Since the turn of 2000s, especially, there has been a shift in the understanding and practice of resistance and struggle. Traditional ways of protesting started to become irrelevant in addressing complex realties of the modern world. Talking only about the bosses, means of production or alienation in the production process and focusing merely on developing strategies on these matters were not providing a strong ground to stand against the machine. It is now a world of ecological catastrophes, health crises, a world ruled not by governments but banks and their corrupted clients, a world in which people are manipulated with heroic narratives and trapped in their futile pursuit of satisfaction through consumption of “things” and became slaves of the “things”. Today we speak of alienation in a different sense, it’s alienation from the nature, from oneself, from the life itself. What we are dealing with today is less a question of labour and more a question of life and how every sphere of it is in one way or another linked to the subject of unrest. Inevitably, modes of action started to move outside of organizations, establishments, and political parties. Structural shifts in communications pushed forward the emergence of global communities and spread the unrest to an extent that was once unimaginable. In 2011, Occupy Movement marked this transformation in political resistance. It turned the political theory upside down, put ideologies under question. Political action became embedded in the life style, it was a manifestation that political will goes way beyond voting, marching and manifestos, it is now taking active and steady step for what is demanded, embracing alternative ways of living to physically exercise what is desired and revealing all kinds of intrinsic relations that is affecting our lives and so on and so forth. There are a lot of unanswered theoretical questions about the Occupy Movement but we know now that nothing will ever be the same again.
Global trends tend to reach Cyprus a few years later, except the consumerist ones needless to stress. But we had an exception 2 years ago
exactly on the same day when OWS started. Responding to the global call to take the squares, people from both sides of Cyprus initiated now what we refer as Occupy Buffer Zone. Along with the parallels with the global Occupy movement in terms of its format and composition, OBZ had a unique twist: it was also an anti-border movement exercised on a border. One of the main slogans used at the OBZ is self-explanatory both in the sense of the nature of global Occupy movement and also specifically in the context of Cyprus: We are living the solution. Theoretical discussion on the Occupy often refers to its function in creation of islands of utopias. Ledra Street/Lokmaci buffer zone witnessed for 7 months an attempt to experience how it would be to live in an un-divided island. It was based on the argument that instead of desperately hoping from the political elite to solve the Cyprus problem one day, why not just transform our demand into practice.
Throughout time, the occupation camp became not only a living space but a space for creation, a space that could generate a common sub-culture. Being divided for 39 years, current generation only had narratives to rely on about the ‘other’. OBZ camp was not only a form of protest; it also provided a ground for redefining the concept of other and challenging the borders created in minds. But it is important to stress that as a form of protest, it brought a whole new perspective to the Cypriot context. It went beyond temporary reactions to undesired policies, it pointed out and connected the dots between various dynamics that had not been addressed before, it allowed people from across the divide to act, react and produce together consistently, through being visible to the public at all times for 7 months it exhibited the determination of the new generation which is often deemed as “apolitical”. Despite it all OBZ was far from being perfect. There were a lot of internal conflicts, which most basically stemmed from whether or no
t OBZ was a medium to have an influence on the public or whether it was just a squat.
The motivation for initiating OBZ was a vision for a long-term impact that would transcend the camp itself and generate an understanding of solidarity, a sense of community within the wider public. Such an understanding required an all-inclusive approach and ironically it became a destructive factor for the movement. In time there had been an imbalance in terms of quantity between the groups who pursued the initial ideal of OBZ and those who were seeking to exercise a form of authority on the space, as a stance against the so-called authorities. People staying in the camp and those who worked outside the camp became polarized and decision-making process was disrupted by the lack of common vision. Not before long the problems became personal and had a negative impact on people’s motivation and also on public’s approach to the movement. But these dynamics are not very different from the other Occupy examples and today we know it was just a beginning. We know utopias do not exist as there is no utter harmony in societies. This is a new era for a new kind of political resistance and there are a lot lessons to be learned on the way. Especially the second half of 2013 is showing us a new stage for the Occupy movement in the world and also in Cyprus. Following a year of decentralized action, there is a lot of work put into infrastructural aspects such as communication strategies, synchronizing action globally and establishing tactics that would spread this new culture of resistance to all spheres of the public and mobilise the non-mobilised. Having enough time to reflect on the mistakes, recover from the conflicts of the learning process, OBZ, too is regenerating itself with a clearer vision and stronger global connections. The next chapter starts here.
An OBZ Activist
*Opinions expressed here are personal reflections of my own and do not necessarily represent OBZ.
translation department of Syspirosi Atakton 