ANALYSIS:THE REMOVAL of Galway protesters yesterday marked the last of physical Occupy camps across the State but activists believe the movement will continue in another form.
Occupy camps in Frankfurt and Moscow were also dismantled yesterday, while the last of the London camps has been issued with an eviction notice.
Despite dwindling camp numbers, global efforts continue to keep alive the campaign against social and economic injustice that grew in every major city across the world last year under the slogan “We are the 99 per cent”.
Galway Occupy protester Tracy Lee yesterday said the eviction marked the start of a new phase.
“The contacts have been made now so the camp isn’t essential,” she said, referring to links made between protesters and other like-minded campaigns.
The end of the camp was a “double-edged sword” because it was hard work to maintain it and its closure would leave more time for activism, Lee said.
There was a sense yesterday that the encampment phase of the Occupy movement in Ireland may have reached its natural end.
“All things have a best-before date,” said David Johnson, who was an activist with the Occupy Dame Street camp, which was closed in February.
The idea of the camp “was of its time”, he said. “For the movement to continue to thrive it needed to move beyond the physical camp.”
A network of activists was one of the strongest things to come from Occupy, he said.
The closure of the camp was “inevitable” but unfortunate, said Prof Helena Sheehan of DCU, who ran Occupy University lectures at the Dame Street camp. It was very problematic to base a movement in a camp, she said.
As a result of the movement there was a “new wave of activism” here which brought in many new people who did not fit in with political parties, she said.
Future activism would not necessarily continue under the Occupy banner but possibly from related movements. She referred to the Unlock Nama campaign to access Nama properties for social and community use, which came out of the Occupy movement.
“I was never involved in anything like this with the kind of a wave that rose so quickly, peaked and started going down again; it was quite a ride,” she said.
