Skag, Squalor and Shock at St. Paul’s!

Last week, some of the most vulnerable people in Britain got up in the morning and reached for their fix of junk, as they do every day. Whilst this habit disgusts most decent minded-people, and parents rightly fear that their children could be infected, it will not go away if we turn a blind eye. It is a menace to the camp and to British society, used on a nearly daily basis by about 4.5 million Brits from all classes. The Daily Mail is real, and we must educate ourselves about its dangers.

The DM ran a fairly brutal story about Occupy last week. The “writer’s” “informants” include the registrar of St. Paul’s and an official from the Corporation of London. Bearing in mind that their only hope for a swift eviction lies in showing that there are health risks or criminal activities going on, let us consider these issues:

1) Thermal imaging reveals that the camp is almost empty at night.

This was debunked weeks ago. YouTube footage shows how the camera used does not pick up bodies inside tents.

2) The grounds are strewn with dog shit, human shit, litter and graffiti.

It’s actually much cleaner than most of central London. The caption on a DM photo describes a dog surrounded by filth, but the photo shows nothing more filthy than autumn leaves. Others revealed a cup, a banana skin, and a few spent beer cans. Clergymen, however, previously noted that our recycling team were keeping it cleaner than normal, and the coordinator of the team was offered a job by the Corporation of London.

The clergy also noted that the turd in the cathedral was nothing to do with the protest. According to the tranquility team, people have turned up purely to defecate – one leaving his motorcycle running for a quick getaway. The church has indeed been daubed with “666” and “ACDC”, which is a genuine shame, but no-one outside of the tabloid press thinks it was a protester. There are plenty of crazies which are nothing to do with us. Furthermore, there is graffiti all over London, and graffiti going back to 1702 on the entrance of the cathedral. The church has survived two world wars and three centuries. It can survive a lick of solvent.

3) Church services have been subject to noisy interruptions.

According to the canon, you couldn’t hear a thing inside during services. Our schedule is organized around church events. The couples who got married had only good things to say about us, and the Remembrance Day worshippers saw nothing more shocking than a handmade poppy quilt. Nearly all protesters attending the service were ejected, including myself, for precisely nothing. I asked the over zealous guy over to the edge of the service to talk quietly precisely so HE wouldn’t disturb the service. He turned out to be an undercover copper, and he bundled me out, along with a girl who had lost a relative in Afghanistan.

4) The finance team has been refusing people money for booze and cigarettes.

So?

5) The site smells of cannabis. The number of HIV infected smack-heads is so high that a sharps safe disposal box has been installed.

Welcome to London. Or perhaps – “This is what care in the community looks like!” I wish people wouldn’t smoke on site, especially seeing as every wrong move we make hits the headlines, deflecting attention away from the issues we seek to address. I hope we develop pride in our site, and the confidence to challenge people who disrespect it calmly and firmly. But we all know that skunk and piss are two of the most common smells on the streets of London, and St. Paul’s is pretty clean by comparison.

The fact is that many of us have no love for our streets. Communities are buckling under the stress of consumerism, libraries and community centres are closing down, whilst multinationals take over every high street.

House repossessions and welfare cuts mean that the marginalized increasingly have nowhere to go. Some find their way to the camp, where there is a genuine sense of community and meaningful work to get stuck into.

Occupy LSX responded to a difficult issue responsibly, putting our donated funds into a welfare tent, sharps disposal boxes and drug counseling. The state, by contrast, has been criminalizing sheltering in empty buildings, closing community centres, and increasing the tax burden on the poor. One in 6 children in London lives in poverty, but when we get a homeless child on our camp, the Mail points a finger not at the parents or crumbling society, but at us.

We have drawn attention to filth far more filthy than the squalor and drug addiction –greed, festering politics, and corporate plutocracy. If the state really cared about sanitary conditions, it would give us a few more portaloos. If the government really cared about drug addiction, they wouldn’t have kicked all the scientists off the Advisory Committee for the Misuse of Drugs earlier this year and replaced them with Yes Men. We did not create these problems. Our movement addresses the fundamental causes of them.
Ignoring the DM charges which are clearly rubbish, we are left with:

6) We smell

Guilty, m’lud. Ask the YMCA to let us in for showers then!

7) A handful of people take drugs.

There may be a handful of intemperate people kicking about, but no more than in any part of the city. I happily bring my two year-old daughters along, and they love it. They don’t know why we are here. They don’t understand that they are expected to pay off bank bailouts for their entire working lives. I’m here because of a clear and urgent danger, and not put off by nonsense about health and safety.

We have all sorts passing through, including addicts and rejects, undercover coppers and agents provocateurs. We probably have a few dirty bankers amongst us. We have nutters, and once in a blue moon, one might decide to take a shit somewhere. Following hot on their trails are gutter journalists, swooping in to scoop it into their pages. We are a light in a storm, so welcome, one and all. We are a broad church, perhaps broader than the cathedral, so come as you are, and be welcomed at the tea tent. Apparently a few EDL rocked up for a bust-up at Finsbury Square the other night. They ended up in a conversation about Leeds United, and taking out one of our boys for a drink. That is the power of dialogue.

Our movement is about dialogue, and the conversation is resounding across the world, so let’s protect the space, and keep it positive.

By Reverend Nemu (unrobed, ungloved, and uncut) www.nemusend.co.uk