Starbucks: Saviour of the Anti-Capitalists
Declan Harvey thinks the St Paul’s protesters should practice what they preach.
11 Nov 2011, 16:05
St Paul's Protestors
None of those camped at St Paul's would have imagined the fall-out of their arrival. Oddly, lest we forget, their gripe is with the London Stock Exchange next door, but nevertheless two senior resignations at the Cathedral give their campaign some weight and have prompted serious debate.
Dr Rowan Williams has backed their ideals. The PM has backed the Archbishop. There's no doubt the Occupy London brigade have at the very least grasped the attention of the big boys. (Whether anything actually now changes is fodder for another blog.)
Add to the mix the students who, on the 9th November, did themselves proud. Irrelevant of where one stands on the tuition fees debate, credit must to given to a campaign that's matured dramatically since last year’s Millbank Tower disgrace.
Several of them told me they've realised that, "tactically", staying peaceful will help win hearts and minds with more ease. Quite right and with only a few minor skirmishes their 6000-strong demonstration went well.
What's interesting is that the Occupy London camp has become a spiritual home for all these people; students, evangalists, free Julian Assange-ists, socialists, idealists, pacifists and anarchists. But the name above the canvass door remains Anti-Capitalist.
With a menagerie of iPads, Blackberries, laptops, video cameras and smart phones on site, the hi-tech needs of a modern campaign are well served. But technology, like us, cannot live on bread alone. It needs juice, electricity.
So I was amazed to see that the sockets of nearby Starbucks are the re-charging point of choice.
Several times I've witnessed groups of (what Boris Johnson would call) "crusties" lounging on green armchairs, with empty cups, looking the picture of consumerist bliss. Beside them their kit was being powered up. Upon their return to camp it would be used to help topple the greed infested capitalist world.
But aren’t we told Starbucks is an icon representing everything that's wrong with the first world? Isn't it the poster boy for exploitation of 3rd world farmers? Hasn't it eaten and spat out independent traders with the disregard I spit out orange pips? Hmmm.
Although Starbucks (which now asserts itself as fashionably fair trade) has had its dodgy past I've always been happy to buy my grande-coffee-light-frappacino-double-blended there.
I've sided, like most, with convenience. Moreover I need a caffeine kick start every morning (sad but true). I have no guilt when enjoying a Starbucks.
But don't Occupy Londoners let themselves down a bag full? They could argue it's their master plan to conquer the beast using its own sword, “we’re making the evil corporation pay for its own destruction, wah-hah-hah!” That doesn't wash with me.
For better or worse, if you're taking on the world, surly you have to live outside it? It's leading by example.
For someone like me, it's a terrifying prospect, but someone like me does not purport to have a "better way"
Perhaps if protesters were strict with themselves and avoided everything they "detest" it would force them to refine their choices, focus their minds. Vegetarians have a manageable lot, they avoid meat. Others don't wear fox-fur.
A tough rule, a difficult way to live, but a strong example and a powerful statement. And right now Occupy London Stock Exchange could do with a powerful statement otherwise the attention of the great will fetter.
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"Add to the mix the students who, on the 9th November, did themselves proud"
You're living in cloud cuckoo land my friend. EU and the Eurozone on the brink of break up and bringing the world into recession. UK debt so high, the interest on it alone every year would be enough to pay for the entire defence budget and then some.
The last, socialist, Labour government leaving the country broke and in hock up to its eyeballs, and yet you have the nerve to state that a bunch of students waving socialist worker placards because the government has asked them to pay for their university education when the nation has no money, are "doing themselves proud!"
Parts of this country live in a separate reality to the rest of us, and I'm not talking about the drugs they take.
11/11/2011 19:43