On 15th October 2011 the Occupy Wall Street protests went global with over 1,000 protests around the planet. In the UK a number of towns and cities saw occupy actions which are ongoing. Birmingham protestors met at Victoria Square, [ 1 | 2 ] and started their on-going occupation. A small protest took place in Sheffield and Cardiff. Several thousand attended a rally in London, where despite a show of force by the Met, a General Assembly was held and tents pitched in front of St. Paul's Cathedral. In Scotland, tents were pitched in Glasgow's George Square and Edinburgh's St. Andrew's Square. Ongoing occupations also started in, Norwich, Nottingham, Newcastle and Bristol [ 1 | 2 ]. These occupations joined Manchester which had already been in Occupation since October 3rd, when a camp was started in Albert Square, which later moved to the Peace Gardens after negotiations with the council and police. Future occupations are being discussed in many other places.
On the newswires: Birmingham 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Sheffield | Cardiff | London feature | Glasgow 1 | 2 | Edinburgh | Newcastle | Bristol 1 | 2 | Manchester | Nottingham feature | Norwich | Rome | Vienna | Analysis: Shift Magazine | 'Towards the end of the state'
Ongoing Occupations: UK: [ occupybritain.co.uk | Wiki | Facebook | Twitter ] | Birmingham: [ Occupy Birmingham | Facebook | Twitter ] | London: [ occupylsx.org | occupylondon.org.uk | Facebook | Twitter | Live Stream ] Nottingham: [ Twitter | Facebook ] | Edinburgh: [ occupyedinburgh.org | Live Stream | Twitter: occed | OccupyEdinburgh | Facebook ] Glasgow: [ occupyglasgow.org | Twitter | Facebook ] Manchester: [ Facebook | Twitter ] Bristol: [ occupybristol.noblogs.org | Twitter | Facebook ] Newcastle: [ occupynewcastle.org | Twitter | Facebook | Norwich: [Facebook ]
The occupy protests have attracted increasing media attention and have also seen concerted efforts to try and bring together people to unite in a struggle for a better world. They have attracted many new people who have not been involved in protests before, and having focussed initially on the failures of the banking system, and against the growing inequality in our societies, they are attempting to start addressing wider issues as their workshops and General Assemblies begin to explore new ways of working with each other, and of organising the camps and in some cases taking Direct Action. In the case of Occupy Wall Street, working groups worked to build links with unions and with communities as they seek to unite people under a banner of "We are the 99%", in the face of the growth of the wealth of the 1%.
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