To celebrate the anniversary of the beginning of the Occupy London Stock Exchange camp at St Paul’s Cathedral churchyard, many old Occupiers and new friends congregated to participate in Global Noise Day; a reminder that the movement has not gone away but continues to work on the creation of a better system, Real Democracy and equality, away from the oppression and dehumanisation produced by the prevailing economic system.
After a numbers of presentations from activists from several countries, the party took Global Noise on a march through various London landmarks including the Bank of England and City Hall.
Some supporters of Occupy London, in collaboration with Christianity Uncut, staged a dramatic intervention to highlight their call for the leadership of St Paul’s Cathedral to join the fight against rising inequality in the UK and beyond.
While Christianity Uncut unfurled a 5m x 10m banner outside the Cathedral urging the leadership of St Paul’s to “Throw out the money changers from the temple” (in reference to the funding it receives from the Banks and other City of London Corporations), four female Occupy activists staged a (less dramatic than Pussy Riot but equally heartfelt) appeal to the Cathedral to stand on the side of the poor, the excluded and the discriminated. They locked themselves on to the Cathedral pulpit, à la suffragette, and delivered their address. Reverend David Ison, dean of St Paul’s, joked that he had now a “captive audience”.
Working Groups
After the evictions several Working Groups have continued the work that began in the campsites. But without their colourful inconvenience the Media is silent. And so most people believe Occupy has disappeared. A little like Bishop Barkley’s famous “esse est percipi” (“to be is to be perceived”), that is, if we close our eyes the outside world no longer exists. Not the most interesting thing to do when a bus is hurtling towards us.
Which is what many politicians are doing, closing their eyes at the massive disintegration of the system, continuing “business as usual”, more austerity measures and concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands, not realising actually we are all in the same boat (they say it but do not really believe it) and when social crisis hits a certain level of instability nobody is safe, no matter how many millions they have tucked away in Tax Havens.
In reality the Occupy Working Groups: Real Democracy, Economy, the Environment and Energy and many others are amongst the few who are thinking about humanity as a whole, even if the slogan is “We are the 99%”. If (and when) they manage to set in motion a way to understand the most urgent priorities, we shall take an unimaginable leap forward, in science, in technology, in medicine, in spirituality, in arts and culture, in family and other relationships, in politics, in economics. And that leap will be for everyone.
A huge number of people who receive the best education, today waste their brain power in developing the most competitive advertising, or building weapons, of mass destruction and of individual destruction, or creating computer viruses to stop the enemy’s computers and obsessively studying the minutia of Stock Markets to make “loads of money” whist producing nothing of any value for themselves or the rest of humanity. Not even Jon Lennon could Imagine a moment when all that brain power, the real “brain drain”, finally points together in the direction of defeating the worst enemies of humanity. Fear of poverty, fear of illness, fear of old age, fear of death. Occupy, Indignados, les Indigné, Springs, Humanists, nonviolence activists, idealists, utopians, dreamers and doers, people who dare to imagine do not disappear when the Media close their eyes. .
