Occupied London is an anarchist-autonomist collective from London, UK. The collective started in 2007 publishing the free anarchist journal Voices of Resistance from Occupied London. The journal was launched with the aim to provide a platform for discussion across the wider social antagonist movement and has seen significant success in doing so, with contributors spanning across that political spectrum (anarchists, autonomists and others from the wider non-orthodox Marxist tradition). They have so far included - among others - Mike Davis, Zygmunt Bauman, Manuel Castells, George Katsiaficas, Franco Berardi, Klara Jaya Brekke, Dimitris Dalakoglou, Christos Filippidis, David Graeber, TPTG, Richard Pithouse, Antonis Vradis, and many more. Today all the content of the journal is available online from Occupied London.
The influences of the journal are diverse, including insurrectionist, situationist, poststructuralist and some elements from the autonomist tradition. Occupied London has featured analyses on contemporary urban culture across Europe, South Africa, the United States and other parts of the world. Focus has also been on the present and future of the so-called anti-globalization movement, as well as discussions about the structure and operation of occupied social centres.
The journal had a close relationship with Last Hours, another London based radical publishing collective. The collectives have shared articles between themselves and have presented stalls together at events, such as the London Anarchist Bookfair, as well as holding benefit events together.
The Web-Blog and the Book
On January 2009 the fourth and last issue of Occupied London was published, because since December 2008 the collective has been running the blog From the Greek Streets covering the civil unrest in Greece and since then it provides almost daily updates on the unraveling crisis in Greece, becoming a key source of counter-information on the Greek crisis. During Tahrir Square revolt, Occupied London collaborated with Egyptian groups to set the Cairo blog www.occupiedlondon.org/cairo. Members of the collective are often writing for other journals and magazines on political issues while they often participate into public events-discussions promoting the interests of the global antagonist/anarchist movement.
In 2011 the collective co-ordinated a group of 50 people and put together the book Revolt and Crisis in Greece that is analyzing the revolt of December 2008 and the Greek crisis from the side of the global and Greece-based antagonist movement. In the 19 essays collected in that book, over two dozen writers offer historical analysis of the factors that gave birth to December and the potentialities it has opened up in face of the capitalist crisis. Yet the book also highlights the dilemmas the antagonist movement has been faced with since: the book is an open question and a call to the global antagonist movement, and its allies around the world, to radically rethink and redefine our tactics in a rapidly changing landscape where crises and potentialities are engaged in a fierce battle with an uncertain outcome.
Contributors to Revolt and Crisis in Greece include Vaso Makrygianni, Haris Tsavdaroglou, Christos Filippidis, Christos Giovanopoulos, TPTG, Metropolitan Sirens, Yannis Kallianos, Hara Kouki, Kirilov, Some of Us, Soula M., Christos Lynteris, Yiannis Kaplanis, David Graeber, Christos Boukalas, Alex Trocchi, Antonis Vradis, Dimitris Dalakoglou and the Occupied London Collective. Art and design are by Leandros, Klara Jaya Brekke and Tim Simons. It is edited by Antonis Vradis and Dimitris Dalakoglou of Occupied London.
Famous quotes containing the words occupied and/or london:
“The power of a text is different when it is read from when it is copied out.... Only the copied text thus commands the soul of him who is occupied with it, whereas the mere reader never discovers the new aspects of his inner self that are opened by the text, that road cut through the interior jungle forever closing behind it: because the reader follows the movement of his mind in the free flight of day-dreaming, whereas the copier submits it to command.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)
“I suggested a doubt, that if I were to reside in London, the exquisite zest with which I relished it in occasional visits might go off, and I might grow tired of it. JOHNSON. “ ... No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.””
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)