The weird and not so wonderful at St Paul’s

As I sat on the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral, listening to the Occupy movement’s General Assembly, a man beside me remarked to his friend ‘Well, it’s a bit disappointing to be honest.’

I was clutched with an urge to spit in their faces and protest. I thought of telling them that it’s easy to just blindly follow the fatuous, throwaway critiques rambled out by all current newspapers; that the Occupy movement has no direction, and that they are not presenting tangible solutions. But I did not get the chance to voice my objection.

Alas, there followed a troupe of directionless, crazy religious demagogues. The microphone is hijacked by a self-confessed Druid, who excites herself by lamenting the government’s ‘suppression’ of ‘6000 free technologies’, which would bring to life our ‘Divine Right of Energy’, and by doing so they have cut off a new age of utopian nirvana.

Ah. In all fairness, this is actually a bit disappointing. So, obviously, the only possible response is a small, fatuous, but by no means throwaway, newspaper critique.

With news from New York about Bloomberg’s forceful (and completely unjustified) expulsion of occupiers in Zuccotti Park, our eyes gaze to St. Paul’s, and we witness time run out for the protesters. The Corporation of London’s deadline to vacate draws ever closer. It is in these moments where they shall have to prove their case.

The fact of the matter is that, until the Occupy Movement gains a wider breadth of support, with a broader demographic of protestors – it will always attract, and focus the spotlight on, completely deluded weirdoes. In other words, professional protesters.

Don’t get me wrong, I love ‘em. But if there ever was a time in a protest for a man dressed up like a leprechaun, dancing to Irish folk music – it would be when the protest was so busy that he served merely as a side-show. At 2.45 on the Thursday before last, this was the sole occupier on the steps of St. Paul’s. A fucking leprechaun.

Yeah sure, you need the comic ‘pot of gold’ satire to keep a protest’s spirits up. But satirical fancy dress is not going to make the middle and lower classes as pissed off as they should be. For this occupation to gain credibility, it needs to reach people more directly.

After the leprechaun gracefully finished his jig, I moved on to the ‘Tent City University’, and for the first time I was reminded of why I was there in the first place.

The notable anthropologist, Danny Miller, was giving a lecture inside a small, cramped tent. He was deconstructing capitalist principles, and discussing with a handful of occupiers and students what elements we can gain from capitalism, and what we can do without. This was no misty Marxist abstraction. This was a concrete discussion, with a rational group of thinkers.
The question and answer session lasted far longer than the talk itself. It was an opportunity for anyone to bring to the table their concerns about either the Occupy movement, or the inadequacies of the present system. Time and time again, the conversation was led towards a simple question: how do we make the Occupy movement seem less threatening, less directionless, to the general public?

Answer: GIVE DANNY MILLER THE MICROPHONE OUTSIDE.

And not just Danny Miller, either. What journalists need to see are real, intelligent people, challenging the perspectives of not just the occupiers, but the people that pass them by. I can’t help but wonder if the two disappointed men I mentioned earlier would’ve stopped and listened had they seen the professor speak.

So, if the protest seems directionless, it’s because the main focus of the news media has solely been on the people who just love to protest. This is not a bad thing in itself, but the only demonstrations that have ever been successful involve the non-professionals: people taken out of their comfort zone and encouraged to use their free speech rights. God bless the weird and the wonderful, but they are making the legitimate complaints of a body of people seem as distant and unintelligible as, well… a leprechaun.

And if more people could have witnessed what went on in the ‘Tent City University’ that day, then Occupy London could have struck a chord with an audience far, far vaster. This is because a protest based on logical discussion and rational thought, with aims to educate instead of mystify, is, to my mind at least, a beautiful, beautiful thing.