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Where you stand determines what you see
We have a saying in nonviolence practice: "Where you stand determines what you see." Here's what I saw.
On Friday morning I was one of the last into the area before it was completely fenced off. I spent the next two hours moving between the lines of police and occupiers, asking them to remain human to one another, eventually kneeling in the space between them to pray for same. It's only when we dehumanise one another that we are capable of violence. People become "problems" to be solved instead of brothers and sisters to reason with and convince.
I read Melbourne Lord Mayor Robert Doyle's op-ed in the Herald Sun. I don't fit Mr Doyle's stereotype of "rabble". Neither did more than half the crowd there on Friday. I saw professionals, students, mothers, and tradies. In fact, the more violent the police response, the more diverse the crowd became as bystanders flocked to join the occupiers. I saw elderly shoppers in tears, clearly shocked by the brutality. Where you stand determines what you see. What they saw clearly helped them choose a side.
Mr Doyle asked of the Occupy Melbourne group, "What were those knives, hammers, bottles, bricks and fuel for?" Simple: they were used in the camp kitchen, Mr Doyle, to feed anyone who wanted food, including the homeless. The knives were used to butter bread, the bottles for drinking from, the fuel for cooking, the bricks and hammers to set up the camp. If any of those items were intended to be used as weapons, as you so obviously imply, why were they not used or even brandished as such? The occupiers had ample time and opportunity to do so. They didn't.
In fact, I ask Mr Doyle to show the public one instance of documented violence by the occupiers. If there was any such instance, you can be certain it would be all over the news - yet it is not. In fact, despite almost 100 arrests, not a single person has been charged with anything. On the other hand, YouTube (and even the Herald Sun website) is awash with examples of excessive police violence.
What is more, the eviction strategy backfired spectacularly. It moved the peaceful occupation of a public space onto the street where it was far more disruptive than it would otherwise have been. The police were clearly not in control, or they would have dispersed the group. As it was, they were incapable of moving the group more than a couple of hundred metres in more than seven hours, where they remained blocking intersections. Now far from being "returned to the people", the city square is blocked off with fences, security and guard dogs rendering it useless to anyone.
Certainly there were times when the language of demonstrators was inflammatory and abusive towards police. Arrests were often met with shouts of "Scum!" at police, which did nothing to calm the situation or advance the cause, particularly given police were frightened due to being clearly outnumbered by demonstrators. But while verbal violence went both ways, physical violence only went one way.
One chant Mr Doyle neglected to mention was, "The whole world is watching!" And thanks to mobile phones and social media, now the world knows what happens in Melbourne to those who express dissent for more than a day or two. Mr Doyle has embarrassed our state and our respected police force, by sending them in to do a job they should never have done. As a result of this overly aggressive 'strategy', the Occupy movement has attracted more sympathisers. They will return, and their numbers will only grow.
"The city must return to normal at some point," Mr Doyle declares. Whether you think "normal" is desirable depends largely on where you stand. In a country where more than 100,000 people go homeless every night while a small minority own billions, normal is precisely the problem this movement is decrying.
Many people have tried to justify police violence under the rubric of the occupiers' refusal to leave City Square voluntarily. Yet civil disobedience is a perfectly legitimate expression of political dissent in a democracy. As Lord Hoffman said in the UK House of Lords, "Civil disobedience on conscientious grounds has a long and honourable history… It is the mark of a civilised community that it can accommodate protests and demonstrations of this kind." There was nothing civilised about the way police were used on Friday. Why send the riot squad to quell something that was never remotely riotous? Escalation of conflict and intimidation are the only answers, and were clearly the intent, to discredit and frighten what has been a peaceful occupation of a public space by a broad range of Melburnians.
"Where you stand determines what you see." Unfortunately Mr Doyle never actually attended the camp himself, so his perspective is less informed than it could have been, but if he thinks this movement - which has expressions in more than 1,500 cities around the world - are a "tiny number" he clearly stands with the 1 per cent, not the 99.
Rev Simon Moyle is an ordained Baptist minister with the GraceTree Community in Coburg. He is a nonviolence trainer with Pace e Bene Australia.
