Occupy London: The Radical Bite Is Dulled

Like the flickering, “ironic points of light” that W.H. Auden described during another age of worldwide despair, once-brilliant Occupy encampments across the globe have dimmed in the face of eviction orders and internal social tension. Occupy London, now “a network of mutual support for the lost and destitute”—as New Statesman columnist Laurie Penny puts it—is no exception. –ARK

Laurie Penny at New Statesman:

Three months on, this is what the Occupy movement looks like: a network of mutual support for the lost and destitute, with anti-capitalist overtones. The Bank of Ideas, an abandoned building owned by the Swiss banking giant UBS and transformed into a space for art sessions, lectures and late-night discussion on the future of the free market, is one of four sites squatted by London’s branch of the movement. The occupations began with the encampment on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral, which has just lost its battle against eviction at the Royal Courts of Justice, and branched out to Finsbury Square, and an empty magistrate’s court on Old Street. As other world cities have seen similar protests violently evicted by local police, the occupiers of London have clung on through a winter that has seen the nature of the camps change profoundly.

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