We received this update from J at Occupy Edinburgh who occupied St Andrew Square for three months from October to January, and set up camp at The Meadows for a short time.
“After over 100 days of protest at our original camp in St Andrew Square, we experienced an array of media coverage, a string of visits from supporters including musician/activist Billy Bragg, writer/journalist Laurie Penny, performing comedians from The Stand and of course, overwhelming public support in the form of food and clothing donations and words of solidarity. At the same time we found solidarity with organisations such as the NUJ, Friends of the Earth and The Church of Scotland.
Since our short—lived camp at The Meadows, we have changed the public presence of the Occupy Edinburgh. After attracting eviction orders for assembling to protest, we must continue to avoid wasting tax-payer money which would be involved in an eviction.
This does by no length mean that we will cease to protest. In fact, when our own RBS (83% taxpayer owned) continues to reward its bankers with outlandish bonuses after losing £24bn, investing in cluster bombs and destroying an area the size of England in Alberta, Canada for the want of oil, we are more compelled to protest than ever.
Each Saturday we will maintain a presence in town, meeting outside RBS’s old HQ – Dundas House at 1PM, we will from there continue to outline the injustices happening in our world, and in our very city.
This weekend, we shall campaign for the Move Your Money Scheme urging the public to transfer their savings to ethical banks from the irresponsible and reckless types such as RBS, Barclays and The Bank of Scotland, to ethical banks such as the Co-operative Bank.
We will also be addressing an imminent peril to the world’s freedom of information The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, ACTA, which threatens our last true source of free information: the Internet.”
