Occupy London
On Thursday I took my Flip to Occupy London at St Paul’s and did this vid. I’ve heard radio pundits ask what it’s going to achieve. I think that people asking questions and establishing dialogue about what matters is not just a means to bring about change but is itself part of the change we want.
Occupy is significant because it is a spontaneous thing that is happening all over the world. It connects us. The protests before the invasion of Iraq were somewhat similar but those were protests against a particular action of an unjust system; this is a challenge to and a questioning of the whole system of global injustice.
A study by the World Institute for Development Economics Research at United Nations University reports that the richest 1% of adults alone owned 40% of global assets in the year 2000, and that the richest 10% of adults accounted for 85% of the world total. The bottom half of the world adult population owned barely 1% of global wealth.
As someone who has been an educator all my life I know that the most significant part of being an educator is getting learners to question, because without that ability to question and a commitment to doing so there is only acceptance of received knowledge whether that received knowledge is true or not. Occupy is questioning the status quo and from what I saw it’s do that in a very creative way. It will be interesting to observe the developing relationship between this world wide movement and the mainstream media and mainstream politics.