And so it begins. A few days after what may have been the largest protest in Melbourne history (estimates run from between 75000 to 100 000) against the Andrews government and their horrendous and insane “Pandemic Bill” we now find ourselves occupying Parliament. Exactly 10 years and one month to the day after the Occupy movement took over the world in 2011.

Many may not even remember the Occupy movement or Occupy Melbourne, which inspired the creation of this website one year after it’s inception. But the Occupy movement was a worldwide protest against bank bailouts ,corporate theft and political corruption – in other words a protest against fascism.

While the New York protest Occupy Wall Street originally gained some decent numbers for several weeks, the Occupy movement itself slowly faded after weeks or months or police evictions that wanted to prevent protesters from “camping”. Here in Melbourne we had a massive eviction from what used to be City Square and then we played cat and mouse with the police , the council and various groups of drug addicted homeless people (who were welcome in the movement but also had a somewhat disruptive influence at times).

The far left (represented by Socialist Alternative) tried to take over the movement initially, but were shouted down fairly quickly, leaving a motley crew of protesters from all persuasions and a small group of thinkers who were too far ahead of their time to be believed by the mainstream population who largely ignored them.

Despite those obstacles, Occupy Melbourne was one of the longest running “Occupy’s” in the world, running for 2 months and culminating in the famous tent monster parade where tents became clothes and could therefore not be moved on. Later the movement morphed into a Free Shop in 2012 and a Free Kitchen, which ran until 2014.

Then we were asked what we were protesting about and now , here today, the answer has finally occurred to tens of thousands of people : Something is wrong when ordinary people are not allowed to have control over their lives due to massive corporate and political interference.

Then it was the bank bailouts that governments supported with taxpayers money (mainly in the US and Europe) and the fallout from the GFC (Global Financial Crisis) which came about through corporate greed , now it is a pandemic of which many are not too sure that it actually is a pandemic, where the only winners appear to be huge corporations and the political class and democracy has gone out the window , possibly for good.

Not only does Occupymelbourne.net wish all the luck in the world to the brave souls who are now venturing on this very tricky path of occupying, we also wish that you have the numbers this time and that this time we the people can actually win, because this time it actually seems possible.

How does it feel to be on the right side of history ?