Occupy International
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re:publica 201256 / 72
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Semiconductor memoryGoodness of fitLecture/Conference
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Error messageBoss CorporationInternetworkingOnline helpInsertion lossLecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
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Multiplication signDifferent (Kate Ryan album)Online helpMeeting/Interview
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Length of stayMultiplication signRule of inferenceSpring (hydrology)BitMeeting/Interview
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Square numberMoment (mathematics)Spring (hydrology)Civil engineeringLecture/Conference
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Digital photographyMultiplication signNear-ringMoment (mathematics)Sinc functionOptical disc driveDifferent (Kate Ryan album)Network topologyQuicksortSquare numberGroup actionFlow separation1 (number)Forcing (mathematics)State of matterWordGoodness of fitRight angleCASE <Informatik>WeightProduct (business)Entire function
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Multiplication signCategory of beingMedical imagingQuicksortHypermediaSimilarity (geometry)Digital photographyMeeting/Interview
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Characteristic polynomialSquare numberDigital photographyHacker (term)Sign (mathematics)10 (number)Right angleInheritance (object-oriented programming)Symbol tableCASE <Informatik>Real numberMeeting/Interview
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BitShared memoryProcess (computing)Reading (process)Meeting/InterviewLecture/Conference
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Roundness (object)Direction (geometry)Moment (mathematics)Optical disc driveGroup actionConnected spaceComputing platformEvent horizonMusical ensemble
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Direction (geometry)Group actionQuicksortContext awarenessMetropolitan area networkHeat transfer
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Heat transferLatent heatDirection (geometry)Group actionDemosceneMultiplication signPoint (geometry)BlogContext awarenessQuicksortWordInformation securityMeeting/InterviewLecture/Conference
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Information securityCASE <Informatik>Staff (military)AuthorizationMereologyNumberRight angleForcing (mathematics)Term (mathematics)Condition numberTraffic reportingSquare numberSoftware bugThomas BayesGoodness of fitMeeting/Interview
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Multiplication signString (computer science)System callExtension (kinesiology)AuthorizationPower (physics)Right angleCASE <Informatik>ArmMereologyMetropolitan area networkLecture/Conference
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Lattice (order)Representation (politics)Right angleSpeech synthesisMultiplication signMereologyInformation securityPhysical systemWage labourError messageArray data structureBitLabour Party (Malta)Meeting/InterviewComputer animation
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Lattice (order)Digital photographyElectronic program guideVideo gameFilm editingPoint (geometry)Focus (optics)Multiplication signWordContext awarenessDirection (geometry)Group actionRight angleVapor barrierVideoconferencingMereologyUniqueness quantificationGoodness of fitLecture/Conference
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Multiplication signGroup actionArithmetic meanFormal languageData miningFigurate numberGame controllerQuicksortLattice (order)Peer-to-peerComputer animationLecture/Conference
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CASE <Informatik>ArmFrustrationMultiplication signAuthorizationCivil engineeringMoment (mathematics)Coefficient of determinationForcing (mathematics)BitContext awarenessPower (physics)MereologySocial classQuicksortFormal languageLevel (video gaming)Right angleOnline chatMetreSelf-organizationRule of inferenceWeb pageShared memoryCanonical ensembleReading (process)Computer animation
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Product (business)Physical systemPower (physics)QuicksortFamilyInheritance (object-oriented programming)Forcing (mathematics)VotingWage labourContext awarenessExecution unitArithmetic meanInformation securityUniqueness quantificationSocial classRight angleMereologyLattice (order)Hacker (term)Twitter1 (number)Speech synthesisPoint (geometry)Phase transitionCASE <Informatik>Moment (mathematics)Insertion lossWaveMultiplication signGodWordExterior algebraTerm (mathematics)Partition (number theory)Electronic mailing listFacebookConservation lawDifferent (Kate Ryan album)Instance (computer science)Open sourceOnline helpSoftware testingState of matterRepresentation (politics)Square numberPlanningDrop (liquid)Parameter (computer programming)Interactive televisionFingerprintAuthorizationFrequencyArmMessage passingOrder (biology)Food energyMathematicsOffice suiteBitAreaTelecommunicationDependent and independent variablesKey (cryptography)Cartesian coordinate systemThumbnailProcess (computing)Rule of inferenceStrategy gameScaling (geometry)Goodness of fitLecture/Conference
Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:16
So, hello, everyone. Nice to see you all. Here I am. They call me Bicycle Mark. If you
00:22
find that to be unprofessional, you don't have to call me that. You can call me Mark. And I'm giving a talk today on Occupy. We gave it this title, Occupy International. Pretty good title. Doesn't really tell me that much other than Occupy is International, which we kind of knew. The strange thing among the many strange
00:41
things about giving a talk about Occupy is that no one has any business telling you what Occupy is. You're supposed to decide that for yourself. So you should completely discredit everything I say in about 40 minutes. What I am curious about when we get down to it is your own experience with Occupy and perhaps somewhere in what I talk about, it
01:06
triggers an idea or maybe a memory, maybe an exact opposite experience, which is also possible. So we'll get to that at the end. I know normally we ask questions and that kind of thing. Myself, I was introduced as among other
01:22
things a journalist, which is basically what I am. The problem with the era we live in is that a journalist doesn't tell the whole story. You could be the kind that pushes a pen. I almost said a pen, but nobody pushes a pen. I'm the kind that works alone apparently or with my audience directly without having a boss. If anything, the Internet
01:46
is my boss, which is a terrible boss to have really if you think about it. Except that you can start really late and stay up late as well if you want. I don't know much about Occupy. I live in the Netherlands. I live in Amsterdam, and I accompanied
02:05
Occupy Amsterdam most days of the week. I did not have a tent, nor did I feel like having a tent. I live so near to Occupy. I was pleased to Occupy from about 11 a.m. until 10 p.m. here and there. But I went to visit Occupy as often as possible, help
02:24
out when I could. Sometimes, like a scumbag journalist, I didn't help, and I just watched everything happen, which is one of those problems that Occupy can have sometimes. So the problem with explaining Occupy International primarily from having been in Occupy Amsterdam
02:46
is that it could be a quite different story from New York to Amsterdam to London to Australia to Nigeria. But I'll try anyway. When I talk about the United States, I'm speaking about the country I was clearly born in somehow or at least lived in for a long time based
03:04
on my accent. Specifically, New York is the place I was raised, New Jersey if we really get into it. Same thing. It is. And so that's another place and a whole experience that was very close to my heart, although I didn't experience it in person.
03:24
There's me. Now let's move on. We had Occupy, but before there was Occupy, if you want to go back in time a little bit, especially if you've never heard about it, you know, kind of like a jury that somehow they always find a jury that's never heard of the guy
03:41
who murdered all these people and is supposed to be giving a judgment, maybe you're like the jury, you didn't know that Occupy happened, then I'm the first one to tell you about it. So before Occupy, there was Los Indignados, and actually before the Indignados, there was the Arab Spring. Before that, there was a lot of history as well, but I'm
04:01
just going to start from 2010. In December of 2010, you had the gentleman who unfortunately set himself on fire in Tunisia, I say unfortunately, I don't want anyone to get hurt, which in the end was one of the catalysts that sparked a movement throughout North Africa
04:23
and the Middle East, known now as the Arab Spring. A lot of people took great inspiration, still do, from what was happening in Tunisia, in Egypt, in Libya, in Bahrain, to a lesser extent, in Syria, I suppose you can take inspiration. I say I suppose because it's
04:43
very, you don't want people, again, to get hurt, that's the rule that I always want to come back to. So we're talking about Arab Spring, that's the end of 2010, 2011 in May, several squares, maybe you were there in Spain, started getting occupied, Madrid
05:02
being the principle place where this was happening, but certainly not the only one. They called themselves Los Indignados, I never read the book, the little red book written by a French gentleman whose name escapes me at the moment, I will read it one day, or perhaps there'll be a short film about it and then I'll watch. But so they
05:20
adopted this name, again, slightly inspired by not just the Arab Spring, but by Spanish Republican with a small R, or is it a big R, small R I'll say, Republican history which was rebellious and of course crushed by Franco and the military that Franco put together,
05:41
during the Spanish Civil War. Anyway, I got lost for a second there. They were inspired by their history, recent and the long past, and then in September, September 17th in fact, which is some kind of significant date because I believe the Constitution or one of those rags that we don't pay attention to anymore was written, and so September 17th
06:03
in New York City, near Wall Street, a camp began now known as Occupy Wall Street or OWS if you can no longer speak in real words. So I put my four photos because the fourth is where it connects to my world, and that of course was in Amsterdam. That was October
06:22
15th, and actually, since we're in Europe, many of you may remember October 15th better than you do September 17th, unless you had a baby on that day, and then you probably remember September 17th, because it's memorable. So October 15th was an international day of action. I know that here in Berlin there were definitely Occupy protests. I don't know
06:45
if you call them, they're not protesting Occupy. Occupy is protest, right? In Amsterdam, two or three thousand people out on what's called the financial square, Bursplein, one of the most insignificant squares for most people in the Netherlands, but symbolically
07:02
very important, similar to Zuccotti Park, a useless square that one day became important, otherwise a very ugly place in my opinion, cement and a few trees struggling to come out of the ground. So this was October 15th. Around the world it was International Occupy Day. I have to admit it was damn impressive, and I admit it because I'm a cynic
07:23
sometimes, and I looked around and from Australia to Israel to Portland, Oregon, where there are always protests, people were out in force, and you could definitely say at that very moment, this is an international movement. An international movement in the tradition
07:44
that we haven't seen in a while, but in the tradition of say, maybe the anti-war protests of 03, when a country called Iraq was invaded. Maybe, I don't know, I missed the anti-nuclear protests in Germany. I don't know how big those were. Maybe that's the last time we saw something this big. Vietnam War is often compared to Occupy. Choose your
08:06
historical moment. For me it was the 90s and the WTO protests in Seattle. I was just becoming politically aware back then. This was one of the last times I remember so many people being so passionate about something or several issues all balled up into one
08:22
in this case. After October 15th, of course, it becomes a different story somewhat, because then it becomes a question of, oh, wait, it's not just a one-day protest. These people are staying, some of them. Many didn't. Maybe you went home. I came back the next day after a good sleep, and in some cities around the world, people stayed. Most famous
08:44
of course is New York. Closer to my home in Amsterdam, besides Amsterdam, which stayed indeed, Brussels tried to stay for a little while before being forcibly removed. We inherited some of the refugees from Brussels who came up to Occupy Amsterdam and sent many greetings
09:02
and told these odd sort of protest war stories about how they were cleared of their camp and so forth. So my experience is based on what they said about Occupy Brussels. A couple of camps took hold. We know that London stayed. New York, of course, stayed. Portland, Oakland, one of the most famous ones, also stayed. Many disappeared. I mentioned
09:27
Brussels is one I remember well disappearing. Paris didn't even have one, and you can argue with me on that. I looked around, and they were very well hidden. Of course, Paris falls into that category of the indignados, because I know it's not Spain, but they
09:42
were at that time similar protests to what had happened in Spain. So maybe there's a Belgium, and it becomes Occupy, and if you go down south, it translates to indignados, but they're very connected politically and the way they operate. So the camps that stayed,
10:04
many people will remember, by the way, Occupy Rome just on October 15th that turned, seemingly, according to the media, very violent. The images suggest that it was quite a rough day in Rome. Maybe you were there. I'm curious. I just saw that photo and got
10:21
distracted because it was very memorable. So these camps took hold, and camps had a few characteristics. Maybe you never experienced them. One simple one is tents. Everybody remembers tents, and tents may seem very standard to you every summer or every hacker camp every two years, but for a protest, it was really something that everybody would
10:44
bring a tent, that the sign of a protest was now not just going to be a placard or a poster, but it was going to be a bunch of mostly decathlon-purchased tents in a square seen here in London, I believe. So that's one symbol. You had the kitchen,
11:02
right? Everybody could eat. I always ran into people at Occupy that maybe they cared about the issues, but they were also very glad to get a meal, and in the case of Amsterdam, there's lots of people that are jonesing for some food real quick, and so they came out to Occupy, of course, as well, but there was the kitchen run by the people.
11:21
The food came from donations. If you live in a city, amazingly, people do still care sometimes, and there was a lot of food to be had. I know in New York, you had corporate sponsors, Ben and Jerry's, among other famous names. We didn't have such famous names in Amsterdam. We just had local people who'd sent food. Worked very well for soup, pancakes,
11:42
and a few medium-healthy treats. There's the kitchen. Then you had Occupy College, an odd name, also because it gets a little bit crossed with occupying your college, and some colleges are in need of Occupy, and that actually has been happening since Occupy really brought protest back into a practice or something that is more often done, but Occupy
12:06
College was, in fact, during the day, because Occupy was going on day after day, there would be an educational program, so yeah, you're hanging out. You're playing guitar. You're eating some soup or some Ben and Jerry's, but you're also going to learn something or you're going to share knowledge. If you have something to teach, teach it. If somebody
12:24
comes with a specific experience, they can share it. I remember one odd moment. Nobody will remember this name, but Mike Gravel came out of the Occupy College tent to a round of applause, and I thought, wasn't he the senator from Alaska that ran for libertarian
12:41
president on a legalized weed platform? There he was at Occupy College in Amsterdam giving a lecture, and I just thought, wow, these guys got connections, and I shook his hand and said, hello, sir, and he had no idea who I was. So there was Occupy College, and then there were the daily actions, direct actions, often called. Of course, you had
13:02
different committees in your Occupy, so you had the committee in charge of the general food and festivities when there were festivities, so events, there could be music. You had the people who were in charge of direct action, and that was to decide, yes, from our little home base camp, we'll go somewhere and we'll hold some kind of direct action
13:24
to raise awareness. One of the more famous internationally organized direct actions was Bank Transfer Day. I don't know if any of you participated. I'm still working on it. I've now transferred to two environmentally sound banks. I think I overdid it, to be honest,
13:41
for a man with very little money. I now have two ecologically sound banks. I'm sort of choosing, but there was a day where everybody would coordinate moving from a corporate bank to a, well, in the United States, you have credit unions, which, yeah, haven't committed any major crimes that are as well publicized as Bank of America, for example. Bank of
14:05
America, by the way, started as a very small, innocent bank in California, I believe, and only later became a terrible, large conglomerate. Anyway, so you had Bank Transfer Day, you had general occupations or protests in front of specific institutions that had somehow
14:21
committed a violation during this financial crisis, and that was one of the activities that came out of Occupy. Here's a scene from Occupy ING, or Direct Action in Amsterdam, where a very simple idea organized at Occupy Amsterdam, which was to occupy the bank, make
14:45
it difficult for them to go about their business, try to raise some awareness about the activities of this bank, maybe among customers that otherwise weren't at Occupy, but were going to check on their money. Who goes to a bank to check their money?
15:00
Anyway, somebody does. My grandfather does. He loves to go to the bank and argue with people. It's hard to find anyone to argue with at a bank any more. No people. So then there's a sort of, I don't want to say dark side, sometimes the word just comes out, but there were problems. I don't know if you experienced problems at Occupy,
15:24
it's hard to find a lot of documented proof that isn't just slander from some Occupy hating blog. I'm telling you that I love Occupy and the problems concerned me constantly. Maybe I'm just a worrier. If you spent any time with security, because there was
15:40
of course a security committee and people who were in charge of making sure that everybody was all right, that nobody was stealing or injuring anyone in any way, keeping the peace because we can't exactly rely on the police, or we didn't want to, for that. And in the case of an Occupy Amsterdam, I mean security issues were drunkenness, generally
16:04
people fighting, which happened very often. It's kind of attached to the drunkenness in my opinion. You had theft, which can happen when you're in a public place where people just pass through. My understanding of some Occupies is there was a lot more under, you could see who was coming and going. It depends on what kind of setup you
16:25
had. But security problems were one of the darker sides, in my opinion, of what I saw at my Occupy. It wasn't a disaster. It was just hard to keep these things at bay and then how do you enforce them. And the guy that got into an angry drunken fight that got taken out of Occupy today, he comes back the next day. And we're not a police
16:46
force. We're not looking to hold people in pens. So the idea is, you know, if you don't want to be here, don't be here. But people actually wanted to be there and still fuck around, which was kind of a problem. You know, then there were other concerns and this has been the bane of most Occupies, ultimately what brought many down in terms
17:03
of the occupation, public safety, right? You can always, one of the classic ways to get rid of a squat, especially in Amsterdam, was that the fire department declares it somehow unsafe. So even though legally you might have the right to occupy something, the fire department says, you could, but it's not safe. So we have to remove you
17:22
for your own good. And this was a constant thing with the authorities that there are too many tents on the square. It has to be this many numbers. I realize this might be very Dutch in some ways. But you had similar in Zuccotti Park where it became about health. There were rats, maybe. I wasn't there to see any, but there were reports.
17:44
It's not sanitary. And then there was a concern for cleaning. You had the cleaning committee, but still, you know, Occupy DC was famous for apparently also unsanitary conditions. Bed bugs heard of. Were these things real? I don't know. But were they used as a good enough excuse to mess with occupiers on the part of the authorities?
18:03
Yes. So we had these issues in Amsterdam which, in my opinion, ultimately have brought it down. And now here's the weird thing. And I'm going to be hated by anybody that's watching from Occupy Amsterdam because, not anybody, but what was that? Oh, all right. Shouting. I'm open to shouting and throwing things, just not glass. There was, where was I?
18:27
Oh, yeah. So they gave in sometimes to what the authorities said. I mean, what are you going to do? You don't want to be evicted completely because as we saw in the end, if the police really wanted to, they did physically come and drag you out of Occupy.
18:46
Now, I know this is a controversial thing to say because if we stand up and if we link arms, people power. And I love people power. I'm interested in people power. I'm glad people believe in it even more than I do to some extent. But what I've seen over the last year
19:03
and years is that when it comes down to it, if a government wants to kick your ass, they often find a way. And I'm talking about police in this case, but let's say the government's pulling some strings there. So there were concessions made that said, all right, we'll have less tents. Okay, we'll make fire lanes. Actually, that makes sense, right? So we do that.
19:23
Then more concessions start to come as time goes on. Winter came and December was a bad month for a lot of occupies. Not just because it was cold, but what I saw was in the United States a coordinated effort to clear them out in all the cities, right? There's this famous mayoral phone call where all the mayors of certain cities spoke about how are we going to get rid of
19:46
these kids. I realize it's not just kids occupying, by the way. But mayors don't know. They don't know anything. They're mayors. Unless you have a cool mayor. So they had this phone call and they decided to coordinate the removal of as many occupies as possible around December,
20:01
mid-December. This would be around the time where the famous overnight eviction of Zuccotti Park happens. Around that time, you had several incursions into the Occupy Oakland, which ended quite in a lot of violence, mostly violence on the part of occupiers getting beat up. But some say occupiers fighting back.
20:24
So Occupy Amsterdam at this point, and it's hard to find a photo of this, by the way, which in a way is like, why aren't we being honest, is mostly just a poll to be honest with you here, because I didn't realize this. I stopped going around January, and I went by
20:41
last month, and there's a poll with flowers, with some signs, and information about where the General Assembly is going on, which it still is. So here's the weird part. Occupies that got evicted, they still exist online and offline. In the case of Amsterdam,
21:00
we still meet in a bunker, a fantastic bunker near my house, and we have the General Assembly. I didn't talk about the General Assembly. We'll get to it in a second. So the place itself became somewhat less important, which takes us a little bit to what is the future of Occupy, which is what you all want to know, and I can't answer.
21:22
You go online, you continue to have the meetings, you don't occupy the square necessarily, because that became impossible to some extent. Also because the idea was in that square, besides education and eating, there would be debate, and there was debate, discussion, try and picture what to do next in order to alleviate this situation, the financial thing,
21:44
the lack of being represented in government, all the problems we know that occupiers were concerned about. So these meetings still go on, you just don't have the square in most cases anymore. I know there are some places where the square continues. Someone here is from Utrecht. I think even including today, there's still a tent or two
22:03
or three, maybe more, but there were never more than, I don't know, 20 over there. So some occupiers do continue, but it's not so much about that tent or those tents, it's more about the discussions that are taking place, wherever they can take place, about what to do next, about protest, direct action, plans, making plans.
22:27
So let's do the General Assembly for a second, because this is one of the legacies of Occupy. On a really simple level, if you think about it, Occupy means something quite different than it used to. Me, I used to think about Occupy as that thing that the Israelis do in Palestine,
22:43
that's an occupation, or the Americans did in Iraq, that's an occupation. But we've kind of now taken the name to a new level. Not to forget the crimes in the present and the past, but Occupy, almost in a joking way, has become a word that means resist, protest. I'm not
23:02
going to let that go. I have friends who always talk about occupying some friend's house for a couple of days to have a party. Occupy itself became sort of this urban dictionary word to be used for whatever the hell we want. Maybe that's good, maybe that's bad, but that's a legacy. The other thing is the tent. I've noticed this in a lot of protests.
23:20
They may not even be called Occupy, but people bring tents. When we occupied the bank, the ING branch, there were tents outside the bank. It's kind of like a calling card. The movement continues, this tent is part of this occupation. We're just not on the square anymore. Simple, yes. Anecdotal, maybe, but it's part of the legacy.
23:43
The other thing, and one of my favourites, of course, is the mic check. Mic checked has become a verb. To get mic checked. Spot got mic checked at the park today. So to get mic checked, of course, comes from the tradition of the way meetings were held, general assembly meetings
24:02
were held at Occupy. It stemmed from the fact that you couldn't have, of course, a megaphone or anything that makes you loud, because that would be somehow an offence against the city of New York or any other city. So instead of doing that, you do the mic check. You've all seen it. One person says something, everybody repeats it, so it becomes louder.
24:22
Now, mic check becomes a tool during speeches, during fancy gala dinners with political representatives that perhaps you don't care for in general and have committed some crimes, and you coordinate amazingly, perhaps during some of those general assembly meetings that still go on, that everybody will, at the same time, someone will shout mic check,
24:43
and from all over this room, I could get mic checked right now. That would be kind of weird. I'm picturing it. Hang on. Okay. And you do your mic check and you make your speech, and security goes a little bit apeshit because they want to take you down, but you're saying it too, so we need more security to take everybody down. So you can mic check someone
25:02
for a while. This is part of the legacy of Occupy, a new tool, maybe a weird tool, but still useful and used when it comes to protest. You know, in the days of labour strikes in the auto industry in the United States, sit-down strike was the thing. You know,
25:21
sit-down, someone must have invented it. The first guy did a sit-down strike, everybody's what are you doing? This is a sit-down strike. You're lazy. No, no, everybody sits, and suddenly you can't move these people because they're sitting. It's much harder. And they've since figured it out, the cops, they now know how to get you out of sitting down. So now we have mic check, that's the new sit-down strike of our era,
25:43
and in 20, 30 years, kids will probably say, mic check is lame, that's easy to mess up, or they will have some device that will kill your mic check somehow. So this is the tool of our era. Enjoy it. And by the way, about this General Assembly meeting, and I'm not here to bad-mouth Occupy, even if I do it here and there,
26:04
General Assembly meetings were something quite interesting. They're often listed, of course, as one of the very unique aspects of Occupy. And so every night, in Amsterdam it was around six o'clock, there would be the General Assembly meeting. Everybody is welcome, different committees report what's up, how's it going, the financial committee will
26:24
list how much money has been donated, transparency, right? And everybody can bring up a point, and if everybody shows up to the meeting and wants to bring up a point, that can be a long ass meeting. Such is life, right? If you want everybody to participate, you're going to have to be patient. But it made for some very difficult meetings in my lazy opinion. You have to be
26:46
there for so long, and it's hard at some point to end it. So General Assembly is often listed as the strength of an Occupy camp, given it's interesting, it's useful, it's democratic in some way,
27:01
direct democratic, but it's also a pain in the ass. And anybody that doesn't admit that sometimes is lying to themselves. I'm not saying I have a solution. I'm not saying I have a solution to improving a General Assembly. Maybe those discussions that I missed out on when I went home to sleep were working on this issue, in fact. But that's the weird aspect. We talk
27:23
very highly of General Assemblies, rightfully so, but we often don't talk about how much of a pain in the ass that shit was. And maybe it's one of those things like taking your medicine, you gotta do it, doesn't taste good. So maybe that's the answer, you know, it's part of taking your medicine, your democratic medicine. So we all know that these camps eventually
27:44
ended and a lot of people are looking around, the critics and the supporters and everybody in between, in 2012, what's gonna happen? We just had May Day, I know it's a very fun time here in Berlin. Back in the U.S., it's a pretty boring day normally, they have
28:00
no idea what it all means. No, some people know. But Occupy announced that this should be the day of reawakening. Protests happened all over the world again, especially, of course, in the U.S. context, but not only. And the idea was that Occupy will show itself again. And then a lot of people wanna know, oh, are they gonna take Zuccotti Park, cut to
28:23
photo of Zuccotti Park, live video, bunch of cops and barriers and, you know, it's Zuccotti Park, it's still there. So a lot of people wonder if we're gonna go back to where we were last year. And I would answer that that wasn't the point, but that's
28:41
just my opinion. The point wasn't to repeat, you know, rinse and repeat, winter comes, we come back. The point was to move on to something else. We've seen hints of what something else is because nowadays, whether it's a bank or an insurance company of some kind, you do have direct actions that happen. These are organized somewhat out of the Occupy
29:03
movement, those that are still meeting online or offline. So you have more focused targets, if I can use a more military word with apologies. You have specific places that you're going to protest and you're creative, perhaps inspired by Occupy Way, you're maybe gonna use mic
29:22
check when possible, you're gonna bring a tent, you're gonna stay, that's something that was brought back with Occupy that people don't just protest for the day, although some people do, that you stay there, you sleep there, your body, like a sit-down strikes of old, is going to remain in this place. So we can still use this, and it is being
29:40
used, in targeted actions. Will they occupy a space and sleep and live and eat there again? We don't know. Maybe that's happened in the time I've been busy with Republica and I missed out on it. By all means, let's talk about it afterwards. But Occupy lives on. It lives on in stories, occasional appearances, like a superhero that
30:04
you know, appears and then leaves and then reappears. The language remains, besides Occupy, there's the, we are the 99%. Even in countries where I don't think the wealth gap is 99% to 1%, people still adopted this saying. I remember in the beginning, I
30:20
saw many Dutch neighbors of mine who are not very political going, I don't think 99% in the Netherlands control the wealth. And I was like, yeah, yeah, give or take a few percents, you know, come on. And so the slogan itself is more powerful than the actual facts, and I'm not saying that we're lying about something. No, 99% was a very
30:40
successful way to look at what's going on in the world, and it really is worldwide anyway, even if the percentage isn't exact. So this is a powerful and lasting figure that still gets used. Occupy, yes, yeah. I mentioned Mic Check, this remains a tool that will continue to appear, especially in a campaign year, and has sort of haunted,
31:03
especially the Republican candidates. Sarah Palin at the great, what is it, CPAC meeting, she got Mic Checked. Everybody, you know what the answer to Mic Check is, have you noticed? It's sing the Star-Spangled Banner, which is the American anthem. Very weird answer to Mic Check. So here we see some protest battle going on. You
31:21
Mic Check me, I sing a shitty song. It is a shitty song. In the American context, I notice, and maybe I'm looking for it, but you find politicians, the greatest among the president at the moment, who will more often now talk about, he likes to say, people doing their share. That there was a time when
31:47
and it is a divisive issue, but there was a time in the US where you couldn't criticize the wealthy. Everybody wants to be wealthy, so they'll never talk shit about them. Things have changed a little, and I like to think that has to do with Occupy, and you'll find Obama is one of the people whose language is much more towards criticizing
32:06
the rich, even if in practice he's not really harming them, but in rhetoric, Occupy, I think, has had an influence on his talks, and even on a lower level, mayors, I mean, there were a few mayors that would speak out against Occupy. They were scared to do it. You know, in Amsterdam, the mayor came by on his bike with his kid,
32:24
and he came to talk, hi, you know, hi, do shake hands, chat with the occupiers, you know, fucking squatters with 20 dogs are talking with the mayor and his kid on a bike, and you could see that whether or not he liked Occupy, he might have hated it, but he could not come out and say it
32:42
because this was a force to be reckoned with in his city, and in any case, I mean, the mayor of Oakland, I don't know how she's doing now, but she was hated for the way Oakland handled Occupy, or at least the authorities handled Occupy, so a lot of politicians have shifted. I don't know if they're gonna stay that way, but Obama certainly seems to stay on that
33:01
page, borrowing a bit from Occupy, being critical of the wealthy, talking class war a little bit, even though you're not supposed to do that, and then immediately he'll say, I'm not talking about class war, but I find that a lot of the rhetoric in politics, especially in the US but not limited, has changed a
33:21
bit thanks to Occupy. Part of it is fear, and maybe part of it is people feeling like they get it, you know, in the case of even the people who didn't go to Occupy, I think one of the great successes is that if you talk about the financial collapse or the financial crisis that we're in, they're in, all over the world we're in, people now know a bit more about
33:41
whose fault it is. There may have been a time where we go, I don't know, it's an economy, it goes up and down, but now we blame banks. We blame certain large corporations that benefited from certain government policies. It's not only an Occupy success, but it's very related. We've become much more, we know who to hate, or at least to target with our protests
34:03
and our frustrations. Yeah, focused, focused, more focused. I don't know, you cannot evict an idea. This is often said, and I don't even know how to argue against it, but they can evict people, and they do it all
34:21
the time, and that is a very scary thing. I was speaking with a lawyer recently who handles civil liberties at Guantanamo Bay, among other places, Brave Guy, and he was talking about how what we don't notice, and has been happening before Occupy and after Occupy, is that there are more and more, of course, rules about where you can protest,
34:41
how you can protest, what time, what it can look like, and so police have more power than ever. This may not always be true country to country. I know Germany is a big defender of individual rights, freedoms, very good for you, but I find that one of the other
35:00
legacies of Occupy is that the cops also get more toys to play with. I mean, I know we've been talking about what sound canon for a long time, but they used them, and we thought rubber bullets was something, but bean bags, those have been around for a few years, but still, they're all coming out of the closet, all these great sort of tools that they've wanted to use on people,
35:21
they have more power to use them, sometimes with legal backing, sometimes with hardly any legal backing, but it doesn't matter, they use them anyway, the case goes to trial, someone that got injured at Occupy wins, or it gets thrown out, but the cops in that moment are able to really hurt people and clear people out, so I understand completely you cannot evict an idea, and I suppose
35:43
that's the most important thing, but what scares me a bit in the aftermath of Occupy is you can evict people, and when they really want to, they do it, and people may be horrified, the public that isn't occupying, but do they really do anything about it? Maybe the next time we vote, but generally,
36:00
people just kind of lived with it, you know? That's my take on it. I want to also talk about something, and this is a problem I have in my own work, and I don't know, we need a good psychologist to really get into it, this tiny, tiny graphic that you can't read says that old annoying proverb that probably isn't really a proverb, it's like when you get
36:21
a tattoo in Chinese, and you don't know Chinese, and you have no idea what you have on your arm, but they tell you it's courage. The proverb is may you live in interesting times, right? And I suppose all times are interesting, but one of our problems, I think, as protesters, as journalists, is that we really want to live in interesting times. I mean, we're working hard trying to make sure we live in interesting
36:42
times, and so every little protest, sorry, even large protests get compared, you know, I did it in the beginning of this discussion, they get compared to the Vietnam War era, and maybe back then, it was similar. We often want so badly to live at a turning point, because one, we need
37:02
a turning point, and two, it would be awesome to have lived it. So one of my problems with even me talking about Occupy, or talking to occupiers about Occupy, or talking about arch conservatives about Occupy, is that there's this battle between acknowledging that a moment is significant, because in the end it is, but then an
37:21
argument about how significant it is. This, you know, many people will say Occupy is the beginning of something huge, and it's like, we don't really know that, you know, no, no, no, there's a plan. Any day now they're gonna unleash Occupy drones, or they're gonna drop ice cream on everybody, like, there may not be a plan. You know,
37:41
this may not be the interesting time we're hoping for. That doesn't mean we should abandon it. I just find that influences everything we do. That's a bit, comes with being in the Twitter, Facebook, everything is recorded, I'm holding an iPhone this whole time, which is ridiculous. We live in this era where we're pretty sure this is important, so it must be important.
38:04
And I don't know how to dissect that, I mean, maybe by comparing history, I don't know, but it comes to mind a lot, we want this to be important so bad, but is it? And one way to measure is, do changes occur? So I leave that up to you to keep an eye out for changes occurring. I tried to bring some small ones
38:22
today. And upon the crying of a lovely young child, that's the basic idea, you know, the future is unwritten. We want to act like we know what's going to happen, you come to a talk and you want this guy who might know something, might not, to tell you what's going to happen and you want to disagree or agree.
38:41
We love doing this, but we really don't know. One thing for sure, after a period of not much going on, a lot of shit is going on. You can quote me on that. A lot of shit is going on and more shit may come. And that's good, it's better than nothing.
39:00
So it is an exciting time to live. Where it all leads, we do not know. But will Occupy come back and look exactly like last year? Absolutely not. How could it? There's just too many forces that have changed and shifted and don't you want to do something new anyway and move on and push forward. So the future is, as I believe Joe Strummer said
39:23
once, the future is unwritten and maybe that's a good thing. Occupy is not finished. Keep an eye out. You know, they're out there. Insert good ending to speech.
39:47
Thank you so much, BicycleMark. Does anybody have any questions, any remarks? Do you want to say how they should pose their questions? Well, what I would like to do is, before you get on hating me, which is, you know. No, what I would
40:00
really like is, I think a lot of people lived Occupy, perhaps in Germany or wherever you're from, we used to get messages from Occupy Frankfurt, they would send a banner. I was like, oh, a banner. I would be curious about your own story about how you lived Occupy, if you even visited for a day or stayed in a tent, as I did not. I'm curious about your story about Occupy and maybe how you see it.
40:22
Okay, so we have 15 minutes for that. Does anybody want to start? Hi, I'm from Berlin. I was born on September 17th, so I stayed home and watched this and I've been watching ever since and I live in Berlin. I was curious, Oakland protests, all of them, you know, and I was wondering how much you think the petition
40:42
of grievances might have politically impacted in the US and my second question is, how much do you think the unions or labor is involved in this? I remember in Oakland there was a lot of, oh, it's our protest, what are you doing here? Like, you know, that kind of thing. Has that gotten any better? And then you see a lot, you know, so, thank you.
41:01
Okay, you give me a question, I don't have a question. The first part, though, was petition of grievances, so people after, oh, so how effective have the grievances of Occupy, how have they been, the growing list of, I've seen it at different phases,
41:21
but probably haven't seen the last list. So the question is, you know, yeah, yeah. All right, I'll answer the second part first. Because, yeah, I remember the petition of grievances, but I haven't thought about it since then.
41:42
The second part of the question was labor. So I don't know if that, I mean, we didn't have that as much in Amsterdam. There were meetings, you know, and they said, oh, labor has said on this particular day, because Saturday was a big day for Occupy, so there would be extra people coming. And there would be music, and labor would show up
42:00
on that day, I think they did maybe more than, at least once, I remember. So their members, who may not have been part of Occupy at all, would show up. In the US, it was a much bigger deal. Labor joined Occupy, and this gave it another sense of importance and legitimacy, because you want to be working class, let's have more working class. It definitely helps to be more, you know, encompassing,
42:24
but the bummer about labor in general, I mean, I don't want to go out too far on a limb, but is that they're losing battles left and right in the actual workplace. So it's a movement that is already struggling to remain significant, and you know, you can question how much power they have anymore anyway,
42:41
especially politically. So, I think it was great. I mean, right, okay, I'm almost forgetting that already. But, yeah, no doubt, a labor union of any kind, or as many as possible, joining Occupy has been important, probably will happen again in the future. But there's another problem going on,
43:00
which is the power of labor, or how people relate, regular people who so many now aren't in unions, relate to a labor union. I mean, that's something I'm actually been thinking a lot about lately, the future of labor and Occupy. So we have another question or remark. An experience, I'm Ingrid, I lived for three weeks in October in New York, and joined the occupation
43:22
as part of the kitchen team, and... Thanks for the food. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a lot of work. And to me as a European, it was a bit weird. I mean, I was there on a holiday, and for three weeks, I haven't seen much of New York, only Succati Park,
43:40
I have to admit, so yeah. And to me, I felt there were a lot of problems, like, I mean, it was a massive magic time there, the greatest of my last decade, I think I can say that. But there was also problems. For example, we couldn't get the kitchen to get more ecological, or people bringing up donations
44:05
from Dunkin Donuts, and I mean, it was a bit, it seemed, you know, the energy on the square, the efforts made were amazing, you know,
44:21
the passion of grandmas coming up with their homemade cookies, saying, keep up the good work, you know, distribute this. That was great, but then there was a lack of, okay, let's make it matter, let's make it ecological,
44:40
let's make it vegetarian, at least, you know? There's, in the kitchen, you know, people come up, it was a protest, but they come up to you in a consumerist attitude, saying like, I want oranges, give me oranges. And that was, I don't know, yeah. You know, one of the big problems I experienced was, and I come from a family of therapists and social workers,
45:02
mental illness, I mean, we have a lot of homeless in all cities now in the world, who don't always have places to go, or even if they do, they, you know, we don't reach them and Occupy actually attracted a lot of people with mental illnesses, and then that was another problem, because you had people who were just volunteer security, you know, very friendly guys and girls,
45:23
and here you had people with mental illnesses that were, or difficult to deal with, or had some of their own problems, but they didn't know how to treat these people or how to handle it, so it was almost like we needed an emergency psychological unit, and occasionally a psychologist would stand up and say, I'll go with him or her.
45:41
But this was one issue I noticed a lot. For me, like, back in New York, it's harder to drink on the street, not to pick on alcohol, but alcohol was one of the banes of Occupy Amsterdam, at least, because people were too drunk sometimes. Not everybody, obviously. And it's one of those old, there must be a rule of thumb, and it's not Murphy's Law,
46:03
but that for every one person in these situations that is trying and is doing volunteer work and is listening, and there's, what, six that are just hanging out, and it's okay to just hang out, but then some even do worse and make it hard to exist.
46:22
And this was one of the great problems we have in society, and I'm not getting all, pick yourself up and get a job, but occasionally I had that feeling. They're part of the movement. They're part of the movement, and it's not like, that's a very weird strategy to exclude them.
46:45
They were not the problem, I think. Was more problematic the way the street gets diggin' up in the middle of the night, or in the middle of the General Assembly, just out of nowhere and stuff like that.
47:01
You know, by authorities. Oh yes, yeah, yeah. An interesting aspect was in some occupies, I mean, in all occupies there was some communication between cops and occupiers, I hope. In the case of the Netherlands, you had a lot of communication. I got to talk all the time with the police officer that was sort of responsible for Occupy,
47:21
and he would walk through, and I always thought that was key, especially with the people who can kick your ass and have the authority to do it, legal authority. It's good to show them that you know they're human, and they know you're human, and no one wants to get beaten. And I really liked the sort of interaction between the police and Occupy in the Dutch case,
47:43
but when push came to shove, the Dutch police would do whatever they're ordered to do as they have many times, and they become no friend of ours. But yeah, I know what you're saying. There was some discussion about whether or not the homeless should be welcome. I remember this discussion in a general assembly, and a representative of the homeless stood up and said,
48:01
we've discussed it with the committee for this and that, and we'll stay, and we'll try and keep an eye out for people who need extra help. And I was like, wow, representative from the homeless. Not bad. He doesn't get invited to city council ever, but he's here with us. Thanks though. Hi. I'm from Germany, but I live in Spain, and I noticed the movement last May,
48:26
and I visited the one in Barcelona, in Tarragona, and also in Granada because of my work. And I found it quite impressive to see this in different cities happening, especially as you mentioned it as well, the, let's say the patience and the respect
48:42
for each other in the general assembly to listen to each other for hours and hours with kids, with lots of people, and this strength that was in there was really impressive, especially maybe some of you have noticed there was also some violence in Barcelona last May then,
49:05
and afterwards more people came to the square, and more people were very, well, Pacific, non-violent, and this was also part of this strength that you could see there. My question is, now the elections last year,
49:24
not only because of the protests in Spain, but yeah, they brought the conservatives into power. It was their turn. And I talked to a professor from Granada who actually said, well, it's beautiful what they do, and we did it some decades ago as well. I have a lot of sympathy for this. I mean, he didn't consider it to be part for him, no?
49:44
But he said, actually what they do is they weaken the left wing. I didn't agree to that. But I found it interesting also because of the discussion about is it a movement outside the parliament, or could it be the next party,
50:02
and what would need to happen, and do we want this? These kind of discussions were, for instance, going on in the assembly. And I wondered, what is your impression on this from the inside maybe, also given that in the US we will have elections this year, and you may criticize Obama for many things,
50:22
but if you consider the alternatives, you know. Oh yeah, Obama in 2012, yeah, yeah. The thing about being a party, right, and this is significant to what's going on in Germany in a way, not in the Occupy becomes a party sense, but in the sense that the, can I say,
50:41
the hackers become a party, or at least some. And I'm talking about the pirate party. I know they're not all hackers, obviously. But in the case of Occupy, I would never want them to be a party. It would be a mess, for some of the reasons you brought up. You've got the person who's a vegetarian
51:02
and supports vegetarian policy, and the person who's big into eating meat, but never mind food. Recycling and the people who say, fuck recycling, but they hang out at Occupy. I know that sometimes we can find points that we all agree on. One of the simple ones for Occupy was, things are not okay, things need to change. If they actually became a political party
51:22
in the system that we currently have, that, formally that would be scary. Informally though, as a force, it's interesting. Some people compare them to the Tea Party, which I kinda hate, because I don't wanna be in any way compared to the Tea Party. I don't wanna be the polar opposite, I don't wanna be on the scale.
51:42
But they're a force, the Tea Party is a force that sort of fuels the right wing now. I don't think, and especially in the American context, Occupy is not powerful enough. It captured a lot of attention, people sympathized with it, but how far would they go in their sympathy? I'm not clear on that.
52:01
Would they vote? Maybe. But I think one of the sort of underlying things was we don't like the system as it is, so we wouldn't run a party in the existing system, and then comes the question then, what kind of system would you run the party in? So I don't see it happening, at least not in the American or the definitely not the Dutch context.
52:22
And I make a face because there just weren't enough people, actually, even public support wasn't that good. My Dutch friends can correct me, but it wasn't that good. Could have been better. My neighbors in Amsterdam did not give a shit. We could talk about it, but they would never go. So that's my odd answer.
52:42
Okay, so unfortunately we only have time for one more remark story experience, and there are so many people wanting to say something, so it would be great if you just could go outside afterwards and have some chat maybe. Okay. Okay, so.
53:00
Yeah, we could, of course we could. Thank you, everyone, you've been very kind. Mark. Mark, I have the last word. Well, actually you will have, but she gave me the mic. Well, I just wanted to comment very quickly. I was also observing the, well, not Occupy movement,
53:21
but the Los Indignados movement in Spain and Valencia, and I just wanted to comment on the first commentator, because she criticized kind of that the movement was kind of undermined by, let's say, corporations or commercial, whatever, and I observed that in Spain it was often undermined
53:43
by more punk, hippie part of society. I mean, there were a lot of punks that were certainly drawing away attention from the real topics, and that was a problem also. Yeah. That's it.
54:01
Yeah, yeah. I would talk on, but.
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