As I mentioned when I posted some photos, I was there on Saturday when it started (that is, when they set up the camp and the opening speeches were made). And then I left. And quite possibly, I am not coming back to take part in any way (of course, I reserve the right to change my mind if any of my actual criticisms become obsolete).
Here are a few things I did like:
There were many, many Latin Americans. I suspect it is because we are, effectively invisible in this society. To put it bluntly, for media, unless there is some “exotic” event depicting our cultures (Brazil Festival! Tango exhibition!), we pretty much do not exist. The immigrants, of course, are “someone else”, mainly “bad, bad Muslims”. And we live here by the hundreds of thousands, but media, as a whole, will barely register our political and/ or social engagement. This is not unique to The Netherlands, though, this is pretty much across the board all over Northern Europe.
However, many of us, come from a very politicized environment. Our home countries have already seen many similar social struggles and we know how to participate in them. So, just like I did, we will go and check it out, see if there is a place for us in this movement. I don’t know how representative of other Latin Americans my friends are, but a whole bunch of them left even before I did.
And here’s where all positives pretty much end. Because, the opening speech was by a guy who took the stage and declared “We are not leftists! We are just normal people!”. Right then, I side eyed the stage and realized there was no way I would be able to remain much longer. But that is not all, the gist of my political engagement in this country has to do with the rights of immigrants and minorities. There is no concerted effort in the left, or in “progressive” movements to decolonize the deeply troubling language behind this phenomenon. There is absolutely no attempt to tackle not just media representations of immigrants, but the legal framework behind the treatment of immigrants and minorities. None. And sincerely, I am not going to fight that fight in this OccupyAmsterdam environment. I already do so, every day, in my city council, in my meetings with Members of Parliament (in both local and European Parliament), in my engagements with Party politics that sometimes leave me exhausted. I do that every week. In addition to these meetings and engagements, I write about it. I attempt to produce a body of work that documents the situation.
And then there is the slogan. “We are the 99%”. No, we are not. Just like I struggle to try and decolonize the language behind immigration, just like I fight to make minorities visible (documented AND undocumented), just like I need to break the dichotomy that pervades discourse, which states that “immigrant = Muslim” (effectively obliterating hundreds of thousands of people from the public eye), I cannot stand behind a facile slogan that is simply not true. Wealth distribution is radically different in The Netherlands. It is slowly being eroded because well, people vote for Geert Wilders! And that is an omen of very bad things, but how could I devote myself to decolonizing language while I mindlessly stand behind a lazy slogan that absolutely does not represent our lived experiences? And moreover, how could I, in good conscious, devote myself to fight against cultural hegemony while we lazily copy catchy phrases that have no base in truth?
ETA: The above is applicable only to OccupyAmsterdam. I cannot speak for any Occupation I haven’t seen first hand, so I hope this is not read as an indictment of the movement as a whole. It is not. Just the one popping up in my neck of the woods.
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