A way to remember in a time of free market forgetting

Next year is the 40th anniversary of the military coup that overthrew the democratically elected socialist government of Salvador Allende in Chile. This elected alternative to free market economics was met with state violence supported by the most powerful nation in the world. The 17-year dictatorship that followed traces the systematic end to the idea that democracy would be permitted to deliver equality and justice. In 1989 the Cold War symbolically ended with the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. At the end of Pinochet’s dictatorship, this point signified the apparent victory of capital over labor through both a global financial system connected in a real time global communication network and the military industrial complex that is coordinated by and underpins it.

In 1990 the period of transition to a new kind of democracy commenced in Chile with the return of a democratically elected government followed by sustained economic growth in the first decade of 21st century. The term ‘transition to democracy’ was used to describe this period. It is a term now widely used to describe dictatorships formerly supported by the US - from the middle east and north Africa to Asia and the Pacific region - as they embrace or are strangled by free market economics.

The 20 years of “transition to democracy” in Chile places the current generation at a distance from the promise and peril of its past democracy. Today, most people in Chile under 30 will not have experienced a world without the excess of information, entertainment and standardized choice of the Internet. Neither will they directly know the power and violent opposition of capital to popular movements. Part of this is experienced vicariously in the near absence of organized labor (and is across the world) that further atomizes and fragments people into individual units of production and groupings of families as the norm.

The victims and families of state violence - the disappeared, the executed, the tortured and the imprisoned – are similarly atomized and fragmented into units of consequence in the absence of acknowledgement of the ideology that persecuted them for their thoughts. The victims and families of the abuses of human rights under the dictatorship is marked and remembered in many ways in Chile, most publicly in the Museum of Memory and Human Rights that opened in 2010. This museum is underscored by the idea that human rights are abused when the institution that is meant to protect them does not. In this sense, the significance of the state sponsored Museum of Memory and Human Rights cannot be underestimated in its impact on the 1000s of school children that visit the archive, performances, exhibitions and tours. It brings this audience together with the victims and families of the abused who have and continue to contribute to the museum as a living archive. In part, this institution links the human impact of the dictatorship with the broader Chilean society. However, the undisputed crimes of the state under the dictatorship are contained within this universal idea of Human Rights, not a critique of the political ideology of neither neoliberalism nor the organized opposition to this notion. The Museum of Memory and Human Rights is a building and public space that serves as a living archive that is networked with a number of sites of memory across the city – the National Stadium, Villa Grimaldi Peace Park (a former prison of torture) and others that must be sought out by those interested in the crimes of the dictatorship and the strength of opposition that brought about it demise. These sites are destinations for those interested to commemorate, understand and be acknowledged but are not necessarily part of the daily life of the city.

BiciPaseos Patrimoniales, frente al Museo de Bellas Artes, Santiago

A large number of memorials have been created across Chile to the victims and families of the crimes committed by the dictatorship. I find it difficult to write about this because the memorials trace the continuing struggle for recognition of the violence of the state against its own people. The Faculty of Latin American Social Sciences (Facultad Latinamericana de Ciences Sociales) FLASCO report entitled Memoriales de Derechos Humanos, Chile (2007) makes the distinction between sites of memory – prisons, places of execution and torture – and memorials. This is important because it identifies who is remembering whom and how this is brought about. The report identifies 106 memorials created between 1973 and 2006, 6 of which were created during the 17 years of the dictatorship, 53 were created between 1990 and 2000 and 47 were create in the years 2000 – 2006. This near two-fold increase in number of memorial signifies a shift in the decisive power relations between the former dictatorship and the governments of the “transition to democracy” subjected to increased community pressure. The memorials created during this time are different in their location in public space and/or the support by the state through the commissioning of works. Commemorating the disappeared (more than 1000 of the over 3000 executed during the dictatorship) highlights the importance of the site in relation to the memorial through the absence of the body as both material evidence of the crime committed and the subject and act of mourning and remembering in place. The Women’s Memorial (2006) is of particular interest because it is a memorial to the disappeared as well as the executed, imprisoned and tortured.

Museo de Solidaridad Salvador Allende, con una pintura de Miro

It is also distinguished because it is specifically about violence against women, which is a broader and ongoing issue of human rights violation – a violation most systematically employed by the dictatorship and continuing in contemporary societies. The work was commissioned in a competition that brings into this discussion the value of the artist in interpreting collective memory. The selected design is in a public space, yet does not name the victims, though they are known, and is situated in a prominent location in the city. In these aspects the memorial is based on a human rights principle of solidarity and is open in its defense of these ideas while creating a place of ritual. It is, unfortunately, in a terrible state of repair that says more about the maintenance of the city than the work.

Memorial a las Mujeres víctimas de la represión en Alameda, Santiago

The idea of memorials and cities has dominated much of the discussion of public space in a broader discourse about whose history is and can be told, the use of public space, the image of the city and how collective memory is constructed through cultural production and representation within the post modern paradox of identity and difference. The counter-monument movement in Germany is an example of a critical engagement with traditional forms of memorials and monuments as permanent and fixed versions of history. In parallel and sometime in unison with this discussion is a resurgence in the ideas of the Situationist International in the appropriation of space through temporary intervention and urban tactics as an assertion of the right to the city and a counter to the society of the spectacle (neoliberalism). Much of this has manifest in the appropriation and détournement of the dominant visual culture of advertising and other privatized public times and spaces, in other ways through public mourning and spontaneous monuments that challenge the fixed notion of the monument and in others it takes the form of street art following the tradition of the mural’s narrative and with this, protest, parades and occupations as festive disruptions that make the city a living work. The Situationist tactics and aesthetics emphasize the temporal aspect of space through appropriation to highlight the potential of everyday change by the social. Public Memorials, on the other hand, depend on the spatial association with place in relation to the city and the collective social memory to insist on this physical and symbolic reconciliation of the past with the present and future. Ritual, through the spatial practice of the city, either as individual or collective acknowledgement depends on the permanence that underpins place in order to never forget.

Museo de Memoria y Derechos Humanos, Santiago.

A bridge between these ideas of memory and intervention, permanence and transition and the historical and psychological gap between the events of September 11 in Chile and today’s “youth” was made in a simple and informative way recently in Santiago. A group called Bicipaseo Patrimoniales http://www.facebook.com/bicipaseospatrimoniales– loosely translated as bicycles wandering through our heritage – is a voluntary collective of young people who organize free bicycle tours of metropolitan Santiago. This particular tour fell under the umbrella of an urban intervention festival in Santiago entitled Hecho en Casa (Homemade). Bicipaseo is a purposeful critical mass that not only asserts the citizens right to the city above the car but also connects the people of poorer suburbs with richer ones in an attempt to change spatial and social perceptions and realities. Bicipaseo is a web based organization who embeds the physical actions that slow traffic and disrupt the city with an urban political agenda. This particular night ride through Santiago visited four museums that were open until midnight and was attended by about 150 riders – riders of all ages, some with kids, some with trailers, all followed by the obligatory street dogs that joined the pack in the city at night. The tour visited both the aforementioned Museum of Memory and Human Rights and the Museum of Solidarity with Salvador Allende. (MSSA). The MSSA is a magnificent building which houses a collection of the original 500 artworks gifted by national and international artists in support of the social project of Salvador Allende at the time of his presidency. The works were taken abroad during the dictatorship and toured in Europe as a form of protest and returned to Chile in 1991 with the inauguration of the museum as part of the “transition to democracy”. Amongst the works are Picasso, Miro, Calder and Matta. The collection now stands at over 2600 works and is the most important collections of modern art in Latin America.

Memorials, demonstrations, cultural facilities, exhibitions, literature, film, theatre, collective archives, visual art collections and actions are all ways of remembering. Theses accumulative and growing creative actions of political intent and reconciliation taking place in the capital city make it difficult for the broader public and future generations to forget.

Anthony McInneny
Architects for Peace, December 2012

Public housing in Australia - selling out?

Keppel St, Carlton public/private housing development on a former hospital site.

Over the last decade, the concept of what public housing is in Melbourne has been rewritten, again. Perhaps it has been lost altogether. Once it was a backstop, there to ensure that manufacturing workers had somewhere to live that was secure and socially-connected and close to work. By the '90s the mix changed with a wave of deinstitutionalisations almost doubling the number of people in these flats with special needs. In 2012, urban public housing provision has deteriorated to the point that it's a token gesture, ill-coordinated and incremental. If you sell it with enough spin, no one will realise that the new public housing development contains no new public housing.

Superman slum-clearing to cut crime in 1939. [Cracked magazine]

Inner Melbourne has a suite of large housing towers, of the cut rate Corbusian model. As elsewhere, these towers swept away slums and replaced them with what was one of the last gasps of grand modernism for the public good. They have been abhorred by the media ever since, a failed architectural folly that everyone has to look at as they drive past.

Public housing towers showing the new PPP developments in colour.

True, they are no Unités d'Habitation. They look like giant battery hen houses, but they are not Pruitt Igoes either. Strong communities have formed, with which Architects for Peace have worked, and they have generous swathes of green space around them, integral to the original model.

In late 2005, when the state government announced that it would redevelop many of these precincts, people were fairly supportive. There was little information to read, but there was also a great shortage of public housing, and the relentlessly negative media coverage of drug dealing around the towers meant that no one could protest an effort to change them. These "ghettos" might be demolished, open space would be preserved, and public housing numbers would of course be increased, said the housing minister at the time. A good thing, as over 100,000 people were homeless in Australia at the time. Displaced residents would be rehoused locally during the works – tick. They would go overboard with community consultation – another tick. The derelict site of a former hospital would also be covered in housing – more ticks. And it would all be designed sustainably by Melbourne's top architects – even more ticks.

"In the past, public housing has been decidedly basic — Soviet-style, concrete high-rises marooned in bleak, urban gulags where no one would choose to live. The future of public housing looks considerably more appealing for tenants, with the government taking a more enlightened approach." The Age, 2010

The first signs of action were the demolition of many small four storey "walk-up" flats. These were getting tatty and didn't have lifts, but they weren't offensive as buildings. They had to go as they took up the space needed for the redevelopment. Then the large green spaces for active play were fenced off. I think they were called "lungs" once. The nearest parkland is one kilometre away. Small gated gardens are to be the new lungs. No community facilities have been included in the redevelopment other than an aged care facility, so kids will just have to kick the footy at home.

"The sleek, contemporary exterior of Viva Carlton is the outward manifestation of architecture designed for unlimited living. Signatures include Viva Retreat, the development’s own large private garden, ample natural light and space, and sightlines which make the most of the standout location." Early real estate marketing for the Viva Carlton development (one of the private components).

It's 2012 now and some of the projects in Carlton are reaching completion. The precast concrete blocks have been given shallow surface treatments by local architects to make them look less like concrete blocks. The resulting architecture has not stimulated much discussion. But they signal that we just might have reached a nadir in public housing provision here.

Princes Street Carlton. Public / private (PPP) housing development - street edge.

New public housing, segregated from the private, facing onto an arterial road, Carlton.

This 7.5 hectare project, costing the government who knows what (figure are hard to come by), and disrupting the lives of hundreds of residents, will leave us with precisely 138 fewer public tenants on the sites. While the number of public flats (now including "community housing" owned by NGOs) has increased by 54 to 246, the flats are all smaller than those demolished. Who knows where the relocated families are meant to move back to. The new flats are not suited to families, as the demand on the waiting list is for smaller homes.

And what about all the towers, whose 'stigma' was the initial justification for the redevelopment? 51 of the 844 high-rise flats in Carlton are being refurbished, and their surrounds are being landscaped again, so at least it will look like something good has happened.

Street-level cosmetics to existing high-rise flats in Carlton.

We end up in a worse situation than before, while the waiting list for public housing in Victoria has grown to 37,887, 10,544 being urgent cases. Many of those urgent cases are living in poverty, spending up to 60% of their income on private rentals. Meanwhile, the developers managed to incorporate about 670 private apartments onto these once public sites. The "salt and pepper" mixing of public and private housing didn't eventuate. Instead the public blocks are separated off, with their own entrances and good views of the major arterial roads a matter of metres away. They act as a very effective acoustic barrier from the traffic for the private housing behind.

In the governmental rationalisation of PPP housing schemes, this private housing helps fulfil its public housing obligations, which are now more about increasing the amount of "affordable" housing to people "caught in the middle". But prices start at around $300,000 for a one bedroom apartment next to a very busy road, which is no less than market rate. People renting these apartments will be subject to local market rents, which have escalated 83% in the last 10 years. What a bonanza, for landlords.

The state housing minister sent a discussion paper to all public housing tenants this year, noting this private rental cost increase. They didn't do this to reassure tenants that their rents would continue to be pegged to inflation. Instead they stated that due to escalating rents, people renting privately while on public housing waiting lists were paying up to three times as much as public housing tenants, and this difference was neither fair nor affordable. Public rental increases and new tenant selection criteria are now on the cards.

The underlying truth, as reported recently by KPMG, is that public housing has run out of money. "Without additional funding, the supply of housing stock will not increase under the current model." There is no money even to repair the 42% of public housing stock that has deteriorated through 30 years of neglect.

KPMG recommended that the government out-source its public housing responsibilities to private companies and community housing associations, as this is the only way to fulfil its responsibilities economically. But these associations have their own beliefs, influencing how they select their tenants.

"Increased targeting of public housing to those most in need is not the answer... Targeting of public housing to high-need clients has contributed to the financial unsustainability of public housing." CEO, Housing Choices Australia, a Victorian housing association.

The City of Melbourne was unable to have any meaningful input into the development as the State Government had taken charge of it. They weren't happy. "This is a missed opportunity to increase the provision of public and social housing in the Carlton area, particularly as there are 35,000 households on public housing waiting lists in Victoria." The local residents association went a step further, writing that, "the much heralded Public Housing Estates redevelopment is mostly about private housing for sale into the buoyant Carlton real estate market for private profit, and very little about desperately needed public and affordable housing."

Hopefully people will eventually come to wonder, "what on earth happened here?" Public housing still has an important role, but our governments seem to have forgotten what it is.

Occupying the street

The Occupy Frankfurt camp, one of many in the global movement, was reportedly ‘cleared’ by police a few days before the Olympics ended, as I wrote this, and according to Occupy Frankfurt, was successfully relocated. In light of the complex discussion in the previous editorials about solidarity and “clarity, strategy, and purpose” and investigating the accountability of the Occupy Movement, in this editorial, I reflect on my own research on ordinary street occupations in Frankfurt and London, which are not usually associated with media or spectacle.

http://www.occupyfrankfurt.de/2012/08/09/umzug-erfolgreich-camperinnen-bedanken-sich-fur-die-unterstutzung-durch-die-frankfurterinnen/

The idea for my research on streets initially developed about 2002 in Perth, partly inspired by events at that time, including the urbanism effects of street festivals and protests in street environments. In a course on cities at the Berlage Institute (1990-2012) Roemer van Toorn, for example, was writing about these phenomena. Street parade traditions, often with ancient origins revived in the city and media of early modernity, like urban protest encampments have a parallel history with the modern city. In 2000 I had attended a reconciliation walk across Sydney Harbour Bridge and visited the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Sydney’s Victoria Park during the Olympic Games. I wrote about this in the Architects for Peace Book (Maturana and McInneny eds. 2010, p.136) The twenty-first century began. For me the streets research has been a journey to identify a politics of the street, from Australia to Europe, and spanning across my period of international development work in Ulaanbaatar, about which I have also previously written for Architects for Peace in 2007 and 2008 (http://www.blogger.com/profile/03514272254037627854 ).

My recent field work on streets in Frankfurt and London involved a recording a score of interviews in each location, investigating perspectives on strengths and weaknesses of the street, from users and managers in or near these sites. The two streets I have studied each forms part of its respective city’s international railway station quarter. International flows of culture and goods and people blend with local people and visitors about their day to day business in the street. I have been seeking to find how a better balance between place and movement could be struck on streets, in inner city contexts where transport plays a key role along with walkability and liveability. Emergent themes have included everything from planting and de-cluttering to active building facades and pavement use. Unsurprisingly, there was some feeling expressed among the interviewees that ownership and management of these public realms – streets which also function as public space for citizens – may be improved. However the conflict experienced was strangely attractive. Positive change might occur through design or ‘management’ but it was clear that these measures may be complicated to follow bureaucratically and also potentially relatively invisible.

Disparate disciplines and interests are at play in these mixed-use inner-city streets. The professional methodologies of the sociologists, writers, photographers, activists, architects, urbanists, highway engineers sometimes seemed a world away from the interests of shopkeepers and pub-goers, hotel guests and receptionists, drug addicts and outreach workers, beggars and police officers. The social science findings and the physical findings of my investigations in my case studies are also all held in two respectively “disparate bodies of research” which the research attempts to bring together.

social urbanism ------------ physical urbanism

These inner city streets are cores of mixed-use neighbourhoods – they are both residential and commercial neighbourhoods, and people not only shop, work and play in these areas, but they also carry out the everyday domestic rituals of sleeping, cooking, washing and eating. Some of the modes of doing these could be considered aberrant or diverse, with sleeping in doorways or eating in a church as examples. This form of urbanism is sustainable and diurnally balanced in the original sense of a city accommodating diversity. Occupy protesters are experimenting with the civic notions of diversity, balance, sustainability and resilience in an idealistic, theatrical and radical way, while my research has focussed on banal occupations. Occupation nevertheless involves challenge and conflict. The street poetry of Professor Kayoss in King’s Cross at cyclist’s action (9 Jan 12 http://youtu.be/ofiImQNJe1Q ) was a little-noticed moment of street theatre in London. The report of an incident in which a church worker was attacked in Frankfurt (Email from LvJ) was also a rare moment, an irruption of the constant conflict in which restaurant goers, bankers, people parking cars and prospective punters share the street with prostitutes and drug users in a curated Red-Light district. (BHVN) in this sense, the streets are occupied by users with diverse interests. Quantitative engineering methodologies and approaches could be said to dominate generally across a spectrum from physical spatial design to social community development method.

These streets occupied in a quotidian way, and they are sites of everyday, ordinary reconciliation. Sites in which a domestic or commercial sense of peace is sought by diverse citizens. One person seeks peace though a substance fix, another by divine resurrection, another by an uneventful health and safety inspection, another by finding an available parking space.

‘Expert’ disciplines addressing the street as a physical realm include the twentieth century’s post-war hope for a solution to the city – the highway engineer – who will calculate the correct volume and design the surfaces and signage in compliance with national highway standards. On the other hand, local experts include the creative artist, urban designer and sociolologist, delving into field work in the most challenging ways, opening discourses, accused of re-arranging deck-chairs. The tour guide, the sausage stand and the graffiti artist add further decoration. Pedestrians, non-experts by definition, train their journeys back and forth along the street, day and night, summer and winter over years, observing and experiencing details which experts do not.

In the social urbanism realm again there are quantitative methodologies and consultation targets (Buergerbeteiligungsverfahren) and these are gradually transmogrifying. The authorities have the responsibility to consult and to cooperate with those using the street, and in each case, they attempt to respond to the changing sense of the civic. In Frankfurt, beautifying a square and incorporating public toilets is a challenge in an area fully of junkies and streetwalkers, while in London King’s Cross, users attempting to tame a traffic gyratory installed in the sixties are stymied by bureaucracy. In both sites, the day-to-day reconciliation of interests plods on, and change occurs at a snails pace and without spectacle.

In the post-Olympic Games lull in London, as the segregated VIP (‘Zil’) traffic lanes are erased all over the capital, we reflect on the occupations of the Olympic park urban regeneration area. Cyclists navigating around the outside of the Olympic Park on a spontaneous ‘Critical Mass’ ride, celebrating the freedom and benefits of cycling, were arrested by tense security forces. Urban regeneration benefits to the area so far were reserved for the captive ticket-holding audience eating corporate hamburgers inside the Olympic compound. Local east London traders with approved and licensed ethnic food stalls nearby made enormous losses when attendees were redirected away. (http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/08/13/olympic-food-market-leyton-petition_n_1771817.html ). Despite celebrations, the tense security environment and ticketing difficulties apparently made the street ambiance in the area tense rather than ‘vibrant’. However there was at least a symbol of hope in the Rio 2016 contribution to the Olympic closing ceremony.

Renato Sorriso came under the spotlight in overalls, an unlikely agent of the city street and agent of conviviality, a Rio street sweeper who is a noted samba dancer. The script for the short segment in the 2012 Olympic closing ceremony had Sorriso sweeping the stage, and when a guard came to escort him away, the guard was shown how to samba. These figures of the informal street economy, the increasingly anonymous uniformed operatives of corporate agencies like G4S and Veolia, play an insidious part in streets. Might these lowly paid contract workers indeed band together and create conviviality in the street? Could they create a sense of caring, ownership – even what Jane Jacobs called ‘Eyes on the Street’? Press headlines reporting on Sorriso’s act and personal story confused road sweeper, cleaner and street sweeper, missing the significance of the street’s role as the stage in this theatre of the city. The locally-grown choreography of this Carioca improvising rhythmic steps on the pavement of the street would not occur in motor traffic on a ring road. It would not occur on a bicycle or in a car or taxi or bus or HGV. This informal use of the public realm depends upon the pedestrian interest in the street. The street is a space which is both a place and a link, which privileges and protects the pedestrian, the human, with or without their transport.

Gregory Cowan 
Architects for Peace, August 2012

(1%) Divide and Rule (99%) Democracies

(a discourse with Beatriz’ editorial 21 November 2011)

For the Occupy Movement, democracy is in crisis as the elected ‘representatives’ are often beholden to the super-elite 1% and not the 99% majority - implying a direct conflict between democracy and capitalism as practiced in their ‘advanced’ forms. Utilizing Lefebve’s ‘social production of space’ to read the phenomenon, ‘real democracy’ has always been condemned in this elite (on the whole, authoritarian) production of capitalist space. However, it is only in the time of recessions (perceived failure of capitalism) that a sizable network of the 99% spatially and symbolically occupies the city’s public domain, attempting grassroots (re)production of democratic spaces. Yet in occupying capitalist produced ‘spatial practices’ of the city, the movement is inevitably set against their fellow (less enlightened?) 99%, inconveniencing/frustrating their (productive and consumptive cycles of) ‘lived spaces’ – hence finding themselves entrapped in this ‘divide and rule’ democracy. (Admittedly this is an unfairly reductive reading – but it frames/serves my usual convoluted thinking that follows)

On the other hand, ‘developing’ (pseudo) capitalist-democracies presents a contradictory phenomenon where, for example, the warm, uplifting triumph of Arab Spring now faces the harsh, ruthless winter of realpolitik(ing) with and against unelected power-brokers. One such society, Thailand, marks 80 years of democratic experiments this past June but has been inconspicuously absent (in its Red-Yellow color-coded conflict) in the globally viral Occupy Movement. Why? Arguably Thai society finds itself in-between the Arab 'apprentices' and Western 'alienated veterans' of democracy with parallels in Turkey’s experience in shaking off military interventions in politics while concurrently becoming increasingly enmeshed in capitalist representation and spatial practices that offers many odd paradoxes. One such paradox is how the former prime minister in-exile 0.0001% elite Thaksin can manipulate traditionally benign Thai social fault lines so devastatingly, through a 'serfs' (prai) versus 'aristocrats' (ammart) narrative that, in May 2010, sufficiently radicalized some of his Red Shirt followers to sacrifice their lives for "true democracy" (in his own words ). This ‘true democracy’, it is increasingly apparent, translate to Thaksin’s return from exile "in style" (again in his own words) white-washed of all convictions and ongoing court cases and the return of his seized assets (USD1.5billion that he recently lamented via Skype to a Red Shirt rally). For ‘true democracy’, he is willing to 'trade in' the 91 deaths (protesters, security forces, bystanders) from the 2010 riots against the military-backed (yet elected) government via a blanket amnesty for all sides as advocated in a draft Reconciliation Bill proposed to parliament (post 2011 elections, now run by Thaksin’s nominees) by a former army general (turned MP) who actually led the coup against Thaksin (in essence, a ‘reconciliation’ between sections of the military and capitalist elites – totally bypassing collateral damages on live, limb and property suffered by the ‘99%’)!

I’ll try to speculate explanation to this genre-bending, democratic phenomenon. In terms of economic wealth, there is a substantial class gap in Thailand – but not in the way misrepresented by the Thaksin/Red leadership. For one, socio-economic inequality is a known consequence of capitalism in a globalized economy and the level of inequality in Thailand is comparable to that in the US, for instance. However, unlike in many advanced economies (where middle-class income levels have stagnated for the past decade – one issue that arguably galvanized the Occupy Movement), the gap is not increasing. In fact being an aggressively industrializing/developing economy, the wealth gap in Thailand – omitting the richest and the poorest ends of the spectrum – has been decreasing over the past 3-4 decades with millions joining the ranks of the 'middle-class' (backed by the proliferation of new consumptive spaces over the past 2.5 decades amidst the countrywide urban sprawl).

Then why has Thaksin been so successful in perpetuating this class battle (and fortunately it has not progressed into a ‘war’ – just yet)? Many Thai commentators have already observed that this fabricated battle is not between the 'rural poor' against the 'urban middle-class/rich' but rather between the aspiring 'lower middle-class' against the 'middle-class' – perhaps with some parallel to the phenomenon in industrializing 19th Century Europe (viewed from this prism of democratic development, the logical evolution would be for the Red Shirt movement’s split from its capitalist puppet masters and form into a political party that represents the interests of rural and urban workers).

I endorse this analysis and have a few thoughts to add. I suggest that the rapid economic expansion of the past four decades has effectively dismantled the traditional Thai social patronage system that vertically linked the poorest to the richest - the farmer to the noblemen, the prai to the ammart so to say – a system that concurrently assuages, lubricates social class and ethnic relations yet perpetuates the hierarchical structure (while also allowing for a degree of social mobility). Industrialization has afforded more options (for a new ‘exploitation’) to the rural and urban poor – in its production of capitalist spaces – eroding a pre-existing common 'lived' social space. This severance of social bonds (and bondages) and increasingly monetized relationships may have led to the loss of understanding and empathy.

Yet this change is, overall, a positive phenomenon in terms of improved socio-economic condition and life opportunities (but with a high social and environmental price). Critically, what Thaksin and the Red Shirt leadership have exploited may have been the ‘lack of recognition’ from the middle-class of this significant shift in Thai society. In a habitually hierarchized society, the upper and even the emerging middle-classes have hung on to the out-dated, judgmental stereotypes such as of the 'uneducated, lazy, rural poor' to be patronized (in a negative sense – as in Thai social relations, patronizing can also be perceived as positive) and looked down upon. The new 'lower middle-class' – the taxi-drivers, factory-workers, technicians, street-vendors etc., major beneficiaries of many of Thaksin's populist policies (and, to be fair, many have been good policies), have pride in abundance and aspirations for 'equality' (certainly a deserved pride - as their labour has been fundamental to the country's economic growth whether in the manufacturing, construction, agriculture and service sectors). Arguably, it is this ignorance, gap in perceptions that Thaksin exploited (through sophisticated, well-funded media campaigns) to 'divide and rule' Thailand up to the present. The irony is that the socio-economic gap is being bridged anyway – providing that the economy continues to expand (and Brazil is a great example of a country with many progressive pro-poor policies that has often been unravelled by extreme economic growth and recession cycles). Another irony is that the socially mobile 'lower middle-class' increasingly share the productive/consumptive spaces with the 'middle-class', perhaps laying groundwork of conflicting political orientations in the process of becoming a more ‘advanced’ democracy.

This brings us back to the Occupy Movement and why it is almost impossible to achieve some form of broader solidarity “clarity, strategy, and purpose” (Beatriz’s AFP November 2011 editorial), amongst the 99%. The modern democratic socio-spatial spaces are conceived and produced by capitalism and Beatriz hit the nail in stating that “…we are a product of the system we oppose”. There are also the difficulties in defining/determining who/what is accountable in the ambiguous spectrum between the 1% as individuals and as institutions (e.g. the controversial notion of Corporate Personhood). Moreover operating beyond/above governments, one rarely get to see ‘their’ operation in the public, political arena – even while there are occasional revealing glimpses in Silvio Berlusconi’s career as Italy’s prime minister; Rupert Murdoch’s “'I have never asked a prime minister for anything” moment at the British parliament Leveson inquiry; the recent (deliberate) media prominence of Australian mining magnates etc.. Arguably, the Thai case furnishes concrete evidences and Thaksin can be seen as a blunt manifestation/expression/representation of the 1% agenda and how they conceive ‘democracy’ – merely “as a means to an end” (again, in Thaksin’s own words). Critically, while “we are the 99%” is a powerful narrative, it is merely a statistical manipulation – as both the 1% and 99% are highly heterogeneous groups that can claim/assume multiple identities (and certainly there are the philanthropic many in the 1% sympathetic to the plights of the 99%). This fluidity of identity, assisted by effective media campaigns, can make poor working-class Thais identify with (populist, tax-evading) Thaksin as ‘one of us’ as it can make the American working-class, white male without health insurance vote for tax-cut-for-the-rich, trickle-down economy Republican Party.

Occupy Bangkok? Red Shirts in Bangkok April-May 2010 

Day job: Day job: Building high-end condominiums for the ‘elites’; after hours: join protests against ‘them’ and then (violent elements in the Red Shirt or the convenient ‘third-hand’ scapegoats?) burn the elites’ temple of worship in Southeast Asia’s biggest mall (while the Red Shirts have naturally denied the burning – it is consistent with incitements of the Red leaders). I must stress that I see the overwhelming majority of the Red Shirt protestors as truly peaceful and non-violent – however their leaders have layered, ulterior motives in strategically choreographing tactical provocations, such as through armed elements camouflaged amongst protestors, which inevitably and tragically led to the disproportionate response from the security forces. The earlier refusal by the Red leadership to the government’s offer of an early election – which was the Red Shirt’s fundamental demand in the first place – supports this reading of events. This Thai episode problematizes Gene Sharp’s advocating of planned non-violent changes (quoted by Beatriz) – especially in very large protests with the involvement of multiple ‘stake-holders’ with often competing agendas. The Thai case is also consistent with the pattern of capitalist tactical utilization of violence from a local (e.g. evictions) to global (e.g. wars for resources) levels to serve business objectives. (For further discussions of the Red Shirt occupation, see Nasongkhla’s paper in http://www.e-jts.asia/documents/article3Vol1Iss1.pdf)

As usual, I seem to be writing myself into a decidedly pessimistic hole. Looking for a more positive turn to finish with, I again refer to Beatriz for inspiration “…we are a product of the system we oppose—a condition whereby we feel unable or unwilling to judge, decide and most importantly, to take responsibility. I suggest that in order to achieve change we need to step out of the state we are in.” That last phrase caught my eye as did my own juxtaposed image above. Significant existential difficulties remain on how to oppose the capitalism that produced us. A less problematic path is to ‘re-localize’, hyper-localize, advocate for local-responsive capitalism such as in the ‘informal economy’ (also with its many implicit problems) manifesting in, ‘occupying’ Bangkok’s streets that provides a degree of insulation from the global whims of the 1% (and food vendors are often tied to small-scale local producers offering a degree of food security)? That said, I am certainly not for protectionism and/or seal-the-borders sentiments. Globalization and capitalism are givens (and even Facebook that socially and ‘democratically’ connects many of us together is a 1% run USD100 billion business, the ‘market price’ for our rights to global expression and our privacy) – and the critical challenge for the 99% may be how to catalyse strategic/tactical, ‘peaceful’ individual+collective/coordinated+incremental transformations of capitalism in the multi-layered spaces of the city-suburb-rural-natural-virtual to benefit local species (including humans) everywhere...

Sidh Sintusingha
Architects For Peace, July 2012