A voice for the voiceless – A Rally of the 99% to raise awareness of the issues of people without a voice.

The rally will be introduced by Richard Brown and the following people will be speaking:

• Tom Redfearn (occupy Sheffield)
• Jillian Creasy (Green party) to speak up for Surestart
• a speaker for Defend Council Housing (yet TBC)
• Colin Hampton (Derbyshire Unemployed Workers Centre)
• Tom Whittaker (Speaking Up for Advocacy) SUFA, on the volunteer sector
• Dawn Hunt (Socialist party) speaking up for people with additional needs
• Alan Thorpe (entrepreneur with a visual impairment)
• Barry Biddulph (trade unionist)
• Maxine Bowler (Sheffield Anti-cuts Alliance)
• Alistair Tice (Socialist party) on a Socialist alternative
• Julia O’Dwyer on the threat of extradition to the USA faced by her son, see her website and follow @jrodwyer on twitter

This will be followed by a open mic space for as long as people appear interested to contribute.

With Sam Duckworth, Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly, at 7:30pm and Roy Bailey. Other acts to be confirmed!

Saturday 21st January – 7pm – 11pm

Free on the door but donations are welcome, 3 buckets for donations for the artists, Occupy and The Archer Project.

The Dove and Rainbow, Hartshead Square (just down the hill from the camp, map).

YT and Seize the Day were lined up but are unfortunatly not going to be doing sessions after all.

We are pleased to have been able to engage the proprietor constructively in a progressive and forward looking manner and that the time and energy of costly legal wrangles has been averted and our energies can be more effectively focused.

It is worth noting that the council have an active ‘temporary use’ strategy in this part of the city, and we certainly hope that the use of the Citadel by Occupy Sheffield would be supported by Sheffield City Council.

Occupy Sheffield is also engaged with Sheffield Cathedral in another legal action due in Court on 26th January. We would like to be able to engage with the Cathedral in a similarly progressive and open manner, and save all parties the considerable time and energy of a prolonged dispute. Therefore our invitation to the Dean Peter Bradley to visit the camp remains: We would love him to engage with us directly, and experience some of the love, enthusiasm and generosity of spirit which has marked the Occupy camp. In recent radio interviews, Mr Bradley has raised his concerns over attending the camp, and has cited his fear that he would be subject to ‘the anger of 30 people’. We would like to reassure Mr Bradley that this will not be the case. We certainly do not see him as a Daniel and ask him not to see us as Lions!

Occupy Sheffield

Happy New Year! We have big plans for 2012 and so do you. We hope that those plans can co-exist peacefully. There have been and continue to be headwinds, both natural and man-made, but we believe that the issues we are attempting to highlight are still a very real problem in our society. We continue to be actively engaged in the cause and feel it would send the wrong message if we were to pack up and go at this point.

The situation remains the same; we will continue protesting as long as the financial structures which caused this economic crisis remain. We cannot relent while the corporations continue to exert undue influence on politicians and while a tiny minority of the global population wields a frankly hideous proportion of wealth. It is not a love of camping which causes us to occupy your forecourt in the depth of winter. We are here because the scale and depth of this crisis demands that we make a stand!

It has always been important to us to be good and responsive neighbours – and although on some matters we have agreed to disagree, we are proud that in the last 2 months, there have been no on-camp incidents with any serious negative consequences. However, once the current storms have passed, it is our intention to rearrange the camp and create a more open and welcoming environment for the general public. This will involve reducing the number of smaller tents and rearranging the larger marquee to create a more public area.

As you will be aware, we are hosting the 3rd National Occupy Conference on 21st/22nd January, and it is our intention to use the Citadel of Hope as the main conference space. There may be a small increase in the number of tents on this weekend as we will be accommodating some of the conference delegates at the camp. Please be in no doubt that safety of all our visitors, and yours, has been and remains paramount.

We arrived at the Peoples café (FKA Forrest café), Edinburgh at approximately 11pm to the sounds of a local folk band. The venue was a former community café that was closed due to lack of funding and then left empty for years before being reoccupied. We introduced ourselves and were shown around the building including the location of our luxury room (luxury compared to a tent!) for the weekend. We unloaded the car and started to investigate the building which was populated by a variety of different people from different groups and backgrounds – some had never protested before whilst others had made protesting a way of life and others who were somewhere in the middle. The atmosphere was positive and the walls (and floors) were covered in writing.

The conference started on Saturday with Jack from Newcastle making a vat of porridge and calling delegates for breakfast by banging a saucepan. Some of the people staying in the building were not there for the conference and complained about the early call for breakfast but the rest of us were there for a reason and appreciated the substantial breakfast.

Saturday was mostly spent sharing experiences and looking for ways we could work together to improve co-ordination between the camps and start to address the bigger issues that affect us all. We had all gone through challenging times during the formation of our camps and appreciated the opportunity to discuss some of the bigger issues whilst refleecting on our shared experiences.

The camp at St Andrews hosted a comedy show on Saturday afternoon for citizens of Edinburgh and any conference delegates who were in need of some comic relief after some intense discussions.

Following the comedy show a GA was held in the Bell Tent, a semi-permanent structure that provided shelter from the elements although it was a bit cramped as you can see from the images below!

We were then served St. Andrews Stew before continuing with the GA and then heading back to the People’s Cafe for further discussions which went on until the early hours.

Sunday, despite a late start, involved more focused discussions about how we could use our shared knowledge to help push the movement forward. Suggestions included a unified statement of aims, new occupy handbook, a national Occupy website, actively promoting a safer spaces policy, a women’s group amongst others.

The final overall aim was below however we all recognised that there was a lot of hard work still to be done.

We seek a more egalitarian and fair society, an open and peaceful environment for discussion and inclusiveness for people of all backgrounds. We seek a twenty-first century Enlightenment

We decided to stay over on Sunday night to give the techies a chance to finish working on ideas and give a lift to one of London’s head techies, Sam, who offered to come and assist in Sheffield. Sam ended up staying longer than intended, putting Sheffield before his new girlfriend, to help set-up some much needed technical infrastructure. This infrastructure will provide both opportunities and challenges – having the technology on site provides an opportunity for instant communication but also, unfortunately, an opportunity to thief’s!

We need to give us much time as we can to support the Occupy Sheffield permanent residents and make the camp a thriving community.

Season’s Greetings and Happy New Year