At the time the Occupy LSX protest started, news started to trickle out about just how bad the level of corruption has gotten within the banking sector and within large corporations. 98% of the corporations listed on the FTSE index have been revealed in an ActionAid report (linked at the bottom of this blog) to be utilising tax havens, costing the UK billions at a time when public services are being cut to save money. The government also wrote off the £10 million debt that investment bank Goldman Sachs are supposed to be paying back, but good luck to the person on the street trying to get the same treatment on their student loan or their mortgage. Hell, two weeks after the protests started in London, it became known that top director pay has increased to obscene amounts, meanwhile those at the bottom of the chain have been forced to take pay freezes and pay cuts, or even lost their jobs entirely, because allegedly there’s no money left to pay for them. Sound fair? Absolutely not. And this is merely a snapshot of how bad the situation has gotten and why there’s a need for protests.
But what’s the reaction to Occupy LSX? Well, put simply, derision. Not from the general public, as many informed people are supportive of what they’re doing, largely because they’re feeling the pinch of the economic crisis themselves. But the reaction from the top has not been positive. Top level government has failed to pass comment on the movement in any significant way (probably because the protests haven’t been reported by the Daily Mail so Cameron remains clueless). But backbencher Mark Field says “It's like a third world shanty town outside St Paul's which is a Unesco world heritage site. We've got Remembrance Sunday, the Lord Mayor's show all within the next fortnight.” So basically he’s more concerned with the look of the cathedral than anything else. MP Louise Mensch appeared on Have I Got News For You where she complained about the protesters using Starbucks while protesting against the financial system (fortunately, she was immediately shot down by the rest of the panel, including Ian Hislop, who correctly pointed out that spending money and protesting a broken system that isn’t getting fixed are not mutually exclusive). The Lord Mayor showed how out of touch he was by saying the issue is that the financial system merely hasn’t been properly explained to people. And, of course, there’s the media circus over the closure of St Paul’s Cathedral.
This event has been a farce to begin with. St Paul’s closed down citing Health and Safety concerns, despite the protesters fully complying with any issues the church may have. The Cathedral was closed for a week, although a wedding did take place the day after its closure. Guests at the wedding stated that the protesters did not ruin their day, and in fact many of the guests showed support for their efforts. Which is why that part of the story has been swept under the rug because it doesn’t suit the media narrative that the protesters are an unwanted nuisance. Now, after a week, the Cathedral has been re-opened, and a similar stance has been taken by the churchgoers who arrived to see it re-open. There are also threats of legal action to force the protesters to move, a move which seems ludicrous following the re-opening of the Cathedral. Only now they’re claiming the protesters are blocking the road. However, merely looking at the photos in the press shows that neither access to the cathedral nor the roads are being blocked by protesters.
It doesn’t help that the term “anti-capitalist protesters” is being bounced around by the press, when in fact the point of the protest isn’t to bring down capitalism, it’s to address the rampant greed and corruption within the financial sector. Not one person has been held responsible for the collapse of the economy. No one has been fired for doing a poor job, and no one has been charged for fraud, although inevitably someone needs to be.
It’s also disheartened to see people criticise the camp purely for being “messy” or full of “dirty unwashed hippies”. This insistence on focusing on the look of the camp is wrong. It should be about the issues they’re trying to raise awareness of, not how they appear. What’s more, it’s inaccurate to refer to them as hippies who need to find better things to do with their time. Many of the protesters hold down jobs or are currently in education, and in fact during the day do return to their jobs and return immediately after. These are valuable members of society, and the fact they are willing to hold down jobs shows they’re not anti-capitalist, they’re more than likely feeling threatened they’re going to lose those jobs.
I fully support the actions of the Occupy movement. I recently visited the camp in Birmingham, and shook hands with one of the protesters there. He didn’t strike me as a deluded hippy. He struck me as an educated man with something important to say. Which is what many of them are. I urge everyone to do their research on this movement by reading the Occupy London website, by reading their Twitter and Facebook pages, and by reading up on the issues they stand for. They are, after all, working in everyone’s interests, and trying to make a fairer system for us all. Please find a way to show your support, and hopefully this movement can expand to the levels the Wall Street protest has reached and beyond.
It’s time to fight back
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