Bank of Ideas

On the fringe of London’s wealthy financial district, a four-storey building owned by one of the world’s largest companies has found an unlikely new purpose. 5-29 Sun Street, an office block owned by Swiss financial services giant UBS, was ‘repossessed’ last month by protesters part of the anti-corporate greed Occupy movement. Offering the opportunity to “trade in creativity rather than cash,” it is now bustling with art workshops and discussion groups focusing on everything from squatters’ rights to economic trade policy.

The protesters did not pick their target at random. UBS has in recent years attracted heavy criticism for a range of risky financial practices. In 2008 the firm was made to pay a £500m fine to the US government over allegations it had helped wealthy Americans evade taxes through offshore accounts. The same year it reported losses larger than any company in Swiss history and, despite this, went on to pay some of its executives salaries of over £8m – slashing 11,000 jobs and accepting a £40bn bailout from the Swiss government along the way.

Renamed by protesters the Bank of Ideas, UBS’s multi-million pound London property has become an important hub for Occupy activists. As the winter weather begins to bite, their divisive outdoor campsite at St Paul’s Cathedral has seen a drop in numbers and is planning to scale down. The repossessed building, though run down, provides shelter out of the wind and rain, with toilet facilities, electricity and a kitchen serving up free hot food. Eviction proceedings have been launched against them, but the latest hearing was last week postponed until January. In the meantime, the Bank of Ideas is staying open for business.

Inside the massive, 400-room building, people from all walks of life mingle. An open door policy is essentially in operation; all visitors must sign in, but anyone can come and go provided they are not disruptive. Among die-hard protesters who have been involved with the Occupy London protests since they began in October, there are homeless people, families, teenagers with nowhere else to go, and even a few inquisitive pensioners. Crammed with meeting rooms, a makeshift internet cafe, a library, a kitchen and even a 500 seat lecture theatre, it is in effect the largest community centre in England – albeit unofficially.

On the first floor, down a quiet corridor, a large, bright room has been transformed into an art workshop. The walls are decorated with paintings and graffiti, and in the middle two young rappers, Sonny Green, 17, and Tom Coffey, 21, perform an impromptu song. Green, from Southend in Essex, explains that he stayed for two weeks the St Paul’s campsite, and has been visiting the Bank of Ideas since it opened on 19 November.

“Coming here is just amazing for the soul,” he says. “London at the moment, especially if you are my sort of age, is really gritty. There’s not much to do, and you can easily get led down the wrong path all the time through violence and things like that.”

A number of youth centres across London have been forced to close in the wake of recent government budget cuts, which has had a tangible impact on the lives of many young people in the city. The Bank of Ideas, though under-resourced and run by a ramshackle team of volunteers, is to this end performing an important function.

“When you’re out on the streets, it’s almost like the police are just trying to intimidate you all the time,” Green says. “Places like this bring it all back to reality: we can love each other, we can be peaceful, and we can create stuff, we can do what we want, we can have our say.”

Today, Green, who plans to release an album called When Words Fail Music Speaks early next year, has brought his friend and fellow musician Coffey to the Bank of Ideas for the first time. A rising star on London’s hip-hop circuit under the name “Agrow”, Coffey is impressed by what he has seen.

“I’m glad I came because I’ve met some magnificent people,” he says. “I came here just to see what’s going on. I wanted to appreciate the vibes of people trying to make a positive change for the world rather than a negative change to pull us all down.”

Outside the art workshop, the rest of the office block is lively with activity. A large group gathers near the kitchen for a discussion on squatting, while up a flight of stairs in a calm room designated for meditation, a green-haired woman in her early 60s, Corina Flamma, shares an extraordinary story.

Born in Liberia, she came to England in the 1950s as a child with her father, who was then the West African nation’s consul general to the UK. Aged 20, she sang in an all-girl pop group, the Flamma-Sherman Sisters, who secured a publishing deal with the Beatles’ Apple Records in the late 1960s. Earlier this year, Flamma was made homeless after her North London flat was repossessed. She now lives at the Bank of Ideas along with her daughter, Zo, on a mattress in a disused meeting room.

“Occupy is an alternative socio-economic provider complimenting the government,” she says. “It’s providing housing, it’s providing food … I see it as a vehicle to recycle wasted buildings, wasted resources, wasted people and wasted skills. It’s a very important principle that doesn’t end with the loss of this building.”

Before she came to the Bank of Ideas, Flamma, a qualified architect, was sleeping on a friend’s sofa. “I was not joyful,” she says. “But the blinkers are now off my eyes. I see England in a totally new way. I had given up with this country until I came to Occupy.”

There are many in the building, like Flamma, who face difficult circumstances. Yet despite this, a sense of optimism prevails. With an average of around eight workshops every day on a wide array of topics, there are opportunities to learn, discuss, share and build. This process has led the participants to feel they are part of a something positive and important – a global protest community that has flourished in 2011 and continues to grow.

“The fact is a tiny proportion [of the population] has this disproportionate control,” says Janos Abel, a 74-year-old retired engineer who frequently visits the Bank of Ideas to participate in discussion groups. “The 99 per cent has to wake up as to how they are so powerless. And that’s what I hope will grow out of this occupation.”

Once active in historic student protests in France during the 1960s, Abel is convinced the Occupy movement is of greater significance because of the internet’s role in spreading its message global. A tall, thin man of Hungarian descent, he recounts how he has been politically engaged since he was a youngster. But today, at the Bank of Ideas, he is more content than ever. “I’m doing something I wanted to do all my life,” he says, smiling. “I’m trying to change the world.”

The Occupy Movement and The Indignados

On the sweltering Madrid streets back in May, there was a strong feeling that something very significant was happening. Tens of thousands were crammed into a makeshift encampment in the city's Puerta del Sol square, unified by an acute sense of disillusionment with the political establishment. High unemployment, unaffordable housing and a feeling that politicians were not representing the people had resulted in the near spontaneous birth of a movement that would become known as the Indignados (the outraged), or 15-M (after 15 May, the date the protest began).

Everyone who was there and who witnessed it could sense that this was not any ordinary demonstration. Despite the bleak social and economic conditions that had sparked the protest, the place was buzzing with indescribable energy and an optimism for what could be achieved. It was a forum for all ages to come and debate how to create a better society; inspired by protests in other parts of the world – particularly across the Middle East – the aim was, in essence, to take control of history and swerve it in a different direction. "I am here because I think we can change something," said 20-year-old student Alejandro Jalón.

In the main, they were reformist as opposed to revolutionary, calling for electoral and media reform and an end to corruption and money in politics. Rejecting representative, parliamentary style democracy, they favoured direct, participatory democracy, with decisions made by consensus at public "general assembly" meetings.

Like the uprisings that had exploded onto the streets of places like Tunisia and Egypt, the Spaniards hoped their actions would spark similar protests across Europe. One 66-year-old man stood awestruck amid the crowds at Puerto del Sol and recalled the student and worker protests that swept parts of the world in 1968. What was happening in Madrid was of greater significance, he believed, because of its relationship to the uprisings in the Arab nations. "I think I am living a new world order," he said, without a quiver of doubt or hesitation in his voice. "I am sure it will spread."

His prediction was not far off. By late May protests had sprung up in over 60 Spanish towns and cities, and similar groups were formed in Italy, France, Greece and England. In London, activists organised a protest outside the Spanish embassy and called a public meeting on 29 May at Trafalgar Square. About 300 were in attendance, but they were predominantly of Spanish or Greek nationality.

"We are hoping that the British will join us too, because you have a lot to complain about," said 29-year-old Virginia Lopez Calvo. "We are sure that more people will join us if we continue to convene."

The 15-M, however, seemed to lose steam after the Madrid camp, which had become the beating heart of the movement, voted to disband in early June. Marches and demonstrations continued – some of which were suppressed by authorities – but lacked the same scale. The systemic change which at one point seemed to be within the clutch of the Indignados' grasp suddenly began to look like a faded dream. There was a moment when the movement itself appeared destined to fizzle out, as had the protests of 1968, absorbed into history before making any substantial political impact.

That was, of course, until a new wave of protesters exploded onto Wall Street, New York, in September, which injected a powerful double dose of energy and inspiration into not only the Spanish movement, but to similar protest groups across Europe and beyond.

Calling themselves "the 99 per cent" – a reference to the gap in income and wealth between the one per cent super-rich and the rest of society – the Wall Street protesters had themselves been moved into action after watching events unfold in Spain, Greece and the Middle East. Their anger, like that of their European counterparts, was borne on a basic level from the same sense of disillusion – even despair – at the political establishment and the lack of equality and opportunity within their society.

Dubbed the "Occupy" movement, the American protest, which is ongoing, erupted like a volcano into something far more politically radical than anything proposed by the Indignado reformists. Though it adopts the same participatory methods of direct democracy used in Madrid, the New York group completely rejects politicians and the traditional system of government – instead calling explicitly for a "revolution of the mind as well as the body politic".

By mid October Occupy-inspired groups – many forming their own general assemblies and tent-based occupations – had sprung up in over 80 countries and 900 towns and cities, including across the UK. "It's about finding a new way for people to actually have control over their own lives," said 32-year-old Tom Holness, a protester involved with an Occupy group in Birmingham. "At the moment our access to democracy is limited to going to a ballot box every five years and voting for people who are going to lie about what they're going to do."

Each of the groups' methods, goals and motivations are not necessarily the same, but they are united in their adoption of participatory democracy and their broad rejection of 'leaders' and hierarchical forms of organisation. Some are reformist, others revolutionary – all are vehemently opposed to the current political and economic status quo.

In cities across the world, there is now that same sense of indescribable energy and optimism that could be felt in Madrid's Puerta del Sol in May. It is contagious and continues to spread. There are some who believe it could be the birth of a new paradigm – the embryonic beginning of an alternative future unburdened by the cobwebbed shackles of party politics. Many continue to disregard it as a flash in the pan that can be ignored, though there is an increasing recognition that the Occupy movement and others like it cannot be dismissed out of hand for much longer. Mark Field, Conservative MP for the cities of London and Westminster, acknowledged last week that such protests posed a "huge challenge for the entire political class".

In the five months since the demonstrations in Madrid shook Spain, citizens on almost every continent appear to have simultaneously awoken from their slumber in unprecedented numbers, giving rise to all manner of possibilities that would have been unthinkable one year ago. No matter what the political differences between the movements in America, Britain, Spain, or elsewhere, there is a binding feature that is in itself incredibly powerful. It is a relentless, restless desire to fight for what is perceived to be a better, more egalitarian society – or "in defence of our dreams," as one of the slogans popular among the Indignados eloquently put it.

"Once in a while in history something will happen that will capture people's imagination," said Edward Needham, 43, a volunteer at Occupy Wall Street. "We're all at the start of this. Together there's not going to be anything that we can't achieve."

This article originally appeared at: http://www.newstatesman.com/the-staggers/2011/10/occupy-movement-madrid