Pressenza: What is the situation now following the excitement of the early days of the Occupy Hong Kong activities?
Derrick: *Many people are supporting us. As you can see some people come everyday and ask what we need and we will tell them we need bread, or a bicycle, another table, whatever, and they get them for us. As you can note though most media are not interested in us anymore, because the media in Hong Kong always ask, ‘Hey, what will you guys do next,’ or ‘When will you leave?’ These are questions we cannot answer. But they only want to know those things. They do not really understand and they don’t think Hong Kong people are interested in what we are doing. “Hey, you guys are just discussing what is capitalism?’ that’s what they say so they won’t put us in the newspapers or on TV. That is a problem.*
Pressenza: in the beginning the media was excited but they didn’t get it. It could be said though that the media is not that important, what is important is what you are doing.
Derrick: *What we are doing among the different people here – we have Marxists, we have anarchists, we have liberals, but we are all suffering under capitalism, under that system and some people are starting to ask why. Why do we have to live under this system; is there no other system? These questions go around and we think about these things. How to go against it? How to move beyond it? This is what we are doing here. We won’t finish it in a day or a week or a month – this is a very long discussion so we are living here as long as we can because we think we can’t discuss this on the Internet, we have to do it face-to-face, so we live together. It’s quite a community. We have a tea tent, library, bedrooms, the toilet is over there.*
Pressenza: In the English language press The Sunday Post ran a decent story which anyway told it how it is after a reporter camped out with you overnight and could really get to know what’s going on. That’s something. Are you in touch with the European Occupy actions or the Occupy Wall Street actions?
Derrick: *Only a little. We know what they are doing and what they are facing but we cannot really communicate or organize with them. Maybe it’s the language or maybe the lack of human resources as we don’t have many people really. We know it would be better if we did keep in contact but it will take time.*
A PA system started up, protesting about the Lehman financial escapade where many people lost money. Another chap was volubly shouting out his own protest in his own slightly mad way though his problem was unclear. Derrick said the Occupy Hong Kong efforts attracted all types and with all kinds of grievances.
I left the site, smiling to myself. Something was going on here, something different with a different kind of people. Hong Kong is a hard commercial city, but it has its laws, it has its ways and means. There is a wide support base for public protest in Hong Kong and an awareness of not crossing the line on both sides of the fence. It might be difficult for Occupy Hong Kong but already the seed is sown and progress is being made – inroads into the capitalist heart of darkness.
