The 99%- St. Pauls, London
Text and photography: Halfdan Broch-Due
Walking by a sign that said “Tahir square” I entered the crowd standing outside of St. Pauls Cathedral on the 15th of October. If the space-time convergence evoked by this sign was not exotic enough, then the profusion of different people certainly was. There were people from all walks of life- I saw an old woman, conservatively dressed sitting next to a young man with green hair. Some kids with a boom box on wheels gave the commotion a strange electronic soundtrack and behind them walked guys in suits who would have fitted nicely in the lobby of the London Stock Exchange. It was almost like a carnival, yet I realized that this was exactly what the movement represented; a movement defined not by its specific political goal, social class nor group but everyone affected by the crisis of capital. Student’s who have had their university fees raised side by side with pensioners who have seen their retirement funds shrink with the low interest rate. At one point even Julian Assange showed up with an electronic bracelet around his foot, temporarily hijacking the stage and telling people to boycott VISA and Mastercard (whom have both cut off services to wikileaks). It seemed like the movement belonged to everyone and no one simultaneously.
Julian Assange shows his support
This is both the strength and the weakness of the Occupy movement. The movement has often been critiqued as lacking a specific set of goals. “What do they want, exactly?” is the prevailing question asked. From change through the political system to changing the political system entirely; voices and opinions differed widely. Whether or not this will affect the power of the movement to actually have any real impact remains to be seen yet some argue that to focus on the goals of the movement misses the point entirely. Some see the movement more as a forum for an assembly; a different kind of democracy being advanced as opposed to going to the ballot boxes. As David Graeber, one of the initial organizer of Occupy wall street puts it “You’re creating a vision of the sort of society you want to have in miniature, if you make demands, you are asking the existing institutions to do something different…people have been hesitant to do that as they see these institutions as the problem”.
Certainly it did seem that there in front of me, a little miniature society was assembling. There were tents being put up, fervent discussions about how to solve the logistical problems of food and access to water. In a true democratic fashion we were all asked to sit down and form smallerx groups with those sitting around us. In these groups we were supposed to come up with a list of “concerns” that would later be voiced by single representatives of the groups and then voted upon by the rest of the congregation present. Although, if this is a miniature society, it remains to be seen who wants to live in it and for how long. After seemingly hours of deliberations on solving where and how access to the toilets would be established- the discussion of how to solve the world’s financial woes seemed impossibly distant. I was reminded by some of the critiques of the concept of a direct democracy where you end up spending most of your life as your own insignificant politician.
The metaphor of the miniature society seemed also to reflect aspects of and some of the problems that led our larger society into this mess in the first place. With some people eager to grab the microphone and feel the alluring power of the attention of hundreds of eyes upon them seeming clearly more important than the ultimately trite messages they delivered. Yet like any human project, there is a steep learning curve and it will be interesting to see whether this structure of debate can be streamlined to produce something concrete and legitimately democratic.
Anonymous members were present
The most striking feature of the Occupy movement is that this miniature society represents a new space for political mobilization which has been visibly created where the old space has had its constraints increasingly concretized and entrenched. The dismay over how the financial crisis was handled, the seemingly arbitrariness of voting for candidates to either the left or the right that at the end of the day are unable to put any pressure on financial institutions to reform the destructive path that led to millions of people across the world loosing their jobs, their savings and their future prospects (look at Spain and France where the right and left wing looks poised to swap power). A good example is the Dodd-Frank bill which was signed by Obama to give the “strongest consumer financial protection in history” yet out of 380 rules that were supposed to be written, only 30 have been finalized and of those most are watered down remnants of their original statements.
The room for maneuvering and the faith in the current democratic system has understandably dwindled. From the fall of communism to the meteoric rise of liberal-democratic capitalism we now seem to be back to the point where we are forced to think again. As the philosopher Slavoj Zizek puts it “the field is open”. It is in this climate that the occupy movement has emerged and it has symbolically claimed central public spaces for its purposes. The message does not have to be anything other than, “we are here and we are willing to commit ourselves in this space because we are no longer being heard anywhere else”. As opposed to the anti-globalization movement, which was also a hodgepodge of different grievances, the protests dispersed as the summits targeted ended. The occupy movement fashions itself as something that is here to stay. If so, then the space of occupation must grow and the occupation itself must be continued.
"United as One- Divided by Zero"
So what is the future of the movement? Will it blow over like the anti-globalizations movement leaving little trace of impact or is this the movement that will define our generation? The physical manifestation of an ever more technologically interconnected and globalized anti-establishmentarian force? The media coverage has so far not really reflected the significance of thousands of people across the world spontaneously mobilizing, and seems to be already dwindling. Although as we saw in Oakland where teargas was used to disperse the crowd, as well as the narrow scare experienced in New York where the movement was threatened with eviction based on “sanitary concerns” (a move that was ingeniously thwarted when protestors themselves cleaned the vicinity) there is sure to be a confrontation between protestors and local authorities on the horizon which will attract more attention to the movement and further embolden participants.
The long term trajectory is difficult to predict but there seems to be a discernable trend with some very important implications. In the last fifty years the western world has seen unparalleled economic growth. Yet this growth has been concentrated in the hands of a small elite group. In the U.S wages have actually been in stagnation since the 1970s. The promise from the neo-liberal camp of a ‘trickle down’ effect has been debunked. Our relatively high living standards have been kept artificially inflated by massive credit debt and control of the world’s cheap labor supply through deregulation and structural adjustment policies. With India and China’s middle classes waiting for their share of the riches, the power dynamic is set to change. The recent financial crisis has revealed the cracks in the system and the search for a solution is becoming ever more pressing. If this economic down turn is only the beginning of the much larger downward spiral that many are predicting then the occupy movement really could be just the seed of something much bigger, something that really will define our generation; the necessity for change. Or was it V for Vendetta?
Halfdan Broch-Due is a Masters Student in Conflict Studies at London School of Economics. He enjoys climbing rocks, daydreaming and watching films.
Great! thanks for the share!