Money would be distributed to the UK Occupy movement and to encampments around the world. It's tremendous … and hopefully it will be the first of many concerts. Poets, dancers and comedians also performed to a packed room, and during the electronica and dub set lasting for two hours the crowd held up a banner which read: "This is just the beginning".
Yorke had had to cancel a previous gig for Occupy Wall Street in New York when the crowd grew too large for him to perform. Concert organiser Adam Fiztmaurice said the show had taken a fortnight to set up, but was just one cultural response to economic injustice. Cantave herself only spent one night sleeping out in the plaza. It was not always a safe space for women or female-presenting, female-identified people.
Yet by comparison with sleeping out elsewhere in the city, it was relatively safe. As one witness testifies in All Day All Week , horizontalism faltered when it met homelessness. No one had the expertise or knowledge to deal with people who had really been let down by the system they were all protesting against.
Cantave says she can remember a lively discussion about whether they were organising a protest project or providing social services. The fact is, even in the most egalitarian of settings, some people are practised in discursive dynamics and others struggle to make their voices heard. It was amazing. To the academic, it was a theory that had been put into practice.
Some of his fellow protesters were committed on a more practical level. A combination of internal tensions, exhaustion and worsening weather began to undermine morale among the occupiers and thin their numbers. Despite several attempts to re-occupy the space and others in the area, the protest effectively came to an end. It also ended an experiment in social and political organisation. However, Wall Street, and the whole financial and corporate sector, remained almost entirely untouched by the two-month long occupation.
It changed no banking practices, brought forth no corporate regulation. By that measure it was widely seen as a failure. In its own way, OWS was adjudged to be equally counterproductive. Micah White, who is mixed-raced with an African American father and a white mother, believes that the links between OWS and BLM are not just an overlap in individual protesters, but also the adoption of a model.
On this, Cantave is in agreement. And I think the Democratic party was forced to speak to that base in a more serious way. White, however, is more sceptical. Gradual change in the future at some unknown period of time. For all his revolutionary fervour, White has since gone on to address Davos — a decision he justifies with the comparison of Che Guevara addressing the UN — and is now a father and works in cryptocurrency.
At the end of her film, when Holmes admits that the Zuccotti Park eviction marked the end of OWS, there is an air of dejection in her narration.
Yet both she and Cantave remain firm believers in anarchism. Holmes is currently working on a PhD in media studies and continues to be committed to the ideals that first took her to Zuccotti Park. It can get really rough in the face of state repression. The Bank of Ideas legal team are hopeful, but they have appeal papers ready and have advised police against rash action. The exclusive DJ sets were played to an audience of Occupiers and livestreamed around the world via the Occupy London livesteam.
The performances have been recorded for an album and HD video, to be made available to help raise money for Occupy London and the wider Occupy movement. Their intervention is an important cultural response to the economic injustice that is happening and will hopefully help ensure that more people join the fight.
Massive Attack recently launched a Soundcloud page — Occupy Radio — with mixes and tracks from artists inspired by the global Occupy movement. But people taking action and applying pressure on a problem that politicians are unable to fix as they are also the shareholders.
Occupy London has called for a day of artistic expression this Saturday 10 December. We want banners, paintings, crazy designs, writings, colourful posters or just surprise us. Children and families are especially welcome. Love for each other and our troubled world.
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