Midwinter in Parliament Square with Occupy Democracy

#OccupyDemocracy returned to Parliament Square as planned this mid-winter weekend, with a focus on housing and homelessness.

The turnout wasn’t huge – it was cold, it was just a few days before Christmas – but the quality of debate, entertainment, knowledge-sharing, solidarity-building and the sense of an emerging community of creative and determined change-makers was… inspiring.

Contributors to a full programme of events in and around the Square included:

• Speakers from the New Era Housing Estate (who this week won a huge victory over the US development firm which had planned to make them homeless), Focus E15 Mum’s housing campaign, Occupy Barnet and Our West Hendon, plus Phoenix Rainbow on squatters’ rights.
• ‘Dying for Heat’ activists who stripped off outside Downing Street to protest the scandal of deaths due to fuel poverty.
• Deputy leader of the Green Party Shahrar Ali, speaking about the UK’s democratic deficit.
• A ‘Fossil Free Nativity Play’ and Shell Out Sounds choir.
• Green & Black Cross with activist legal advice.
• Fran Boait from Positive Money, Samir from Stop The War coalition, and Occupy activist George Barda on compassionate revolution.

The  schedule was interspersed with participative assemblies and debates, poetry, carol singing, sharing of food – and a blissfully warming impromptu late night ceilidh dance!

With the high heras fencing around Parliament Square replaced by less robust crowd barriers, an opportunity arose on Saturday evening for occupiers to move through a gap in the barrier and to occupy the centre of  the Square – for the first time since being dragged from the grass two months ago in the infamous Battle of the Tarpaulin.

Displaying a ‘Real Democracy Now!’ banner before continuing a discussion about how much interaction Occupy Democracy should have with party politics, occupiers continued to demonstrate genuine participatory debate and decision making as police vans made haste to the scene, disgorging columns of officers who proceeded to kettle those assembled. Police outnumbered activists and Occupy supporters approximately 4:1. Or maybe more.

Confusion ensued as to whether those in the Square were committing civil trespass, or were breaching a byelaw, or were somehow committing a crime by talking about politics and economics on the lawn outside Parliament.

The Occupy Democracy assembly wound up and a young woman began to talk about Positive Money, a non-profit initiative to make money work for people rather than enslaving us.

Eventually the unjust and draconian Criminal Justice Act was invoked, and those assembled were threatened with mass arrest on the basis that a cable tie on the fence had been broken, and someone had – allegedly – been rude to a Heritage Warden. For these ‘crimes’ the police were prepared to arrest thirty or so peaceful, politically-engaged citizens.

The dreadful absurdity of young people volunteering to listen to a lecture about economics on the Saturday night before Christmas, sitting stone cold sober on cold damp ground to do so, and being forced to move or face arrest… What kind of country, what kind of law, what kind of system, what kind of justice is this?

There was a stand-off during which occupiers asked the police to think again, to think of genuine justice, to uphold the right to peaceful protest and assembly. During this period Donnachadh McCarthy was arrested for peacefully holding a banner.

As the police closed in on the Positive Money discussion, occupiers reached consensus to withdraw from the central lawn of the Square and reconvene on the pavement at its edge. Sometimes the image of mass arrests can be powerful; other times arrests simply serve the purpose of the police in dispersing people and disrupting planned activities.

We chose to take control of events and be free for the night; the cells that had been made ready for us remained empty, save for Donnachadh, who returned to us around 1am.

After a long, cold mid-Winter night on the pavement, dawn saw Occupy Democracy supporters bleary-eyed but unbeaten, continuing to refine a unique but widely appealing list of ‘demands’ that put people, democracy and planet before profit.

Meanwhile, on Charing Cross Road near Trafalgar Square, a squat was opened in an old Nat West bank. On December 25th, Christmas dinner will be served for homeless and hungry people. Until then, it’s an activist networking and skillshare space.

Livestream of some of Saturday evening’s events: http://bambuser.com/channel/Bencavanna

More at occupydemocracy.org.uk

Festival Of Resistance

It felt like summer, at last. It was the first weekend of the school holidays and everyone was heading south, down the M6 to Devon and Cornwall, to sandcastles and seaweed and surf. I was on my way to Devon to meet a bunch of occupiers, anarchists, socialists, greenies and unclassifiable objectors-to-the-current-system at the Festival of Resistance.

I was going along to spread the word about the Occupied Times and to help a fellow OT editor convince anyone who needed convincing that creating our own indymedia is vital. I didn’t know what to expect, just knew that the festival was organised by ‘Globalise Resistance’ who have been accused in the past of being a front for the Socialist Workers’ Party.

M arrived before me. His text said: “I always suspected the leftist insurrection would start from a Devonian stately home.”

Italian terraces and smooth lawns with views to the coast. A walled tea garden, trapping the sun. An unlikely location for a hotbed of revolutionary zeal, for the harbouring of undercover SWP members and for having many kilowatts of solar panel in a meadow around the back.

The caretaker of this stately pile was recently in court accused of trashing a GM wheat trial site at Rothamsted Research Institute. An organic farmer and passionate about permaculture, he’s concerned that genetically modified crops could cross-breed with conventional plants and become impossible to control. One of the weekend’s talks was on this subject.

Economic meltdown in Greece, anti-capitalism, food sovereignty, community rights, undercover cops, William Morris, the Olympics, imperialism, debt and austerity, the banking crisis, radical design and the Leveson inquiry were also on the agenda. A great speaker from the New Economics Foundation explained “just how fucked the economy is.”

There were probably a couple of Socialist Workers in attendance and possibly a cop or two. There was a guy in an Anonymous mask, a few anarchists, the odd geek and more photographers and livestreamers than some attendees felt to be prudent.

Those identifying as occupiers were reminded that Occupy didn’t invent the idea of pitching a tent and clamouring for change, nor was it the first movement to see the personal as political or to understand that things have gone wrong on a global scale. Amateur activists learned a little history from veterans of Greenham Common, of anti-globalisation protests and road protest camps, of Stonehenge Free Festival and the poll tax riots, of Reclaim the Streets and Climate Camp.

A recurring theme was the importance of networking between radical groups that are broadly leftwing, of focusing on our similarities and agreements rather than squabbling. The Festival of Resistance proved that this is possible. We’re moving away from the old isms – capitalism is rubbish but what we have isn’t even capitalism any longer, it’s corporatism and cronyism and corruption. Likewise socialism and communism are old hat. For now we’re refusing to be trapped in boxes and are steering clear of labels.

One big question that we returned to repeatedly was ‘What is Our Alternative’? Sure, we know the current system stinks. We know that profit-chasing, planet-raping and power-mongering are bad. We don’t believe austerity and privatisation are the answers to anything. So what are the answers? The words and concepts that keep cropping up are: Community, Co-operation, Transition, The Commons.

The weekend ended with the question “So what do we do now?” Answers were thrown into a pot:

“Support Greece and Spain – they’re the canaries, huge experiments are being conducted over there, we should travel there en masse, by train…”

“We need to be connecting globally, with the majority world, with the global South, not just across Europe and the States.”

“For alternatives look to South America, to Argentina, and to some extent to Greece. They’re learning new ways of organising and co-operating, through necessity.”

“Give people what they want in order to gain their support – we can’t expect them to join us just because we’re right!”

“Focus on debt. Refuse to pay unjust debts.”

“Link up with the unions, we need mass action… help to radicalise the unions, as ‘the Sparks’ have been doing.”

“Everything needs doing and we need to reach out to everyone! Transition towns, freeware geeks, faith groups, co-operatives…”

“We need to engage and evoke a visceral response, not just an intellectual one.”

“We need to move fast, there’s not much time, climate chaos is just around the corner.”

What I’d have liked to do next was for everyone to say which of these answers resonated most for them and to link up with others of like mind. Form affinity groups. Note down action points. Instead the bus to London arrived and most everyone rushed off to pack up their tents, bolt a bite of lunch and squeeze onto a sweaty coach.

I went to the beach.