Will the police crackdown stop the Occupy Movement? | The Wire, 2SER 107.3
Protesters in New York. Image: AP Photo/Mary Altaffer (salon.com)
The Occupy Wall Street movement this week in New York reached a turning point when a judge evicted protesters after several weeks of camping.
Occupations across the world have clashed with authorities, and organizers are now faced with the task of reevaluating how the movement will go forward, if at all.
Neda Vanovac reports the future of the movement in New York and Sydney.
Listen to the audio or read the transcript after the jump.
DR DAVID SMITH: There’s only a certain amount of attention span for this. Occupy Wall Street might have passed its peak of public sympathy. Now that the protest has gone on, people have gotten a more specific idea about what Occupy Wall Street is all about, and some people will have lost a bit of sympathy if it’s seen as overthrowing capitalism, or something like that.
NEDA VANOVAC: That’s Dr David Smith, Lecturer in American Politics and Foreign Policy at the US Studies Centre.
This week, Occupy Wall Street protesters were evicted from their base of Zuccotti Park after a judge ruled that the authorities and owners of the park were not denying protesters their constitutional right to freedom of speech by banning them from camping.
With the wind taken out of the sails of the movement, talk has turned to how the movement will shift, and in fact whether it can even stay alive.
Says Dr Smith:
DR DAVID SMITH: I think in its current form it’s not going to last. And these kinds of legal problems, these police actions, what they do is they add to frustrations that people are facing. Each of these setbacks is another thing that is going to make fewer people turn up. And already with weather getting worse, and the amount of time it’s gone on – it’s already gone on for an extraordinarily long time. Protests just don’t normally go on this long. There’s a certain amount of fatigue and these legal actions do add to the attrition and I think it’s not going to continue in this form.
NEDA VANOVAC: After the police shutdown of Occupy Melbourne and dwindling numbers at Occupy Sydney, the movement is now in a period of transition as protesters determine how best to move forward.
Dr Stewart Jackson, a researcher with the University of Sydney who has conducted research into the movement, thinks different kinds of activity will come into play.
DR STEWART JACKSON: Keeping in mind that the occupation, if you like, originally of Martin Place was over fairly quickly, that doesn’t mean that Occupy, if you like, is finished as a movement. Partly because Occupy has to be about more than occupying a place, it also has to be a state of mind. There is a movement now to shift past just being about place, it also has to be about ideas, and they can then move to different forms of activity.
NEDA VANOVAC: However, Tim Davis-Frank, spokesperson for Occupy Sydney, rejects claims that the occupation of Martin Place is over.
TIM DAVIS-FRANK: I see the occupation of Martin Place as the beating heart of Occupy Sydney. The Occupy Movement is alive and strong. We’ve had a permanent occupation in Martin Place now for over a month.
NEDA VANOVAC: He says that the movement is just setting down roots.
TIM DAVIS-FRANK: This is just the beginning. These movements springing up around the world, these groups around the world who are sleeping out on the streets, who are dedicating time and energy to try and talk about these issues, these people are impossible to silence.
NEDA VANOVAC: Dr Jackson’s field interviews with protesters at the November 5 rally in Sydney found a wider demographic range than expected.
DR STEWART JACKSON: The rally is different from the core organising groups staying at Hyde Park, but nonetheless, the people turning out to support it are aged between 14-83. So they’re covering the whole age spectrum. They’re covering political spectrums. The Australian protesters have tended to be to the left, generally to the left, we actually tested for their identification. So you’ve got 35% identifying as Greens, 16 or 17% identifiying as socialist or communist, and over 40% saying, ‘well, we don’t align with any party’. You’re starting to see quite a diverse group in there. And still 10-12% saying ‘I identify with the Labour Party, the party in government’.
NEDA VANOVAC: Criticism has been levelled at the movement in Australia, where it has been portrayed as lacking the economic imperative of the American and European movements.
Says Dr David Smith of the US Studies Centre:
DR DAVID SMITH: The economic devastation in the US has to be seen to be believed. I lived in Michigan for six and a half years and I saw the way the rug was pulled out from under millions of people. And it’s just not the same kind of pressure we face in Australia. Inequality is not such a problem in Australia as it is in the United States. And people in Australia who are feeling the pinch still have far more of a safety net than they have in the United States.
NEDA VANOVAC: Says researcher Dr Stewart Jackson:
DR STEWART JACKSON: Certainly in Australia there’s a question of relative deprivation. In the United States where you do have very high levels of unemployment comparatively to Australia, it’s not seen as being such an issue. I’ve heard comments made, like, ‘they’ve never had it so good, what are they complaining about?’ That doesn’t mean the issues don’t exist.
NEDA VANOVAC: Says Tim Davis-Frank:
TIM DAVIS-FRANK: What we’re fighting for in Australia is a global struggle to reform the international economic structures and political structures to avoid a similar catastrophe happening here, but also to find a better world where the people who put us in this situation are no longer the ones with the power to change things. That we, the people, can take back some of that responsibility and start deciding what kind of a world we want to live in and how we’re going to get there.
This story was broadcast by 2SER FM’s weekly current affairs program, Razors Edge, and award-winning current affairs program The Wire.
