Occupy Melbourne Advocates Violence.

At the 21st General Assembly of Occupy Melbourne held tonight a proposal to reaffirm non violent direct action was defeated. Specifically the motion attempted to clear up what was and was not appropriate action taken on behalf of Occupy Melbourne. The non violence advocated was for non violence against persons and property. This non violence policy was quite heavily defeated on the floor of the GA.

The motion was put in response to an action by an individual who allegedly smashed the camera of a Council worker. The person has been charged with willful damage, and with assault, because it is alleged that the person holding the camera was injured during the process of having the camera taken from him with the alleged purpose of damaging that camera. The alleged injury to the person may or may not have occurred, and was incidental to the alleged intention to take this person’s camera for the purpose of causing damage to it.

Non violent direct action is a tried and tested form of protest, which is supposed to be a part of the platform of Occupy Melbourne. This motion was to test whether or not that platform actually existed, and whether or not the occupiers still held by it. Apparently they do not. This is a shame. It is particularly strange given that only minutes previously the group had voted to include the word “peacefully” in its Declaration, which is still being considered for adoption. Occupy Melbourne needs to determine what it means by peaceful, and what it stands for in terms of direct action taken by its members. To advocate violence is a huge change in direction, and it is this that I feel the group has effectively done by rejecting this proposal.

It is only one complaint of several that I wish to make against Occupy Melbourne. Whatever good intentions you have, by failing to adopt important policy, means that you advocate violence, and yet are we not meant to stand against the violence of the 1%, the violence of the police and the state in oppressing the voice of the people?

Violence is a deal breaker for me. If you support violence, then you lose my support. If you will not support policy that affirms non violence then that amounts to the same thing. And then you wonder why more people do not support you.

There are too many agendas at the Occupy Melbourne movement. Another item that is included in the declaration (as I repeat, as yet unadopted, but nonetheless a guide) is that we do not discriminate on the basis of sex, faith, sexuality, race, and age, amongst other things. But last night, the first night that I decided to sleep over at the Occupy Melbourne camp, a fifteen year old male was evicted from the camp with the threat to “call the police.” I was flabbergasted, to say the least. We were going to call the police to evict someone? I would like to say, “please say it isn’t so.” But it was so.

There was a reason not to allow this boy to remain. Apparently unaccompanied minors provide some sort of risk, it is AGAINST THE LAW to harbour them. But is it harbouring them, or is it simply a matter of not evicting them? And how can you have a declaration that states it does not discriminate on the basis of age, and then threaten a young man with the police if he does not leave? Isn’t that discrimination? Meanwhile the woman doing this “evicting” was very strident, as far as i am concerned she used psychological bullying and violence against this boy, and against those who came to his defence. We do not bully. We do not (or did not) promote violence.

So I found it also strange that another young man who was very insistent in making a particular point swore at me, and told me a was a stale, dried up twat, or words to that effect, and at another time referred to my age by saying I should have more sense (in relation to the above incident) at my age. This also is discrimination based upon age. The idea that I should have either more or less sense because I am fifteen or fifty is not relevant, but being called the genitalia of an old whore is.

Later that night as the rain came down I heard people outside my tent actually wolf whistle at a woman. Wolf whistling is also an act of violence, and a stereotyping of women as sexual objects. I was amazed that this sort of behaviour was going on in what ought to have been a politically aware group of people.

All of these points I might have liked to raise at points inf the GA’s were not so badly run. A woman made a proposal that GA’s should be held nightly from now on, and some people from the facilitation work group were not sure if they could attend every night. I kind of thought, what a relief that would be, without these damn facilitators I am sure we would get a lot more done.

Well, alas, I’ve already said that there was a deal breaker for me. A group that promotes violence is not a group I want to be involved in, so I guess I’ll just continue biting at th e dges and let others get on with the good (or bad) governance of Occupy Melbourne.

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