Workshop Announcement: (Re)thinking Protest Camps: governance, spatiality, affect and media

Posted on March 4, 2012 by protestcamp

Booking is now open for this free one day workshop, “(Re)thinking Protest Camps: governance, spatiality, affect and media” to be held on Tuesday 26 June 2012 at the University of Leicester, UK. Instructions and an online form to reserve a place are provided below.

Workshop Programme and Reading

The (Re)Thinking Protest Camps Workshop is structured around four ways of approaching protest camps and theorizing their social, cultural and political impact.  Following short introductions by discussion leaders, in each of our themed sessions, workshop participants will be invited to collectively examine the governance, spatialities, affective terrain, and media representations of/from protest camps. The day aims to provide plentiful opportunity for open, yet focused, discussion and debate, as well as a space for networking and research community building.

 

Schedule

 

09:30-10:00 Registration

Coffee & Tea

 

10.00-10.15 Welcome & Introduction

 

10.15-11.15 Opening Lecture: Sasha Roseneil

 

After the camp – what do we leave behind? Legacies, memories, transformations?

 

Sasha Roseneil is Professor of Sociology and Social Theory and Director of the Birkbeck Institute for Social Research, at Birkbeck, University of London. She has written extensively about Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, and more widely about social movements, feminist politics and intimacy and personal life.

Reading:

Disarming Patriarchy: Feminism and Political Action at Greenham, 224pp, Buckingham, Open University Press, 1995.

Common Women, Uncommon Practices: The Queer Feminisms of Greenham, 329pp, London, Cassell Academic Press, 2000.
‘Greenham Revisited: Researching Myself and My Sisters’ in D. Hobbs and T. May (eds) Interpreting the Field, pp. 177-208, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1993.
Break 11.15

11.30-12.15 Session 1: Spatialities

 

Discussion led by: Jenny Pickerill & Gavin Brown


This session examines protest camps spatially.  It considers the physical space occupied by camps (in their locational context), their materiality, and the spatial practices that occur within/through those sites.  It interrogates the (strategic) location of encampments and their (non)relations with the objects of their protests.  It debates the place of protest camps in cohering social movements at different scales, by providing spaces in which those movements can converge, but also hubs through which different types of networks are articulated across varying distances and of different durations.

Break 12.15

 

12.30-13.15 Session 2: Governance and Organisation

 

Discussion led by: Fabian Frenzel & Keir Milburn

Protest Camps are sites of experimentation with alternative forms of organisation and governance. They are places where radically democratic models of decision making, as well as decentralised, autonomous structures are tested and developed. As an organisational form, protest camps invite the practice of prefigurative politics (Breines 1989). The experience of many protest camps proves the use and utility of these alternative forms of governance, yet also shows clear limits of such attempts, for example when protest camps reproduce divisions of gender, race and class rather than work to overcome them. This session addresses the possibilities of and limitations to autonomy in protest camp organisation and the learning processes that may result from tackling these limits.

Reading:

Cornell, A. (2009) ‘Anarchism and the Movement for a New Society: Direct Action and Prefigurative Community in the 1970s and 80s’ online  http://www.anarchiststudies.org/node/292

Frenzel, F (2010) ‘Exit the system: Crafting the place of protest camps between antagonism and exception’ online at: http://eprints.uwe.ac.uk/15924/

Lang, S. and Schneider F. (2002) ‘The dark side of camping’
online at http://www.all4all.org/2004/07/985.shtml

13.15-14.15 Lunch

14.15-15.00 Session 3: Affect

 

Discussion led by: Anna Feigenbaum, Emma Dowling & Anja Kanngieser
What does it mean for politics to be attentive to the affective dimensions of protest and encampment?. Affect is defined by in a number of different ways, most of which relate to our pre-linguistic feelings and sensations. Affect theorists are often concerned with the materialities of daily life as they shape bodily reactions and responses, moving us toward, as well as potentially alienating us from each other. In this session we raise questions such as: How does affect accumulate and circulate in protest camps, shaping practices and policies? How does affective labour take shape in protest camps, intersecting with lived conditions of race, class, sexuality and gender? How do the affective qualities of the voice engage people’s capacities to listen and to respond to one another both in meeting spaces, as well as in daily interactions?

Reading

 Trott, B. (2007): Notes on Why It Matters that Heiligendamm Felt Like Winning, http://transform.eipcp.net/correspondence/1183458348#redir

Free Association: Moments of Excess, either online: http://freelyassociating.org/moments-of-excess/moments-of-excess-2006/ or the book (published by PM Press)

Shukaitis, S. : Questions for Aeffective Resistance, from his book Imaginal Machines, the chapter is downloadable here: http://f.cl.ly/items/3E1a1X2b0A0M3u0p2x15/Shukaitis%20-%20Questions%20for%20Aeffective%20Resistance.pdf

Break 15.00

15.15-16.00 Session 4: Media Representation & Cultural Production

 

Discussion led by: Patrick McCurdy & Julie Uldam

Media is a site of struggle on par and in tandem with physical places of resistance. As such, the representation of a social movements or protest camps in both mainstream and social movement-produced media can have a powerful impact on its public standing and success. Recognising that media – in all its forms – serve as an important environment and platform for social struggle, this session is interested in the representational strategies of protest camps and will debate how, and to what end,  media (mainstream, movement and social) are used in such spaces.

Reading:

1. Castells, Manuel (2007). “Power and Counter-power in the Network Society”, International Journal of Communication, Volume 1. Available from: http://ijoc.org/ojs/index.php/ijoc/article/view/46/35 Article captures the core ideas of Castells’ 2009 book, Communication Power. The idea of counterpower is helpful for understanding the rise and media resistance of the Occupy movement.

2. Donson, Fiona, Graeme Chesters, Ian Welsh and Andrew Tickle (2004).“Rebels with a Cause, Folk Devils without a Panic: Press jingoism, policing tactics and anti-capitalist protest in London and Prague”, International Journal of Criminology. Available from: http://www.internetjournalofcriminology.com/Donson%20et%20al%20-%20Folkdevils.pdf

This study is based on Stanley Cohen’s idea of ‘folk devils’ which is a helpful lens for reflecting critically on the media’s coverage of the Occupy movement.

3. Gladwell, Malcolm (2010). “Small Change: Why the revolution will not be tweeted”, The New Yorker¸ Available from http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell A now famous polemic on the debate about the potential for social media to facilitate activism.

Break 16.00

16.15-17.15 Research network foundation

 

Facilitated discussion on future research collaborations and networking

 

Following the conclusion of the workshop there will be informal drinks and dinner at a restaurant near the train station for those wishing to attend.
If you planning to book your travel in advance, please consider the following approximate times for the end of each of those activities:

Workshop ends: 17.15
Drinks till about 18.15
Dinner from 18.30 to ….
(it’s about 20 mins walk from the university to the trainsation and 10 mins from where we have drinks and eat)

Workshop Overview

Over the last year, urban protest camps and encampments have captured the world’s attention and imagination.  From Tahrir Square to the tent city of Tel Aviv, from the encampments of the Los Indignados in Spain to the Occupy movement, enduring protests have arisen to demand democracy and fight austerity measures.  In addition to these protest camps situated within/outside symbolic targets, other kinds of protest camps have grown as a social movement tactic in recent decades.

These include camps that aim to prevent or disrupt the destruction of a site under social or environmental threat (for example, anti-roads protests, or the solidarity camp that sought to prevent the eviction of Irish Traveller families from their land at Dale Farm in Essex).  There have been camps that draw attention to sites posing a specific social, military or environmental threat (for example, the siting of Climate Camps outside oil-fuelled power stations or peace camps outside military installations). Finally, camps have been organised as counter-summits or ‘convergence spaces’ (Routledge 2003) in opposition to strategic meetings of global political leaders.

This one-day workshop seeks to examine both these recent and contemporary expressions of protest camps, as well as to chart the historical geographies of protest encampments in earlier periods.  The workshop is open to a broad interpretation of ‘protest camps’ from physical encampments where people live, through to the picket-lines of long-running industrial strikes.  In some cases it is the act of camping, of being in place, that is central, in others it is the duration and creation of a persistent physical infrastructure of protest in situ.

The workshop is structured around four ways of approaching protest camps to theorise their social, cultural and political impact.  Through four short introductions examining the governance, spatialities, affective terrain and media representations of/from these sites, we hope to provide plentiful opportunity for open, yet focused, discussion and debate.

Workshop Organisers

The  “(Re)thinking Protest Camps” workshop is organised by: Gavin Brown, Fabian Frenzel and Jenny Pickerill, University of Leicester, Anna Feigenbaum, Richmond, the American International University in London, and Patrick McCurdy, University of Ottawa.

Workshop Logistics

Booking is now open for a one-day seminar on “(Re)thinking Protest Camps: governance, spatiality, affect and media”, University of Leicester, Tuesday 26 June 2012.  The event is free, and lunch is provided: but a place must be reserved in advance.  Please complete the online booking form to book your place.

A limited number of travel/accommodation bursaries are available for postgraduate / unwaged participants or people without access to funding for such activity which are available on a first come, first served basis.  To request a bursary please contact Gavin Brown (gpb10 (at) le.ac.uk) specifying your status and (briefly) the reasons for your request.
There will be a meal available afterwards at your own cost.
Location: University of Leicester – 15 minute walk from Leicester rail station. http://www2.le.ac.uk/maps/campus-map
Accommodation:  we would recommend Spindle Lodge:
http://www.spindlelodge.co.uk/
or you can find other options here.
www.booking.com/Leicester-Hotels

(If you are unsure about where is and isn’t convenient for the University campus, contact the organizers.) Please also inform us of any special requirements (eg. dietary, access etc.). We will do our best to address these.

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Can Occupy survive its representation?

Posted on March 1, 2012 by protestcamp

Can the Occupy movement survive its representation? This was one of the questions asked of us during the McGill Occupy workshop. The question essentially sought to open a discussion around  Slavoj Žižek’s speech at Occupy Wall Street warned activists not to fall in love with themselves (which was also published as a Guardian Comment Is Free article). When the question was posed, it was also noted that “Occupy” had already started to crop up as a brand for things that have very little to do with the goals or practices of the movement. It was also suggested that at public gatherings activists spend more time talking about the Occupations than talking about (or acting upon) the structural inequality of wealth and power the movement has called to our attention. Thus, with the attention Occupy has been given, the discussion it has sprouted and the branded items it has produced, can the Occupy movement survive its representation?

This question is an important one but immediately raises the question, representation by whom? It also opens up pathways to examine the mainstream media representation of Occupy (and its limits) and, perhaps more important, the output by citizen and community journalists and Occupy members.

Also when considering if the Occupy movement can survive its own representation, we need to consider the constant commodification of dissent. To emphasize this point, we can turn our attention briefly to the topic of hotdogs and sausages.

At present there is a television ad doing the rounds by Maple Leaf Foods which uses the guitar riff from Buffalo Springfield’s ‘For What It’s Worth’ (which some people may know as ‘There’s something Happening Here’). While not written originally as a protest song against the Vietnam War, it became one of the key protest songs of the anti-war movement; and now it is used to sell bloody sausages! The point is, the commodification of dissent is something that has plagued consumer capitalism for some time.

It is also challenge the Occupy movement continues faces. For example, rapper Jay-Z, who sits at the Top of Hip Hop’s rich list, making over 37 Million Dollars in 2011, designed and sold a t-shirt  through his clothing line which said “Occupy All Streets”. Not a penny of the t-shirt sales went back to the movement. This was nothing more than an opportunistic money grab.

Jay-Z’s selfish act stands in stark contrast to Sheppard Fairey who donated the proceeds from his Occupy Protester Image back to the Occupy movement.  Of course there are also more grounded and admirable initiatives such as Occuprint which collects, prints and distributes posters from the worldwide Occupy movement and feeds its funds back into the movement.

Part of the reason there have been so many Occupy-branded  trinkets for sale is that we are unable to experience events in our society without consumption. Watching the Super Bowl requires buy the Super Bowl nachos and beer and emulating  the parties we are expected to have using the products advertised to us. Thus, in terms of Occupy surviving its own reputation, and in the spirit of Zizek’s comments, perhaps the best thing that could have happened to Occupy was to be forcibly uprooted.

The Occupy movement was never about occupying a lawn or a sidewalk, but about occupying an idea. An idea which is dangerous. An idea which can be lost in the daily struggles of trying to keep a camp running. The evictions, including this weekend’s eviction of Occupy London have galvanized occupiers, provided a narrative and banner to organize under and bought time, to rescue its representation. Thus, Occupy can survive its representation and the evictions will help it do this.

The  Occupy movement  is already occupying peoples’ minds; it has started a public conversation. While winter, and not to mention the authorities, have  pushed it Occupy into a cocoon, it certainly appears  capable of undergoing an incredible transformation in the spring and realizing its potential as one of the most important social and cultural movements in the last 50 years.

The beginning is near.

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OCCUPY TALKS TORONTO: Indigenous Perspectives on the Occupy Movement

Posted on January 28, 2012 by protestcamp

Ali Hugill reports from Occupy Talks Toronto for protestcamps.org

The vocabulary of occupation has recently gained a global political prominence for the Left. Those of us calling ourselves the ‘99%’, who – with varying degrees of radical fervour – broadly oppose ostentatious displays of capitalist wealth at the expense of general social welfare, have descended upon Wall Street and other urban financial districts to OCCUPY.

Yet opponents of the moniker ‘Occupy’ argue against it on the grounds that in North America (among other locales) we already reside in an occupied territory. Colonial occupation is ongoing on this continent and to tie a new ‘revolutionary’ movement to the logic of occupation is to efface this legacy of systemic racist violence. Some Indigenous and anarchist groups have agitated for a name change, to ‘Decolonize’ or ‘De-Occupy’. In the face of this rampant use of the term Occupy for ostensibly radical purposes, these groups have proposed an effort to interrogate the colonial logic of the movement itself: to Decolonize the 99%. This action seeks to encourage self-critique in the movement and its supporters.

The question “What does it mean to ‘Occupy already occupied lands?” was the subject of an event at Beit Zatoun Palestinian Cultural Centre in Toronto this week, investigated as part of a series of public discussions called the ‘Occupy Talks’ and organized by Occupy Toronto. Speakers at the event included: Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, writer, activist and Adjunct Professor in Indigenous Studies at Trent University; Clayton Thomas-Muller, Northern Manitoban Cree activist for Indigenous and environmental rights, and Tom B.K. Goldtooth, Executive Director of the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) based in Minnesota.  The talk was moderated by Indigenous artist and academic Tannis Nielson.

Nielson briefly introduced the discussion with a call to recognize the similarities of colonial and capitalist logic and the way in which the economy has grown and continues to grow through the maintenance of racial inequality. She then turned the floor over to the first speaker, Leanne Simpson.

Simpson spoke compellingly of 400 years of resistance by Indigenous people as the longest social movement in Canada, pre-dating Canada itself. As a result, the term occupation sounds, for Indigenous people, like political and cultural genocide. In light of this, she argues that we need to reject the language and ideology of conquest and colonialism entirely. Decolonisation needs to be at the centre of the movement. Simpson’s own experience of resistance was influenced by the Indigenous women in her community, whose love, commitment and strength made survival as resistance possible. She presented the Occupy movement with a challenge: make the concerns of Indigenous women central. This, she argued, would make the movement truly radical.

Clayton Thomas-Muller then recounted his initial reaction to the announcement that Wall Street had been occupied.  He was in Raleigh, North Carolina at a meeting of what he described as “the most radical people in the country,” a group of activists representing various racialized groups from across the continent. Someone in attendance got on the mic to announce that he’d just read on twitter that Wall Street had been occupied. Everyone looked around the room and asked each other: “Who’s leading this?” None of them had heard about the plans, and they considered themselves to be well connected in various activist communities.

Upon making a few calls, they quickly learned the source: “Adbusters.” “Isn’t that some art magazine?,” someone asked. Footage from the occupation shortly emerged, revealing a large contingent of mostly middle class white youths. Thomas-Muller described his initial reaction as one of fear. He was afraid that the scenario could turn into one where various social movements would become alienated and dispersed. He feared that many of the participants were uneducated and unprepared, especially in terms of anti-racism training. He worried that they had already forfeited the crucial opportunity to move socially disadvantaged groups to the fore of the movement.

Retelling this story in Toronto, Thomas-Muller confessed that he believed his fear to have come true.  He spoke about some of his encounters at different occupy sites worldwide, where he was continually met with people saying: “Stop being like that, can’t you just forget about it. Give it a chance to grow. The occupy thing: semantics, man! Semantics.” His response? “FUCK THAT! Occupy is offensive. I know that’s abrasive but I really want to get you all to understand what I’m trying to say here. The fact of the matter is that when we have convergence [of different radical political groups] we have to make sure that we aren’t creating a situation where a bunch of people are getting harmed. And if people are getting harmed then that’s a fucked up strategy and we have to let that go.” Thomas-Muller spoke about his experience at Climate Camp in the UK as an example of a positive convergence strategy.

The final speaker, Tom B.K. Goldtooth, began his talk with the question: Where do we go from here?  He discussed the protocols of Indigenous peoples when dealing with visitors from different regions. “Where is our protocol for communication in this context?” he asked. He suggested that we need to reevaluate our relationship with the female creative principle of Mother Earth and acknowledge that Indigenous people are the settlers’ ‘older brothers and older sisters’ and should be respected accordingly.

“As you occupy Wall Street” he said, “reflect on the recent demands from the American Indian Movement of Denver, Colorado”:  to repeal the papal bull Inter Caetera (1493) or ‘Doctrine of Christian Discovery’ and to support and endorse the right of Indigenous peoples to self-determination as sovereign nations. He praised the impetus behind the Occupy movement but emphasized the necessity for inclusion of Indigenous demands.

Goldtooth insisted that a movement based upon principle was needed, in light of which certain crucial questions would emerge. Most importantly at this point: what is a process for outreach and inclusion of indigenous people? Is this merely a moment or is it a movement? The tactical frame of the movement is the 99% – but who, he asks, is represented by that number? The movement is popular and diverse and, as such, Goldtooth insists that we must have clear protocols for dialogue, which would encompass this diversity. This requires combatting internalized oppression as well, and acknowledging that the system we are fighting is adept at instilling a sense of disempowerment, paralysis and isolation.

Goldtooth’s talk concluded the session on a hopeful note: he believed that despite initial setbacks, the possibility remained to assert Indigenous rights from within what is presently known as the ‘Occupy’ movement.

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Protest Camps to speak at Occupy event with Chris Hedges

Posted on January 12, 2012 by protestcamp

On Friday January 27, 2012 Protest Camps’ Anna Feigenbaum and Patrick McCurdy will host workshops at the media@mcgill sponsored event Media, Politics and Protest Camps in the Occupy Social Movement.

Anna’s workshop Feeling the Movementwill look at how feelings and emotions ‘stick to’ social movements and circulate between people via everyday conversation, social and mass media. The workshop will analyse how the circulation of emotions and ‘affects’ (feeling we can’t name or describe) can shape and construct protest communities, effecting how we see ourselves in relation to the Occupy Movement.

Patrick’s workshop Occupy! the Media will provide an introductory look into ideas of media framing and how the mainstream media has represented the Occupy! movement. It will also explore various innovations in the media strategies of different Occupy encampemnts from the use of uStream [http://www.ustream.tv/occupytogether]  to the self-publishing of digital newspapers and posters with OccupyDesign [http://occupydesign.org/] and the OccuPrint project [http://occuprint.org/].

Nathalie Des Rosiers, General Counsel for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association will also give a workshop on Law, Protest and Policing.

A plenary folliwng these workshops will feature the keynote address “The Way I See It” by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges. Hedges has been a supportive and outspoken commentator on the Occupy Movement, visiting Occupations across the US.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SKw2j3XOY0]

Hedges has taught at Columbia University, New York University,Princeton University and The University of Toronto. He currently writes a weekly column for  Truthdig, a news webiste offering investigative reporting on contemporary issues from a progressive point of view.

For more information and to register for the workshops please visit media@mcgill.

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The Future of Occupy and Movement Sense-making

Posted on December 28, 2011 by protestcamp

At  a recent workshop hosted by Tent City Uni outside St. Paul’s, a group of campers and folks working in the broader Occupy movement came together to reflect on the current climate of the movement and what the future might hold.

In the US and Canada few outdoor camps remain, many cleared by forceful evictions. Occupations of foreclosed homes and plans to takeover disused buildings are now in the works for many North American groups. Meanwhile, in the UK, winter months loom longer and outdoor infrastructures are becoming increasingly difficult to maintain. Two indoor occupations in London at Bank of Ideas and Occupy Justice now house a number of campers and a diversity of activities and events. Local Occupy contingents also continue their work in towns and cities across the country, with London seeing its first Occupy Hackney event on December 15, 2011–an area in East London with one of the highest rates of unemployment.

While the movement has largely fallen out of the mainstream media frame, actions, meetings and plans for the future of Occupy continue to unfold across local and transnational networks. Discussions of what Occupy will be in 2012 are taking place  in tents, squatted buildings and online social forums.

At the Tent City Uni reflection workshop this December, Protest Camps met up with some of the organisers behind The Future of Occupy initiative. We asked them to tell us what their movement building project was all about:

“In its raw energetic sense The Future of Occupy is a creative outcome that continues to unfold in the daily life of the global Occupy Movement, from moment to moment. For a couple of months now, in the aftermath of the original mid-October explosion of Occupy camps all over the world both Occupy-ers and onlooking commentators have been asking the same question: “where is this movement heading?” In the presence of this inquiry a rather organic growth of the movement has been naturally unfolding. Its members are learning from each other and formulating proposals, statements and potential solutions to the economic and democratic crises we all face.

All day, evening and night – the General Assemblies and their myriad working groups, passionate and warmly accommodating, explore the diverse sets of ideas and solutions that may or may not create the real democracy and real economic harmony the protest camps were erected for. Alongside the growth of on-site forums, the proliferation of online exchange through Occupy websites, online forums, email lists and the like, provides the potential (at least) for continued unbroken discussion beyond the geographic limitations of where one happens to be.

The Occupy movement has by its very nature been proactive and committed to seizing the winds of change beginning with Wall Street, throughout America and then spreading around the world the same energy of reclamation ~ that we must take back what is inherently ours ~ our democracy, our economy. This same spirit is expressed within the camps, its general assemblies and working groups, creating a strong sense of solidarity.

As this energy is put to use in highly engaging, uplifting and communal ways many positive human qualities are being reclaimed. The restoration of mutual respect, compassion, deep listening and appreciation for all views among peers and newcomers alike, create spaces where a great amount of shared learning is occurring. Yet as time goes by, and complexity increases there is heightened potential for natural tensions to surface alongside disorganization, reproduction of old ways of life including social divides that the movement set out to transcend. It is here that we currently stand, able to produce positive outcomes but also facing divisive tensions that work against us.

As we contemplate the start of a new year, it is perhaps now more than any time in the year that we realise as human beings that we are not only proactive… we are also reflective. As the movement grows there are an increasing number of Occupy websites that focus on the action, what is happening, the breaking news, but few that address the need for collective self-reflection. It’s true that there have been countless workshops given at the camps which encourage reflection especially in regard to how we relate to each other, but they operate in a sea of action and events, much in the same way that life outside the camps continues – action after action, completing our tasks without pause, incessant activity. If we are to bring awareness to our cultural shortcomings (a by-product of the old world) and amplify our impact in the new year it is time to sit down and think together about our ways of relating to each other and managing our affairs together.

We want to serve that kind of thinking at a systemic level and provide an open platform of participation and collaboration for enhancing the movement’s capacity to learn from the future as it unfolds. Currently, we have only an online platform but thanks to an expanding network of collaborators, in 2012 you will see us more engaged in the action-reflection-action cycle on the ground…”

read more from The Future of Occupy: The Imperative of Movement Sense-making

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Beware of False Friends: Reflections on TIME’s praise of ‘The Protester’

Posted on December 20, 2011 by drfigtree
Last week Time Magazine announced The Protester as its person of the year. Celebrating individuals fighting for equality and democracy around the world, this year’s most important person followed in the footsteps of facebook founder and entrepreneur extraordinaire Mark Zuckerberg in 2010, Obama in 2008 and You (in relation to youtube and the rise of social media) in 2006.
This mass media recognition of 2011’s many struggles for social justice both marks and reflects a rise in public consciousness about global inequalities and the power of dissent. As Protest Camps Research Collective member Patrick McCurdy told CBC radio, when compared to competition like Kate Middleton, the prevailing choice of the protester seems clear.

The ethnically ambiguous, stylised protester staring at us off of TIME Magazine’s cover is certainly seductive. Interpellating all those who’ve taken to the streets, her presence rewards us like a prideful parent patting their child on the back for an A grade assignment.  We can hang her picture on the wall in recognition of our stellar performance.

Yet while this TIME feature certainly prompts some celebration, it also serves as a warning sign. In a speech at Occupy Wall Street’s Zuccotti Park in early October, social critic Slavoj Zizek warned campers not to “fall in love with themselves.” Back in October the swift movement of Occupy camps igniting across the US and then abroad, made change feel immanent and resistance immensely powerful. Accounting for this success, Zizek told campers to go forward with caution:

“Beware not only of the enemies, but also of false friends who are already working to dilute this process. In the same way you get coffee without caffeine, beer without alcohol, ice cream without fat, they will try to make this into a harmless, moral protest. A decaffienated process.”

As ‘The Protester’ image proliferates across facebook pages with profile pictures changed to adopt its symbolic form, it is important to ask: Why has TIME magazine sent out this friend request? In its attempt to befriend these movements, what stories of the present and memories of the past does TIME also ask us to accept?

From its very first paragraph this cover story by Kurt Anderson frames the history of protest as a struggle for liberal democracy. Struggles in the Segregated US and Apartheid South Africa are framed around civil liberties, with no mention of class, poverty or the economic exploitation embedded in violent and repressive regimes of racial apartheid. Entirely absent or largely rewritten are protests against the capitalist system, from factory occupations of the 1920s to the mass global uprisings around G20, WTO and other international summits of the late 1990s and early 2000s.

These omissions and revisions of socio-economic struggle make the present moment seem as if it has arisen spontaneously, rather than built up over decades of protest against neoliberal policies and agendas that deregulated corporate practices, destroyed unions, and replaced social good with a belief in the benevolence of private capital. In a prime example, Anderson writes off The Battle for Seattle as “ineffectual and irrelevant,” arguing later in the article that until 2011, globalization “referred to a fluid worldwide economy managed by important people.” According to Anderson it wasn’t until this year that “do-it-yourself democractic politics became globalized.”

While the mainstream media often have memory lapses, it is somewhat surprising that TIME magazine has forgotten its own coverage of the debates around economic globalization. For example in their 1999 issue covering the now “irrelevant” Battle of Seattle in which TIME journalist Tony Karon wrote that the protests “issued a profound challenge to politics as usual in the Clinton era” and that “the aftershocks of the battle for its streets may reverberate in American politics.” Likewise, a 2006 a TIME article questioned if there was ‘A Backlash Against Globalisation?’ reporting that “a quick look around the planet might lead to the impression that globalization is in crisis.”

TIME Magazine Cover 13 Dec 1999

Hand-in-hand with the global restructuring of trade and commerce, came the further individualisatoin or atomisation of everyday life. The dissolution of unions and cuts to public services combined with increasing rhetoric around the pursuit of individual prosperity became the driving economic force in global capitalism. And just as success was rated on individual achievement, so too was economic failure. Joblessness, bankrupty and foreclosures were blamed on individuals’ poor financing, greed and laziness.

One of the great successes of the M15 and Occupy movement so far has been their work to expose myths around unemployment, the mortgage crimes of banks and credit-rating institutions, and injustices around housing–efforts that all deserve praise. But these are not the collective achievements celebrated by TIME magazine. Instead, like Zuckerberg in 2010, this winter ‘The Protester’ is crowned employee of the year.

Not only does TIME offer praise for turning unwaged, underwaged and precarious labour time into productivity in the protest camps, something even more sinister is happening. When protest campers give up their ‘free time’ to build their protest, they create wealth. This wealth–the ideas and actions of people in a movement–is measured up by capital. In this way free work, via engagement for a better world, becomes ‘productive’ in a capitalist sense. The wealth the protester produces can be turned into monetary value. With their celebration, TIME is commodifying ‘The Protester’ into a spectacle for cultural consumption. Will TIME be sending pay checks to the people on the streets that helped sell magazine copies this week? It’s unlikely. (In fact, these movements might well consider billing TIME for the commodification of their protest work!)

artist unknown

Yes, the Occupy movement is swarming with creativity, ingenuity and problem-solving skills, but the Occupiers’ real protest lies in turning these efforts toward a collective project of refusal. One of the things many in the movement know they do not want is an economy that only sustains output which generates profit. The individualisation and monetization of innovation corresponds to the greed and corruption proffered by a neoliberal, capitalist system  in ways that demand deeper reflection.

In addition, this tidy picture of the hard-working and well-meaning protester makes only slight reference to protesters who “might be beaten or shot, not just pepper-sprayed or flex-cuffed.” This framing censors the realities of police and military violence faced by protesters as clearly outlined in Nina Power’s article for The Guardian. These kinds of cross-cultural comparisons about the severity of violence also work to legitimise non-lethal force and cover-up links between nation’s deployment of violent repression as they share strategies (i.e. coordinated camp evictions) and technologies (i.e. teargas) across borders. Likewise, far from a hip accessory, wearing a mask in protest to protect your nostrils from teargas and your identity from police surveillance is actually outlawed in Germany, prevented increasingly by police in Britain and currently being made illegal in Canada.

While much of TIME magazine’s praise for The Protester resonates with the potency of possibility continuing to energize these movements, perhaps it’s good to hold onto a healthy scepticism. As Zizek encourages, we might be wise to beware of false friends.

Protest Camps thanks Emma Dowling for the insightful discussion on the anti-globalization movement, entrepreneurialism and precarious labour that helped shape this post.

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Protest Camps Hosts Roundtable to Announce its contract with Zed Books

Posted on December 13, 2011 by drfigtree

Before the Arab Spring, our work on the transnational history of protest camping was generally regarded as “too niche”, or “quirky activist stuff for idealists”. But by April 2011, as Tahrir Square became an international sign that perhaps another world was possible, the phenomenon of protest camping gained broader appeal. We were contacted that spring by a number of commissioning academic editors interested in the possibility of turning our on-going research into a book. After meeting with a handful of publishers, the choice to go with Zed felt like a nobrainer. An independent publisher run as a workers-cooperative seemed like the perfect fit for a collectively written book about collective politics.

This decision got us thinking more broadly about the choices we make around publishing as academic-activist researchers. And conversely, about the decisions publishers like Zed make about us and about our work. To coincide with the announcement of our contract Protest Camps Research Collective member Anna Feigenbaum decided to organise a roundtable, in its most literal sense. One late October evening she was joined for dinner around her table by some of London’s most prominent independent publishers. Together they discussed the current state of both the progressive press and the academy, covering a range of issues around publishing politics and markets, from finding the right niches-within-niches to copyediting nightmares.

You can read their roundatable discussion, “Everything We Do is Niche,” in the latest issue of Interface: A Journal For and About Social Movements (3:2)

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Activist Exchanges: the Occupation of Squares and the Squatting of Buildings

Posted on December 9, 2011 by protestcamp
Over the past two months of the Occupy Movement we have seen protesters move from reclaiming city squares to reclaiming foreclosed homes and disused buildings. In Spain, similar actions have been taking place for months. Activist-academics Miguel A. Martínez and Ángela García of Universidad Complutense de Madrid participate in and research the ‘activist exchanges’ occurring between the M15 movement in Spain and the country’s existing squatters’ networks and social centres.  

protestcamps.org approached them for a guest blog post to tell us more about their ongoing project:

“Our research is based on our own participant observation in most of the events of this period in the city of Madrid. To find out more, we conducted 21 semi-structures interviews with squatters and M15 activists. We also analysed media documents, alternative media news and messages which were spread through Internet platforms–particularly via social media sites including weblogs, Facebook, Twitter and Youtube.

The M15 movement in Spain has responded to the financial crisis and the neoliberal policies with a sudden and profound social mobilisation for the past 7 months (May-December 2011). While it arises from previous movements including the alter-globalisation movement 1994-2002, the 2003 anti-war movement, anti-conservative government M14 mass protests in 2004, and pro-housing campaigns for 2006-2010, this is the first time that a precarious multitude takes the squares, the streets and the neighbourhoods for such a long lasting period, through an innovative autonomous organisation and with a transnational scope.

Our research focuses on the convergence experienced by the squatters’ movement and the M15 movement. We look at how and why squatters joined the M15 movement, discussing the utilitarian role that already existing squatted social centres played in the M15 movement. After the camps were evicted, an explosion of new squats took place, coming out of the initiatives of new activists of the M15 movement.

Our explanation of this process of convergence rests mainly in what we call the ‘cumulative chains of activist exchanges’ that took place between the three aspects of the process (squat participants in M15, existing social centre networks and new activists) as they reinforced each other. The structural equivalence of the occupied camps and the squatted social centres, in terms of assemblies, self-management and social disobedience, sparked the mutual collaboration. Camps also turned into strategic ends. Utilising and developing forms of  direct democracy,the M15 movement went beyond its original function as a powerful repertoire of protest, displaying a similar mode of governance as tends to be performed in squatted social centres.

Squatting gained legitimacy within the M15 movement due to protesters’ initial collaborations, as well as to the increasing success of the Stop Foreclosures campaign. The M15 movement encouraged new activists to self-organise in a number of different groups: some of went to work in preexisting squatted social centres, while some others started to squat new houses and social centres. On the one hand, this mixture slightly reduced the radical and anti-systemic discourse of squatting. On the other, the anti-speculation discourse has been incorporated into an anti-crisis one, wherein squatting is justified by the extreme needs of increasing numbers of the population.

The impressive wave of new squats opened between September and November, 2011 also took advantage of the political opportunity structures: low level of repression and temporary divide (and de-legitimation) of power elites around the electoral eve (November 20th), in particular. Since January 2011 the international context of European and North African uprisings (and political and economic crisis as well) have effected demonstration and contamination transnationally, in part through the instant and plural communication enabled by Internet networks. This high speed, multi-vocal communicative environment was also developed by the M15 movement trough their own cybernetic means and platforms. This allowed the new mobilised multitude to frame the continuous grievances that emerged during these seven months (repression, evictions, cuts in public services, reform of the Constitution in order to pay national debts, etc.) using their own communicative platforms.

The camps, the popular assemblies and the squats had the virtue of getting people in touch regularly. This meant that the self-organisation and agency of groups had a reliable socio-spatial ground from which their hybrid urban and macro-political movement could challenge urban life based on collective and private consumption.”

For more information on this research project contact miguelam [at] cps.ucm.es or angela.gb7 [at] gmail.com and visit http://www.miguelangelmartinez.net/

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Generation Occupy: The Demands May Not Be Televised, But Can They Still Be Heard?

Posted on December 5, 2011 by protestcamp

We live in an age where it is socially acceptable, if not encouraged, to camp out overnight for the opportunity to hand over $500 for the latest piece of mass produced technology.

Pictures of technophiles and devotees ecstatically clutching the latest piece of electronics, many brandishing them over their head like they have just defeated Manny Pacquiao and received the Welterweight World Champion belt, are common place. In participating in what is effectively a globally managed advertising event, one is portrayed as upstanding, committed consumer who wants to be at the forefront of technology.

Yet, contrast this to the media treatment one receives for sleeping outside for political purposes, especially purposes which may challenge consumer culture. You may also be portrayed as a diehard, but in this case a deviant diehard; an outsider; a security threat which only dissipates with the ‘peaceful’ conclusion–or more often, as we have seen across the Occupy Movement, in the forceful eviction–of your protest camp.

Initially, the mainstream media didn’t know how to cover the Occupy Wall Street Movement. With a leaderless structure, there were no spokespeople to turn to.  The Occupy Camps were seen as a free-for-all and there were largely efforts to cover the camps in a similar vein to the swinging 60s talking about “free love and liberalism” at the camps. More recently, a spat of articles has singled out the “free STD testing” as a consequence of that free love. The ‘dirty hippie’ theme has also appeared across international news coverage with repeated claims that protesters smell, defecate in the grass, and are junkies.

Covering the Occupy protest camps within the cultural frame of the rebellious and untidy 60s was a logic that the media (and its audiences) could understand. It is culturally familiar, not the least of which because the dissent and rebellion of this era has been continually remixed, repurposed and recommodified to sell goods such as blue jeans, perfume and sneakers. This commercial appropriation was perhaps best epitomised in the recent Levis ad campaign whose images of protesting in the streets were forced off the air following last summer’s London Riots.

2011 Levis Ad Campaign

The media also continues to have trouble figuring out what the “one demand” of the Occupy camps is. Even worse, most outlets have failed to grasp that there isn’t one! A shining exception to this rule is Matt Taibbi’s well written epiphany recently published by Rolling Stone entitled, “How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the OWS Protests”

The failure of journalists to “get it” – to understand that there is no ‘one demand’ – is perhaps not their fault. The Occupy movement exists at a time where the complexities of global politics and international charitable campaigns are reduced by communication professionals so as to conform to the logic of media. For example, the 2005 Make Poverty History campaign condensed the solution to ending global poverty to three talking points, “Trade Justice”, “Drop the debt” and “More and ‘better’ aid’”.  Journalists could then use copy produced by communication specialists to construct stories and succinctly report on the “demands” of Make Poverty History.

The Occupy Movement does not have a team of transnational media professionals refining or pre-testing their key messages. Why? Because the type of system change envisioned by many in the Occupy movement is based on a rejection of the logic of media; a rejection of the limits imposed by sound-byte thinking and a dismissal of the idea that demands or desires must always be articulated so as to suit the logic of media.

At the same time, many Occupy activists do give voice to their ‘demands’ and these demands are varied. Critics  attempt to dismiss these varied critiques as a cacophony of desires unworthy of consideration because of their variation. Yet this is nothing more than a rhetorical strategy used to be dismissive of the movement by those who are keen to keep the current system and its disparities the way they are.

The current decline in media coverage of the movement points toward broader corporate interests in maintaining the status quo. With it’s three month anniversary less than two weeks away, the Occupy Movement is still in its infancy, yet teeters on the brink of disappearing from the news cycle. Despite the continuing on-the-ground growth of these global Occupy protests and the increasing public support for strike action, stories featuring the movement’s strengths are few and far between. Even the Daily Mail’s online readers’ poll showed wide support for the UK’s N30 protests, despite inflammatory front page news coverage slagging off the strikers. In light of ever more evidence of financial corruption from the banks and governments, it is unlikely that these issues will fall from people’s hearts as quickly as they may fall from the headlines.

Daily Mail Online Poll for N30

If there is a ‘single’ message coming out of the Occupy Movement it is that the absence of a single message is ‘ok’. The failure to identify one issue as a ‘problem’ or agree upon one ‘demand’ is not a failure of the movement, but a failure of the system itself. The crisis of corporate consumer capitalism which we are witnessing has many different faces. The movement which has emerged to challenge this system has identified an equal number of problems and multiple demands.

While these demands may not be televised, there are a number of other channels through which they continue to spread–from social media to sidewalk seminars. If the recent successes of Occupy LSX are anything to go by, this movement may be growing in its permanent teeth. As a working group member of Occupy London Cinema wrote today:

“For anyone dismissive that Occupy London is achieving anything Giles Fraser, ex-canon of St Paul’s recently tweeted ‘Just had fascinating and open meeting with Ken Costa and people from Occupy. Occupy really has made whole new conversations possible.’ Church has offered Tent City University and information tent sanctuary on in church grounds if Corporation of London succeeds in banning all rough sleeping on corporation land around St Paul’s. Economics Working Group statement being debated tonight at general assembly. Occupy invited to meet with Financial Services Authority on Wednesday. Think Evening Standard’s attempts to portray camp as a bunch of junkies could backfire – occupy making waves and looks here to stay.”

Where the next stage of hard work begins will be in the connections made between social and economic demands for equality and justice, and in reversing the atomizing forces of consumerism. If one thing is becoming clear about the Occupy movement, it’s that the change must be in the process as much as in the outcomes. It is this potential for a movement to generate convergent, yet multiple demands that stands to define the Occupy Generation.

Tag in Göttingen, Germany September 2011

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Location, Location, Location: Spatiality and Protest Camps

Posted on November 9, 2011 by protestcamp

Occupy LSX, St Paul's Cathedral, London, 09/11/2011 @ktbuckle

The issue of spatiality for protest camps is a big one, especially for someone who is not trained as a Geographer.  As my work usually deals with media representations, this is a daunting task. While media representation is a significant aspect of protest camps, and indeed a space which is struggled over, it isn’t the focus today. Instead, the focus rests on the physical location which often forms its cornerstone. An understanding of space is key to making sense of the dynamics of a protest camp.Protest camps are often defined by their physical location and their location shapes how a camp and its occupiers are perceived by the public, how they are presented in the media and how politicians and authorities react to them. Yet while all of these acts of camping are protests in themselves, I would suggest from our research that there are four (4) types of locations protest camps usually take.  These categories are, of course, a work in progress.

I.  Camps at physical sites under threat

Protest camps may be built upon contested physical areas, such as the proposed site for building a new road or oil pipeline. In such cases, the presence of the protest camp is a physical and direct intervention on a site which is perceived by those camping as at risk; at risk from takeover, demolition, destruction or eviction. The act of camping on site physically prevents, if only temporarily, the contentious action from happening.  This type of protest camp commonly sees protesters occupying trees set for clearing, as with the Newbury Bypass and Minehaha Free State anti-roads camps. Other camps of this nature see activists construct barriers and dwellings in the pathway of proposed construction as with the No TAV campaign in Italy. A case could also be made that the recent Dale Farm protest camp would fall under this banner as well.

II.  Camps highlighting physical sites as threats

While this first set of camps take place on physical locations under threat, other camps directly target sites which are seen as threats. This was the case, for example, with Greenham  Common, where protesters camped out around the perimeter of a military base storing nuclear cruise missiles. Other peace camps, spread across four continents, followed suit with camps established outside of military bases and weapons manufacturing plants. In both instances of sites under threat and sites as threats, the physical location of these types of protest camps directs media attention towards the site as a contested area. This enables, or at the very least sustains, public dialogue and political pressure around the relevant issues.  Some Climate Camps function in this way, selecting a specific site of ‘carbon criminality’ that are both immediate targets of action and stand in for larger problems of airport expansion, coal power and oil-based economies.

III. Camps as Counter-Summits

Another set of protest camps are those established as sites of resistance or counter-summits to large international gatherings of global elites. Protest camps built around the Global Justice Movement took place on sites neighbouring meetings held by the WTO, G8, G20, FTAA and similar meetings. These camps sought to provide an open and inclusive public space to converge, share ideas, enact alternatives and challenge corporate globalisation. Thus the camps were not just spaces to plan protests but were protests themselves with their open, self-organized and good-spirited nature standing in sharp visual contrast to the ring fences and extensive militarization that accompanied such summits.

Over time the Global Justice camps became a ritualistic form of protest and often plans for the camp would begin before the location of a summit was announced. For example, planning for the 2005 Gleneagles G8 Summit began in fall 2003. Dissent! Network activists steadily developed the HoriZone EcoVillage for the Summit even before the location of the G8 was announced. Activists only knew the G8 would be in the UK. Once Gleneagles was announced as the venue, the Dissent! protest network then began exploring options for the camp to take place. The salient point is, the contested site was not a tethered location such as a military base, but was what Geographer Paul Routledge has called a ‘convergence space’; an idea that activists can organise around which was then given material form through announcing the physical location. This means that whereas for some protest camps the physical place of the camp creates the ‘convergence space’, for others, and particularly those with symbolic legacies such as summit mobilisations, this relationship is reversed.  Here, the convergence space is imagined prior to the physical creation of the camp.

IV. Camps Sites as Symbolic targets

Many protest camps from peace camps at military bases to climate camps at power stations have both a particular place-based political target and a broader symbolic one. The symbolic element of protest camp sites increases when protests are around issues such as consumer capitalism or greed that are so vast and hard to concretise. In these cases protesters pick sites which are seen to embody, and be a cause of, the issues at hand. This is perhaps best seen in the current example of Public Square occupations in Tahrir, Madrid, Greece and Israel/Palestine, as well as with the Occupy Wall Street movement.  Taking the square (or the park) in an area of symbolic value or taking a public space and then assigning symbolic value to it. Both the original Occupy Wall Street camp at Zuccotti Park and the Occupy London (Occupy LSX) selected sites for their proximity to the financial centres of New York and London.   Occupy Toronto also picked a public park – St James Park – and despite its close proximity to the financial district of Toronto, it is steeped in Democratic history.  Given that the Occupy Wall Street movement has a broad focus on inequalities caused by the state of hyper consumer capitalism and has more specific concerns around the financial sector, situating protest camps in close proximity to financial districts provides a physical and symbolic or visual challenge to business as usual.

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