Occupy Melbourne: Week One By Sean Bedlam

I went along to Melbourne City Square the first day of Occupy with a plan to interview people for my Youtube channel. Friends had been irritating me in the weeks leading up to it by saying Occupy didn't seem to have a point. I thought there were no shortage of points and that I would go ask people, make videos and at very least show my friends that not everything has to have a slick advertising campaign.

And that's how I got into making slick advertising campaigns for protest movements. My first visit to Occupy convinced me to stay onsite for at least a week. I got involved. On the sixth day a row of us were sitting in a puddle in the rain, our backs to a line of cops, ready to be arrested if need be. We were.

The kitchen in the Square was amazing and I made it my job to set up live online video so people around the world could see this incredible and bustling spectacle of donated ingredients being turned into meals by volunteers. For a week the people of Melbourne streamed through and unloaded huge amounts of cash onto the kitchen. The level of support was sky high.

I never got the live video up, but the night before Eviction (we didn't know this) Jello Biafra, punk rock champ and activist vet appeared. I get asked to video an interview. I sit in a tiny, hot tent, literally at the feet of one of my heroes and tape half an hour of pure gold.

That night I hastily edit a short version of the interview and upload it. It was full of solid advice for protesters. We set up a screen in the Square to show this amazing artifact and some nutjobs hijacked the equipment to show a truly garbage conspiracy video. Christ.

The following morning we woke to rain and a fence that had been erected while we were asleep, exhausted.

That day I was arrested and I've been arrested many times since and will be again. Fun.


in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

 1,911

I'm doing a stand up comedy show called Two Bearded Ladies in the 2015 Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

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