[OccupyComms] Fw: Riot, occupation...

[marknbarrett at googlemail.com]

FYI  this from Greg Wilkinson (aka David) for possible follow up 
Sent from phone

-----Original Message-----
From: david wilkinson <dgregwilkinson at yahoo.co.uk>
Sender: lsxcampeconomics at googlegroups.com
Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2012 10:08:59 
To: lsxcampeconomics at googlegroups.com<lsxcampeconomics at googlegroups.com>
Reply-To: lsxcampeconomics at googlegroups.com
Subject: Riot, occupation...

David and all
 
I'm so sorry not to have been at the St Pauls gig, or Putney or the banking session at Friends House. Instead, I write letters from Wales, the latest in reply to a critical review of Occupy Handbook in the London Review of Books
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v34/n20/david-runciman/stiffed.
 
Here it is for what it's worth :

 
David Runciman makes a fair job in demolishing Occupy claims to stand for the 99%. If only things were that simple. For all the statistics, strong ties and weak, our little camps on Wall and other streets have not as yet ignited wider protest or effective change.
 
It's some consolation, as he notes, that some of us who coincided on the cobbles DID discover real and unexpected attinities. Students, academics and pensioners like me bivouacked with people more accustomed to homelessness, including ex-soldiers and a former trader or two. Mostly we got along alright. The same was true of those who met on the cobbles of Paris 68: I admired the voyoux who already knew about setting cars alight and turning busses on their sides. 
 
In his search for more plausible statistics and potent common interests, Runciman settles on a more manageable 5%. From a US campaign among the older unemployed of the 1930s - bypassed by the New Deal - he shifts the focus to a forgotten younger generation in Europe today, our so-called NEETs - under 25, uneducated and unemployed. 
 
'They are the 5% and we should do something about them.' Of course we should, but Runciman somehow misses two other important points: the point of occupations, and subject of his piece, is what people can do for themselves; and, in the UK at least, the riots of summer 2011 found his target cohort on the streets with a vengeance.
 
To our shame, the rest of us united in condemnation of what we should at least have understood. We nodded as young people who might have been our children were picked up by matching CCTV images with previous police mugshots - petty criminals of course - to be vindictively locked up.
 
This summer 2012, police expected the worst but rain intervened. Instead we watched new fusions on screen from torrid Greece and Spain. We aint seen nothing yet?  As recession and climate change close in on growing inequality, people of all ages even here may find themselves unemployed, under-paid, unable to keep up or living in hopes. Survivors of occupation and riot could find themselves on the streets again, the mob multiplied by more general bafflement, in common cause or common sense. 
 
GW
 
People who were at the events I missed might like to send the LRB  their pennyworth at edit at lrb.co.uk, to show that the game is not over and already has results, as indicated by Haldane's 'They were right.' It might also be worth making the Putney link to an older English tradition, played out in Churchill's 'Light shining...'  
 
For the work still to be done see chart updating Spirit Level inequalities: http://www.newstatesman.com/economics/economics/2012/10/chart-day-price-inequality



________________________________
From: "lsxcampeconomics at googlegroups.com" <lsxcampeconomics at googlegroups.com>
To: Digest Recipients <lsxcampeconomics at googlegroups.com> 
Sent: Wednesday, 31 October 2012, 9:17
Subject: Digest for lsxcampeconomics at googlegroups.com - 1 Message in 1 Topic


  Today's Topic Summary
Group: http://groups.google.com/group/lsxcampeconomics/topics
	* [project2012] Re: [occupylondonpress] Re: [Occupy London] Top Bank of England director admits Occupy movement had a point [1 Update]
 [project2012] Re: [occupylondonpress] Re: [Occupy London] Top Bank of England director admits Occupy movement had a point
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