Nick is an investment banker. He and a colleague are being shown around the Occupy LSX community by shivering activist George Barda, 35. "George said no suits," says Nick, who prefers that his surname is not published. He borrowed his colleague's gardening clothes. Hotfoot from his London hotel room, where he stayed over after a Christmas party "in town", he's now got his own private tour of Occupy's London camp.
Why? "Because I wanted to hear what they have to say." Turning to Barda he continues: "I'm sure there's a very big audience that thinks everyone here is just a complete flake, and you should be bulldozed out of the way.
"That's why it's important for me to get your point across to an audience you wouldn't reach," explains Nick, who writes a blog distributed to some 300 financial institutions and has his own video cameraman in tow.
Barda has plenty to say; thousands of words, in fact, which, as he is one of three named defendants in the high court action by the City of London Corporation to remove Occupy LSX's camp, are neatly distilled in court papers lodged prior to the case which opened on Monday.
Guiding Nick towards the camp's information tent – "our spiritual home" – Barda points to four bulging box files on a small bench: hundreds of legal pages he himself must read and digest in advance.
"Are you proud of this country and the fact that it's actually going to court?" the banker asks.
"Yes, absolutely," replies Barda, reflecting on New York mayor Michael Bloomberg's unfettered powers to order police clearance of Occupy Wall Street's camp from Zuccotti Park.
"Biscuit?" he offers, as they enter the kitchen tent where donated food for the camp is prepared. Nick declines. "Had a full English at the hotel," he confesses. "Well, I had some slightly stale but amazing bread," says Barda cheerfully.
The bread was leftovers donated by a patisserie near Paternoster Square, home of the London Stock Exchange and Occupy London's original destination until police physically prevented protesters from pitching tents. On Monday, two Christmas trees twinkled forlornly in the square's centre, marooned in a sea of metal barriers erected to prevent any encroachment by those protesting about global economic injustices.
Public school educated and having studied law for one year at Oxford, Barda, who has a philosophy degree from University College London, is juggling his job as Greenpeace street campaigner with his masters in environment, politics and globalisation at King's College London, while spending five nights a week sleeping at St Paul's and preparing for the high court case.
It's important he appears in person, he says, because he aims to broaden the parameters of the case to include the social and political issues. "If it was just our legal team versus the City of London Corporation, 90% of the case would just be about health and safety and planning and technical stuff. Nothing to do with the issues of why we are here."
From papers filed before the action, it is clear the corporation intends to focus on the protest camp as a "public nuisance". And this has been the angle for much of the recent media coverage, with defecation, drink and drugs featuring prominently in many accounts of the activities of the camp.
Undoubtedly it has attracted some individuals with little, if any, affiliation or understanding of the Occupy movement's commitments and philosophy.
The open-all-hours tea tent is a magnet for street people, some with alcohol and drug problems, and is a popular subject on Occupy London's online forum. Some women occupiers are said to have felt harassed, and even unsafe there at night.
"It's the one place that's warm. It's for people who don't have their shit together to have a tent," says Inka, 44, a seasoned activist and film-maker whose extremely neat, secure tent attests to her many years of protest experience. "There are some hardcore street people who take up the energy of it."
As the court case focuses minds, the camp's general assembly (GA), the free-for-all governing body for the London protest, seek consensus on how to restructure St Paul's, to make it safer for its workers sleeping there. One account on the online forum last week described "spitting, threats, aggressive behaviour and someone having a rusty saw held to their throat" and claimed general assembly meetings were subjected to "violent interjection from the tea tent crew which seem determined to destroy our camp". Police have been called at times, something that jars with the more idealistically anarchist camp dwellers.
Should some people be excluded? Should St Paul's be downsized? Should it be reduced, even, to one symbolic permanent tent? It's all being debated. Already the housing working group is removing empty tents, leaving around 100 at the cathedral steps at the last count on Friday.
Some 65 days into occupation, other tensions are evident. Those awakening to iced water in the bottom of their tents at St Paul's have "mixed feelings" about colleagues snug and warm(er) at Occupy London's "bank of ideas" – the group sheltered within four walls and under a roof inside a disused building in Hackney owned by the banking group UBS. "Let's face it, they might as well be at home. It's a squat, not Occupy," said one St Paul's veteran.
Concerns have been expressed, too, about how Occupy communicates on social media. Those at the bank of ideas control passwords to the Twitter, Facebook, and online livestreams, one disgruntled member of the St Paul's camp tells the general assembly.
Such complaints of an emerging hierarchy, despite being instantly addressed by the general assembly, predictably have spawned comparisons with Orwell's Animal Farm in some sectors of the media – all protesters are equal, but some more so than others.
But, at "Tent City University", a white canvas structure sparsely furnished with old sofas and adorned with a "no alcohol no drugs on site" sign, Rod Schwartz, 54, a former Wall Street analyst whose company ClearlySo offers business support to social enterprises, epitomises what Occupy LSX believe is their greatest achievement – dialogue. Lectures and speeches are delivered here daily. On Thursday it was veteran US civil rights activist Rev Jesse Jackson. On Friday it was Schwartz, telling the 20-30 gathered, his breath fogging in the icy air: "Thank you for coming, and for staying. You making things a little bit more uncomfortable for everyone else reminds us that the system isn't working".
Sitting on the freezing stone flags, listening attentively, was Peter Brown, 82, a retired architect from Belsize Park, north-west London, and his wife, Doreen, 80, a retired teacher. "Good lecture," he pronounces on leaving. "I came this afternoon because I wanted to ascertain what has been achieved by this Occupy at St Paul's, because it can't be very long before they're evicted. And it isn't obvious to me that very much has been achieved that the government will take the slightest notice of."
"Oh, I think they are achieving a lot of positive dialogue," counters his wife, who visits the camp each week to donate food. "I just hope, if they're evicted, it will be peacefully," she adds with furrowed brow.
In a nearby cafe over warming coffees Nick the banker is engrossed in deep conversation with George and Inka. "You as an investment banker are very much the 1%. But as a human being … " Barda is telling him.
"You're here, you're listening. And that's good, because Occupy is about communication. But you've got one foot over there, and I don't even think you've got a toe, maybe a tip of one toe, with us," pronounces Inka.
"Well, you've got to start somewhere," replies Nick. "Perhaps," he adds, "there is no one-word answer to what you want to achieve. There is no place to which you are going. But, as long as one feels one's moving forward, making progress, then I think it's justifiable."
Origin
Source: Guardian
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