Occupy the mind with right to protest
Michael Koziol
November 7, 2011
I love money far too much to hold a great deal of sympathy for the Occupy movement. I want it - lots of it - and would happily earn it as a greedy chief executive.
But I also want, and indeed cherish, a set of freedoms currently being tested by this motley protest group. We may have the right to movement, speech and assembly, but apparently they can be denied if you try to exercise them all at once.
I attended much of Saturday's rally and subsequent "occupation" of Hyde Park as a reporter. I use inverted commas because, although the group have coined that term, it is hardly descriptive of what they are doing. We are talking about 50-100 people sitting and talking in one small corner of a very large public park.
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The protesters who assembled outside the Reserve Bank building after the rally collectively decided to move on to Hyde Park rather than be forcibly removed from Martin Place, again. In addition to the park being more public, more comfortable, and shadier, they figured it was also a more diplomatic spot which would present fewer concerns for police.
It only took until about 5.30pm for police to conduct their first raid, with several arrests made and at least one person violently manhandled and dragged away by officers, footage of which was posted online.
When I arrived back at the scene about 7pm, 23 armed police stood in a sinister line-up along the main boulevard, all eyes on the occupiers. At least 20 more were gathered further back. Police were filming using hand-held cameras and demanded that large banners obscuring their shot be removed. Protesters did not comply. A little later someone was arrested for using the word f---.
So this is what it has come to: the NSW police prepared, perhaps ordered, to employ rarely-used laws against swearing or loitering in order to shut down a political protest.
The police must know they are wasting their time ''protecting'' us from an imaginary threat. On Saturday dozens of officers stood around aimlessly for 10 hours guarding a peaceful assembly, all the while not policing serious crime. If there was antagonism between occupiers and police, it was a direct result of the standover tactics of the latter.
Earlier this year at the opening night of the Sydney Festival I witnessed police "move-on" a busker from the corner of Market and Elizabeth streets. The officers then ruthlessly dispersed the crowd of about 20, arresting a woman who refused to move. She screamed as they dragged her away.
The predominant argument against Occupy is that their message is vague and their demands unknown. This is only partly true. Speaking to demonstrators on Saturday, it was clear that the movement has welcomed people with a range of grievances, including the Northern Territory intervention, treatment of refugees, and war. But at its core, the group shares a primary concern about income inequality and corporate greed.
Moreover, it doesn't matter how badly phrased or incoherent their objectives are, because that's not the basis of legitimacy. Are we suggesting that a protest is only legitimate if it pertains to a single government policy? Or if a group is professionally organised? Or if the speakers command a certain level of English?
Other critics suggest that the occupiers have had "enough time" to get their point across. But if we believe these freedoms to be inalienable and absolute, then it is unthinkable to impose a time limit on them. The cognitive dissonance of this position should be enough to force a rethink.
Finally there is the matter of civic disruption. Saturday's rally was only given permission to proceed because they agreed to change course to avoid congestion at Wynyard and a wedding at Sydney Town Hall. The mild inconvenience of a few citizens should not take precedence over the rights of political protesters.
Let us not pretend that the state cared so much about this wedding that they took the case to the Supreme Court: they simply seized on an excuse to try and prevent the rally occurring in the first place.
The group will now attempt to occupy a small portion of Hyde Park, even after they were moved on by police at 2am on Sunday. By all means condemn their politics as naive and wrong. But we should defend with unrelenting certainty their right to be there.
Michael Koziol is studying media at the University of Sydney.
