Occupy "funeral" renews protest hope

A hoped-for political "funeral" for Doyle
at Melbourne Town Hall

A modest protest last Sunday marked a year since the forceful eviction of Occupy Melbourne protesters from City Square on 21 October 2011. Robert Doyle, an enthusiast for the eviction who had looked down imperiously on the police horses and more than 100 officers from a balcony of Melbourne Town Hall, will soon learn if he has been successful in his re-election bid for Lord Mayor.

Clouded by allegations he has refused to fully answer about campaign funding, an unrepentant Doyle again seeks the top job with a Federal Court judgment in the offing over whether the City of Melbourne and Victoria Police acted unlawfully and breached the rights of the protesters whose eviction he sought a year ago.

For the anniversary protesters, however, thoughts about Doyle’s continuing bid for power came with more humble reflections about what Occupy continues to represent.

Early on, a mere handful of people gathered near Spring Street on the lowest steps of State Parliament. Just a couple of Protective Services Officers patrolled their upper reaches, but there were no police save for a Critical Incident Response Team van that swung by and continued without apparent interest down Bourke Street.

Was this less the anniversary of a movement than its funeral parade? Would the scene be set for media coverage that would see the numbers as a vote for or against the value of Occupy as a whole?

A year on, with many of the global economic and social justice issues that have concerned the movement only worsening, and with the Sydney coronial inquest into the police tasering of Roberto Laudisio Curti, it would be a mistake to conclude that low numbers could possibly signal irrelevance.

Instead, they would, if anything, signal the challenge of sustaining a disparate movement amid what Noam Chomsky described in July as an “atomised society” where “people are kind of alone, and not by accident”.

Speaking to Gary Younge of The Guardian, Chomsky noted “very large-scale, coordinated, planned efforts to try to restore people to apathy and obedience”. Since Occupy, however, he said that activism had only grown. It was, Chomsky said, a movement of different aspects and strands.

And so it was last Sunday, as the small group at State Parliament was joined by a further group marching up Bourke Street, bearing a black cardboard coffin painted with the words “RIP Doyle” in a hopeful signal of the Lord Mayor’s political demise.

If a sign was sought of the movement’s continuing importance, it was seen in what followed, in the reaction of PSOs to a muted - indeed, funereal - protest on a quiet Sunday afternoon in Melbourne.

The PSOs conferred, radios were spoken into, and police began to gather - two vans at first, and five police officers standing aloof from protesters now lining Parliament’s upper steps with photographs and signs protesting police violence, the coffin at their feet as a funeral dirge floated mournfully in the air.

A PSO confers by radio upon the arrival of Doyle's coffin at
State Parliament

When the protest finally moved off for Melbourne Town Hall, the front and rear of the march were bracketed by police cars, the flanks by officers on foot. This was not so much a safeguard against negligible public risk than it was a will to set the parameters of the march, to mark the limits of its confinement by authority.

In this, the scene brought to mind Chief Commissioner Ken Lay’s comments about such protests distracting police from the prevention of robberies, burglaries and assaults. In what ill-conceived world is constraining peaceful protest a higher priority than such crimes? Was this in any sense meaningful law enforcement?

At the Town Hall the police numbers grew to eight, with five cars ranged along the kerb, across the road and around the corner. The coffin was laid beneath the very balcony where Doyle had witnessed the actions of police last year - the regular and special operations officers, the horses, and all the standard armoury now too often deployed towards compliance with police demands aligned questionably to the actual law.

There was a sadness at this protest, but not over its worth among the protesters. Instead, there was a pervasive sense that in a democracy police should not create confrontation in order to resolve it through the use of disproportionate and unnecessary force. We could have been mourning Roberto Laudisio Curti, or Tyler Cassidy.

The protest at a Flinders Lane police station is well-monitored
by police and CCTV

We ended our protest at the police station off Swanston Street in Flinders Lane. Protesters chalked the road and made their final speeches as police sergeants conferred on the footpath. The filming of protesters with an officer’s smart phone now presumably fell to the CCTV cameras bristling from the station itself.

In the aftermath of the October 2011 eviction, Radio National’s World Today program reported one protester’s words about the state of modern society, if not all who live within it: “We’re trained to see differences between each other; we can’t see what makes us similar anymore”.

Fortunately, one year on from the Occupy Melbourne eviction, and on this day unshaken by police violence, we could be more hopeful. We could still see and share what joins us all.

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Listen to Jon Faine speaking with Doyle about Occupy

This post represents my personal views. I did not attend the original Occupy protest evicted from City Square and do not speak for the Occupy movement. I have participated in a number of subsequent protests as an ordinary person supportive of Occupy's aims.

That's a pretty clear "No" to Ferguson's NOSIC

Lots more photos and video will be available shortly, but Say No to NOSIC, today's Occupy Melbourne event at Martin Ferguson's electoral office, was a very positive coming together of disparate groups - all there to defend public interest protest against private interest spying.

I travelled by 86 tram with a group from the City Square, and it seemed an appropriate beginning that Melbourne City Council officials were there to request the removal of Occupy signage - please do not despair, minions, life can be more meaningful, as we were all about to demonstrate.

When we arrived at Martin Ferguson's Preston electorate office, an advance protest party was already there in force, as was a contingent of Victorian and Australian Federal Police with enough vehicles to give the strange impression of an outdoor law enforcement vehicle showroom.

I asked one besuited young officer if she was from ASIO. "Of course," she replied - rather wittily, I thought - before amending her answer: "No, Federal Police". Unfortunately, not all the officers present had so admirable a sense of humour, with reports of officers swearing at protesters who strayed onto the road to connect with the sympathetic passing traffic. Unfortunately, the AFP's own traffic-stopping antics created far more risk, and they were urged to move on by the crowd.

It was a cause of some amusement to the gathering that Ferguson's office had been closed in response to the protest on "occupational health and safety" grounds. It occurred to me then that if Ferguson is allowed to continue with his lust for burning and exporting fossil fuels, we might just have to close the planet. Fortunately, many worthy campaigners stand in the way.

Occupy Melbourne's Nick Carson did a great job on the microphone, speaking himself but also facilitating a series of speakers in a truly participatory spirit.

Among these was Quit Coal's Shaun Murray, recent author of a powerful opinion piece making the case for democratic protest against coal, and giving the lie to Ferguson's spin regarding the imaginary "risks" posed by protest groups.

Murray had earlier participated in a very funny Tuesday protest filmed to the accompaniment of music from Get Smart.

The addresses continued with Friends of the Earth's Dr Jim Green on Ferguson's complementary delusion that we should not only burn or sell all our coal, we should sell uranium too in a dangerous pretence of action on climate change.
 
Historian and ALP member Wil Wallace voiced his own disappointment at the party he has followed, a disappointment he has channelled into participatory democracy and protest.

Sadly, we also heard testimony of spying on lawful and peaceful coal protests, including on children, in Queensland and elsewhere - spying that simply isn't justified on any public interest basis - whether or not, as one speaker rightly pointed out, that spying is undertaken by government, or by private agencies directed by government, such as the National Open Source Intelligence Centre (NOSIC).

In accordance with the participatory nature of Occupy, everyone was afforded an opportunity to take a turn with the microphone, so I decided I would also say a few words, transcribed here from my notebook scrawls:

We are here today to Say No to NOSIC, the private firm engaged to spy on lawful and peaceful protesters under the direction of resources and energy minister Martin Ferguson, our local Batman MP.

The Australian Federal Police are here not to repel any real threat from us - we are lawful and peaceful protesters.

They are, however, here to defend a threat - to protect and perpetuate the threat of Martin Ferguson to our climate.

We are here today thanks to Occupy Melbourne, to Say No to NOSIC, to say no to spying on behalf of private interests against public interest campaigners seeking a safer climate. We are here to oppose those who work for the benefit of the 1% against the common good.

We are here to say no to that, and to send a message to Martin Ferguson and the Gillard Labor Government, that the 99% will be heard, that they will be heard on the globally urgent question of climate.

The protest wrapped up with a group photo and chalked messages on the footpath in front of Ferguson's office (my own, "Regards, DL-H"). This was a positive protest organised to communicate a very serious message, and I commend Occupy Melbourne for their democratic achievement.

P.S. Don't forget Friday is National Check in with Martin Ferguson Day. Please ensure your heart is in the right place, and report on yourself to help the government save money on spies!

Comments welcome.

More bad news for spymaster Ferguson

Updated 6.54pm.

The continuing public backlash over resources and energy minister Martin Ferguson's spy-on-the protesters campaign spells more bad news for the Batman MP turned private interest campaigner and spymaster.

The wave of letters in yesterday's editions of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald continues in today's Melbourne broadsheet. Quit Coal and Friends of the Earth campaigner Shaun Murray has also today published a powerful opinion piece making a strong case that the risk to Australia is from the coal barons, not protesters.

The coverage came as protesters prepared to gather at Ferguson's 159 High Street Preston electorate office today at 12.30pm (Quit Coal) and on Thursday at 4.30pm (Occupy Melbourne).

Together, the coverage and protests send a strong message saying no to a spying campaign that pits the private interests of emissions-intensive resources companies against community campaigners working in the public interest to achieve a safer climate for everyone.

Here's my letter in today's edition of The Age ("Ferguson must be resisted").

FOLLOWING Saturday's excellent reports by Philip Dorling, it is heartening to see such a united voice opposing the Minister for Resources and Energy Martin Ferguson's undemocratic ''spy-on-the-protesters'' campaign.

Accounts by protesters are emerging across Australia, but notably also in Mr Ferguson's Victorian federal electorate of Batman - a focal point for public interest campaigns to achieve a safer climate.

Mr Ferguson has shown that his local constituents don't count - it's his ''carbon constituents'' from the resources companies he really represents. Sadly, he's willing to engage the government's intelligence-gathering machinery to ensure the companies get their way. He must, and will, be resisted.

 Comments welcome.

Strange freedoms of information

With all the controversy and plans for action in response to Martin Ferguson's spy-on-the-protesters campaign, I was slightly surprised to see my letter ("Keep us informed") in today's edition of The Sunday Age responding to Farrah Tomazin's excellent report last week, Baillieu's FOI watchdog more like a toothless tiger.

Purely coincidentally, of course, the two issues are strangely linked.

While citizens face great difficulties getting their hands on public interest information to critique government and inform their participation in civil society, our politicians and governments - "influenced" by vested corporate interests - rent private firms and use their own formidable intelligence-gathering machinery to unaccountably gather all kinds of information about citizens against the public interest.

Hence "strange freedoms of information" - we're not free to get the information we need to be good citizens; politicians and government are excessively free in collecting information about us to meet ends too often at odds with the common good.

My letter doesn't appear to be online yet, but here it is as submitted:

I welcome the continuing focus by The Sunday Age on freedom of information under successive Victorian governments (Baillieu's FOI watchdog more like a toothless tiger, Opinion, 1/1).

A functioning society in which government can be held accountable for its actions demands an efficient, independent and transparent gateway to public interest information, not needless barriers to its access. Farrah Tomazin nails the claimed aspirations of the Baillieu government on the former, and paints a damning picture of the latter - a toothless system little improved by the mere appearance of reform.

I would suggest, however, that scrutiny of FOI should not prevent us calling for a significant expansion of the scant information government is obliged to release without citizens needing to request it and then being diverted to a bureaucratic process. To gauge government performance, we shouldn't need to piece together a jigsaw of information variously delayed, fragmented, mediated, obscured or denied.

Instead, government should be called on to develop with civil and public institutions - including unions, not-for-profits and universities - indicators that show how effectively outcomes are being achieved. I mean by this not evidence of bureaucratic outcomes based on economic rationalism, but of the effects policies and programs have on real people, whose voices must also be heard in this process.

At the federal level we have MySchool purporting to represent the performance of schools. At state and federal level might we not call on governments to show their own performance in real time on transparent and collaboratively developed websites that could include, for example, MyHealth, MyJobSecurity, MyCommunity and MyClimate?

We then might better hope for our collective well-being.

Comments welcome.

Occupy to send a strong message to Martin Ferguson

I had the pleasure of attending my first General Assembly at Occupy Melbourne today, and did so to urge action over revelations that Martin Ferguson has actively promoted spying on lawful green protest groups pursuing the public interest, and is urging harsher penalties for some protest activities.

The General Assembly resolved that a protest with environment groups will be held at 4.30pm next Thursday 12 January at Martin Ferguson's Batman electoral office at 159 High Street Preston (Google Map).

The spying claims, backed by freedom-of-information requests, were published in today's edition of The Age in two excellent articles by Philip Dorling - Spies eye green protesters and The watchdog's kennel in clandestine Croydon

My own thoughts as one of Ferguson's Batman constituents and as a climate campaigner were captured in my earlier post, Protest magnet Ferguson calls on the spies

It was good to see Occupy Melbourne engage so energetically on this issue, mirroring Noam Chomsky's recent view that the movement was "pretty fantastic", but needed to engage on current issues where it could actually make a difference. The revelation of spying against civil society protest groups is certainly one such issue in Australia.

What I hope we will see from next Thursday's protest is a group that stands for so much showing that it can unify and throw the spotlight on particular issues as needed.

Today I proposed that the event be the first in a series of Occupy plugs in ... events - namely, Occupy plugs in Climate. The range of serious issues with which the movement concerns itself could then revolve through the Occupy spotlight in a similar way, with an Occupy plugs in Indigenous Justice surely a looming priority.

As well as unifying and highlighting the disparate environment groups that will be called on to take part, I am also hoping that next Thursday will see Occupy specifically acknowledged and respected as a wonderful and powerful expression of participatory democracy.

Occupy around the world has put itself bodily on the line to demand equity, justice and genuine democracy for the 99 per cent, who are too often exploited by the kind of vested, wealthy corporate interests that are Martin Ferguson's true carbon constituents.

So, if you can, please come along and show your support. Visit the Occupy Melbourne website or Facebook page, follow the movement on Twitter @OccupyMELBOURNE or search for the #OMEL hashtag, where you'll see lots of updates before next Thursday's powerful and necessary message to Martin Ferguson.


Comments welcome.

Faine presses Doyle to support Occupy inquiry

Melbourne Lord Mayor Robert Doyle was repeatedly pressed to support an independent inquiry regarding police actions at the first Occupy Melbourne protest when he appeared yesterday on 774 ABC Melbourne's Mornings program with Jon Faine.

In what became a combative interview, Doyle resisted independent scrutiny of the actions of authorities, including himself, in forcibly evicting protesters from City Square back on Friday, 21 October.

Faine's persistent questioning provides a valuable insight into the Lord Mayor's attitude to peaceful, democratic protest.

In my own comment, I sought to refute Doyle's flawed argument that force was justified if the protesters failed to live up to a claimed but disputed agreement to leave. I also considered whether we could have seen a death in similar circumstances to that of Ian Tomlinson at the London G20 protest in April 2009.

Interestingly, The Guardian now reports that Occupy London protesters will be "allowed" to stay at St Paul's Cathedral until the New Year, in stark contrast to the approach adopted by authorities in Melbourne. London authorities have considered legal action to remove protesters, rather than adopt the heavy-handed approach we have seen here.

If you haven't already, I encourage you to go to Faine's blog and make a comment after listening to the audio. Here's the comment I made yesterday:

Thanks for supporting the call for an independent inquiry, Jon.

The question of police protest violence is indeed an urgent matter of public interest that Lord Mayor Robert Doyle seems desperate to avoid.

Even if we grant that there was an agreement for the protesters to leave - which I'm confident they would not grant - their claimed failure to follow through would not licence the kind of excessive force employed by Victoria Police at the Occupy Melbourne protest.

An independent inquiry would examine the evidence and also the legal basis relied on to forcibly evict. If Robert Doyle is so confident that authorities, including himself, acted correctly, he should undertake to resign should an independent inquiry show that action against the protesters was illegal.

Further, it is worth noting that a UK police officer has recently been committed to stand trial for manslaughter over the April 2009 death of an innocent bystander, Ian Tomlinson, at the G20 protest in London.

Comparing footage of that event with footage from the Occupy Melbourne protest, the relative levels of violence suggest we could easily have seen a death here, and for what? To assert arbitary power to crush a peaceful protest?

Thanks again for pursuing this issue.

Cheers, Darren Lewin-Hill

 Comments welcome

Could London's death by police happen at Melbourne's protests?

The Occupy movement is a global phenomenon, and we should avoid parochialism as we consider responses to the disproportionate use of force by Victoria Police against peaceful protesters last Friday in the City Square.

In the UK a police officer now faces trial for manslaughter over the death of Ian Tomlinson, a newspaper vendor innocently caught up in the 2009 London G20 protests as he walked home from work. Video footage shows Mr Tomlinson being struck on the legs with a baton and pushed to the ground by a police officer. He collapsed and died a short time later.

Even had Mr Tomlinson been a participant in the protests, and even had he broken some minor law, no-one could reasonably argue that he deserved the treatment he received at the hands of police, and he certainly would not have deserved to die. Instead, Mr Tomlinson was not a participant and broke no law, but died anyway.

Everyone concerned about excessive police force at the Occupy Melbourne protest should review the video of the attack on Mr Tomlinson and compare it to the footage taken of the Melbourne protests. The level of force employed here was in many cases quite clearly higher than that which led to Mr Tomlinson's fatal heart attack shortly after the police incident in London.

In normal circumstances, if an ordinary citizen injures or kills an attacker, the law of self-defence calls on them to show their actions are proportional to the threat they seek to avert. With their use of horses, dogs, capsicum spray, pressure holds and even punches, it seems police refused to be bound by the same rules in their claimed defence of public order at the Occupy Melbourne protest.

Premier Ted Baillieu, Lord Mayor Robert Doyle and Acting Chief Commissioner Ken Lay should consider the potential cost when police needlessly disturb the peace in order to keep it with disproportionate force that might easily take a life.

(An excellent opinion piece by Anna Brown has been published in today's Age regarding the likely legal and human rights violations of actions by authorities last Friday. See Civil rights and crossing the line)