Occupy Melbourne – An Eyewitness Account

This article was first published on the Castan Centre’s blog. You can access the blog here for more great articles on human rights law. A shorter form of this article was also published in The Conversation.

I received a text message on Friday morning from a friend at the Occupy Melbourne protest at City Square, saying that the protesters were about to be forcibly evicted. I had previously been down to City Square the previous Saturday as the protesters were setting up, and my impression of the movement was a largely positive one. Sure, the array of banners and pamphlets attested to the diversity of views and politics present. But to say that the movement was incoherent – and it is tempting to do so – is misleading. From what I saw that first Saturday, the Occupiers were united by a belief that an economic system that favours big corporations is damaging to real democracy. The expectation that the Occupiers would be able to articulate concrete solutions or a ten-step plan was somewhat beside the point. I spoke to a few Occupiers in the Square, and for them the whole purpose of the Occupy movement was to create a space in which people could talk about alternatives to an economic system we normally accept as a given. Overall, the Occupiers struck me as friendly and relatively well organised. There were families with young children there, and non-protesters looked on from the surrounding cafés and bars more in curiousity than anxiety.