tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca-fr/topics/occupy-1836/articlesOccupy – La Conversation2018-11-14T11:46:09Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1043822018-11-14T11:46:09Z2018-11-14T11:46:09ZFrom bicycle to social movements, the changing role of chaplains in the US<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244373/original/file-20181107-74778-c46jbf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'Protest chaplains' came together to pledge their support to the Occupy Wall Street protests at Judson Memorial Church in New York in 2011.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Wall-Street-Protest-Religion/044ec1ede2a841b0b12e3b0e3cb51ba6/1/0">AP Photo/Andrew Burton</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>More and more institutions across the United States are hiring chaplains and other spiritual care providers. Some are places that have long employed chaplains, but others may come as a surprise.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.icpc4cops.org/chaplaincy-intro/appointment.html">Various police departments</a> are adding additional chaplains, as are <a href="http://chaplaincyinnovation.org/2018/10/chaplaincy-in-the-heart-of-horse-country">horse racing tracks</a>. At the same time, chaplaincy positions continue to exist in the U.S. House and Senate. </p>
<p>Given the <a href="http://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/">growing numbers of Americans</a> who describe themselves as atheistic, agnostic or “nothing in particular,” this can appear puzzling. </p>
<p>Why is chaplaincy growing when institutional religious affiliation is on the decline? </p>
<h2>History of chaplaincy</h2>
<p>The presence of chaplains in American institutions goes back to the Revolutionary War, when they served the <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674972155">American military.</a> Chaplains helped perform many rituals and were present for patriotic ceremonies and events. Military chaplains have long been uniformed, noncombatant, commissioned officers with rank.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244368/original/file-20181107-74775-qf2e1b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244368/original/file-20181107-74775-qf2e1b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244368/original/file-20181107-74775-qf2e1b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244368/original/file-20181107-74775-qf2e1b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244368/original/file-20181107-74775-qf2e1b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=590&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244368/original/file-20181107-74775-qf2e1b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=590&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244368/original/file-20181107-74775-qf2e1b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=590&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A chaplain from Iowa presides over Passover service for Jewish soldiers during World War II.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-International-News-Italy-WORLD-/dd37372bcfe1da11af9f0014c2589dfb/148/0">AP Photo</a></span>
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<p>Later, prisons and hospitals <a href="https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo8268248.html">came to employ them</a> to provide spiritual care. In federal prisons, chaplains provide a ministry to prisoners, along with support for behavior modification.</p>
<p>In earlier eras, chaplains, like the American population in general, were overwhelmingly Protestant, Catholic or Jewish. They mostly cared for people from their own faith traditions.</p>
<h2>Changing role</h2>
<p>These traditional roles are changing. In <a href="http://www.wendycadge.com/">our research</a> we have come across some unique examples of organizations and people providing support to individuals and communities in a variety of situations.</p>
<p><a href="http://chaplaincyinnovation.org/projects/allay-care-services">Allay Care Services</a>, a newly launched venture, for example, provides chaplains who, for a fee, help individuals and families clarify their wishes at the end of life and prepare the necessary legal documents. While religious leaders have long worked around these issues, Allay links chaplains to people they do not know. The work takes place by phone. </p>
<p>Chaplains provide care for weary travelers. <a href="http://chaplaincyinnovation.org/projects/donna-mote-atl">Donna Mote</a> at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport is just one chaplain among those working in over 170 countries who provide <a href="http://www.wendycadge.com/publications/airport-chapels-and-chaplains/">support to people</a> they see mostly once as they pass through that busy space. At
the New England Seafarers’ Mission in Boston, <a href="http://chaplaincyinnovation.org/seaports">chaplain Steve Cushing</a>, greets the foreign-born staff of container and cruise ships every week. </p>
<p>Chaplains are currently deployed with every <a href="https://www.redcross.org/local/oregon/about-us/news-and-events/news/Meeting-Emotional-and-Spiritual-Needs.html">Red Cross disaster team</a> in the United States and with many fire departments across the country. In these and other examples, they are present with people in crisis and help connect them to other resources. Mote and Cushing, for example, help travelers transfer money to their families, shop for basic necessities or even call home. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244369/original/file-20181107-74775-ndwrif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244369/original/file-20181107-74775-ndwrif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244369/original/file-20181107-74775-ndwrif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244369/original/file-20181107-74775-ndwrif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244369/original/file-20181107-74775-ndwrif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244369/original/file-20181107-74775-ndwrif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244369/original/file-20181107-74775-ndwrif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A chaplain for disaster and spiritual care with the American Red Cross at a memorial service following Boston Marathon explosions in 2013.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Boston-Marathon-Explosions/57517da33a1c405babbdb641b75bc24e/1/0">AP Photo/Boston Globe, Dina Rudick, Pool</a></span>
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<p>While some of the people chaplains serve have relationships with local clergy, growing numbers do not. This means that chaplains are, in many cases, the only theologically educated people that these members of the public have a connection with.</p>
<p>Religious studies scholar <a href="http://indiana.edu/%7Erelstud/people/profiles/sullivan_winnifred">Winnifred Sullivan</a> describes chaplains today as <a href="https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo8268248.html">“secular priests” or “ministers without portfolios.”</a> Their work, increasingly called “spiritual care,” she argues, is understood by many as required by the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/first_amendment">First Amendment</a> of the U.S. Constitution. </p>
<h2>Chaplaincy without religion?</h2>
<p>What is most interesting is the presence of chaplains in places not typically thought to be “religious.” </p>
<p>For example, chaplains are increasingly present in <a href="https://www.ncronline.org/news/politics/protest-chaplains-shepherd-protests">social movements</a> including Occupy, <a href="https://www.faithmattersnetwork.org/resources-for-care-in-the-face-of-violence-and-trauma/">Black Lives Matter</a> and <a href="https://www.episcopalnewsservice.org/2016/12/15/standing-rock-chaplains-attended-to-needs-after-joyful-news/">Standing Rock</a>. They provide a steady presence to protesters grappling with existential questions amid deep tensions that characterize such situations. </p>
<p>An interesting example is that of Laura Everett, executive director of the Massachusetts Council of Churches. Everett <a href="https://reveverett.com/">serves as a bicycle chaplain</a>. When cyclists are killed in traffic in the greater Boston area, she places white bicycles on the sites and leads services of remembrance for community members. </p>
<p>The point being, even when people are skeptical or distant from religious organizations, many remain personally spiritual. Millennials, especially, are gathering in athletic groups and activist organizations – not congregations - to build community and support personal growth. And they too <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5a32a872ace8649fe18ae512/t/5a6f3b9bec212de83ac81b77/1517239214228/How_We_Gather_Digital_4.11.17.pdf">are being joined by chaplains</a> who accompany them through life in ways traditional clergy have done in the past.</p>
<p>In view of this trend, <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/spiritual-care-in-changing-times-initial-glimpses_us_5a3841d7e4b0c12e6337b004">a quarter of theological schools</a> are focusing attention directly on chaplaincy as their overall enrollment numbers continue to decline. Might this reflect a long-term shift in American religious life?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104382/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Wendy Cadge receives funding from FISH </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Skaggs receives funding from FISH. </span></em></p>The traditional role of chaplains is changing. They are increasingly present in social movements such as Occupy, Standing Rock and Black Lives Matter.Wendy Cadge, Professor of Sociology and Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Brandeis UniversityMichael Skaggs, Executive Director, Chaplaincy Innovation Lab, Brandeis UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/787892017-06-07T12:44:51Z2017-06-07T12:44:51ZPolitical intents: how protest camps are reviving social movements around the world<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172483/original/file-20170606-3668-lwa7sm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tent city. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/sonotoki/15651472772/sizes/l">かがみ~/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The business of government is typically carried out by representatives in parliament, at local town halls or in the cabinet office, but make no mistake: politics is done everywhere, by everyone. Around the world, social and protest movements empower people to push for change from outside of established institutions. In recent years, another form of protest has been added to the familiar repertoire of community activism, marches of protest and social media campaigns: the protest camp. </p>
<p>From Tahrir Square in Cairo, Puerto del Sol in Madrid and Syntagma Square in Athens to New York’s Wall Street, central squares in major cities across the US and Saint Paul’s cathedral in London, urban protest camps featured prominently in the wave of uprisings that have swept the world since 2011. While protesters’ grievances and demands differed from place to place, <a href="https://policypress.co.uk/protest-camps-in-international-context">research from around the world has found</a> that the protest camps themselves showed striking similarities. </p>
<p>Amid the assembly of tents, each of these camps featured common spaces such as kitchens, libraries, learning centres, crèches and places of worship. Places of democratic deliberation and assemblies for collective discussion and decision-making were central to all camps. They often had media centres, where journalists could report about the camp, while participants produced their own media, including newspapers, radio shows and leaflets, as well as spreading their message using social media. </p>
<h2>Putting up a fight</h2>
<p>The camps were important symbols of protest in their own right, but out of the camps many more protest actions occurred; people started marches from the camps and retreated there after them. Within the camps, demonstrators were trained in techniques that would allow them to overcome hostile and aggressive policing. There, they could also find medical and psychological care, if they had been injured or traumatised during demonstrations.</p>
<p>While protest camps occur in diverse forms right across the world, each one empowers people to stay together for longer periods of time; to eat, sleep and share daily routines with fellow protesters. By providing living spaces and catering for people’s needs as they arise, protest camps differ from most other forms of protest action. They can often feel like <a href="https://protestcamps.com/2017/04/26/upcoming-workshop-june-7th-at-university-of-leicester/">a second home</a> for demonstrators.</p>
<p>Protest camps also provide spaces to experiment with the way our daily lives are organised. In these places, political change in the form of direct democracy or gender equality are not only issued as demands by protesters – they can also be put into practice within the space of the camp.</p>
<h2>Mounting a challenge</h2>
<p>Since 2011, urban protest camps have regularly sprung up in cities across the world. Over that time, it has become clear that camps can enable broader political challenges, even if they initially focus on a single aim: the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/apr/08/architects-revolt-kiev-maidan-square-ukraine-insurrection">Kiev Maidan camp</a> in the winter of 2013-14 and the Hong Kong <a href="http://thediplomat.com/2016/09/2-years-later-a-look-back-at-hong-kongs-umbrella-movement/">Umbrella Movement</a> both shook the political foundations of the countries where they occurred. </p>
<p>Similarly, the occupation of Gezi Park in Istanbul was sparked by concerns about plans to remove the green space in the heart of the city. But over time, the protests <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/29/gezi-park-year-after-protests-seeds-new-turkey">came to challenge</a> the rule of the AKP party and its leader Erdoğan throughout the whole country. The camp helped to forge a coalition of diverse opposition groups, who historically had very little in common.</p>
<p>There are also numerous camps that occur on a smaller scale and address specific issues and demands, rather than initiating a wholesale questioning of the political system. Take, for example, the <a href="http://www.savingiceland.org/">small camps</a> which have occurred in response to Iceland’s Hydropower Expansion Plans since the mid-2000s. </p>
<h2>Old dog, new tricks</h2>
<p>Protest camps are not a new invention. Long before the Occupy movement camped out at Saint Paul’s, people gathered in camps to protest against nuclear weapons, road and infrastructure projects and war. In the 1980s, <a href="https://faslanepeacecamp.wordpress.com/">peace camps</a> such as Greenham Common and Faslane in Scotland brought people to the gates of military facilities where nuclear weapons were kept, and formed the basis for regular blockades and protests at their gates. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172493/original/file-20170606-3716-9du64u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172493/original/file-20170606-3716-9du64u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172493/original/file-20170606-3716-9du64u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172493/original/file-20170606-3716-9du64u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172493/original/file-20170606-3716-9du64u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172493/original/file-20170606-3716-9du64u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172493/original/file-20170606-3716-9du64u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Living history: a caravan from Faslane in the 1980s, at Glasgow’s Riverside Museum.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/119886413@N05/16088835172/sizes/l">Michel Curi/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>They continued for an extraordinarily long time: Greenham Common lasted for 20 years and the camp at Faslane – near the UK’s Trident nuclear weapons base – celebrates its 35th birthday this year.</p>
<p>Yet over the past decade, activists have professionalised the camp as a form of protest, both internationally and in the UK. A <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/mar/02/climate-camp-disbanded">broad movement against climate change</a>, which formed in 2005, chose the protest camp as its main organisational form. Annual climate camps took place from 2006 to 2010, organised with an increasing level of sophistication and routine. More recently, protest camps against pipelines in North America – including the one against the North Dakota Access Pipeline (NoDAPL) – have <a href="http://www.dw.com/en/standing-rock-nodapl-protest-camp-cleared-in-north-dakota/a-37688396">brought together</a> concerns about climate change with indigenous rights issues. </p>
<p>Climate camps made huge efforts to be radically democratic and ecological spaces. From plenary discussions, shared rotas for the kitchen, renewable energy supplies and compost toilets, the camps attempted to prefigure how life could be in a more just and sustainable society. By turning protest camps into temporary homes, demonstrators often form close-knit communities which sometimes helps them to network and organise in the future. </p>
<p>In a world where political figures like US president Trump seem keen to bypass democratic deliberation through populism, there is a desire to recreate spaces of political deliberation and community, while realising the importance of face-to-face interaction in building viable alternatives to the status quo. Protest camps are likely to form a crucial part in this endeavour.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78789/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Fabian Frenzel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>From Gezi Park in Istanbul to Wall Street in New York City, urban protest camps are shaking up the political establishment on an international scale.Fabian Frenzel, Lecturer in the Political Economy of Organisation, University of LeicesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/743732017-03-16T03:05:05Z2017-03-16T03:05:05ZContested spaces: flash disruptions on the CBD street<p><em>This is the tenth article in our <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/contested-spaces-36316">Contested Spaces</a> series. These pieces look at the conflicting uses, expectations and norms that people bring to public spaces, the clashes that result and how we can resolve these.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Inner-city streets have historically been a site for challenges to the conventional, disrupting the flow of business suits and shoppers. Clashes can occur on many levels. </p>
<p>Noise, smells, pollution, garish billboards or even the jostle of bodies are aspects of the city that can excite or repel us. Among disruptive street users are the homeless sleeping rough with their bundles of belongings and graffiti artists painting murals in alleyways at night.</p>
<p>Our reactions to alternative practices on the street depend on what meanings we inscribe on the city, and what we are there for. Disruptions can challenge our sense of order and control, and so can make us feel insecure. However, many people are drawn to the city for the rush they experience from its diversity and possibilities.</p>
<h2>Occupy</h2>
<p>Some disruptions on the streets are overtly political, such as the Occupy Movement. Occupy Melbourne protesters camped in the city square in October 2011. I was part of this protest – a group of people giving voice to citizens who felt left out by the surging corporate profits on display in the city. </p>
<p>This clash of values was resolved after one week, when police gave two hours for the square to be vacated, before moving in with riot gear and pepper spray. </p>
<p>The next day, the Herald Sun published an article by Melbourne Lord Mayor Robert Doyle, “<a href="https://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjh9tar99TSAhXGKZQKHVlQB4oQFggbMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.heraldsun.com.au%2Farchive%2Fnews%2Fselfish-rabble-got-what-it-deserved%2Fstory-fn7x8me2-1226174052823&usg=AFQjCNHFn2ZGI2EKUmFHdC44A81tFUoVyg">Selfish rabble got what it deserved</a>”. He wrote that:</p>
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<p>… the city must return to normal at some point. Our streets belong to everyone, not a self-appointed rabble.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The question remains, however, as to what is “normal” and whether a city’s strength lies in its ability to <a href="http://www.creativeclass.com/richard_florida/books/cities_and_the_creative_class">nurture diverse and creative uses</a>.</p>
<h2>Flash mobbing</h2>
<p>An example of a less overtly political form of disruption is flash mobs, with their playful pop-up challenges to order and restriction. Flash mobs began in the increasingly surveilled spaces of post-9/11 New York. </p>
<p>Flash mobs can be characterised as a unique form of game, using internet and mobile technologies in their organisation but playing out in public urban spaces. The idea is to “jam” public space like a disruption to a radio transmission.</p>
<p>Technologies are changing city space. Mobile devices have allowed the online world to become a part of the city street. <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Wired-Youth-The-Social-World-of-Adolescence-in-the-Information-Age/Mesch-Talmud/p/book/9780415459945">Ilan Talmud and Gustavo Mesch</a> write that “the online/offline comparison is … becoming a faded and even false dichotomy”. The “entwining of people, place and software” creates complex new relationships, which reinterpret spaces. </p>
<p>Mobile technologies augment the city with a “secret” space known only to the gamers. The <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/bunch-of-geeks-pokemon-go-players-told-to-stay-away-from-melbourne-golf-course-20160820-gqx7tf.html">Pokémon Go phenomenon</a> was a short-lived but very visible example of this augmented reality. Less obvious to the public is <a href="https://www.geocaching.com/play">geocaching</a>. </p>
<p>In the case of flash mobbing, remaining disguised before a timed eruption is essential.</p>
<h2>Don’t walk, dance!</h2>
<p>On Facebook I received an invitation from a guy I’d met at a party. It gave directions on how to participate in a “portable dance portal” at the intersection of Flinders and Elizabeth streets, at 5.55pm on 5/5/11. </p>
<p>I jumped on the Flinders Street train, excited by the invitation and not wanting to be left out. In my carriage I noticed a girl dressed in brightly coloured, alternative clothes.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/160865/original/image-20170315-11529-144p07h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/160865/original/image-20170315-11529-144p07h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/160865/original/image-20170315-11529-144p07h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160865/original/image-20170315-11529-144p07h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160865/original/image-20170315-11529-144p07h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160865/original/image-20170315-11529-144p07h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1060&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160865/original/image-20170315-11529-144p07h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1060&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160865/original/image-20170315-11529-144p07h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1060&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A green light to cross the road, or to dance?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Twenty minutes later, I was dancing with her in the intersection of two of the busiest streets in Melbourne’s CBD. Like a storm appearing in the summer sky, swirls of people skipped unexpectedly into the intersection as the crossing lights changed to green. They emerged out of the peak-hour suits as though drawn by an invisible thread, cavorting and pirouetting, dancing to the tunes on their MP3 players until the lights changed to red. </p>
<p>I, caught in the current, felt a strange connection with my new friends, although no words were exchanged. The dancing went on for about an hour – the crowd swelling to a peak of about 150. It was not a large mob, but this made it perfect. </p>
<p>When the light turned red, the mob had the ability to melt into the sidelines, and appear again as if by magic at the sound of the walk signal. Astounded commuters stared, but continued in a frantic beeline for the next train. </p>
<p>I wondered whether seeing the spin of whirling dervishes made them question their hurry and consider joining in. Perhaps life doesn’t hinge on catching the next train…</p>
<p>This was my very first flash mob, up close and personal. According to Bill Wasik, the inventor of the phenomenon, flash mobbing was <a href="http://harpers.org/archive/2006/03/my-crowd/">dead before the end of 2003</a>. However, as reported by Giles Hewitt, flash mobs have taken on “<a href="http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s913314.htm">a life of their own</a>” and this was confirmed for me on the streets of Melbourne in 2011 and again in 2017.</p>
<h2>Pussy hats</h2>
<p>On March 8, 2017, a group of Melbourne women, and a few men, took to the streets in a <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/video/video-news/video-victoria-news/flashmob-at-melbourne-international-womens-day-march-20170308-4rgxq.html">“pussy hat” flash mob</a>. </p>
<p>They joyously sang the song Quiet, which has gained international popularity with guerrilla protesters <a href="https://www.icantkeepquiet.org/about/">#ICAN’TKEEPQUIET</a>, who gave an impromptu performance of the song in response to President Donald Trump’s inauguration.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">A pussy hat flash mob in Stockholm Central Station, one of the big ones held on International Women’s Day this year.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Melbourne mob was celebrating International Women’s Day. The group was a smiling, singing vision in pink and lavender, many wearing pussy ear hats like those worn in the Washington flash mobs.</p>
<p>Via creative and playful practices assisted by mobile technologies, flash mobs can provide spaces where the marginalised or unconventional can become visible and resist the conformity of suits and shoppers. </p>
<p>Flash mobs have the power to not only disrupt flows of traffic but also assumptions about norms of behaviour in public spaces. Their disruptive quality exists more in the psyche, in their ability to provoke questioning of public behaviour and to momentarily slow the city’s rush.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can find other pieces published in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/contested-spaces-36316">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/74373/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Susan Bird does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Political street protests and even the more playful flash mobs have the power to not only disrupt flows of traffic but also assumptions about norms of behaviour in public spaces.Susan Bird, Lecturer in Law, CQUniversity AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/684522016-11-10T09:32:49Z2016-11-10T09:32:49ZAnarchy in the USA: five years on, the legacy of Occupy Wall Street and what it can teach us in the Age of Trump<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/145053/original/image-20161108-16707-1hc7by8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Police officers try to clear people participating in the Occupy Wall Street protest, New York City, 2011.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.epa.eu/politics-photos/citizens-initiative-photos/occupy-wall-street-march-in-new-york-photos-50077586">EPA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It was a turning point in the story of a new kind of democracy – and how the state tried to snuff it out. In a coordinated show of force, state and federal authorities evicted <a href="http://occupywallst.org">Occupy Wall Street</a> (OWS) and a number of similar camps across the US. It was November 15, 2011 – and five years on, the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/jun/17/where-occupy-protesters-now-social-media">legacy of Occupy</a> has some important lessons for us. </p>
<p>Occupy’s “<a href="http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/page/231">we are the 99%</a>” meme successfully placed debates about class inequality at the centre of political debate. The <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/sep/17/occupy-wall-street-protesters-bernie-sanders">enthusiasm generated by Bernie Sanders</a> in the US presidential primaries this year can be explained by this renewed political consciousness and the confidence of <a href="http://www.rawstory.com/2016/02/bernies-success-is-less-surprising-once-you-remember-occupy-wall-street/">young Americans in particular</a>. Hillary Clinton’s failure to win over this constituency partly explains her failure to defeat Donald Trump. </p>
<p>In the inevitable soul-searching to come, we need to think carefully about the nature of our political institutions and constitutions – and how they can serve all, not just the few, the powerful. In this respect, Occupy offers us a positive alternative to the status quo – a way of building bridges between diverse groups and empowering all. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/11/2011112872835904508.html">anarchists of Occupy</a> created another way to <a href="http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199585007.001.0001/acprof-9780199585007-chapter-3">constitutionalise</a> – that is how to constitute ourselves as a political community – involving the people in all elements of decision making and identifying and combating domination in all its forms. This may strike you as ridiculous, but our research suggests that constitutionalising in this way is routine in anarchist groups such as Occupy, and has much to teach us all, especially in the new Age of Trump. </p>
<h2>A new anarchism</h2>
<p>Occupy put anarchism back on the political map. The anarchists of Occupy taught us that organisations can be structured differently and showed us that political movements don’t have to crystallise around political parties, businesses or even NGOs. Indeed, self-organisation stands as an important example of how anarchist ideas of <a href="https://theconversation.com/whither-anarchy-freedom-as-non-domination-60776">non-domination</a> and participatory democracy can also be <a href="https://theconversation.com/icelands-crowd-sourced-constitution-hope-for-disillusioned-voters-everywhere-67803">constitutionalised</a>. It is possible to identify five broad aspects of constitutionalising in Occupy. </p>
<p><strong>Declarations and preambles:</strong> The Declaration of the Occupation of New York City was one of the first things to emerge from OWS. Much like the Preamble to the US Constitution, it invokes “<a href="http://occupywallstreet.net/policy/declaration-occupation-new-york-city">one people, united</a>” to bring the camp into existence. Occupy’s Declaration expressed commonly shared values, “constituting” the occupation as a group, the 99%, which included all those dominated by the unaccountable 1%. </p>
<p><strong>Decision making:</strong> Occupy camps subsequently constituted themselves through participatory decision-making procedures. A General Assembly (GA) became the central decision-making body of each Occupy camp and decisions were made by consensus, by all. This is tricky because it gives everyone a veto or block, but it is designed to ensure that no one can be arbitrarily ignored or overruled. It can be, and was, modified to allow voting and to avoid one or a few individuals blocking a popular decision. Such modified consensus still demanded a high threshold – a 90% majority. </p>
<p>Occupy’s decision-making practices were as constitutive as the decisions Occupiers made, if not more so. The popular slogan, often repeated, was: “This is what democracy looks like!”</p>
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<p><strong>Institutions:</strong> Understood as rules, norms and decision-making procedures, institutions are truly plural. Likewise, the Occupy camps had numerous relatively embedded institutions. <a href="http://www.nycga.net/resources/general-assembly-guide/">General Assemblies</a> were explicitly declared sovereign. Decisions affecting everyone were taken here, giving everyone a chance to have their say in the rules that shaped their involvement in the camp.</p>
<p>A <a href="http://www.villagevoice.com/news/occupy-wall-street-debuts-the-new-spokes-council-6666585">Spokes Council</a> was also established to work alongside each General Assembly. The name “Spokes Council” is significant: the design is like a bicycle wheel. Delegates come together from groups at the periphery to meet at the centre. This was introduced to bring together delegates from working groups (kitchen, cleaning, media outreach, welfare and so on) as well as caucuses (for those marginalised along racial or gendered lines, for example). </p>
<p>The Spokes Council served as a constitutional check and balance on the General Assemblies, importantly limiting the scope of decision making to logistical issues by delegates of active groups and restricting the powers of tourists and visitors to the camps who attended the General Assemblies. </p>
<p><strong>Rules and procedures:</strong> Camp rules and processes were complex, sometimes explicit, sometimes not. Because camps were constituted by people committed to horizontalism and against hierarchy, rules were shaped by distinctive ethics, revised and supplemented to address failures of norms and to be inclusive, transparent and accountable. The corruption and injustices of representative systems – the lack of transparency in parliamentary processes, corporate greed and bankers’ bonuses, for example – were at the forefront of everyone’s minds. </p>
<p>When, in the course of the occupations, it became clear that types of domination remained, camps introduced new rules. Safer spaces policies were introduced to counter dominating patriarchal attitudes and actions. Camps also used “tranquillity” teams to resolve conflicts through reconciliation and de-escalation, using the camps’ rules and procedures.</p>
<p><strong>Addressing power imbalances:</strong> Constitutions, which follow the model established after the American and French revolutions, routinely seek to balance powers within societies, notably between the people and the government, and between the capital and labour. This means that power imbalances have to be identified first. Occupy camps constitutionalised in the same way and entered into a processes of self-critical reflection to address concealed or invisible forms of domination.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://occupyoakland.org">Occupy Oakland</a>, for example, participants recognised that the language of occupation itself raised fundamental questions about ownership, property and sovereignty: who were the occupiers? In the North American context, “Occupy” itself begged questions about white settlement, colonisation and systemic racism. Occupiers checked their own privilege and responded by calling for the decolonisation of camps.</p>
<h2>Non-domination as a constitutional principle</h2>
<p>These five aspects of constitutionalising, typical to both anarchist and non-anarchist practices, exist in dynamic relation with one another. In other words, if one element of the constitutionalising process is fixed, it will inevitably clash with the others. Likewise changes in one area affect another. The amount of state force it takes modern society to fix them all is staggering: the coordinated eviction of the Occupy Wall Street camps and the criminalisation of dissent, the incarceration of millions for minor misdemeanours, and so on. The unique feature of anarchist constitutionalising, and what we find in Occupy, is the degree to which they were participatory and voluntary, rather than imposed from above.</p>
<p>What we also learn from Occupy is how non-domination, a constitutional principle central to contemporary political theory and anarchist practice, can operate outside the currently established systems of government. In Occupy, constitutionalising accomplishes what mainstream political and constitutional theory expects, but goes further. </p>
<p>Occupiers saw no virtue in relying on the existing institutions to provide for non-domination. If non-domination is our pole star, Occupy Wall Street shows us that radical alternatives to the status quo exist, work, and can broaden our horizons in the Age of Trump.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68452/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ruth Kinna receives funding from Economic and Social Research Council for a project seeking to understand the specificity of anarchist consttitutionalising. <a href="http://www.anarchyrules.info">www.anarchyrules.info</a></span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alex Prichard receives funding from Economic and Social Research Council for a project seeking to understand the specificity of anarchist consttitutionalising. <a href="http://www.anarchyrules.info">www.anarchyrules.info</a></span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thomas Swann receives funding from Economic and Social Research Council for a project seeking to understand the specificity of anarchist consttitutionalising. <a href="http://www.anarchyrules.info">www.anarchyrules.info</a></span></em></p>In this new political era, how a popular movement offers a route to a new form of governanceRuth Kinna, Professor of Political Theory, Loughborough UniversityAlex Prichard, Senior Lecturer in Politics, University of ExeterThomas Swann, Research associate, Loughborough UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/607782016-08-05T21:53:54Z2016-08-05T21:53:54ZWhither anarchy: the fantasy of natural law<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/125846/original/image-20160609-3477-13syepb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Do outdated fantasies of anarchism simply play into the agendas of the rich and privileged? Nuit debout in Paris, 2016. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/boklm/26322384582/">Nicolas Vigier/flickr</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> series, a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> with the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century. This article is the last of four perspectives on the political relevance of anarchy and the prospects for liberty in the world today.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>What is the relevance of anarchism today? Should we see a reinvigoration of anarchist tropes and themes or movements – such as <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/the-triumph-of-occupy-wall-street/395408/">Occupy</a>, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/postcard-from-spain-where-now-for-the-quiet-revolution-43779">Spanish Indignados</a> and most recently <a href="https://theconversation.com/are-frances-nuitdebout-protests-the-start-of-a-new-political-movement-57706">Nuit debout in France</a> – as a sign that anarchism is about to enjoy a resurgence?</p>
<p>Notwithstanding the slow but undeniable decline of political ideologies and sources of inspiration for political action, my feeling is that anarchism has fallen into a certain redundancy when confronted with the issues that animate activists today.</p>
<p>The anarchist focus on the state as the locus for its critique of how power and domination operate has a vaguely antique air to it. It’s an analysis that belongs to the early modern era and particularly to the period of high colonialism that inspired the classic works of anarchism in the early and mid-19th century.</p>
<p>What we see in this period is state power being used to eviscerate indigenous ownership over land. This happened both as an internal process of what Marx called “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_accumulation_of_capital">primitive accumulation</a>” and as an external process of forced conquest and enslavement of subject peoples. </p>
<p>From this point of view, the anarchists’ argument that the key antagonism lies between a statist metropolitan core and various forms of collective communal existences beyond or outside of the state is compelling. Resistance to the state was thus a logical strategy for those who wish to preserve and consecrate forms of social life beyond or outside the state.</p>
<p>For anarchists such as <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Pierre-Joseph-Proudhon">Proudhon</a> and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Peter-Alekseyevich-Kropotkin">Kropotkin</a>, society worked best when it ran in accordance with “natural law”, which they, by contrast with the likes of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Thomas-Hobbes">Hobbes</a>, regarded as essentially benign and sociable. </p>
<p>It was the state that disrupted the possibility of social peace and harmony, not “us”. The state was an imposition, an artifice whose origins are rooted in the protection and promotion of inequality and enslavement.</p>
<p>In the mid-19th century, it was perhaps still plausible to cling to the idea of the reinvigoration of “society” as potentially having a distinct life apart from the institutions and processes of the state. </p>
<h2>Battlelines have shifted</h2>
<p>Let’s fast-forward to today’s “anarchistic” movements. What provided the spark for Nuit debout? In origin it was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Khomri_law">Loi de travail</a>. And what is that about? A threat to undermine hard-won gains by generations of trade unionists who have sought to use state power to protect workers’ rights from the encroachments of the market and neoliberals.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/125850/original/image-20160609-3497-mrsv2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/125850/original/image-20160609-3497-mrsv2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125850/original/image-20160609-3497-mrsv2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125850/original/image-20160609-3497-mrsv2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125850/original/image-20160609-3497-mrsv2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125850/original/image-20160609-3497-mrsv2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125850/original/image-20160609-3497-mrsv2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Is the problem ‘too much state’ or not enough?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Georges P/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This movement and the protests going on in France as I write are inspired not by the prospect of the state encroaching on society and “natural law”, but by the threat of the state withdrawing from the economic sphere, leaving workers exposed to the law of the market. The problem is not “too much state”, but not enough – or not enough to protect those who stand to lose from the winding back of state protection in the name of economic competitiveness.</p>
<p>The antagonisms that give rise to political mobilisation today have quite a different character to those of 19th century. Once this antagonism was between the state and society. Now the key conflict is between the state and the market. </p>
<p>“Rolling back the state” is a phrase we rightly associate with an aggressive assault on decades of collective agreements, understandings, practices and institutions. Together, these have provided the basis for commodious living under market or capitalist conditions. This includes state-provided health services, education, welfare payments, social housing and the like.</p>
<p>Rolling back the state is no longer suggestive of restoring or preserving the rights of indigenous, tribal or other kinds of “natural” association. There remains a kind of doctrinaire anarchist who is deeply hostile to seeing these facets of collective life as anything other than a sop to capitalism. They are wary of creating “happy slaves” far removed from the image of the fully autonomous individual they believe would be the result of removing the state.</p>
<p>The Occupy protesters, the Indignados, Nuit debout and all the rest know better than that. The absence of a program, ideology or manifesto from these political phenomena can be read as a nod in the direction of an “anarchistic” practice, as can the deliberative assemblies, the <a href="http://berkeleyjournal.org/2014/10/can-prefigurative-politics-replace-political-strategy/">“pre-figurative”</a> gestures of soup kitchens etc.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/125848/original/image-20160609-3475-bcwv59.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/125848/original/image-20160609-3475-bcwv59.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125848/original/image-20160609-3475-bcwv59.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125848/original/image-20160609-3475-bcwv59.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125848/original/image-20160609-3475-bcwv59.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125848/original/image-20160609-3475-bcwv59.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125848/original/image-20160609-3475-bcwv59.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Forget about soup kitchens, what about anarchist community television?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nicolas Vigier/flickr</span></span>
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<p>But the absence of demands is better read as a desire to maintain an inclusive “anger” about the direction in which our world and our politics is heading – away from social democratic, state-centric collective life towards a warts-and-all “natural existence” where the dominant ethos is “survival of the fittest”. </p>
<p>It’s a world that <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/max-stirner/">Stirner</a> and individualistic anarchists might be comfortable in – but not collectivists or anyone concerned about the least well-off.</p>
<h2>State or society is a false choice</h2>
<p>My hunch is that it is Donald Trump, Wall Street and Big Finance that will gain from “anarchy”, not the poor, the marginal and those whose plight animated the emergence of an anarchist theory and practice in the first place. </p>
<p>Anarchism lost its “natural” constituency in the more or less violent process of the unfolding of modernity, whether of the state capitalist, communist or free market varieties. </p>
<p>What we are left with is not a choice between “state” and “society”, but between a state that serves the needs and interests of its citizens and a state that prioritises the needs and interests of <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/21543178">the 1%</a>.</p>
<p>Many anarchists know this, which is why some of them are standing for election in places like Spain, Iceland and Italy – and winning. They understand that the contemporary task is not the abolition of the state, as per the classical anarchist formula, but its transformation into a vehicle that better expresses the needs and wishes of ordinary citizens. </p>
<p>It is not to rid us of political authority in the name of “natural law”, but to create the conditions for a more authentic and more involving form of democracy that protects many of the “wins” from decades of struggles by trade unionists, social movements and progressive political parties.</p>
<p>Today’s anarchists should give up the fantasy of “abolishing the state”. That simply plays into the agenda of the rich and privileged. Instead, they should join in the movement to make the state more democratic, more accountable and better able to reflect the views, needs and interests of all of its citizens.</p>
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<p><em>You can read the other articles in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/whither-anarchy">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/60778/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon Tormey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Today’s anarchists should give up the fantasy of ‘abolishing the state’. That simply plays into the agenda of the rich and privileged.Simon Tormey, Professor of Political Theory and Head of the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/577062016-04-14T09:34:58Z2016-04-14T09:34:58ZAre France’s #NuitDebout protests the start of a new political movement?<p>It’s a familiar script for anyone who knows recent French history: the government rolls out a reform, citizens react with outrage, and Paris is filled with demonstrations and strikes. </p>
<p>The current turmoil began in March, when President François Hollande proposed reworking the country’s <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/09/end-of-term-protests-threaten-francois-hollande-labour-legacy">labour code</a>. Known as the “El Khomri law” after the minister responsible, Myriam El Khomri, the reform shares some elements with earlier attempts – including providing companies with more flexibility in hiring and firing – but the results have been the same: widespread resistance.</p>
<p>This started with an <a href="https://www.change.org/p/loi-travail-non-merci-myriamelkhomri-loitravailnonmerci">online petition</a> that gathered more than a million signatures in two weeks, and has since shifted into the public realm. <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/08/nuit-debout-protesters-occupy-french-cities-in-a-revolutionary-call-for-change">Thousands</a> of protestors have occupied the city’s Place de la République with all-night meetings and debates, and the protest is now known as “<em>Nuit Debout</em>” (roughly, “standing up all night”). </p>
<p>The ambition is to create a shared space that allows citizens to exchange stories, express shared outrage, and imagine a better world. Recently, the movement has spread beyond Paris to <a href="http://www.nicematin.com/index.php/politique/les-visages-de-la-contestation-du-mouvement-nuit-debout-a-nice-40449">Nice</a>, <a href="http://www.sudouest.fr/2016/04/11/le-pari-des-citoyens-noctambules-2327158-2780.php">Bordeaux</a> and <a href="https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/france/060416/lyon-une-nuit-debout-est-improvisee-sous-un-pont">Lyon</a>.</p>
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<p>In early 2006, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/16/AR2006031601908.html">similar protests</a> broke out in France against a proposed “first-hire contract”. Students, unions and left-wing political parties united against the proposed contract, and after months of protests, then-prime minister Dominique de Villepin <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/85c031e6-c8f7-11da-b642-0000779e2340.html">abandoned the idea</a>.</p>
<p>In <em>Nuit Debout</em> key roles have been played by author, filmmaker and activist François Ruffin, whose film <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/13/arts/international/the-film-merci-patron-emerges-as-a-rallying-cry-in-france.html">Merci Patron!</a> has been a touchstone for the protesters, and economist Frédéric Lordon. There are echoes of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/sep/19/occupy-wall-street-financial-system">Occupy Wall Street</a> and Spain’s <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/apr/28/spain-indignados-protests-state-of-mind"><em>indignados</em></a> (“the outraged”). In Spain, the protest movement gave rise to the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/31/podemos-revolution-radical-academics-changed-european-politics">political party Podemos</a>, which made significant gains in the December 2015 election and is now playing a key role in the negotiations to <a href="https://theconversation.com/just-a-reminder-that-spain-still-doesnt-have-a-government-55884">form a national government</a>.</p>
<p>And as the protests have grown in France, supporters have gone beyond the initial objective of forcing the withdrawal of the labour law, as happened in 2006, to the idea of launching a wider political movement.</p>
<h2>The law that started it all</h2>
<p>Of course, simple frustration isn’t enough to launch a mass mobilisation – a trigger is needed. The proposed labour reform allowed the protests to spread beyond the core group of <a href="https://theconversation.com/qui-sont-les-organisations-etudiantes-quel-est-leur-role-et-qui-representent-elles-56311">high-school students</a>, activists and labour unions, and to gain visibility in the mass media. The law also provided the framework for a regular series of demonstrations, allowing the movement to establish a cohesive form. As <a href="http://lexpansion.lexpress.fr/actualite-economique/frederic-lordon-l-economiste-qui-dit-merci-a-la-loi-el-khomri_1779193.html">Frédéric Lordon said</a> during the first <em>Nuit Debout</em> on March 31:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We will never be able to sufficiently thank the El Khomri law for having woken us from our political slumber.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>What distinguishes social movements from mere protests is that they have a larger purpose, not one specific demand. From the first meetings of university and high school students on March 9, the El Khomri law served as an opportunity to express general indignation. In protest leaflets, students called for resistance “against government policy” rather than just this one bill. During marches, protesters expressed their disappointment with the political left in general and the ruling Socialist Party in particular.</p>
<h2>Standing up to the elites</h2>
<p>The students denounced the collusion between the country’s political and economic elites, much like the Occupy movements that swept the world in 2011. They joined many activists, intellectuals, and progressive politicians from the “left of the left”, a political movement that forced a <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/16/french-prime-minister-vote-of-confidence-parliament">vote of confidence</a> against Prime Minister Manuel Valls in 2014.</p>
<p>The lack of viable political alternatives in France makes it a particularly favourable time to mobilise outrage and propose a more participatory democracy, centred around the people. French citizens no longer identify with national and European political elites. The system appears to them to be “democracy without choice”, where voting for either the left-wing Socialist Party or the right-wing Republicans barely changes the government’s social and economic policies.</p>
<p>Debates over finance minister Emmanuel Macron’s <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/11/business/france-labor-market-jobs-unemployment.html">economic programme</a> (passed only with a manoeuvre that sidestepped a parliamentary vote) only strengthened this conviction. As did the failed proposed constitutional amendment to <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/30/francois-hollande-drops-plan-to-revoke-citizenship-of-dual-national-terrorists">strip French citizenship</a> from convicted terrorists with dual nationality.</p>
<p>With disappointment in the government widespread, and established leftist movements such as the Green Party and the <em>Front de Gauche</em> torn by internal dissent, the only option for progressive citizens has been to express disapproval and build “another policy” from the streets. In <em>Nuit Debout</em>, as in the Occupy camps, it has all been about “getting our act together as citizens” to question the relevance of representative democracy.</p>
<h2>A youth with no future?</h2>
<p>During the events on the Place de la République and on social networks (<em><a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23OnVautMieuxQueCa&src=typd">#OnVautMieuxQueCa</a></em>, <em><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NuitDebout?src=hash">#NuitDebout</a></em>, <em><a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=loitravail&src=typd">#LoiTravail</a></em>, <em><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/32mars">#32mars</a></em>), young people express their fears of being “deprived of their future”.</p>
<p>If Occupy, the <em>indignados</em> and <em>Nuit Debout</em> aren’t specifically youth movements, young people are the driving force behind them. Through these demonstrations, they affirm and express themselves as individuals, as a force for democracy, willing to re-imagine the world. This all-encompassing desire can be seen embodied in a <a href="https://twitter.com/marillerpat/status/706267757965344768">single tweet</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We need to think of tomorrow’s society, with humanism, freedom, equality, fraternity.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Where next?</h2>
<p>So will <em>Nuit Debout</em> fizzle like Occupy or follow the same path as <em>Los Indignados</em>, which sparked political change in Spain? </p>
<p>While both movements refused to engage in the electoral process, some of their activists chose to do so. The campaigns of <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/jeremy-corbyn">Jeremy Corbyn</a>, elected to the head of the British Labour Party in 2015, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/bernie-sanders">Bernie Sanders</a>, currently running against Hillary Clinton to be the Democratic nominee for US president, have been empowered by young activists angry and frustrated with politics as usual. </p>
<p>The rise of the Podemos political party in Spain was both the continuation and inversion of the <em>indignados</em> movement: it showed that political change is possible, but only by moving from <a href="http://www.laviedesidees.fr/Espagne-de-l-indignation-a-l-organisation.html">indignation to organisation</a>. To do so, Pablo Iglesias, secretary-general of Podemos since 2014, betrayed certain core values of the <em>indignados</em>, including its leaderless structure and the requirement that decisions be made by the largest possible number of participants.</p>
<p>While <em>Nuit Debout</em> borrows some of the Spanish movement’s codes, the political situation in France and Europe is quite different from 2011, with the rise of far-right parties and security concerns. <em>Nuit Debout’s</em> centre on the Place de la République is where the huge public memorials were held after <em>Charlie Hebdo</em> and the November 13 attacks. Some politicians, including former prime minister and presidential candidate François Fillon, have criticised the movement as being a <a href="http://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2016/04/10/francois-fillon-critique-le-mouvement-nuit-debout-tolere-en-plein-etat-d-urgence_4899572_823448.html">security risk</a>. </p>
<p>With France’s recently extended <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/22/france-considers-extending-national-state-of-emergency">state of emergency</a>, authorities haven’t just targeted potential terrorists. Muslims and young people are regularly brutalised by the police, and some student demonstrations have been <a href="http://www.liberation.fr/france/2016/04/05/un-policier-m-a-dit-que-ca-lui-faisait-plaisir-de-nous-matraquer_1444126">violently suppressed</a>.</p>
<p>The <em>Nuit Debout</em> movement in France will have to find its own way forward, building on both the successes and the limitations of its predecessors. Without predicting what its future may be, bringing together thousands of citizens of all generations to reaffirm that “another world is possible” – that there are progressive alternatives centred on democracy, social justice and dignity – is already a huge success.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Translated from the French by Leighton Walter Kille.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/57706/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Geoffrey Pleyers is president of the "social movements" research committee of the International Association of Sociology.</span></em></p>Proposed labour reforms in France have sparked mass protests led by young people who want to reclaim democracy from the elite.Geoffrey Pleyers, Sociologue, FNRS-Université de Louvain & Collège d’études mondiales, Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain)Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/551912016-03-24T11:56:27Z2016-03-24T11:56:27ZHow the legacies of the Tea Party and Occupy are shaping the 2016 race<p>As they continue to tear up their respective parties, <a href="https://theconversation.com/sanders-wins-new-hampshire-why-the-time-is-again-ripe-for-american-socialism-54317">Bernie Sanders</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-last-time-an-outsider-like-trump-crashed-the-gop-1940-55742">Donald Trump</a> are tapping into rich veins of “anti-establishment” fury. And while they’ve managed to create movements of a force not seen at the ballot box in years, they clearly owe a debt to the US’s two biggest protest movements of recent years: on the right, the Tea Party, and on the left, Occupy.</p>
<p>On the surface, it seems simple enough. Trump’s highly divisive campaign has amplified a <a href="http://reason.com/blog/2015/08/27/donald-trump-nativist-campaign-racists">nativist</a> strain that already ran strongly through the Tea Party; various observers see Sanders as an advocate for the supposed “<a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/02/11/stephen-colbert-grills-bernie-sanders-isn-t-this-class-warfare.html">class warfare</a>” associated with Occupy.</p>
<p>But this rests on assumptions about the Tea Party and Occupy that aren’t completely accurate. In fact, both were far more internally diverse than was recognised at their peak – and it’s that quality that actually best resonates with what’s happening in the 2016 election.</p>
<p>While the Tea Party’s ranks certainly included a radical conservative majority, it also consisted of various elements held together by libertarians tolerant of a range of differing opinions. These Tea Partiers were open-minded about immigration, social issues, gay rights, and other issues, and they duly met with some hostility from the Tea Party’s more bellicose conservatives. Nonetheless, because of their shared disdain for government power and devotion to individual liberty, these libertarians became fellow travellers. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, while Occupy’s strong progressive or liberal majority generally dominated the considerable press coverage the group’s protests attracted, there was also a dissenting minority – an agglomeration of the radical left, left-libertarians, and anarchists who had a fundamentally different vision for the future of the country. Their views on inequality and the erosion of community chimed with the Occupy mainstream, but their positions on hierarchy, governmental power, and tactics differed significantly and caused friction.</p>
<p>Even though the Tea Party and Occupy spoke for a minority of the American population, the feelings of intense grievance and umbrage they expressed have permeated mainstream politics. There is now substantial division and discord within both parties, many of whose core constituencies are unwilling to compromise. </p>
<h2>Falling apart</h2>
<p>On the right, the friction between hardline conservatives and more libertarian types appears to have opened up a deep divide within the Republican Party, one that might be irreparable. </p>
<p>The Tea Party experience initially emboldened libertarians in their efforts to wield national political influence, and their renewed zeal for politicking drove Ron Paul’s explicitly libertarian 2012 campaign to far greater success than his 2008 run. But the Republican nomination responded by <a href="http://www.democracynow.org/2012/8/29/chaos_on_the_convention_floor_as">changing the rules of the convention</a> to silence Paul and the corresponding delegates supporting him. </p>
<p>After that, many libertarians <a href="http://www.independentpoliticalreport.com/2016/02/ron-paul-liberty-minded-republicans-should-forget-about-gop-primaries-support-the-libertarian-party-instead/">swore an end</a> to their participation in the Republican Party. And the <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/rand-paul-dropping-out-of-white-house-race-218675">failure of Rand Paul’s 2016 campaign</a> indicates that whatever grip they had on the party’s thinking has slipped.</p>
<p>This libertarian collapse helps explain how candidates such as Donald Trump are frontrunners, even as they focus on social issues and authoritarian practices miles away from anything resembling a limited government philosophy. </p>
<p>The Democratic Party is witnessing a fragmentation as well, as Bernie Sanders lends a surprisingly strong voice to sections of American society that include the minority mentioned earlier in Occupy – even if he isn’t necessarily as hard a leftist as they might like. </p>
<p>Even Noam Chomsky, deeply sceptical of the possibility of a left-wing ascendancy in American politics, <a href="http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/video_noam_chomsky_bernie_sanders_is_not_a_socialist_new_dealer_20160217">has sympathetic words for Sanders</a>. It seems that after years on the margins, there’s a renewed desire among the radical left, the libertarian-left, and others to exert some real influence in mainstream electoral politics.</p>
<p>That the twin legacies of the Tea Party and Occupy have so disrupted the 2016 election spells deep change in American politics for years to come. The phenomenal performances of Sanders and Trump challenge the notion that American political culture is essentially bipolar, with coherent Republican and Democratic factions on either side, and indicate that the artificially bipolar makeup of American electoral politics need not necessarily be a given. </p>
<p>It would indeed seem that Americans are now following more in the steps of Thomas Jefferson, who stated: “I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/55191/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>I am a member of the Democratic Party, but not an active volunteer.</span></em></p>The two biggest American protest groups of the millennium have long passed their peak – but their effects linger on.Alfred Cardone, PhD Candidate, Institute of North American Studies, King's College LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/350582014-12-04T19:51:30Z2014-12-04T19:51:30ZEric Garner, the ‘American problem’ and a chance to unite<p>Police violence has dominated American headlines over the past year. The seemingly unaccounted-for police shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson brought renewed attention and public protests to this issue; now, the decision <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/dec/03/eric-garner-grand-jury-declines-indict-nypd-chokehold-death">not to charge</a> officer Daniel Pantaleo for the death of Eric Garner, even after he was caught on video illegally restraining him with a chokehold, has only added to these rising concerns over apparently unaccountable use of force by police officers across the country, particularly against African-Americans.</p>
<p>In the months since Garner’s death, authorities had feared unrest on the same scale as in Ferguson, or even worse. These worries were especially acute in light of <a href="http://time.com/3615660/chokehold-eric-garner-daniel-pantaleo-nypd/">video footage</a> showing the officer putting the victim in an illicit chokehold while he repeatedly gasped: “I can’t breathe.” </p>
<p>This evidence was even more damning given the <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/08/01/337177619/nyc-man-s-chokehold-death-was-a-homicide-medical-examiner-says">coroner’s report</a> that the death was a homicide caused “by the compression of his chest and prone positioning during physical restraint by police”.</p>
<p>Not surprisingly, this violence has been largely linked to the persistence of racism in the US. The American news cycle has been tightly focused on the country’s racial divisions, the threat of race riots and the stark disparity in the way the white majority and the African-American minority are treated. </p>
<p>But tragic and racially charged though these incidents have been, they are also a golden opportunity to unite Americans behind the cause of fundamental social change – a cause that encompasses racism, but goes further too. And while no such movement is yet in the offing, the seeds of one are already starting to sprout.</p>
<h2>Black lives matter</h2>
<p>The mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio, quickly responded to Pantaleo’s non-indictment with <a href="http://nypost.com/2014/12/03/cop-cleared-in-eric-garner-chokehold-death/">appeals for non-violent protests</a>, declaring: “New York City owns a proud and powerful tradition of expressing ourselves through non-violent protest. We trust that those unhappy with today’s grand jury decision will make their views known in the same peaceful, constructive way.”</p>
<p>While the moderating impulse is understandable, sentiments such as these do little more than focus attention on the “threat” of “violent” blacks rather than the actual aggression and violence of the white police officers responsible for Garner’s death. </p>
<p>But de Blasio also managed to advance things a little, bluntly and honestly <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/12/03/368249828/reports-nyc-grand-jury-does-not-indict-officer-in-chokehold-case?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=202603">acknowledging</a> that “centuries of racism that have brought us to this day”. That spoke to the deeper anger driving these protests, reflected in the protesters’ rallying cry: “Black lives matter”.</p>
<p>At the heart of these words and the protests they addressed was a desire to unite the country in condemning the status quo. The emphasis was on “healing” a divided nation, while also recognising the serious need for reform at all levels of the state. As the US president, Barack Obama, <a href="http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/12/03/the-death-of-eric-garner-the-grand-jury-decision/?_r=0">said in response</a>: “We are not going to let up until we see a strengthening of the trust and a strengthening of the accountability that exists between our communities and our law enforcement.”</p>
<p>But crucial to the success of those efforts will be realising that this is not just a racial problem – it is a problem with authority in the US in general.</p>
<h2>Fight the system</h2>
<p>Undeniably, African Americans are <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/08/14/police-killings-data/14060357/?AID=10709313&PID=4003003&SID=1qmlggfjl3g52">disproportionately affected</a> by police violence – but it also affects people of all races. Within months of Michael Brown’s death at the hands of the Ferguson police, there were two less publicised cases of excessive police violence against white suspects in the surrounding area: Joseph Jennings, who <a href="http://www.kctv5.com/story/26355241/ottawa-police-involved-in-shooting">was shot 16 times</a> outside a Kansas hardware store, and 17-year-old Bryce Masters, who <a href="http://fox4kc.com/2014/09/17/search-warrants-shed-light-on-taser-incident-that-hospitalized-bryce-masters/">ended up in a coma</a> after a police officer tasered him when he refused to roll down his window after being stopped.</p>
<p>Obama echoed this need to both recognise the racial dynamic driving much of this violence while also the importance of treating it as a national not just “black” or “minority” crisis. He <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/11/25/obama-ferguson-protests-immigration-speech/70111056/">maintained</a>: “The problem is not just a Ferguson problem. It’s an American problem.”</p>
<p>In order to address the problem, we have to confront its deeper causes, ones that certainly involve but are by no means limited to the country’s ongoing structural racism. Rising inequality and poverty, especially in the wake of the financial crisis, have <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arzu-kaya-uranli/the-problem-is-not-just-a_b_6233104.html?utm_hp_ref=police-brutality">done much to contribute to police brutality</a>. These economic factors have been exacerbated by the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746">growing domination of US politics by elites</a>.</p>
<p>Framing police violence as principally a “black problem” reinforces the underlying notion that African-Americans are somehow separate from other Americans and that authoritarian crackdowns on them are reactive, not active. This plays into an established tactic of <a href="http://peoplestribune.org/pt-news/2014/11/poverty-police-violence-spare-none/">strategically highlighting racial divisions</a> within the country to distract attention from other issues such as class polarisation and oligarchy. </p>
<p>Ultimately, this is a way to freeze out solidarity across race, geography and even class, leaving Americans with an identity politics of distrust and conflict.</p>
<p>This strategy is part of the culture of fear that has driven much of the US government’s policy for decades. From the War on Drugs to the War on Terror, chronic and growing issues of unemployment, economic insecurity and declining social welfare are channelled into anger and action against existential “enemies” – most of whom are non-white, or in some way portrayed as less than “American”.</p>
<p>These policy “wars” have been mounted in the service of a growing authoritarianism in contemporary America. The militarisation of the police force, for instance, reflects the government’s need to neutralise urban areas marked by often extreme poverty and violence. Instead of an attack on the <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/155801/city-ruins">economic and social causes of ghettoisation and urban blight</a>, we’ve seen a move away from “<a href="http://www.cops.usdoj.gov/Publications/e030917193-CP-Defined.pdf">community policing</a>” toward what has been called: “<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/izak-pratt/the-united-police-states-of-america_b_6226452.html?utm_hp_ref=police-brutality">The United Police States of America</a>”.</p>
<p>To overcome this strategy, then, it must be tackled as more than just a programme of racism. What must be emphasised is the authoritarianism and deeper shared disenfranchisement that motivates the state violence we see today – a tendency that certainly includes structural racism, but which is by no means limited to it.</p>
<p>In the words Obama used when responding to the Eric Garner case, it must be framed as an “American problem”.</p>
<h2>Unite against authoritarianism</h2>
<p>The foundations for such a movement are well established and span the political spectrum. On the right, anti-authoritarian feelings have spurred the Tea Party movement to unprecedented, if chaotic, success. While Tea Partiers are primarily up in arms about public intervention in the private sector, their politics speak to an underlying fear of unaccountable state power and mass political marginalisation. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, on the left, the Occupy movement has been railing against the growing influence of corporations and their political handmaidens since 2011; an <a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/2011/10/04/occupy-wall-street-is-a-populist-movement-the-t/182601">anti-elite politics</a> that appeals to many of the same Americans outraged at the surveillance policies of the NSA. The authoritarianism of the police response to the Occupy protests drew unforgiving attention to just how defensive US police forces can become when power is confronted.</p>
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<p>Unpunished incidents of police violence should be a catalyst for uniting Americans in a common cause against authoritarianism. In the US, the odds are stacked against most of the general public in favour of a privileged minority – and police forces are seen to ultimately serve to protect this unfair system more than they safeguard citizens.</p>
<p>What is needed is a vision of constructive change, one focused not simply on individual justice but on collective national progress. That means going beyond simply blaming law enforcement officials and instead indicting the system as a whole. </p>
<p>The fight against police violence should unite Americans, not divide them. Before the country can heal, it first needs to come together to cure itself.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/35058/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Bloom does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Police violence has dominated American headlines over the past year. The seemingly unaccounted-for police shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson brought renewed attention and public protests…Peter Bloom, Lecturer in Organisation Studies, Department of People and Organisation, The Open UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/326562014-10-09T05:07:22Z2014-10-09T05:07:22ZHong Kong protesters have sights set on global problems<p>Complaints about the supposed political apathy of todays’ students are not uncommon among middle-aged professors. Historian [Mark Lilla](http://www.zeit.de/2014/37/ideologie-freiheit-westen](http://www.zeit.de/2014/37/ideologie-freiheit-westen) diagnosed that apathy as a problem affecting not just American students, but even Chinese students born after 1989. </p>
<p>For Lilla, trying to get across the heady political mood of the Cold War era in the classroom now makes him feel like a “poet singing of the Lost Atlantis”.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/hong-kong-leaders-in-lockstep-against-divided-protesters-32534">Hong Kong’s pro-democracy student protests</a> have seemingly defied that commonly heard generational lament. Far from apathy, Hong Kong’s students have shown an admirable determination to confront the former colony’s baby-boomer elite, as well as the idealism to spurn conciliatory moves by figures like <a href="http://www.straitstimes.com/news/asia/east-asia/story/hong-kong-occupy-leader-benny-tai-admits-protest-out-control-amid-traffic-">Benny Tai</a>, a leader of the protests. </p>
<p>Naturally, some have suggested that the students’ idealism is <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/29/fight-for-democracy-not-just-people-hong-kong">reminiscent of the hope that infused the 1989 Tiananmen demonstrations</a>. If anything, Hong Kong students are even more indomitable; Hong Kong’s free press means they are less naïve about the Chinese government’s capacity and willingness to reform itself than the Beijing students were back in 1989.</p>
<p>This sentiment was shared by many who contributed to the coverage of the recent events in the West: the free press in Hong Kong was held up as the true game-changer, exposing a regime that fends off dissent on the mainland by flaunting GDP growth figures and <a href="https://theconversation.com/great-firewall-of-china-tasked-with-keeping-hong-kong-conflagration-in-check-32288">censoring the news</a>.</p>
<p>But Occupy Central is not just a burst of rage about the obscure provisions of universal suffrage under the CCP’s watch, a local Chinese story off-shooting from 1989. It is at its heart much more part of the anti-globalisation movement worldwide – as the movement’s name implies.</p>
<h2>Going global</h2>
<p>It’s not just China that has radically changed since 1989. Today’s insatiable 24/7 media cycle may have loved to wedge Occupy Central into a comparison with the Tiananmen events of 1989, but given the staggering income inequality which has always characterised Hong Kong society, and the enormous clout a handful of tycoons wield there (with Beijing’s blessing, of course), it’s surprising just how little the Western media made the link between Occupy Central and Occupy Wall Street. </p>
<p>Both initially began as protest movements against growing inequality, albeit on opposite sides of the planet, and anyone passing by the tent city set up by the original Occupy Central movement activists under the HSBC headquarters back in 2011 would have been struck by the similarity to the economic protest movements in the West. </p>
<p>There is a distinctly global dimension to what has been unfolding in Hong Kong’s financial district. Hong Kong’s recovery from the 2008 financial crisis has also meant realty prices there have skyrocketed to the extent most locally-born 20-year-olds can scarcely imagine owning homes any time in the near future. In that sense, Hong Kong is not much different to <a href="https://twitter.com/occupySYDNEY">Sydney</a>, <a href="http://occupylondon.org.uk/">London</a>, or <a href="http://occupywallstreet.net/">New York</a>. And as in many other global hubs, Hong Kong’s middle class has become desperately squeezed, with real wages stubbornly stagnant for the last two decades. </p>
<p>Meanwhile Hong Kong’s recent prosperity has been towed along in the slipstream of mainland efforts to dodge the 2008 global economic downturn, most obviously a <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/12585407">massive stimulus package</a>. Beijing has also allowed if not encouraged an upsurge of mainland tourism into the former colony, to such an extent that some Hong Kong businesses have complained of a <a href="http://www.ejinsight.com/20140923-beijing-to-reconsider-individual-tour-scheme-to-hk/">strain on public resources</a>.</p>
<h2>Getting it wrong</h2>
<p>This much-overlooked economic dependency on the mainland means Hong Kong’s tycoons have much to fear from the Occupy Central movement. What’s at stake for them goes well beyond the issue of universal suffrage. As a measure of their worry, Beijing has also demonstrated – through the establishment of the <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2014/10/06/news/economy/shanghai-free-trade-zone/">Shanghai Free Trade Zone</a> - that it is prepared to prime Shanghai as an alternative finance hub should the situation in Hong Kong spin out of control.</p>
<p>This is why framing the Hong Kong protests as a story of “democracy vs Beijing” is misleading. Nor do Cold War narratives of liberal democracy vs communism really make sense; instead, globalisation is the real matter at hand. It is affecting everyone, and warping old ideological and political divisions.</p>
<p>China has been by far the single largest beneficiary of post-1989 globalisation, and has been through one of the most radical transitions of any major world power, but it’s also struggling with inequality. The difference between the mainland and Hong Kong in that respect is that most mainland youths are better off than their parents were at their age, and stand a better chance than ever of receiving tertiary education. </p>
<p>They therefore remain optimistic about the future. By delivering better standard of living in absolute terms and a return on tertiary education, the CCP has so far avoided a repeat of Tiananmen 1989 even as inequality in the PRC has <a href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2011/05/inequality_china">widened</a> so much in relative terms.</p>
<h2>Aiming high</h2>
<p>So far, Occupy movements around the world have failed to converge into anything resembling a truly effective transnational network. Beyond the machinations of a few odd hardcores and anarchists, there seems to have been no substantive organisational co-ordination between, say, the British <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/education/2010/nov/10/student-protest-fees-violent">student riots of 2010</a> and the anti-austerity demonstrations in <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22362757">Greece</a> and <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2014/03/anti-austerity-protesters-march-spain-2014322192956618925.html">Spain</a>. </p>
<p>Still, Hong Kong’s protesters have certainly and quite admirably pulled off a “local feat”. They may have not massively teamed up with Occupy clusters elsewhere, but they have drawn the attention of media around the world – and they have almost overnight shaken off Hong Kong’s image as a politically apathetic and buttoned-up city, one happy to cosy up to big business and in love with laissez-faire government and low corporate tax.</p>
<p>Occupy Central 2014 may not ultimately be remembered as Hong Kong’s largest or most significant protest against Beijing, and nor is it; <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/asiapcf/east/07/01/hk.protest/">even more people took to the streets in 2003</a> to protest a new “anti-subversion” law imposed from the mainland (<a href="http://www.scmp.com/topics/hong-kong-basic-law-article-23">Basic Law Article 23</a>). </p>
<p>There are now signs of <a href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/hong-kong-protests-concessions">serious division</a> within the Occupy Central ranks, and of mainstream Hong Kong turning its back on the movement for good after the traffic disruption it caused; Beijing may have won its stare-down with the protesters for the time being. But the prospect of serious social upheaval in China as a result of globalisation and growing inequality is not going away. </p>
<p>And at the very least, the spectacular exploits of Hong Kong’s animated youth movement should remind baby-boomers that today’s students can still kick up an admirable storm when a lofty cause demands it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/32656/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Niv Horesh does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Complaints about the supposed political apathy of todays’ students are not uncommon among middle-aged professors. Historian [Mark Lilla](http://www.zeit.de/2014/37/ideologie-freiheit-westen](http://www.zeit.de/2014/37/ideologie-freiheit-westen…Niv Horesh, Professor of Modern Chinese History and Director of the China Policy Institute , University of NottinghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/153142013-07-17T05:39:27Z2013-07-17T05:39:27ZAn indignant generation is raging around the world<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26341/original/kthdjfqf-1372344163.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A new generation is raising a fist in anger.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gert Bruininkx</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><strong>Foundation essay:</strong> <em>This article on the indignant generation by Simon Hallsworth, head of the School of Applied Social Sciences at University Campus Suffolk, is part of a series marking the launch of The Conversation in the UK. Our foundation essays are longer than our usual comment and analysis articles and take a wider look at key issues affecting society.</em></p>
<p>People are filling the streets all around the globe. From Turkey to Brazil, Libya to Egypt, the circumstances change but the scenes are eerily alike. Shouting, marching, clashing with police; masses of angry people gather together to share their indignation. And they are becoming impossible to ignore. </p>
<p>In August 2011 England’s metropolitan cities erupted in the worst outbreak of urban disorder the country had witnessed in three decades. At the end of four days involving 14,000 people, scores of buildings were destroyed; shops were looted and lives were lost. </p>
<p>It did not take the government long to identify what had gone so badly wrong. The riots were explained away in the first instance as manifestations of “mindless criminality” perpetrated by urban gangs. Shortly after, the discourse shifted to implicate half a million “troubled families”, products of a feckless underclass that had apparently given birth to the gangsters that then went on to riot.</p>
<p>In a subsequent <a href="http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20121003195935/http:/riotspanel.independent.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Riots-Panel-Final-Report1.pdf">report produced by the Riots Families and Communities Panel</a> (reluctantly established by the government to investigate the disorder) a range of solutions was touted. The police were praised for taking a hard line with rioters who were being relentlessly hunted down before receiving exemplary punitive sentences. </p>
<p>Schools were instructed to instil “character” in young people and proposals were made suggesting they be fined if they failed. Money was made available to turn around the “troubled families” of the “underclass”, and more was given out to “end gang violence” - even though evidence began to emerge that <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/09/london-riots-gangs">gangs were not responsible for the riots blamed on them</a>. </p>
<p>Devastated riot-hit cities did not constitute an image remotely consistent with the brand the government wanted to promote of a happy entrepreneurial society populated by contended, freedom-loving individuals. The wedding of Prince William to Kate Middleton surrounded by happy crowds of cheering subjects was the image of Britain that needed to be celebrated along with the individuals who, through voluntarism or private enterprise, would build a new “<a href="http://www.thebigsociety.co.uk/">Big Society</a>”. </p>
<p>The Olympics duly arrived in 2012 and seemed to give life to the brand as athletes struck gold. The opening ceremony with its eclectic mish-mash of all things British provided a visual representation of a society that appeared to be coming together in common accord.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, back on the estates of the inner cities, things looked altogether different. As <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/series/reading-the-riots">research conducted by the LSE and the Guardian</a> uncovered, the rioters came disproportionally from marginalised communities dwelling in Britain’s poorest and most deprived areas. </p>
<p>What the research also brought to light was the indignation they experienced at the way things were. Indignation they dramatised in riot through the inversion and ritual demolition of the very principles around which rule-based societies are constituted: namely that within them people normally obey rules.</p>
<p>Are they the only indignant ones? Arguably not because indignation best describes the dominant emotion that shapes the lives of an entire generation of young people today.</p>
<p>Let’s return to the violent street world from which many of the rioters derived. A world populated by young people who also experience and carry within them a legacy of <a href="crj.sagepub.com/content/9/3/359.abstract">deeply internalised anger</a>. Indignation graphically expressed in violence. The depressing litany of young men killed by other young men just like them represents in this sense the symptoms of anger inwardly directed. </p>
<p>But they are not the only ones capable of self-mutilation. Take The English Defense League (EDL) – predictably <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/rightwing-american-speakers-planning-to-join-the-edls-woolwich-march-should-be-banned-from-entering-the-country-8668686.html">out in force</a> in the wake of the Woolwich murder. Here we find another group of deluded men defined by the indignation they feel. Sad products of a working class in free-fall, whose demise they blame on migrants undertaking work they would never touch.</p>
<p>The violence of the street is mostly implosive: gangsters kill each other, the EDL takes out its anger on another part of the working class. But indignation can also become explosive and outwardly directed and this is how we might retrospectively best make sense of the English riots. </p>
<p>The externalisation of indignation also explains the motivation behind Occupy. A movement populated not by the urban poor, but by a middle class constituency whose life chances are immeasurably diminished compared with those enjoyed by the baby boomers of the post war epoch.</p>
<p>Is this wave of indignation connected? More so than it first appears. We can begin with the material conditions these diverse constituencies face in the context of a society in which they lead increasingly precarious lives. Indeed, all the groups identified above belong to what the economist Guy Standing terms the <a href="http://www.bloomsburyacademic.com/...Precariat/book-ba-9781849664554.xml">new precariat</a>. This is, he argues, a new class in the making. It has no history and no class consciousness.</p>
<p>A fragmenting working class is being decanted into it - including many members of the EDL. The denizens of the UK’s violent street world also live precarious lives in what has become for most a low wage, low status “mac economy” where temporary work, unemployment and endemic insecurity constitute the conditions of its existence. </p>
<p>The migrant communities that the EDL blame also live precarious lives, and precariousness is a term that captures well the lives of the rioters as the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/series/reading-the-riots">Guardian LSE research</a> uncovered. The educated young people who were involved in Occupy also form part of the new precariat; many burdened down with student debts they will never pay off.</p>
<p>Ruling regimes do not require the full ideological incorporation of their subjects. And while persuading people to believe in the virtues of the ruling regime might be desirable it is not a necessary condition. What ruling regimes must avoid however is being considered wholly illegitimate. If they can’t keep all the people happy all of the time they have to avoid making too many people too unhappy. More than that, they have to avoid seeing the pragmatic acquiescence that normally defines most people’s relationship towards power (and the powerful) mutate into indignation and rage.</p>
<p>The Arab Spring (another movement driven forward by indignation) epitomises what happens when this occurs. Though it would be pushing matters too far to suggest the UK faces a crisis of legitimacy, the neo-liberal regime does and this is expressed variously in the indignation carried and expressed by its growing precariat, the new indignant generation.</p>
<p>While it is possible to identify in the endemic insecurity of lives lived precariously, a motive for indignation, it has been accentuated by the extent to which the ruling regime has all too effectively delegitimised itself; hollowing out, in so doing, any claim to integrity or moral authority. </p>
<p>We might begin with the feral over-class of financiers and the tame politicians that aided and abetted them in orchestrating the global financial meltdown; a crisis that’s costs are not borne by the class that induced it by but those whose lives have become more precarious as a consequence.</p>
<p>Add to this list the venality of the political elite in the UK who were caught with their hands in the nation’s till as the political crisis that followed the exposure of the expenses scandal revealed. Add to this toxic mix Blair’s disastrous foreign policy adventures and all of a sudden it is quite clear to see why our western ways are not resonating with an increasingly disillusioned and angry generation of young people that had every right to expect better.</p>
<p>A nomadic capitalist elite (the one percent) has not only accumulated the world’s wealth, it is clear that it has every intention of hanging on to it as “fat cat” culture of excessive pay testifies. The ruling regime reproduces itself certainly but does so in ever more self-destructive ways. But consider this; in the past five years the UK has experienced an economic crisis from which it has not recovered, then a political crisis. In the wave of indignation we are witnessing today we find a crisis being played out in the social system as well.</p>
<p>In <a href="http://indignez-vous-indignacion.blogspot.co.uk/p/english.html">Indignez-vous (Time for Outrage)</a> Stéphane Hessel argued that people today need to become outraged at the way things are. In Britain’s ever more divided and inequitable society a new generation is outraged. Some express it by clinging to an imagined nation, while others find fundamentalism. Some turn on each other or, as in riot, the wider society. In Occupy and movements like it, we find a more progressive agenda where the very legitimacy of the neo liberal order has been brought into question.</p>
<p>Nor are they alone. There is of course the Arab Spring. But to the rioters in England let us add the rioters in the <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21572248-young-diverse-and-unemployed-forgotten-banlieues">French banlieues</a> and the young people currently rioting in Greece and Sweden. Canada too has faced unprecedented student unrest in recent years. Add to this mix the indignatos of Spain and Italy, Occupy in the USA and we are looking at indignation on a global level.</p>
<p><em>Simon Hallsworth’s book <a href="http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?pid=696075">The Gang and Beyond: Interpreting violent street worlds</a> is published this year by Palgrave Macmillan.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/15314/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon Hallsworth does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Foundation essay: This article on the indignant generation by Simon Hallsworth, head of the School of Applied Social Sciences at University Campus Suffolk, is part of a series marking the launch of The…Simon Hallsworth, Professor of Sociology, University of SuffolkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/154292013-06-25T13:52:36Z2013-06-25T13:52:36ZPopular protest: new media and the spread of inspiration<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26005/original/t5x5mt69-1371834424.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Made in Brazil, used in Turkey: a teargas canister</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Özlem Gürses</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A protest against the destruction of green space in central Istanbul escalates to national protests against a remote, desecularising political leader; public transport fares in Brazil lead to a national upsurge of protest against an uncaring elite. </p>
<p>But what similarities can be found between these two and other protest movements globally? The answer lies in the emotive imagery that they both share, from the Gandhian passive-resistance of Gezi Park and the images of thousands in the streets of Rio to the Occupy protests of New York, London and California.</p>
<p>The images and footage created of these movements at once inspires others to join that particular movement, and gives impetus to other protests the world over. Each of these movements has an inspirational image, piece of footage or even a sound bite that defines them in the eyes of a global audience. What is also shared among these captured moments is that they are rarely created or even dispersed by traditional forms of media.</p>
<p>Egypt’s protests were epitomised at the time by a top down view of a packed Tahrir square. The sheer volume of people created an inspiring image that encouraged people throughout the world to consider what could be achieved through mobilising the masses. The protests in Turkey and Brazil are already finding their symbols.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26168/original/y6sz4nkt-1372159841.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26168/original/y6sz4nkt-1372159841.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26168/original/y6sz4nkt-1372159841.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26168/original/y6sz4nkt-1372159841.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26168/original/y6sz4nkt-1372159841.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26168/original/y6sz4nkt-1372159841.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26168/original/y6sz4nkt-1372159841.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A ‘standing man’ protests in Turkey.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Zsombor Lacza</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Turkish protests soon found the image that will embody and immortalise their movement. Ceyda Sungur is the <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/turkey/10108014/Lady-in-the-Red-Dress-and-her-dream-of-a-Turkish-rebirth.html">woman in the red dress</a> who can now be found all over the internet as she is pepper-sprayed by police while attending a protest in Gezi Park. Sungur now exists alongside <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/18/turkey-standing-man-protest-erdem-gunduz_n_3458390.html?utm_hp_ref=world">Erdem Gunduz’</a> standing man as a symbol of passive resistance. This resistance has spread from Taksim square throughout the country, as a telling commentary on police reaction to demonstrations. Together they are the leitmotif of this popular motion against perceived wrongs.</p>
<p>In November 2011 an Occupy demonstration at the University of California, Davis gave birth to an image that has since achieved cult status on the internet. The image in question: footage of John Pike, a UC Davis police officer spraying already <a href="http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/19/video-of-police-pepper-spraying-u-c-davis-students-provokes-outrage/">seated and peaceful protesters</a> with pepper spray. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26166/original/gk2dv948-1372159003.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26166/original/gk2dv948-1372159003.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26166/original/gk2dv948-1372159003.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26166/original/gk2dv948-1372159003.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26166/original/gk2dv948-1372159003.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26166/original/gk2dv948-1372159003.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26166/original/gk2dv948-1372159003.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">John Pike sets off a global meme.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Louise Macabitas</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The similarities are obvious and, while traditional forms of media reported the story, they couldn’t do it fast enough. The internet rapidly filled the gap with the images and video spread through youtube and twitter. The counter-point of violent reaction against what appeared to be perfectly peaceful action was a powerful image, just like that of the woman in red.</p>
<p>Several elements of this imagery can be found in Brazil as well, and indeed mirrored in earlier protests such as the Occupy movement. What these key moments share is that the images all capture some form of unnecessary violence, they are all taken from an intimate perspective, and then they are spread using a medium that throws off attempts at restriction.</p>
<p>In Brazil, we’ve already seen the resonant and almost nostalgic pictures of throngs of people filling streets and squares by night. But the unfortunate truth is that artistic images such as the “standing man” represent a rare example of a defining image without violence or pain. </p>
<p>What is more likely is that Brazil will come to be defined by a picture such as that taken last week of a <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/i-was-brazil-woman-peppersprayed-in-face-says-protester-8667257.html">woman pepper-sprayed by police</a>. Like those mentioned earlier, images like this create empathy, and spread through crowd sourced and popular new media to reach a global audience.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/15429/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexi Drew does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A protest against the destruction of green space in central Istanbul escalates to national protests against a remote, desecularising political leader; public transport fares in Brazil lead to a national…Alexi Drew, PhD Researcher, New Political Communications Unit, Royal Holloway University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/76762012-07-02T00:12:58Z2012-07-02T00:12:58ZAustralian census: not quite the US, but income gap widens<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/12414/original/f6v5xcry-1340951072.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Occupy movement highlighted income disparity across the world.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Dean Lewins</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/occupy-movement">Occupy movement</a> in the US has brought into sharp focus the level of income inequality that exists in society.</p>
<p>For example, in 2009 the top 10% of households in the US had an income that was about 11.5 times as high as the income of the bottom 10% of households (the so-called <a href="http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/acs-16.pdf">90/10 ratio</a>). In many ways it is surprising to an outside observer that there is not even more popular anger about how income is distributed there.</p>
<p>Income inequality in Australia is not anywhere near as high as it is in the US. However, it does appear to be rising. <a>According to the ABS</a>) the 90/10 ratio of disposable household income was 4.21 in 2009/10 compared to 3.78 in 1994/1995.</p>
<p>The release of initial data from the 2011 census allows us to pick apart this income distribution by where a person lives as well as their individual, family and household characteristics.</p>
<p>According to the ABS, median personal income in 2011 was $577 and median household income was $1,234. </p>
<p>After adjusting for inflation, median personal income was 7.5% higher than it was in 2006, whereas median household income was 4.3% higher. Unlike much of Europe and North America, income in Australia has increased over the past half-decade.</p>
<p>As documented in the following figure though, this increase has not been consistent across states.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/12261/original/r9dw75hv-1340770713.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/12261/original/r9dw75hv-1340770713.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12261/original/r9dw75hv-1340770713.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12261/original/r9dw75hv-1340770713.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12261/original/r9dw75hv-1340770713.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12261/original/r9dw75hv-1340770713.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12261/original/r9dw75hv-1340770713.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Percentage change in (real) median weekly household income, 2006 to 2011.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">2006 and 2011 censuses</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Quite clearly, the fastest rate of growth in median household income has occurred in the Northern Territory and Western Australia and it is tempting to think that the commodities boom is driving most of the increase in household income. </p>
<p>We will have to wait till labour force data on the census is released later in the year to check how income has grown across different occupations and industries. However, with an increase in income of 10.3%, the ACT isn’t that far behind these resource-rich states. Looking out our windows at the ANU, there aren’t too many mining trucks rumbling along Northbourne Avenue. </p>
<p>Looking at individual characteristics, we can see that there has been a faster increase in mean income for women (8.66% between 2006 and 2011) than men (4.48%). Although men on average still have a higher average income than women, there has been a slight decrease in the gap between the sexes over the past 5 years.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/12262/original/xk2gtx9d-1340772380.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/12262/original/xk2gtx9d-1340772380.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12262/original/xk2gtx9d-1340772380.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12262/original/xk2gtx9d-1340772380.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12262/original/xk2gtx9d-1340772380.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12262/original/xk2gtx9d-1340772380.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12262/original/xk2gtx9d-1340772380.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ratio of male to female weekly mean income by age bracket, 2006 and 2011.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">2006 and 2011 censuses</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As interesting as these national-level or State/Territory statistics are, it is unlikely that when most people want to gauge their own income they go to the ABS website. Instead, they probably use other informal means. This includes: </p>
<ul>
<li>Through social networks (virtual or otherwise);</li>
<li>Through the media; </li>
<li>In the workplace; or </li>
<li>From other people in the area or neighbourhood in which they live.</li>
</ul>
<p>The 2011 Census gives us a chance to look at the income distribution from the last of these perspectives. Unlike sample surveys, censuses allow us to replicate someone looking around them at others in their neighbourhood or area and seeing what the income distribution looks like. </p>
<p>As the following figure shows, income isn’t distributed evenly across or within our large cities. The first set of bars gives the median income for each of the five largest capital cities (and their surrounding suburbs). Sydney and Perth had the highest median household incomes in 2011 (at $1,447 and $1,459 respectively) with Adelaide having the lowest ($1,106). Melbourne and Brisbane fall somewhere in between ($1,333 and $1,388 respectively).</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/12282/original/jt7tchwt-1340778658.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/12282/original/jt7tchwt-1340778658.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12282/original/jt7tchwt-1340778658.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12282/original/jt7tchwt-1340778658.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12282/original/jt7tchwt-1340778658.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12282/original/jt7tchwt-1340778658.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12282/original/jt7tchwt-1340778658.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Median household weekly income across and within cities - 2011.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The second set of bars gives the ratio of the median income in the richest part of the city to the median income in the poorest part. Here, we can see that although Sydney has quite a high income on average, this is not evenly spread by geography. </p>
<p>Median income in North Sydney ($2,111) was more than twice as high as median income on the Central Coast ($1,003). There were disparities in other cities (for example between Inner Perth and Mandurah) but they weren’t nearly as large.</p>
<p>Income data from censuses and other surveys suggest that while Australians have on average experienced significant income growth since the 2006 census, concerns about income inequality are still valid. </p>
<p>Overall income inequality is rising in Australia, with this phenomenon reflecting differences both between regions, and within major cities. These numbers can’t tell us how the man on the street feels the effects of this inequality, but they do suggest that the situation in Australia is not yet as dramatic as that in the US.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/7676/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicholas Biddle receives funding from the Commonwealth Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA) as well as the respective State/Territory Indigenous/Aboriginal Affairs departments.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maxine Montaigne does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Occupy movement in the US has brought into sharp focus the level of income inequality that exists in society. For example, in 2009 the top 10% of households in the US had an income that was about 11.5…Nicholas Biddle, Fellow, Australian National UniversityMaxine Montaigne, Research Assistant, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/52062012-02-21T03:52:35Z2012-02-21T03:52:35ZOccupy a money-free world? Now that’s a capital idea<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/7732/original/d2px6mhp-1329283706.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A life without money isn't pie in the sky any more.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">truthout.org</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg ordered police to <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/15/michael-bloomberg-statement-zuccotti-park">clear Zuccotti Park</a> of <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/occupywallstreet">Occupy</a> protestors on 15 November last year he called on the protesters to “occupy the space with the power of their arguments”. Starting out as a movement against corporate greed, the Occupy movement quickly developed demands for grassroots democracy. The economic became political. But it seems to have fizzled out for now. Or is this the quiet before the storm? What arguments might fill this space?</p>
<p>Whether or not 2011 becomes known as a turning point in world history will mainly depend on whether or not the “99%”, as we have nominated ourselves, take up Bloomberg’s gauntlet. </p>
<p>It’s hard to imagine such a dramatic shift taking place, with mainstream politics focusing on unremarkable presidential electioneering in the US; a pretence by the Australian media that Julia Gillard must fall and a real (read “male”) leader take her place; and hard-fought-for “freedom” in the Middle East looking more and more like a mirage.</p>
<h2>Life without money</h2>
<p>But the ten contributors to a new book I co-edited, <a href="http://www.lifewithoutmoney.info/">Life Without Money: Building Fair and Sustainable Economies</a>, offer strong, radical responses to defenders of capitalism and the so-called “free world”. They set out money-free models of community-based governance and collective sufficiency, arguing that production for trade contorts and destroys humane and natural values. They offer strategies for undercutting capitalism by refusing to deal in money, arguing that we need to replace monetary values and relationships by accounting directly in social and environmental values. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/7855/original/j73z6qn4-1329781056.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/7855/original/j73z6qn4-1329781056.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/7855/original/j73z6qn4-1329781056.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/7855/original/j73z6qn4-1329781056.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/7855/original/j73z6qn4-1329781056.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/7855/original/j73z6qn4-1329781056.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/7855/original/j73z6qn4-1329781056.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lifestyle choices such as freeganism are gaining traction.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ethan.lofton</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There are a number of alternative communities, as well as movements such as squatting, <a href="http://freegan.info/">freeganism</a> and collaborative consumption, experimenting with non-market models. A decade ago they might have been considered marginal. But their activities are gaining greater currency (pardon the pun) and coming into sharper focus as capitalists and workers alike fear more and worse instability in global financial markets. </p>
<p>All this uncertainty, endemic to any market economy, threatens the viability of businesses, job security, house prices and home ownership, the worth of assets and superannuation savings. It makes people question the basis of our economy within which money is the operating principle, dominating value and determining so many relationships. </p>
<h2>Opting out of overconsumption</h2>
<p>Even those of us who are not managers or workers are intimately integrated into the monetary system; everyone’s fortunes depend on satiating <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammon">Mammon</a>. </p>
<p>For the wealthy north, overconsumption is a very real sustainability-cum-economic challenge: if everyone decided to live modestly capitalism would disintegrate. Growth is capitalism’s achilles’ heel. While overconsumption in the north demands that we develop less materialistic ways of living, it is simply impossible to imagine either individual entrepreneurs or national GDP “degrowing” without a planned economy, at which point we have only two options.</p>
<p>There is the option of state-planned economies, which are out of favour among the left and right alike. The problem with planned economies is working out how everyone gets a say in what is produced. If distribution is more on the basis of need, it would appear money has little function. If we were to have less we would be very concerned to make sure we had enough and the kinds of things we feel we need, or badly want. </p>
<p>Could we really leave such decisions to the kinds of politicians we have today? No, we’d like a direct say in how we live.</p>
<p>On the other hand, non-market forms have the distinct benefit of offering individuals and neighbourhoods economic democracy. It is precisely the importance of such democracy that lies at the heart of Occupy movements worldwide. Occupy politics focus on general assemblies, allowing everyone a say in decision-making. Clumsy, you say, impossible, not feasible. You’re right, under current economic conditions, under capitalism.</p>
<h2>Collective sufficiency</h2>
<p>But the economic infrastructure of a world in which we could all have a say in how we live our lives is sketched out in the final chapter of Life Without Money, which offers a model of a “compact society”. “Compact” because all the main relationships and structures would be based on legally enforceable voluntary agreements, rather than monetary contracts.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/7735/original/t3n22ddt-1329284106.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/7735/original/t3n22ddt-1329284106.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/7735/original/t3n22ddt-1329284106.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/7735/original/t3n22ddt-1329284106.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/7735/original/t3n22ddt-1329284106.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/7735/original/t3n22ddt-1329284106.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/7735/original/t3n22ddt-1329284106.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Occupy movement showed the public’s dissatisfaction with the trappings of capitalism.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Justin Lane</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Instead of establishing tiny self-sufficient households, we’d work collectively, with a range of connected local households occupying a basic unit of a neighbourhood, the size of which would be flexible and dependent on the local ecology. Local collective sufficiency would be the key aim of every neighbourhood, sourcing materials for, and making, food, clothing and shelter as well as other basic needs, through appropriate technology. </p>
<p>Of course, there are likely to be needs or wants that people could not source or create locally. Ideally, these would be obtained from a neighbouring area or through the least environmentally and socially expensive option available at the time. </p>
<p>Establishing and maintaining collective sufficiency would require every individual to work out what they would need over a year, assessing local potential, planning how to meet the needs listed, working out how surpluses might be generated, and negotiating with other units to fulfil their needs. The internet facilitates this kind of collective research, planning and negotiation, which would involve numerous compacts. </p>
<h2>Working out what works</h2>
<p>A main focus of the Occupy movement has been working out how to develop and embed processes for direct decision making. Only by expanding such experience can we decide what practices work, are efficient, effective and really democratic. </p>
<p>At the same time, as developments that stimulated the Occupy movement show, the economic systems by which we live have to be reclaimed as our cultural inventions.</p>
<p>A massive decade of engaging with our current economic, environmental and political challenges might well have just started.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/5206/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anitra Nelson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg ordered police to clear Zuccotti Park of Occupy protestors on 15 November last year he called on the protesters to “occupy the space with the power of their arguments…Anitra Nelson, Associate Professor, School of Global Studies Social Science and Planning, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/46512011-12-09T00:51:25Z2011-12-09T00:51:25ZMoving right along: what powers do police have to ‘move-on’ protestors?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/6268/original/g5zpfjc7-1323383616.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=31%2C1%2C592%2C344&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Occupy protestors have a right to protest; police powers to move them on from public spaces should be questioned.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">RynChristophe/Youtube</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When police removed a <a href="http://www.news.com.au/national/police-criticised-after-tent-dress-torn-off-occupy-protester/story-e6frfkvr-1226215162454">young woman’s “tent dress”</a> this week at the <a href="http://occupymelbourne.org/">Occupy Melbourne</a> encampment, it was yet another controversial interaction between protesters and authorities.</p>
<p>As shown in the Occupy movement, the increasing regulation of public spaces through intensive policing is a global phenomenon. Governments across Australia are introducing increasingly strident laws to police public spaces. </p>
<p>However, the evidence shows that these powers do not reduce crimes, they are exercised in a discriminatory way against young people, racial minorities and people experiencing homelessness, and they breach the norms and standards of international human rights laws.</p>
<h2>Legal confusion</h2>
<p>Occupy Melbourne demonstrators were first evicted by police from City Square in October. Afterwards, there were <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/agencies-split-over-eviction-20111027-1mm5r.html">conflicting </a>explanations about the legal basis for protesters’ removal. It seemed that government, police and the local council were all citing different laws.</p>
<p>The Police Minister’s office suggested police were using the move-on powers contained in <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/vic/consol_act/soa1966189/s6.html">section 6</a> of the <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/vic/consol_act/soa1966189.txt/cgi-bin/download.cgi/download/au/legis/vic/consol_act/soa1966189.rtf"><em>Summary Offences Act</em></a>. But these powers were <a href="http://archive.premier.vic.gov.au/component/content/article/7746.html">created in 2009</a> to help police deal with alcohol-fuelled violence; they specifically prevent police from moving on people “demonstrating or protesting”. </p>
<h2>Vulnerable targets </h2>
<p>Move-on powers allow police to control both the users and the usage of public space. Similar laws have been introduced in most Australian jurisdictions, with troubling implications.</p>
<p>Legal expert, <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/ben-saul-4459">Ben Saul</a> notes that “particularly if you are a young person, indigenous, homeless, or a sex worker, police scrutiny and state surveillance of the public use of public streets has become acute”. Empirical research is limited and not very recent, but it does point to discriminatory use of move-on powers. </p>
<p>People experiencing homelessness - like <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2008/s2290231.htm">Bruce Rowe</a>, who was brutally arrested by <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rf_rt5XJbek">Queensland police</a> in 2006 - occupy public spaces out of necessity but are disproportionately and adversely affected by move-on powers. </p>
<p>A Brisbane <a href="http://www.qpilch.org.au/_dbase_upl/Nowhere%20To%20Go.pdf">survey</a> of 132 people experiencing homelessness found a total of 76.5% of respondents had been told to move on one or more times in the last six months. Nearly 78% of respondents who received a move-on direction said their behaviour was innocuous and unlikely to meet the threshold requirements for a lawfully issued move-on direction. </p>
<p>Concerns about police “chasing” homeless people from one place to the next were raised throughout this research. Some respondents stated that it was often the same officers that followed homeless people throughout the day to “chase them away”. I often heard stories like this when I worked as a lawyer with Victoria’s <a href="http://www.pilch.org.au/hplc/">Homeless Persons’ Legal Clinic</a>.</p>
<h2>Unequal treatment</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/6269/original/6yjhkf5c-1323386212.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/6269/original/6yjhkf5c-1323386212.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/6269/original/6yjhkf5c-1323386212.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/6269/original/6yjhkf5c-1323386212.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/6269/original/6yjhkf5c-1323386212.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/6269/original/6yjhkf5c-1323386212.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/6269/original/6yjhkf5c-1323386212.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An Occupy Melbourne protestor is removed from City Square by police.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">setaysha/Flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Indigenous Australians appear most likely to be moved on compared to other community members. A detailed <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/AILR/1996/4.html">1995 study</a> found that Indigenous young people were over-represented at every level of the justice system except police cautions. </p>
<p>This certainly appears to be the case with move-on orders. <a href="http://www.aic.gov.au/criminal_justice_system/indigenousjustice/cjs/police.aspx">Chan and Cunneen</a> note that police use “move-on” powers against Aboriginal people at a massively disproportionate rate. </p>
<p>The New South Wales Ombudsman <a href="http://www.ombo.nsw.gov.au/publication/PDF/other%20reports/PolicingPublicSafety_Nov1999.pdf">expressed concern</a> with the large numbers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people given direction to move on. This brings otherwise law-abiding individuals into contact with the criminal justice system in areas where relationships between the police and Aboriginal communities have been very poor. </p>
<h2>Young not welcome</h2>
<p>But it’s not only Indigenous young people who are over-policed by these move-on powers. The struggle over territory between police and young people is <a href="http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/previous%20series/proceedings/1-27/%7E/media/publications/proceedings/22/white.ashx">not a new phenomenon</a>. </p>
<p>A <a href="http://www.acys.utas.edu.au/nyars/pdfs/pdfs-perceptions/perceptions.pdf">1992 study</a> found that 80% of young people aged 15 to 18 had been stopped by the police, and that 83% of them had been stopped on the street. In addition, 53% of the police officers who participated in the research thought that young people were causing problems in malls. </p>
<p>The disparity between young people being moved on by police, and the rate of their involvement in crime compared to their representation in the population, is disturbing. The disparity suggests police are not using the powers as an effective tool and are exercising the power in a discriminatory fashion. </p>
<p>This does not reduce the incidence of crime and it may lead to even more unsatisfactory outcomes. Police and young people may come into conflict or young people may be pushed into more serious offending behaviours. </p>
<p>There is no evidence, in Australia or internationally, that suggests move-on powers reduce crime rates.</p>
<h2>Breaching human rights?</h2>
<p>Human rights lawyers have <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/civil-rights-and-crossing-the-line-20111025-1mi0s.html">suggested</a> that the October eviction of Occupy protestors may breach Victoria’s <em><a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/vic/consol_act/cohrara2006433.txt/cgi-bin/download.cgi/download/au/legis/vic/consol_act/cohrara2006433.rtf">Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act</a></em>. </p>
<p>Researchers have previously <a href="http://www.gtcentre.unsw.edu.au/sites/gtcentre.unsw.edu.au/files/mdocs/goldieLivingInPublicSpace.pdf">questioned</a> the human rights implications of move-on powers and other regulation of public space. The exercise of these police powers engages Charter rights including freedoms of <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/vic/consol_act/cohrara2006433/s12.html">movement</a>, <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/vic/consol_act/cohrara2006433/s16.html">association</a> and <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/vic/consol_act/cohrara2006433/s15.html">expression</a>, among others. </p>
<p>Infringement of these rights, particularly given the disproportionate impact on vulnerable groups discussed above, may amount to an unreasonable limitation of the rights. This question is currently <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2011/s3359779.htm">before the Courts</a>, following action brought by an Occupy Melbourne protester.</p>
<p>As the Occupy movement challenges some of the existing power structures, let’s hope that this draconian legal development of police move-on powers is one of the first casualties.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/4651/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Farrell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When police removed a young woman’s “tent dress” this week at the Occupy Melbourne encampment, it was yet another controversial interaction between protesters and authorities. As shown in the Occupy movement…James Farrell, Lecturer in Law, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.