Quiet revolution on the way

AT the end of last week, City of New York officials and the millionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg attempted to the disperse the members of the Occupy Wall Street movement from Zoccotti Park, which they have renamed ‘Liberty Plaza’. The reason cited was to allow the area to be cleaned. The protestors believed this was nothing more than a pretence aimed at disrupting the solidarity and cohesion of the grassroots movement and responded by spending $3,000 on cleaning products and cleaning the area from top to bottom. The city backed down and the cleaning evacuation order was withdrawn. It was a small victory on a long road.

The Occupy Wall Street protest has been going on for some weeks now but it has remained largely under the radar in terms of coverage in the mainstream media. Similarly, the copycat camps that have been springing up all over the world have received coverage only when there is a little violence to sex up the images for television news broadcasts.
The Guardian was at pains to point out the politeness and general good behaviour and demeanour of the protestors. This was done smirkingly, as if to imply that they could achieve nothing with their affability. This may not be true. For many years, legitimate protest has been the subject of negative news coverage simply because involvement of any kind on behalf of state authorities and the arrest of any protestor, for whatever reason, generally tends to be painted as lust for violence and disharmony on the part of all those in attendance.
For many years, the protestors at Rossport have been denigrated in the Irish media and labelled extremists and hooligans. Nobody takes a blind bit of notice to the fact that the garda presence there would be sufficient to guard a US military installation and that the private security contractors seem to be operating in some kind of legal limbo. What is perceived is a gang of troublemakers who need to be policed. This attitude is reinforced continuously by coverage in the Irish media.
The protestors in Dame Street have come to an agreement with gardaí and have banned drugs and alcohol from their camp in an effort to avoid publicity. The Occupy Wall Street collective seem to be operating a similarly tight ship in relation to such issues and it is a very astute move. Another notable aspect of the Dame Street gathering is the decision of the group not to harass those entering and leaving the premises for work. When insults and derogatory slogans are shouted in your face, it is easy to appease your sense of guilt in the balm of righteous anger. It is more difficult to reject the look in another human being’s eyes if they simply regard you in silent protest. I have no doubt that the chosen methodology of the protestors will be far more effective than shouting or slogan chanting.
Given that these protests have been so quiet by comparison with others in the past does beg the question why authorities are worried by them at all? Is it because despite a lack of noise and bluster, they are drawing attention to areas that can usually operate in darkness without a light shining on their activities?
The connections between Government and business have certainly been to the fore in people’s minds in Britain in recent times. The former Defence Secretary, Liam Fox, was forced to resign his post because of the activities of his friend, Adam Werrity. While the issue came to light because of business cards being distributed by the ‘adviser’, who was not actually an adviser, it has lifted the lid on something far more sinister. For one, it has drawn attention to the think-tank established by Mr Fox called Atlantic Bridge. This was registered with the Charity Commission in Britain but was in fact a lobbying outfit calling for privatisation, deregulation and tax cuts. It again reminds us of the close connections that exist between governments and big business.
The recently released Keane Report in Ireland did not recommend widespread debt-forgiveness but did suggest that ordinary Irish people should lose ownership of their homes, become tenants of either the State or, by proxy, the bank and work the rest of their lives to earn money to pay the negative equity on their former property back to the bank. In many cases, the same banks who were bailed out by the Irish taxpayer in 2008. It begs the question whether the people working on this report had the interests of the banks or the people at heart. In the run-up to the publication of the report, people could have been forgiven for believing that some hope might have been on the horizon but this too has been dashed.
There is a quiet hope about the mounting protests around the world against corporate greed, banking fraud and, though not overtly, the links between big business and government. In Ireland, the number of people in mortgage arrears is growing all the time and so is the righteous anger of the people whose lives are being effectively destroyed.
We all get one chance at life and to see that chance being destroyed for some people by crippling negative equity for the sake of a bank’s balance sheet will not wash with people for long, or so we hope. The candidates in the Presidential Election are seeking the votes of the people of Ireland and it is the people who matter so something must be done for them. The nation is nothing without the people so their interests must come first and certainly take precedence over the balance sheets of financial institutions, who already owe the State and the taxpayers massive amounts of money.
A quiet revolution is coming in relation to this injustice. The lack of fairness inherent in these systems must come to an end. Politicians seem to have forgotten that they are elected and paid their salaries to serve the people so they must be reminded.