With each day now taking us further towards Spring and the warmth of the year ahead, the plans and blueprints drawn up in wintry months by Occupy London’s working groups are thawing to fruition. Multiplying. Gaining traction.
Beneath the bells of St. Pauls and through the wires of e-mail groups and message boards, dozens of working groups pursing their respective goals are looking ahead to new horizons, with plans to carry further the narrative of a movement seeking social, economic and environmental justice from its tarpaulin roots at the gates of the London Stock Exchange.
Following our previous look at the origins and achievements of selected OLSX working groups to date, here we present a glimpse of some of their considerations for the future.
ENERGY EQUITY & ENVIRONMENT WORKING GROUP
The Energy, Equity & Environment Working Group was created to highlight the fact that to continue with ‘business as usual’ would simply be to allow large corporations and an over-centralised government to continue looting the resources of the planet which belong to us all by right. If we destroy nature, then we are destroying the conditions on which human survival and the survival of all species depends. In EEE we believe that power should be handed over to local communities and responsible providers of goods and services, and that we need to restore our broken link to nature. The group has decided to work with other occupiers and other occupations and organisations, using events and other outreach activities, combined with direct actions, in the following areas:
• Raising awareness on and actively opposing false solutions to environmental problems (such as biofuels)
• Supporting a genuine “Green New Deal” including shifting from taxing labour to taxing carbon emissions, and supporting the campaign for 1m new climate jobs
• Exposing corporate lobbying and unethical environmental practices, and demanding tougher regulations
• Exposing major environmental destruction and human rights abuses overseas (such as land grabs and tar sands), especially by companies listed on the LSX
• Supporting measures such as replacing GDP and profit with alternative indicators of commercial and social success which take account of social and environmental factors
• Supporting the re-localisation of food production, smallholder agriculture and permaculture
• Strengthening environmental law so that it protects human health and biodiversity
• Supporting the campaign to recognise the rights of nature and to criminalise ecocide
• Campaigning for a global reduction in net carbon emissions. - Peter Colville
ECONOMICS WORKING GROUP
Occupy may have lost the right to maintain a physical presence, however, just because tents don’t occupy St Paul’s that doesn’t mean that the movement doesn’t occupy a valuable place in society. And let’s remember one thing, which is central to the existence of Occupy in the first place. The camp may be at the steps of St Paul’s but actually we are there because we are camped outside the London Stock Exchange. And we are camped there because of the gross injustice inflicted on society by banks and a complicit financial system. That existed before the tents arrived on that day in October. It continues now and, unless there is radical change, the banks and the financial system will continue to harm society, which will bear the scars for generations to come. That is justification enough for Occupy to continue to fight for the very many who’s lives have been made worse by the very few. It is not enough to stand by and watch the car heading for another crash. Fundamental to averting disaster is to move towards new economic structures that lead to greater equality and economic security for society at large. That is what the Economics Working Group has been working on and will continue to work on and demand. Change will come. - Tom Moriarty
CORPORATIONS WORKING GROUP
The fact that the tented presence of many of the Occupy camps is currently being shoved aside by what I believe is becoming an increasingly worried and embarrassed state is in the long run, of little consequence. Now that the movement has established itself in the UK and in the world, moving the tents will make little to no difference at all.
The future of the corporations working group has already started. No longer focusing on just releasing statements, the group is currently working with indigenous activist groups on three continents, three Occupy camps in Switzerland, UK Uncut, the Australian Miners’ Union, the Economics WG, the Outreach WG and other centres of relevant expertise to create a national day of action around one corporation (by the time this goes to press, you will probably know which one it was).
We also intend to help shape the national WG hubs that will allow for WGs across the UK and Wales to link up, share skills and work towards co-ordinating national days of action where all the Occupy camps are focused on the same target for the same reasons, with the same research backing up the same styles of direct action channelled through the same media approach. This process, once tested and refined could then lead on to a situation where there are global occupy working group hubs that will lead on to global days of action in the same way.
We are not sure that it was ever our place to remain isolated and to be simply a machine that churns out statements and policy through the assembly and courts the relevant media. At least, once our initial statement was out, it became more exciting to us to consider ways whereby we can connect up with other groups – inside and outside of Occupy – in order to target specific corporations. Reaching towards national and global days of action seems the ideal way to have the most impact on those often nameless practitioners of what we have called a ‘psychopathic’ form of behaviour that is unsustainable, unjust, undemocratic and… embarrassing.
Our long term aim is to have at least taken part in calling time on the often destructive and insane behaviour of corporations. - Jamie Kelsey-Fry
