People of the Year

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 16 December 2011 20:22:32

Time Magazine has chosen "The Protester" the person of the year, as various articles including their main cover story explains. They do explain within the article that the nature of protest in different parts of the world over the year has differed. Within this two aspects have been evident - which they do comment upon - the globalised aspect and the relation to social media.

As somebody who has to a minor extent been involved in the protests this year I want to reflect on my own experiences of this. Before I start I want to comment on Occupy Newcastle. The protest there is an organic thing and whilst I haven't been back physically I have been following via FB. It wouldn't be appropriate for me to go into detail about what is happening but I do have to say that it is interesting watching and seeing the way creativity, cynicism, disillusionment, idealism, hope and principles have been working together.

So what do I make of the protests? Personally I think whilst there are clearly differences in the importance and relevance of each set of protests I think that if you look at them on a relative basis each and every protest has been important.

Firstly, all of the occupations and protests have bought together a mix of people. I know some have criticised the Occupy movement in the UK for just being another leftie talking shop but I have spent enough time hanging around with "the usual suspects" over the years to know that this year has been different. The mix of people that I have met and spoken to in the various locations have included the anarchists and socialist usual suspects but they have also contained lots of people who come into neither of these categories. It contained people from a range of social and occupational backgrounds. This is something that has not always been evident because these protests have tended to have a fluid aspect with people coming and going both during the different parts of the day and night but also moving in and out of the protest spaces over time. This has caused issues at times. One time I was over in Newcastle and there was a discussion about the future of the camp going on at the general assembly and I was like, "I don't feel comfortable having an equal say in this as those people who are currently physically occupying at the moment". Others were of the view that a whole point of the movement was it was an equal democracy where there are no leaders / or everybody is a leader depending upon your view and so everybody there at that time had an equal voice.

This democratic view and who has a voice and how it is communicated has been something else I have found interesting - particularly in terms of how the internet and social networking has been used. Social networking sites and any online discussion forum are at risk from trolls and those who would seek to divert the discussion for their own ends. The different Occupy movements have had to deal with these online issues aswell as those things occuring within the physical world. Therefore the movements have been working in what Bex Lewis refers to as both physical and non-physical spaces. In Newcastle this was handled by setting up a controlled group which only those who had physically been involved in at various points could be part of. This was one way of balancing voices and ensuring that those who had only supported by pressing like on FB or posting a few links could be differentiated from those who were physical stakeholders.

The lack of clear slogans and aims was something which - in part - came from the diverse nature of people. Normally there is a clear agenda coming from the SWP or some other organisation but with this there hasn't been - it really has been about starting a discussion amongst and encouraging the disenfranchised to have a voice and to find ways to re-engage with the system or to look about how changing the system (depending on whether they have had a reformist or revolutionary agenda). The movement has been about people taking charge of their own destinies rather than continuing to feel dragged into misery by regimes and institutions which they feel don't represent them or which have let them down.

In terms of the long term influence and impact of the protests in the UK I think we will have to wait and see, but for now a few things are clear. First off is that the language of the protest movement has been resuced from nineteenth century ideological dogma and terms reserved for politics and sociology students. Occupy has effectively included within it a "plain English" campaign. This is one reason it has not simply been the usual suspects having the usual conversations. Secondly, I think the power of social media for influencing change and making it happen has been given a clarity and turned into something more than theoretical. Thirdly and finally I think that a generation who have become cynical about politics have found ways to engage with the issues which impact their lives - which often relate more to the practices of corporations and global financial institutions than nation states.

As a Christian involved in this stuff the protests have made me re-evaluate my faith and look at my motivations for involvement. This re-evaluation of faith has come from being in a position where I have had to ask serious questions about my values, my hopes for society and my understandings of personal and corporate responsibility - I have had to ask myself what I really believe discipleship (being a follower of Jesus) involves in the twenty first century and what is the relationship of that discipleship to institutional religious structures. Regular readers will know I have struggled with those questions - and whilst I have found some answers I know it will be an ongoing search. For the moment some peace in holding the tensions has been achieved - Jesus did not abandon formal religion, but he did question it sometimes - often through performing acts of compassion.