Occupy London protester. Yui Mok/PA Archive/Press Association Images. All rights reserved.“We are the 99%!” In 2011 this declaration went viral as protesters occupied urban spaces in defiance of the global elite: the 1%. Three years after the crash of 2008, when bankers brought the economy to its knees and were rewarded for their efforts, discontent percolated to the surface and tent cities were hastily erected across the planet.
It began with Occupy Wall Street, but nowhere was immune. By harnessing globalisation’s most democratic product – social media – occupiers in multiple countries were able to like, share and learn from one another’s posts. Local anger morphed into an international movement, and global capital was greeted by global resistance.
Activist and filmmaker Chloe Ruthven’s The Occupiers (2016), screening at the Open City Documentary Festival, charts the London iteration of this process. On 15 October 2011, social justice activists attempted to take over Paternoster Square outside the London Stock Exchange. Thwarted by the police, they set up camp outside St. Paul’s Cathedral.
