The BBC asks the question is it time for the Occupy movement to pack its bags and go home?
Primarily, there is the question of competition between the right of people to protest and the right of others to be able to conduct their business without having to navigate a tented village.
My sympathies lie with the latter position. The Occupy movement have had their say – more than had it, frankly. Now it is time to go home – or as is more likely, to descend upon the next issue du jour and camp out there.
The Beeb article raises a point though, one that is overlooked, I think.
The protesters want to keep on getting their message across until their goals are achieved.
Now, I might have some sympathy with this when it is a population seeking to overturn a tyranny. However, Occupy are not doing that. Indeed, it is not entirely clear what their aims and objectives actually are – apart from professional protesting. Their claims to represent the 99% are patently false (they certainly don’t represent me and I’m not a wealthy banker with a huge bonus in my back pocket). We know – God, don’t we all know by now – that they don’t like the bankers, the City, the financial system, capitalism, even. Yes, we get the message, we got it several times over. However, camping out is not going to change anything any more than a march and a few speeches would. Indeed, camping out incessantly merely pisses off erstwhile supporters.
So, yeah, time to go and if they don’t get the hint, time to make them. A public space is for all of the public, not just the protestors.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg criticised the Occupy protest in the city’s Zuccotti Park for “making it unavailable to anyone else”.
For once, I find myself agreeing with Bloomberg. There’s a turn-up.
They may not be going home just yet…
‘The Occupy protest movement is turning its attentions to schools through a new educational outreach programme.’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-16650613
Yeah, let’s propagandise impressionable minds.
For me the question was only really ‘who owns the land they’re occupying?’, and it was because it was the church and the church didn’t know what to do about it, due to their establishment-lefty way of unthinking, that the occupiers have had such a long run at the place.
I don’t see this as a ‘competing rights’ issue, indeed I don’t know whether there are such things as competing rights. If rights are properly defined as grounded on property, there should be no competition, although there will always be boundary disputes.
The competing rights is between those who wish to protest and those who are inconvenienced by it. Although this particular one is on Church property, others are not. The New York one is in a park, so presumably belongs to the city and is therefore a publicly owned space.
I support absolutely, their right to protest. I do not support their desire to keep doing it ad infinitum and by doing so mess the place up and inconvenience others. The Bristol one is going to take thousands of pounds to restore College Green when the bastards are finally evicted. That one is Church ground again, so the cathedral will be looking for some extra in the collection plate, one assumes.
I think the park in New York is private property, but I may be wrong. I accept that where ‘publicly-owned’ property is concerned, then it’s a difficult question, but I would think that the key issue is whether such a protest is preventing other people from going about their business. I would use the term ‘preventing’ rather than ‘inconveniencing’, as I think there needs to be a clearer definition, which the former word allows.
The question of damage and cost is simple in theory; it is the responsibility of those who cause it, although getting them to cough up the money may be tough.
As for the ‘right to protest’, I would say that such things fall under the general heading of individual liberty, and that no special specification is necessary. Protests can often involve infringing other people’s right to go about their business. If it is something that protesters believe in, they should recognise that a price may have to be paid for this, rather than claim a spurious right to cause trouble for other people, by appealing to some kind of ‘greater good’.
Civil disobedience (or indeed committing other crimes) may be deemed necessary on moral grounds, but that doesn’t effect the issue of whether the law has been broken.
I didn’t mention the law as it hasn’t been broken (unless a bylaw, possibly).
Protest is one of our basic civil liberties and, yes, it can affect others adversely – sometimes, it is a deliberate weapon used to make the point. A march may close off a street temporarily. I would accept this as being reasonable as it is temporary. As an aside, while I sympathised with the fuel protesters’ point, I did not support their tactics as they were holding the country to ransom. Occupy is not temporary, therein lies the fundamental difference to normal protest. A road closed for an afternoon is one thing, a semi-permanent tented village blocking a public space is another. Here’s where the private property issue becomes muddled. The property may well be owned by the Church – College Green is – but it is a public space used and enjoyed by the public. Occupy is hogging it all for themselves – quite apart from trashing it. The Church, of course, should be evicting them – but as you point out won’t for fear of the negative consequences.
I used inconvenience deliberately as the camp is not preventing worshippers or tourists visiting the cathedral. It is an inconvenience, though.
“Occupy” are idiots.
I went and spoke to a few.
Supposedly “moderate” muslims, flat-denying what the koran says …
Real actual vacant-faced-starry-eyed MArxists, refusing to believe that their model has neen troied, many time, and ALWAYS results in tyrrany (“But with US it’s be different!”)
Christian loopy ranters, the lot.
Oh, and I forgot the “meat is murder” nutters, who’ve never looked at their teeth in a mirror ……
The usual suspects, then.