FOR DEMOCRACY AND DISCIPLINE: a plea to

By James Pollard

FOR DEMOCRACY AND DISCIPLINE

The end of Occupy Melbourne

On the morning of the 21st of Oc- assembly has come to pass, leaving tober, about 400 peaceful police1, us in circumstances that demand re- some mounted on peace ponies, oth- flection, re-organisation, and prepa- ers wielding peace spray, swooped ration before future action can be down on City Square which had carried out with confidence. then been host to the camp of Oc- cupy Melbourne since the 15th. The Lord Mayor had an- “This is a peaceful !” nounced earlier in the week that “it Leading up to, and on the day of, was time to move on.” This is an the eviction, the constant refrain of article on the eviction of the occupa- “peaceful protest” only hampered tion. In it, I try to show how certain attempts at a serious discussion of assumptions and ways of action, tactics. A discussion of tactics is not crystalised in the chants we raised necessarily the endorsement of vio- on the day of eviction, defined and lence. It is an attempt to enable col- limited what the was. lective responses to the questions of Throughout the week, a clique of how to respond to police violence, liberal-pacifist activists attempted how to protect ourselves, and what to impose these ideas upon the en- is the best way to resist authority. tire assembly, and to take control of I have seen the ideology of non- the general assembly. In the wake violence used to end discussions on of the eviction, their coup over the civil disobedience (which is some- 1 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-10-22/ how always “violent,” even though occupy-melbourne-protesters-head-to-city- the greatest figures of nonviolence centre/3595192/?site=newcastle 2 democracy & discipline

were practicing civil disobedience), “Move forward slowly!” and to discourage a pro-active re- -The chant we used as the cops action to the police (building bar- charged us in the rear ricades, or defending them, being The eviction went through three categorised as “violent”). More- phases. First, there was a period over, it is unfair to credit the media of police investment2 which lasted victory on Friday to an ideology approximately three hours; sec- which I doubt is held by a strong ond, there was a half-hour of as- majority of protestors; nonviolence sault; third, there was a slow retreat is simply not accepted completely through the city, going up Swan- enough to explain a causal link. ston street in response to a series What we instead saw was a case of of charges by police, during which discipline: as a movement, we made many were arrested, finally con- a disciplined decision not to riot, in cluding at Trades Hall. Between the spite of vile attempts by the police second and third phases there was to provoke us. Discipline must fea- the greatest danger of a riot, but also ture in our discourse from this stage the greatest opportunity was lost. on as being neither obedience, for Two thousand people had come out discipline is actually worked out in support of our movement: the by a thousand instantaneous acts of moment was ripe for a mass ex- consensus in the field, and grows periment in democracy. But at that out of a shared culture; nor ideo- stage, due to a lack of prior planning logical reductionism, for discipline for police violence, the movement is not afraid to examine alternative was unable to act decisively. In the strategies, trusting in its own matu- following hours of the slow retreat, rity to choose the appropriate tools the proved use- of struggle. When I see a protestor less for creative decision-making, talking another one out of attacking in fact quelching the independence the police, I do not see the triumph of groups moving to seize nearby of nonviolent ideology. I see the triumph of a disciplined resistance 2 I use the technical term from siege culture. warfare, during which the attackers sur- round the defending castle and move their siege weapons into place: in this case, a cordon around the camp which prevented reinforcements from intervening in the assault. During this time, the police also cleared all protestors from Swanston street, outside the camp, which was later used as a dumping ground for those removed. democracy & discipline 3 intersections as a defense against a failure – of political representation.”4 second police kettle, and “had the At its best, the slogan “99%” rep- effect of enforcing opinions as fact resented an awakening class con- through repetition” as in Los Ange- sciousness (thus the uselessness les.3 Eventually the process became of the doctrine of “the 100%”, of dominated by those who could unity with the police and a reified speak loudest (the ones with actual image of “humanity”; this language microphones). The collapse of radi- is the end of politics proper, not cal democracy was evident not only its transcendence). At its worst, it in the inability of the crowd to act in represented a vulgar materialist ap- response to the police without hier- peal to democratic legitimacy, as archical leadership, and the heavily though there were something worth stage-managed general assembly saving in the corpse of bourgeois at Trades Hall at 6:00, which took representative democracy. We are, place with a heavy police guard quite simply, the 0%: those who are waiting outside (as though to in- precisely un-represented in the po- sinuate that they, too, could block litical sphere, and who thus choose certain motions). to represent themselves. When we choose move from schemas of rep- resentation to politics proper, we “We are the 99%!” leave behind any idea that this is an Throughout the survival of the act of protest. camp, and all through the eviction process, protestors took up the slo- “We are Occupy Melbourne!” gan of “the 99%.” Analysis of the movement’s political strength gen- Beneath the outward signs of our erally came down to what propor- unity, fissures are opening in the tion of this statistic we represented. . Those who ini- But as Hardt and Negri have recent- tially convened the protest still seek ly argued, in line with their general to maintain ownership over the pro- argument of Empire-Multitude- cess. Consensus-based decision- Commonwealth, the demand for making has been perverted into a democracy made by the movement bureaucratic means of silencing is symptomatic of “the lack – or minority opinion (always, always in the interests of the group: there’s not

3 https://unpermittedla.wordpress. 4 http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn. com/2011/10/03/the-general-assembly-and- com/2011/10/11/occupy-wall-street-as-a- grassroots-democracy/ fight-for-real-democracy/?hpt=hp_c2 4 democracy & discipline

enough time, the group has already At this stage, it is vital that we learn reached a decision, or that’s not from the lessons of our first occupa- what “we” are about, etc.). A few tion. Several issues present them- slogans are promoted to the point of selves immediately: being beyond any questioning; the assumption that they are common 1. The second occupation, at Flag- ground labels all criticism of them staff gardens, has been announced as disruptive. But as I have sought with what seems like undue haste. to demonstrate in those article, Remember, unlike the anti-globali- those slogans actually act as limits sation movement, which reacted to imposed on the movement by those WTO and G8 summits, we set the who wish to control its potential. pace and the agenda. Perhaps it is We must break out of the “consen- already a political impossibility to sus” that dictates that we are engag- call off the occupation, as it has the ing in an act of civil protest within acclaim of a series of assemblies the coordinates of liberal democ- and has already been advertised, racy. Rather, Occupy Melbourne, but activists would be wise not to and the global movement of which expect different results from a rep- it is a part, are part of a process to etition of the same strategy. come up with new models of social organisation beyond the limits of 2. Every member of the occupa- our current political system. The tion must be organised in a way that only word I can think of for such a permits them to partake in political, process is revolution. strategic, and tactical decision-mak- ing. The most effective measure at this stage would be for individu- als to form themselves into affin- ity groups: that is, groups of people who have the shared values, trust, and knowledge of one another to act collectively both in democratic forums and in conflicts with the po- lice.

3. The entirety of the movement must begin a study of its tactics in- cluding safety, responses to police democracy & discipline 5 violence, and nonviolent resistance. sembly has become markedly more Workshops can be organised on all centralised in a way that is un- of these subjects with little more healthy. A spokescouncil, compris- resources than the energy of those ing delegates from all participating who have past experience. organisations, affinity groups, and special interests (i.e. there should 4. Tactics, of course, only become be queer, womens’, and indig- an issue in terms of an overall strate- enous delegates) is one alternative gy. At the moment, the wisest strat- model which could rectify some of egy is not to seek conflict with the the problems of the assembly, but enemy, but to emphasise and build as with all of my suggestions it is on the movement’s strengths. Pro- meant merely to initiate debate on testing against police behaviour is the challenges we face as a move- probably more effective at this stage ment. than occupying the park right now. The fact that Sydney was crushed, if anything, more brutally in a dawn raid on Sunday shows that media coverage alone won’t prevent fur- ther violence. Moreover, a lot of people were injured on the day, put in jail, lost property, lost days of work, and lost sleep over the occu- pation. The valiance of the leaders in sending people back to the front can only function by ignoring this reality.

5. The problems of democracy in the general assembly must be con- fronted and rectified. While in the moment of crisis after the evic- tion, the intervention of experi- enced leaders was probably neces- sary (though, again, this necessity could have been mitigated by prior discussion and planning, enforced through discipline), the general as- A plea to Occupy Melbourne in the days follow- ing the cowardly attack of the upon our fair encampment at the order of the princeling, Robert Doyle