Impressions from my visit to Occupy Brighton

Last week, I made a couple of posts raising questions about the validity of the claims of the Occupy movement to openness, horizontal rather than hierarchical governance, and effectiveness. In a spirit of challenging my own beliefs, and because the questions I had could only be answered by experience, I decided to go to Occupy Brighton and see what an occupy camp looks like in practice. I also had a few conversations with some of the camp members, focussing on some of the questions I jotted down to ask them.

These are the impressions I got, the answers I was given, and my overall feelings about what I saw.

The first thing I noticed was that the camp was racially diverse. However, when I arrived I only saw 2 or 3 women present (including one WoC); it had quite a masculine vibe. The people mostly resembled the people I have seen at progressive movement and "alternative" events for the past 15 years or so.

I also noticed that there was one major exception to the "no drinks or drugs" rule, and that exception was tobacco/nicotine. Several camp members were bumming smokes from each other, and attempted to bum some from me (but since I don't smoke, this was unsuccessful!) When I said I don't smoke, a majority of the ciggie-seekers said "good for you!" in a tone of voice that suggested I was to be congratulated for not smoking. This aside, most people who spoke to me did so to welcome me. However, their manner was one that I again found familiar from many other "alternative"/"progressive" movement events and that I found quite aggressive or off-putting. That may be to do with my own insecurities or my introversion in general, but it was the impression I had.

I spoke to three or four people about how the camp worked, and what they saw as the "long game" for the Occupy movement. One in particular (who introduced himself as Ben), was willing to talk at length with me about these questions. I also spoke with a man in the Info Tent (whose name I've forgotten - I didn't really catch most people's names, hearing them only once or not at all), who was in fact the first person I met on-camp, really.

I opened my questioning by mentioning that I had read about the Bank of Ideas in London, and he volunteered that he had been there at the weekend. As the Brighton delegate? Yes. How was he selected? General Assembly nominated and approved him, in his absence, as the Brighton delegate (laughing, he agreed that he would have blocked the vote had he been there!) He told that he had been surprised that he was expected to give a talk about how the Brighton camp worked, "to a room of 600 people." This implied to me that he had not been given any particular instruction on how to represent the Brighton camp, so I didn't follow with that question.

I then got onto more challenging questions. When I asked, "Who, out of the 99%, aren't (represented) here?" I got a rather too quick answer, "No one." They told me that everyone is represented, "We're very diverse." I questioned further, and they explained about internet involvement, including trying to set up a livestream of the General Assemblies so people who can't attend in person are also a part of the debates. I wasn't really satisfied by the explanation, but moved on to a related question.

I wanted to know how they made sure that all voices are heard, particularly in reference to the shy or people averse to large gatherings (such as me!) The Info guy took this one for those specific suggestions, by referring to his own experience: he was shy himself for his first couple of GAs, but then there was a comment that he just couldn't ignore and he just had to put his hand up to speak. He felt that this would be a tendency for most people who attended. I questioned further, and he added that there was a kind of unofficial policy of prompting those who remained silent, to get their feedback. I was satisfied with this answer. The broader questions of accessibility overlapped with the previous question of "who isn't here?" At about this point, I raised the question of those who maybe don't feel invovled enough or don't have the energy to participate on the level that the people at camp did. One of the few women on site rattled aoff a list of heavy duties she had (single mum, full-time job, student, and I think a couple more) - and concluded "And here I am!" Thinking of my battle with depression, or of people who work a 9 hour day plus long commutes and just want to slump and relax when they get home, I suggested that not everyone has the same energy levels. I was slightly nonplussed when they said that basically, people who didn't tune in online or turn up at the Gas were "excluding themselves, we don't exclude them". I settled for suggesting that it is important to be aware that there may be silent people who aren't reached or involved, even if the movement doesn't have any way to involve them - that it is important not to pretend to include everyone if there are some people whose voices are not yet involved. In general, this is a question that nags me about participatory democracy: can people in general, as opposed to activist-minded people, be expected to want to be in on everything, or to invest time in stuff that for many may seem like minutiae or irrelevant to their own lives? Many people feel that way now, it seems to me, about things that actually do have a strong impact.

Ben spoke with me at length about his personal views on how scalable direct/participation democracy is, and what the movement's "long game" might be. He spoke about the current moves to start unifying the global Occupy movement through stronger communications. Having seen the How To Occupy site's description of their planned Global Occupy Assembly, it sounds to me like the sort of thing that is one of the big reasons I do not participate much on social media sites (even the ones that I am a member of!) I envisage overload and introvert freak-out even at the remove of the computer screen for that one. In my initial "Ordinary Commies" post, wrote:

Politically, there wouldn't be a "state" as such, because democracy would be completely devolved, with decisions being made and power being wielded at the lowest possible levels. In a way, if we consider Plato's Republic, with the "Philosopher-Kings", then that would also be a way of looking at a communist society – except that everyone would be a Philosopher, and everyone would be a King. Participation in democracy would not be a once-every-2-years affair, but would be almost daily, with the real chance of seeing one's own thoughts become developed into policy that spreads throughout society.

This was an attempt to describe the type of democracy that the local General Assemblies seem to be aiming to be. The key point I want to pick out from that passage is, "power being wielded at the lowest possible levels." My concern is that I do not know whether "Occupy Britain" (the Bank of Ideas conference and whatever follows from it) or "Global Occupy Assembly" will tend towards making a central government of "Occupy" and draw power away from the local GAs by establishing an overarching, unified, policy. I don't know if any experts on US history and the US constitution might be able to draw analogies with the issue of States' Rights versus the Federal Government in these kinds of matters?

I was more interested in asking about expanding membership and involvement of the local communities. I was told that they had spoken with a couple of thousand local people, and only two had expressed disagreement with the aims of the Occupy movement. I feel like I didn't really express my thoughts very clearly on this: I was more thinking about making more GAs, that were located in the communities and owned by them, but Ben and the others who were listening in at that point seemed to be focussed on the Occupy Brighton GA as being the centre or focal point for it all.

My last question was, "What's the long game?" or, "What do you hope/expect the Occupy movement to achieve?" In my conversation with Ben, this got narrowed down to a specific concern or question, which will be familiar from the "Could you govern a nation like that?" post. I said that I had seen two different strands of thought online: the first was that Occupy, with its participatory democracy, should become the new way of governing things, while the other was that it should be essentially a way of governing the protest, and that results eventually in a list of demands presented to the people with the power - "take power" or "negotiate with power" would have been a more succinct way of putting it, but I didn't think of that in the conversation.

Emphasising that it was his own point of view, but backed up by Info Guy and one or two others, Ben explained that he viewed it as a false dichotomy. He described a political structure whereby the General Assemblies acted as an advisory or consultant body for those who actually made the final decisions, presumably having power of veto or recall or something, if those holding the strings disobeyed too heavily (that last clause is me reading between the lines). His idea was that GAs would neither be sovereign bodies of government, nor temporary bodies of protest, but an integral part of the political structure.

To me, that sounds like a "negotiate with power" option with some bells and whistles, when I prefer something closer to a "take power" approach. That said, it seems quite realistic, and not all that different from the structure I outlined in "Ordinary Commies" (see quoted passage above).

I think I found this part of my conversation with Ben to be the most useful, perhaps because I was not coming with a direct challenge but more curious to know what answer I would get.

***

I returned to attend the camp's General Assembly in the evening. I counted maybe two dozen people in attendance, and maybe half a dozen women (give or take one or two). With that error margin, we're talking between 20% and 33% female representation at the GA, with my best estimate being 25%. UK Parliament has 22% representation of women. There were several POC there, including at least one for whom English was a second language (by his own admission). However, the predominance was for White (or at least, I read them as White), male, apparently-cis folks (I didn't ask anyone about sexuality!) I did not see any BSL interpreter present, I don't know if there would have been someone available to interpret had a D/deaf person wanted to be a part of the GA.

Before GA started, it was announced via Human Microphone that GA was running "fashionably late", as people were still eating their food. A lot of what I saw in terms of camp maintenance and food provision was familiar to me from the holidaying Folk Camps that I used to go to with my family, if not in detail then in ethos. However, I felt quickly as though I would feel "forced" into socialising (again, introvert, so please no!) if I were a regular/long-term member of the camp. What wasn't familiar was that food seemed to be quite "ad hoc" even though there was some communal catering; the folk camp tendency to sit down together at tables did not apply here, and people milled around holding a plate in one hand and a fork in the other, from what I could see.

One thing I noticed and found interesting was that the Human Microphone was not very strong in amplification while I was there. Typically, someone would call out "Mic Check!" and get a strong response. Then zie would give the actual message, and only a few voices would be heard to pass the message on (if I heard it clearly, I was one of those). Part of me wonders if there is something of the "bystander effect" involved here: people know what is expected when they hear "mic check" but the repetition of the message is less clear, and people tend not to act out of character with their neighbours - they need to feel confident the person next to them will repeat the message just as loudly, and a lot of the time it seemed as though most people didn't feel that way.

So, eventually, General Assembly started, with one of the few effective Human Microphone uses that I saw. I shall get onto why I think that is later. Ben acted as facilitator for the GA.

After running through hand signals, and outlining the agenda for the meeting, things got under way. Pretty soon, Ben was apologising to the newbies (such as me) that "it isn't normally like this". One person was interrupting speakers and making a nuisance of himself. Another was (by his own admission) very sleep-deprived, and raised his hand to speak but seemed to go off-topic, repeating issues that were to be dealt with later in the agenda anyway. At times, Be was reduced to the role of teacher in charge of an unruly class. In fact, once or twice I almost felt like his role resembled Griff Rhys Jones' character in the "Hey Wow" sketch by Not The Nine O'Clock News (starts about 2'30"):



There was some interesting debate, and I added a comment of my own, that seemed popular but didn't move things forward as I had intended it to, because it maybe didn't address what others thought was the issue or something. Anyway, most of the time I sat as an observer, with occasional show of "like" or "meh" fingers. I heard the same points batted back and forth a few times, and once again it felt very familiar from other progressive movements I've been a part of over the last 15 years. Eventually, Teacher Ben had to move things along.

Early on, the woman sat next to me asked if I minded if she smoked and, because I do mind smoke in general, I apologised but said I would mind. A little later, this question was asked by someone else in the form of "what's the rule on smoking in the GA here?" Ben said, "okay as long as no one objects". I lacked the confidence at that point to say loudly, "I object", partly because I could see no one else raising an objection and several people already reaching for their tobacco and lighters. I said it, but not loudly enough to be heard. I needed a "temperature check" to be called explicitly, then I could have made the silent gesture of "blocking". As it happened, the smoke wasn't too bad and I was able to tolerate it for as long as I was there.

Now, in my previous post, I suggested that all groups have leaders, whether or not they are recognised/identified as such. In the GA, I saw about 5 or 6 people who spoke with the sense of privilege and "I expect to be heard". Not, it should be noted, delineated along the usual lines of race/gender but present anyway. These people were sure of their footing, and of their role. In addition to these "leaders" there was Ben as facilitator. Even before he was appointed/allowed to take this role, his role as leader was apparent. Remember that effective Human Microphone? That was his call, as an instruction to the seated group, that we were to echo. People followed him as a leader. Ben seemed very comfortable with the role and the business of maintaining order. Now, I think it is true that there was not a great deal of overt influence that he had, and I saw direct challenges occasionally to his debating position, but I think it is important to notice these things and see that hierarchical relationships do seem to crop up in these groups, despite the theoretical/ideological desire to avoid or mitigate them.

I had to leave after the first couple of discussions to catch the last bus back home, and it is also valid to say that one example does not form a strong foundation to draw conclusions about what the movement is "really" like. This post is just to report my findings from this particular visit. I shall probably have more thoughts after the Occupy Tunbridge Wells initial meeting which is planned for November 30th, and is also within striking distance of my home.

At the moment, my feeling is that there is potential for Occupy to be something positive, but at the moment I am not sure that it is fully-fledged yet.