Posts Tagged ‘protest’

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Occupy’s Object Lessons: Why The Camps Were Critical

In Rory MacKinnon on March 6, 2012 at 1:54 am
Protesters stand on a fort of furniture and shelving, challenging a police operation to remove them.

Photo by freelance journalist Stacey Knott.

[First published in the Morning Star, 02/03/2012.]

And because he was of the same craft, he abode with them, and wrought: for by their occupation they were tentmakers. — Acts 18:3

“OCCUPIED 137 DAYS, CLEARED IN 137 MINUTES” blared Wednesday’s Evening Standard as cleaning crews quite literally scrubbed Occupy London Stock Exchange from existence.

The capital’s exiled activists have refused to be cowed, rallying at their sole remaining camp in nearby Finsbury Square. But the loss of St Paul’s Square is only the latest in a string of setbacks: with a grim inevitability, the movement has been ceding ground since December. The repossession of public spaces has been a key image for the movement, with more than 20 outdoor sites across Britain at its height — but four months on, Nottingham, Norwich, Kent and Finsbury Square are all that remain.

The refrain among critics and commentariat alike is that the camps have outlived their relevance — as if the centuries-old predations of capital vanished the moment Miliband and Cameron parroted identical platitudes about ‘responsibility’.

But even the campers themselves have been divided on the issue: even as the eviction was underway, defender Pedro Lima told me they had “spent enough time with the 1 percent”. The week before, regular spokesman Ronan McNern had lamented their legal battles as “a major energy drain — sometimes you just want to get back to the cause itself.”

But a look back at the battle over St Paul’s shows the conflict has, if anything, only served to highlight Occupy’s discontent with the status quo. Read the rest of this entry »

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Some Things I Meant To Say Re: Occupy & The Riots

In Rory MacKinnon on January 3, 2012 at 1:57 pm

Kiwi Summer on Radio New Zealand National

[A ridiculously long postscript to my interview with Radio New Zealand's Kiwi Summer (listen here)]

I love radio, but every time I do a spot I always come away kicking myself because there’s a million more points or stats or clarifications overlooked without which I’m convinced I’ll sound like a blithering idiot. Luckily Charlotte and Sonia of Radio New Zealand’s Kiwi Summer have kindly offered to repost this on their Facebook page so I can completely undermine the point of a radio interview with a massive wall of text. So let’s get cracking.

Occupy & The August Riots Are Rooted In Dispossession
While Occupy and other protest groups have been frequently portrayed in media as a public menace, even the most right-wing media outlets have been wary of associating them with the ‘feral youth’ narrative that immediately sprang up in the wake of the summer’s week-long riots. Many Occupy activists I’ve spoken to have outright rejected any notion of common ground: we are Peaceful Protesters with Placards; they were just Violent Looters. Certainly there’s almost no demographic overlap — and there is an ethnic component to this which is delicate but vital — but it seems blindingly clear to me as an outsider at least that both Occupy and the riots could only have burst upon the country in the way they did because of a backdrop of political disenfranchisement and massive social deprivation. Read the rest of this entry »

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Occupied Press Club: Apply Within!

In Rory MacKinnon on October 31, 2011 at 11:09 pm

No big bloated essays for now – just a notice that I’ve been talking to Ryan of the Occupied Wall Street Journal about putting together an unofficial network of correspondents at occupations worldwide. In the same way that the papers are reflecting the issues in each individual community, a bit of international coverage would offer an unfiltered view of daily life in the camps.

I’m not camping full-time, nor would I expect anyone else to, but you would need to be visiting/camping at least 1-2 days a week and get along to the main events since the point is to source these stories from protesters on the ground. If you are living there full-time, even better.

And best of all would be if you’re covering an occupation in a non-English speaking country (or where English is not the language of choice). This is an international movement and it would be a shame if our readers didn’t hear about all the important things going on in Europe and Asia and the Middle East and Central America. Read the rest of this entry »

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The Occupied Times Of London: Issue 1 Out Now!

In Rory MacKinnon on October 28, 2011 at 12:14 am

My job at the Morning Star has trucked me off to all sorts of events this year: anti-war demos, anti-cuts marches, the defence of Britain’s biggest Irish Traveller camp, a student occupation up at Glasgow University and of course a bunch of trade union conferences. But Occupy London Stock Exchange is the only one so far where they’ve actually started their own newspaper instead — and I’ve somehow found myself on the editorial team.

Issue 1 of The Occupied Times of London is out today: 2000 free print copies floating around central London and an online version here. It’s an independent weekly paper, with no control or influence from the camp’s Media Working Group (which handles press releases and all that sort of thing). The staff are all unpaid volunteers, as is the printer Aldgate Press, and contributors and content are anyone from camp residents on daily life to international commentators on the occupation movement as a whole (rumour has it Noam Chomsky is working on something for the next issue). Read the rest of this entry »

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Man United: Public-Sector Pensions & A City On Strike

In Rory MacKinnon on July 2, 2011 at 1:15 pm

Image by SecretLondong123, used under a CC license.

[First published in the Morning Star, 01/07/2011]

It’s 8am on a Thursday morning in Manchester’s university quarter, smack in the middle of the summer break. But the streets are far from empty.

Teachers and lecturers stand clumped together on picket lines outside their classrooms, while across the canal librarians, parking wardens, civil servants and others are doing much the same. Manchester it seems is closed for business.

It’s only a slight exaggeration: with literally a third of Manchester’s workforce in the public sector, it’s hardly surprising that the government’s plans to raid public sector pensions has raised a bit of a ruckus. And with clear blue skies, a beaming June sun and the warm glow of camaraderie, it’s obvious people are glad to be out and about. But they haven’t forgotten why they’re here. Read the rest of this entry »

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Haw Fought The Law & The Law Won: The Crackdown On Activism

In Rory MacKinnon on April 4, 2011 at 4:42 am

Anti-war protester Brian Haw. Image by David Martyn Hunt, used under a Creative Commons License.

[First published in the Morning Star, 02/04/2011]

There was a strange scene at London’s Chatham House on Wednesday morning.

Israeli president Shimon Peres stood inside at a lectern, a man accused of war crimes for his role in Operation Cast Lead; the 2008 assault which saw missiles rain down for 22 days straight on a city about the size of Sheffield, killing between 1100 and 1400 Palestinian civilians and injuring countless more.

Police kept watch outside the building — but they weren’t there for President Peres.

They were there for the 30 or so members of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in the street outside, peacefully protesting and calling for his arrest.

The campaigners say they were kettled; the police deny it.

But in an odd twist of fate the conflict seemed to crystallise the twisted mentality behind the government’s policing bill being debated in the House of Commons a few streets away. Read the rest of this entry »

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London Underground: An Eyewitness Account Of March 26

In Rory MacKinnon on March 29, 2011 at 8:56 am

Hi all. It’s been two days since the anti-government rallies and the accompanying media coverage, and rather than the usual essay I’m just going to put my thoughts, actions and reactions in a tangled mess here. If that’s alright.

Much of the media coverage has drawn a distinction between peaceful protestors – those who stayed on the designated march route and toddled home after the speeches – and Violent Anarchists. The truth is much more complex.

There were certainly anarchists (and anarcho-communists). I was there when they marched from Malet St; I was there when they broke away from the official march and surged up towards Oxford. I spent much of the rest of the day chasing after them, arriving just too late to see what really happened at TopShop, HSBC, Santander and The Ritz.

But they were just one of many groups, and they had specific goals and tactics which go well beyond the media depiction of mindless violence. Read the rest of this entry »

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