After the, arguably, successful antics of those pesky ‘we are the 99%’ protestors on Wall Street, and their occupation of Zuccotti Park, imitators have sprung up across the globe to really take the fight to ‘The Man’. Manchester held a rather wet flannel of an event to coincide with the Conservative Party Conference, and now London is set to receive its own street based occupation.
Taking place on the 15th October at St Pauls Cathedral – incase you fancied swanning along – Occupy London Stock Exchange promises to reclaim the space ‘in the face of the financial system and using it to voice ideas for how we can work towards a better future. A future free from austerity, growing inequality, unemployment, tax injustice and a political elite who ignores its citizens, and work towards concrete demands to be met.’ Just make sure if you turn up, you arrive on time. Apparently they don’t like people arriving early, or arriving late…
Personally I don’t quite see how annoying some businessmen by getting in the way of their probably already frustrating commute to work is really going to help us ‘work towards a better future.’ It certainly wont be enough to create this ‘better world’ that they talk about, although I’m sure they’ll be plenty of Guy Fawkes masks about the place. Although V for Vendetta was a fairly crappy movie, I guess it has at least given us that legacy.
Either way, it should be interesting to see unfold. Will it last like Occupy Wall Street has, or will it crumble under the autumn weather like Occupy Manchester did? I doubt they’ll get the clout of local business’ on their side like their American counterparts have but still it’s nice to see people wanting to do something about their situation albeit probably ultimately fairly misguided and inappropriate.
Source: http://occupylondon.org.uk/
