occupymelbourne.net 21 10 2012 (Video 4208)

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Every protest starts with declaring your right to protest, and if you don’t know your rights, you don’t have any rights.

A lot can be learned from this footage.
Firstly many people who go to protests aren’t aware of the preparation that goes into organizing the protest. Some of the organizing is done to prevent problems on the day and a certain amount has to be done on the spot.
When a protest is made public, the police, PSO’s and security guards will know you are coming, one of the first sentences of the conversation is about the start time of the protest. The beginning of this interaction is interesting.  A PSO he implies the protestors have less rights the other people in society, PSO  then starts trying to give his ‘just following orders’ interpretation of the law and is told his interpretation is not correct in law. This leads to a very long conversation.

Ultimately it’s best in one of these lengthy exchanges to break up the tension. That’s the reason for the East Richmond quote

(if you have been to East Richmond you’ll understand that reference).

Though the PSO was threatening to call the police and have the camera guy removed, the camera guy leaves without being asked by police or PSO’s at any stage.
The PSO may have been a bit green because he agreed that he understood several statements, the straw man guys will know what this means.
Fortunately the PSO didn’t get his face in the camera at close range so he will most likely only be recognized by close friends and associates.

He also claims the camera is making him nervous, why do you think that is so? If you have done nothing wrong you have nothing to hide.

In a giant leap of cognitive dissonance he claims to have been there before as a refugee, but doesn’t seem to recognize or respect the importance of political protest.

In the end another PSO drags the first PSO away before he admits to too many crimes and mostly stands on the sidelines.

That usually implies the PSO has been outmaneuvered in the conversation about the law, and is effectively digging a hole for himself/herself and needs to be rescued before he/she falls into it.
The PSO’s did try to block the mock coffin but after a bit of persistence and a good distraction the protesters get it to roughly where they wanted it.
it’s worth pointing out this footage is of two separate protests at the bottom left ( a silent vigil ) they can almost be seen but the PSO refuses to even recognize
them as a protest. They then all gravitate to the other other protest as soon as it arrives.
the Second protest (the main event essentially) was the funeral march for the political Death of Robert Doyle. Quite a spectacle with costumes and masks and a
cardboard coffin with a sound system playing a funeral dirge on a constant loop. Oh and the bells and a brazier, really detailed stuff. it’s a lot more effort and
planning than a few cardboard signs and takes significant amounts of time.

When protest groups join together it can be synergistic, symbiotic, parasitic or mutually destructive. Draw your own conclusions.

The other important thing to learn from this protest is most protests are peaceful and sometime performance art in them selves. Well you have to get some attention from a public they has been fed the same hype and spin for decades so it’s hard to get their attention unless you do something really strange. But in saying this you must have a message otherwise you are just wasting everyone’s time with attention seeking behavior.

Of course protest creates a reaction from those who you protest against.

Within hours of this event Robert Dolyle’s Melbourne city Council IP addresses were used to make biased edits to the  Occupy Melbourne Wikipedia page removing the words peaceful to describe the protest.

Once this was discovered it created a significant scandal.

To this day there still has not been an explanation of who made the Wikipedia edits from MCC IP addresses.