By yesterday afternoon, the Occupy Dame Streetprotest had become a shadow of its former self. The protest which originally had four demands – that the IMF pack their bags and leave; that the bank bailout be stopped and reversed; that Irish oil and gas assets not be sold to private interests and and that there be “real participatory democracy” – had expanded to include grievances against fracking in Leitrim and the new €100 household charge. The tents were mostly gone and there were about 10 more permanent structures, constructed with wooden frames and sheathed in tarpaulin and plastic. The main structure on the site which doubles as a media hut to where every foreign TV crew traipsed was bereft of media. A few foreign students shepherded by what looked like a teacher were milling around taking photographs. Paths had been cleared through the encampment to two side gates to the Central Bank of Ireland whose brutalistic architecture towers above the plaza where the Occupy Dame Street protest has encamped since last October 2011.
The site was dismantled by Gardai overnight, ostensibly for health and safety reasons ahead of the St Patrick’s Day Festival in a fortnight’s time – there was certainly an abundance of wood pallets at the encampment yesterday though there were also plenty of signs for fire extinguishers; I think that for many, the health and safety issue will have been a happy coincidence with patience having run out at the protest. Staff at the Central Bank, councillors who wanted the public space returned to the public as well as local traders who blamed the encampment for damage to business might be happy, the occupiers won’t be.
What has the protest achieved? At a time when most of the country is suffering the consequences of the banking collapse, the protest was for many, a welcome manifestation that the injustice wasn’t going unnoticed and there was some low-level fight left in society. Befuddled foreign media who wanted to know whyIrelandwasn’t protesting had a specific place to visit and I can’t help thinking the protest was to a large extent sustained by this interest. The protesters drew attention to the payment of €1.25bn to Anglo bondholders in January 2012 by chaining themselves together outside offices of the Department of Finance, and indeed a memento of that day, the giant cheque to Anglo’s bondholders from the Irish nation, was propped up with breeze blocks outside the media hut yesterday.
The protest also drew attention to the uneven distribution of wealth in society, but the protesters’ claim – “we are the 99%” – grated when 70% of voters had turned out a year ago to democratically elect a new government. The protesters had claimed that 1% of Ireland’s population controlled 20% of its wealth and whist there’s dispute about the provenance of the 20% statistic, no-one disagrees with the claim that there is an uneven distribution of wealth but there is certainly disagreement over what, if anything, could or should be done with uneven wealth, which is after all, a feature of any free society. Has the Occupy Dame Street run its course? The protesters mightn’t think so this morning, and they may attempt another “occupation” later in March, but that is against a background where many think its relevance, in this format at least, has waned.
What happens if they now decide to go and have an impromptu Patrick’s Day Parade? After all, they have just been freed up! Also, I find it a bit ironic that it happens on a day when 2,500 AIB workers are told they are surplus to requirements.
I don’t want to start a a war of words, but to me, Occupy give resistance a bad name by not engaging in debate and by being every bit as crony as the far right. Anyone can sit around being disruptive, but go try talk to movement leader about politic, see how far you get.
Their story here in California is one of arrests, violence and scandal.
As California goes….so goes the world…eventually. Beware.
[...] and what levels of support the camp still generates are open to debate (see some discussion on namawinelake), the events of last night nevertheless seem to me a sad reflection of the paucity of positions of [...]
@nwl
I completely disagree about the ‘brutalisitc architecture’ bit. This is a fine building with a timeless quality. I particularly like the steps, narrowing as they rise, tempting your eyes to the point, the door, where you enter. The fact it was an Occupy site demonstrates its seamless integration into its environment. And the narrow black features on the side border the sky nicely. Don’t know he architect, just like it a lot.
The architect was the infamous Sam Stephenson’s work. He was also responsible for the “bunkers” on wood quay and the ESB offices on Fitzwilliam St. which broke what was until then the longest stretch of original Georgian houses in Europe. The bank was controversial as it exceeded its original approved height.
@eamo
Thanks for that.
Funny I had forgotten about Wood Quay, where once as a kid I touched history with my bare hands. Now it hurts the eyes. it shows the value of admiring art without knowing the creator.
Any takers on my data argument http://wp.me/28tG9
The central bank always reminded me of that building collapse filmed from an american stealth fighter in the first gulf war – pop a bomb into the central shaft, and the stories pancake down on top of each other.
UK court case on the St Pauls Occupy has the dreary facts of occupation – pretty much the same legal issues:
http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/media/judgments/2012/cityoflondon-v-samede
I suppose the fact of occupation has drawn a line. The ideas themselves are not the important thing, the participation is. Although I can imagine those ideas being gradually implemented like those of the hippies from the ’60s, which seem to have resulted in corporate welfare and tax credits. Uugh.
This is not about 15 people willing to sleep out in the cold on Dame Street this is about what David McWilliams called the insiders and outsiders. The insiders simply cannot continue without the consent and support of the “outsiders”.
These protesters when you spoke to them individually made a lot of sense. Granted, they were not using the “sophisticated” impenetrable language of economists and financial experts, but they knew that the ordinary person was being “stiffed” again and again to pay for the mess the same “experts” made. We have been told at least 4 different times that the banks were healthy, manageable, stress tested, well recapitalised and that they would soon be back in the business of lending, despite having to deleverage by 73 billion and eating up over 70bn which included the decimation of the NPRF. Truth is we still have zombified banking institutions. The latest whizz of an idea is they are going to shift their disastrous tracker loans over to the Irish bank resolution corporation requiring even heftier funding from the first bailout.
The biggest weakness of this group was protesting about too many things and not staying focused and fixated on Ireland. Nobody, wanted to go down to Dame Street to listen to Libian, Palestinian anti Israel rants, Shell to Sea or indeed daily updates on the Syrian civil war. The main problem of the group was lack of discipline, lack of focus and lack of a coherent message for the media to digest in sensible, cogent sound bites. The fact is, they lost the PR battle and that is when the authorities moved against them.
The medias portrayal of them as a bunch of “hippies”was/is typical of the lazy stereotyping journalism that has ironically seen hundreds of NUJ jobs disappear over the last 4 years and which threatens lots more. I don’t think we have seen the back end of these protesters and even if we did, we know they are symptomatic of a much deeper malaise.
I’m actually glad to see this protest go because now hopefully those wanting to protest will focus on more productive tactics.
You cannot simply stand around and ask politely for injustice to stop being done. You have to force the issue. You have to make make the governing classes listen.
The best example of this was in Iceland. The population stood outside the parliment, banging on pots and pans, and forced the government to do a u-turn and not bail out the banks. It was a polite protest, it was civil, but the message was clear: “Stop what you’re doing or we’ll do more than bang on pots and pans”.
Unfortunately, I believe that civil protest in Ireland will ultimately prove futile and that the only considerable civil disobedience will change government policy. I would hope this goes no farther than refusing to pay household charges and barricading TDs in on Friday, but hope, like anger, is not a policy.
Sympathetic that I am to the occupy movement, it’s good on one level at least to see the square clear, it’s a pleasant space to be able to sit down and read a paper in the Spring air. I suspect though, that there’ll be an echo of the camp’s presence in people’s minds for quite some time, the odd dirty look thrown up at those dark windows.
In terms of highlighting the existence of opposition of any sort in this country (to foreign media at least) then surely it was some kind of success?
With such a broad spectrum of people agreeing on one subject you’d think something would come out of it, you’d think they’d be collectively chomping at the bit for the chance to come together and fight this appalling situation and you’d think something like occupy would have worked as a beacon for such agreement, but it didn’t, and when it failed in that, then it failed fullstop.
When broadcaster/blogger David Malone (golemxiv) was here last October he pointed out that the Dublin occupy was the most important one, as it is in the CBI that the records of the dirty deals of Europe are kept, deals drafted in Frankfurt but signed in Dublin.
It’s a pity it failed, but it’s not over, the occupy NAMA group -a more indigenous and singularly focused movement- is one thing that came out of this and you’d imagine that those involved in this have learned a thing or two over the course of the protest, things change, even in Ireland.
having been there you are all right and wrong it had lost its way due to agent provocatuers and disruption by the powers that be we challenged the government into a referendum thats why we were moved but no one knows this except us that were actually there so I have no regrets
occupy in NY being evicted , live stream tue 9 pm pst (now)
http://www.ustream.tv/timcast#utm_campaign=t.co&utm_source=9824271&utm_medium=social
an awful lot of cops just to let the cleaners into union square?
but no big eviction it seems