Last week, Occupy London (OL) celebrated the fifth anniversary of its inception on the grounds of St. Paul’s. In an attempt to detect and challenge the ‘master codes (Melucci, 1996), that dictate political norms (amongst other societal practices) OL exercised pre figurative politics. They utilized the consensus model. The proponents of the consensus model believe it to be a fully accessible democratic decision making model. The reality that emerged, however, challenged this view and I will be using Gaventa’s power cube (2006) to explain how.
Occupy managed to claim the space (Gaventa, 2006) outside St.Pauls for 4.5 months. Due to a variety of oddities the protesters earned themselves the “right to participate in a given space and the rights to define and share the space” (Hayward, 1998).
“Some issues are organized into politics while others are organized out” (Schattschneider, 1960)
Snippet 06 – You Have To Take Up Space from Polly Tikkle Productions on Vimeo.
Occupy London’s decision making process had two tiers. First the working groups had to agree via full consensus on a given issue. Then they would seek consensus at the General Assembly, which were held daily at 7pm. If successful the policy, action or press statement would become an official Occupy London decision. Individuals could also bring up topics in the GA directly.
The GA’s needed to be managed and there was a process group to do that. This process group had the power to dictate the issues to be discussed at the general assemblies. This kind of power was unaccountable and although there was a mechanism to address the issue, resolve required consensus that this power actually existed and this was never achieved. It should be of no surprise that the individuals blocking the very notion that such a power dynamic was developing were the people who had that power. Their reluctance to acknowledge their own power angered many and germinated what Gaventa’s Rubic Cube of Power (Gaventa, 2006)describes as ‘invisible power’. This power dimension includes, amongst other elements, the disempowerment of certain individuals’ to engage in the decision making process at all. Such disempowerment is to some degree self inflicted.
Anyone could join the process group who would meet in open meetings according to the ad hoc design of Occupy. This openness was ostensibly supposed to address most power issues. There were other elements at play however.
The meetings were not always held in the same place and their locations were not made available to people, especially campers without access to the internet. The lack of diligence to maintain it as an open space which involved the effort of ensuring that anyone could find out where a meeting was being held turned this open space into an invited space (Gaventa, 2006)
“…..openness was ostensibly supposed to address most power issues.”
Whether the individuals wielding this power were corrupt, stupid, enlightened saints or gifted facilitators is not within the remit of this piece. What is being highlighted is that they held power in a movement that practically evangelized the fact that they had no leaders. This propaganda is what attracted many to the movement and when the realization settled that it was not in fact all that horizontal, many protesters were bitterly disappointed and in fact caused much grief in the camp.
Although Gaventa (2006) may have been describing power dynamics in large NGO’s and governments, his description of the power that evolves from the creators of the decision making space can be related to the social protest movement of Occupy London after it had settled in for the winter.
References
Gaventa. (2006). Power after Lukes: An overview of theories of power since Lukes and their application to development. Retrieved October 21, 2016, from Power Cube: http://www.powercube.net/other-forms-of-power/other-forms-of-powerresources/ power_after_lukes/
Lukes. (2005). Power: A Radical View. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
Melucci. (1996). Challenging Codes. Cambridge University Press.
Schattschneider. (1960). The Semi-Soverign People; A Realist’s View of Democracy in America. New York, New York: Halt, Reinhardt and Winston.
https://netpol.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/wainwright-report-final1.pdf