5 - People Making Change

Summary

In the autumn of 2011, thousands of protesters in multiple cities across the world – from Australia to Mongolia – put up tents to occupy prominent sites in cities to protest against the international financial system. Under the slogan of ‘We are the 99%’ they were particularly responding to the financial crisis and austerity measures. Our own research on the Occupy movement shows that these protests attracted many people who were new to organising for change. However, the camps also attracted experienced SCMs who had participated in multiple causes. Life history interviews with SCMs like Mike, a man in his forties, who participated in Occupy London, illustrate how the involvement in SCOs is embedded in everyday lives.

We interviewed Mike, who came from a working-class background, in November 2011. He remembered that during his childhood and youth, his mother supported the Labour Party and was involved in the Greenham Common protests of the 1980s against the stationing of cruise missiles during the Cold War. He was socialised into attending marches and direct actions and started to become aware of different movements through going to protests at an early age. He remembers meetings of SCMs while he was growing up and that his mother hosted members of the Polish Solidarność (Solidarity) movement. They were staying with Mike and his mother on an exchange basis at the beginning of the 1980s, when Solidarność was starting to take shape to bring about changes in communist Poland. Mike went to university, and at the time of the interview was self-employed and had several children. He told us that fatherhood was his main motivation for being politically active. He was concerned that his children would not have the same opportunities that he has had and was concerned about their economic situation and the state of the environment. Before getting involved in Occupy, he had participated in various campaigns organised by several environmental SCOs. He had been involved in Camps for Climate Action and had also run a local environmental campaign. When he realised that his local environmental campaign got bigger, he approached larger and more established organisations such as Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace because he felt that he did not have enough experience to deal with the significant campaign that he envisioned. However, he stressed that he preferred being independent from organisations.