Sunday 13 November 2011

Occupy London



I have been spending a lot of time down in the occupy London protest camp at St Pauls this week. It has been amazing to be part of a truly global community that is genuinely passionate about the world around them. Somebody said that it doesn't matter that we don’t have the answers, what matters is that we start the conversation and there is certainly a lot of conversations happening down there. Every night at 7pm there is the General Assembly (GA) in which logistics of the camp are discussed as well as important political and ideological questions and ideas. Over the weeks the topic each night has ranged from the media, the environment, Palestine, internet and technology, violence and of course many different discussions about capitalism. Each group’s idea is then fed back into the main GA meeting in order to be explored further by the entire group.

The camp also provides an entirely free cafe serving breakfast, lunch and dinner for every person every day and a tearoom where you can drink tea and have a game of chess. This micro direct democracy in action is far from perfect but is without doubt a timely and inspiring alternative which proves that it is possible to work together without the need for hierarchy and unequal power relations. The fact that it is happening in the city centre of London deep in the heart of the financial district makes it even more moving