By Jake Céileachair – Self styled “Occupant”

The article below is the personal view of the author and does not necessarily reflect the policy stances of either Occupy Exeter or Exeter Anti-cuts Alliance

We are a menace to society and we need to be stopped

Says one Occupant as I interviewed him today, he also happens to be me and therefore a barking mad leftist traitor without a bone in his body related to journalistic integrity or regulation of sarcasm, and a lack of regulation helped get us in to this financial mess so God forbid what this article does to the poor souls who publish and read this.

The interviewee in question takes a quick sip of his Starbucks and sets it down next to his second Starbucks, his copy of some evil cultural Marxist book called “Structural Transformation of the Bourgeois Public Sphere” by Habermas or some other foreigner and another book with some weird old bloke on the cover named “Cliff”. He sighs with indignation, the news has been peppered with this “Occupy Exeter” fiasco, BBC have claimed we’ve targeted the Cathedral in an evil display of terrorism, the Daily “I’m not racist but..” Mail has broken the ranks of traditional right wing rhetoric and branded us “well dressed and clean” and the Daily Telegraph ran two stories of us on their news service, one article featured 99% embedded video of my well dressed and clean self chanting down the megaphone and 1% boredom. He joined the Occupy Exeter protest on the 12th in solidarity with workers and disadvantaged hit by the massive cuts locally against domestic violence abuse support and Citizens’ Advice Bureau along with youth housing and social schemes carried out by a Tory County Council.

“That just about does it” the interviewee displays in a fit of controllable and clearly Stalinist rage, “if the BBC thinks they have the right to expose my terrorist plot to peacefully camp outside Exeter Cathedral wearing an Armani suit paid by my profession as a benefit cheat and get away with it. the bourgeoisie have another thing coming”, so here I am, taking a short break from occupying a corner of the Cathedral Green and instead hopefully occupy one of the few trusted national papers representing the needs of the working class, this little paper called “The Socialist”.

So what has driven us to Occupy here in Exeter? What has driven us to Occupy globally? Dunno. So in I go in to the Lion’s Den, the air is too clean for my liking, there is no scent of a hippie in the nasal passages, it’s too quiet, these aren’t the typical appearance of evil dissenters and morally perverse lefties, no graffiti on the stone cold walls of the Anglican monument, no rubbish left on the floor, no rusty needles or half eaten Pot Noodles, no middle finger at the elderly passers by and war veterans. They’re hiding something, an evil agenda lurks behind their seemingly innocent smiles and their calling out to me by name with a friendly wave, I did not bring any recording equipment but it’s clear that if I did I would have heard the words “666, evil, Mandelson” when played backwards on the tape. I put on a disguise and infiltrate this communist gathering and listen to what they have to say.

One sixth former by the name of Alex Kumar who clearly needs to stay in school says “People who would previously have flinched at the terms “anti-capitalism” or “socialism” can see now that the system isn’t fair, and if communities across the country come together demanding change, then the government will be powerless to resist the will of the people. Real change can only come from the bottom up.” Yeah like that’d happen, it’s not as if thousands of people across the world are rising up and occupying every major cit—– …

Dave McGunnigle 19 and a student studying to be an electrician so he can be kettled in the near future added “Well I support it because the government is cutting funds for vital services which means that the working class just gets screwed over even more, and the fact how can we bail other countries out when our own country is in financial meltdown. Politicians no longer support the people they represent all they care about is their own back pockets and how much money they have in them .”.

One camper by the name of Chanuki Bavington quipped “I believe there are people out there, like me, who see, hear and feel what’s going on around them and they don’t like it. I believe Occupy Exeter can contribute to the solution of making our every day lives better and helping us realise we are not alone”

Chelsea Palmer proudly boasts “I’m sh*t at giving statements, but basically I just hate the capitalist idea of competition in society and the massive gap between rich and poor, it’s just not right really; there’s no way the world can develop and reach globalisation when its so damn competitive and ethnocentric, the western way is just a media fed idea that people think is right, because they’re just too naive to know what’s really going on.”

One man with a vaguely materialist conception of history gave the somewhat aphoristic “Because over the past thirty years we’ve seen the greatest redistribution of wealth since the feudal system.”, but that’s a good thing surely? The top executives of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and what were once Lehman Brothers, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, AIG and a zombified Northern Rock need that big bonus to keep the big numbers on the screen in check otherwise our lives fall apart.

Chanda Pires answered “Because sitting at home don´t change anything. I want a better life for me and everyone else. I want a good future for my kids. I want to go to work and know who is it that I’m making money for.”

I bumped in to a Comrade of mine from Exeter Anti-Cuts Alliance as I waded through the small tents and surprisingly clean grass had to say that “Because the systematic, planned and accelerating shift of wealth from poor to rich has reached a point where if we don’t stand up for ourselves now, we will all be enslaved for the foreseeable future. For me this is the meaning of the 99%.”

Another person said she joined because “I want to be part of Occupy Exeter because I think that a system of unethical and unregulated capitalism is damaging our economy, our planet, and our lives. The Occupy movement is one of global change, not just local change, and I think a new system can only be effective if everyone works together for a fairer and more sustainable world.”

Helen Drever, Churchgoer also remarked “I have worshiped at Exeter Cathedral for the last 6 years. In this time I have represented the Cathedral as a lay member of both Deanery and Diocesan Synod, I have sat on the Cathedral Community Committee, the Fellowship Committee and The Environmental and Social Justice Group. On Remembrance Sunday, in the shelter of my mother church, I joined with others in the Occupy movement to protest against the social injustice of a world were corporate greed cleaves an ever widening gap between rich and poor. This is not the world my grandfathers served in WWII to build nor the vision Christ proclaimed. I am proud to be a part of Occupy Exeter and to add my voice to countless others around the globe, of all faiths and none, who now demand that this earth be a common treasury for all to share. Greed is not good.”

So in this scramble for quotes and statements from the 99%, we turn back to the interviewee/author who has this to finish up this article “As a socialist for most of my short life I’ve seen any sort of inequality abhorrent morally and an actual detriment to the economic system, the financial crisis has been overshadowing the global markets for decades and further deregulation has only quickened the process of meltdown. Coming from a working class family, been out of luck finding a job for almost a year and told to leave college because of cuts in their funding, I’ve been one of the 99% hit by this crisis so here I am supporting Occupy Exeter and their right to protest close to the city centre. It’s not just me. People everywhere have displayed an outpouring of anger at today’s unpredictable climate; we have been rendered impotent by forces beyond our control; we lose our jobs and join the 2.3m dole queue; we now work until aged 68 because when 2/3rds of us will have developed chronic illnesses from working at such a late age; in Blackpool, Salford and Liverpool you’re expected to now enjoy only 6 years of retirement before death as a man; we’re told to pay tuition fees and lose EMA and the Labour and Coalition groups justify the broken capitalist system by saying layoffs are a necessity; we’re living for too long and we can’t afford to support the workers, the single mothers, the students, the elderly and the disabled because we’re out of cash; yet the British government has spent £1.1 trillion since 2007 propping up the banks instead of the workers. The cuts are hitting us hard and we have no other way of fighting back other than to take back the city.

This is not just a protest. It’s also the establishment of a new democratic forum for citizens to come together, to plan, to organise, to see what’s there on the table that we can use. That only alternative is workers’ control of the economic system that we drive through labour power, not capital power. Only through our demands, not put towards the banker or MP but put towards ourselves as the revolution we set in motion, we demand of ourselves jobs, homes, public services, education for our children and democracy and only a mass workers’ party can bring that about as the memory of past and present struggle. In Tahrir, Syntagma, the footsteps of Wisconsin State Capitol to Occupy Wall Street in Zucotti Park, we have the energy, the love, the passion to bring about the change promised to us by those above, we as socialists have the open floor to push for a socialist alternative in the new-found democracy here in Exeter, our message is clear and concise, our alternative simple and effective. The 21st century has cast new doubts over the triumph of capitalism. Fukuyama wrote after Stalinism fell that this was the end of history. With the global proletariat up in revolt it’s fair to say that the Occupy movement has triggered a new beginning of history, it’s just a matter of questioning who will be left on the ash heap and which programme will be guiding us. But for now I am proud to call myself a member of the 99%”