Its been a hectic and emotional three weeks. An invitation to an event got me started on a roller-coaster of Occupation, which at least for the time being as now slowed to a halt. After seeing an event listing for an Occupy Leeds event, I happily signed up, after developing an increasing awareness of Occupy themes via Facebook and Twitter over the previous week. My reactions peaked when I realised this was an event without a group, I recall it being odd, and was excited about being involved in a movement from the group up, so I quickly setup a Facebook group, it was the 30th of October 2011. Soon after I was alerted to the fact that a Facebook Page had already been setup called Occupy Leeds, funnily enough both the Facebook Page, the group I created and the event had all been setup independently of one another. The same individual was then pivotal in linking us all up together, so even though each effort began as an individual effort, soon all 3 Facebook initiates began to converge into one unified presence, albeit with still a lot of independence.
A wonderful member of Occupy Britain was soon involved and hooked us up with the domain name and hosting for www.occupyleeds.co.uk and from that moment on I took on the role of webmaster, and loved it. I’ve used WordPress a lot previously, but this felt new and refreshing, it was a great pleasure in developing a new site that seemed to look more and more polished with each passing day and having our kind “sponsor” on call to help me tackle any difficulties made it a really enjoyable experience. For the next few days, things developed at a rapid rate, I setup a Skype account, however it got seldom used, I setup a Twitter account, the credentials of which have been used by the initial “founders” of Occupy Leeds and eventually other members who took on either a “web-role” or an “admin-role”. A forum soon appeared and I believe within a week, with help of our “sponsor” we had also setup an e-mail forwarding system given us the use of official looking e-mails, such as info@occupyleeds.co.uk and we even had a public phone number, working via a call forwarding system. These steps where crucial during the pre-occupation phase in my opinion and quickly became swamped after “occupation day”, which facilitated the need for a mobile phone for camp use to remain on site.
The occupation began rather haphazardly on the 11th of November 2011, I personally felt annoyed by the lack of organisation of the group as a whole, despite doing my very best. Perhaps I should have expected, to my knowledge only the 3 “co-founders” had met each other before occupation day, and everyone inevitably add their own priorities and biases towards what needed to be done, and how it should be achieved. After lots of discussions throughout the night regarding the setup of the camp, laid out in my absence whilst I was purchasing supplies elsewhere, the next morning, those of us who capped the night before got busy and remodeled the camp in time for the 2nd general assembly (GA).
My priorities at this time, was in setting up a well organised, functioning camp, so I recall being even a little annoyed that work had to stop to facilitate a GA, which felt a little pointless as tents still had to be fastened in place, etc… but it happened, and during this GA, the working groups were created, those already existing from the night before were either confirmed or modified. After getting other my frustrations with the actual camp, things got on nicely for a few days. There was a very small number of us who remained close to 24/7 and we all seemed to get on well. Up to a week in, a rift could have developed between those who remained at camp, and a larger majority of people who seemed to only appear for the GA’s then disappear, and to an extent I believe it did, though it didn’t halt progress.
Towards the end of the first week and into the second week, morale was low. After several nights myself and others ushered thoughts to the effect of another night with just 4 of us all day and all night and we may as well pack up. Bringing these concerns to GA, alleviated some pressure and we had a small bump in over night attendance for the next couple of nights. After two weeks I had, had enough and had to get away for a night at home, but you couldn’t really forget about the camp. I kept seeing things or being made aware of things that needed to be done, but camp life was so busy you can’t manage everything, and wish such low numbers around camp for the majority of time, especially in those early day’s, it was very hard achieving anything outside of keeping the camp running… and at least in my own opinion that problem has persisted to this day.
Up to 20 days in to occupation, more working groups have been setup, and they appear to be getting more organised, unfortunately that was tainted by a storm decimating the camp, and despite a call and tweet for an emergency meeting for the next morning, at most 3 people turned up until well into the evening, leaving us very under-manned to rebuild the camp. In the end we did a very through job of rebuilding the main tent and stabilizing the smaller sleeping tents, but the camp was a mess, and remained so for several days afterwards.
At 3 weeks in, the camp and its surrounding movement has enjoyed some real success, we had an awesome day when Billy Bragg graced us with his presence and sang a few songs, and a large presence of support from the N30 strikers also raised morale. However, the camp is still plagued with fundamental problems that have been present from day one, despite my best efforts these have developed to an extent, where I feel my presence on camp was a waste of energy, so I pulled back, hoping and expecting others to step up and take more of an active role, and to an extent that did happen. The camp so an influx, albeit small of new people, who were keen to keep the camp running, fetching water, charging the battery system and keeping watch on a night, etc. Sadly the day shift, has ever has been increasingly forgotten about, less and less people turn up during the day, and any active engaging with the public on a day-to-day basis has effectively ceased all together in my opinion. I tried to re-kindle things, but in part due to my lack of familiarity with “Occupy procedures” and my overt frustration over what to me is clear inactivity and inefficiency of everything from inter-group communication to even handing out information to the public, a key objective of the camp, those efforts have not amounted to enough positive change that I feel I can remain as part of the current movement within Occupy Leeds, without driving myself mad with frustration or driving others away.
It’s definitly a sad day, but also a relief to be away from what seems to me like increasing reactionary red-tape and hypocrisy. As of today I class myself no longer a part of Occupy Leeds, and wish everyone still involved a safe journey and good luck.
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