Future Arts Blog

On Fri­day 11^th Novem­ber the occupy move­ment finally came to Leeds as tents and ban­ners got erected in the city square by pro­test­ers.  The fol­low­ing Sun­day I decided to pop down to the square to see the makeshift camp for myself and more impor­tantly to engage with some of the occu­pants. Most of the debates that I had were unsur­pris­ingly around cap­i­tal­ism and my favourite topic unemployment.

Unem­ploy­ment is a big prob­lem in Leeds which I feel is been swept under the car­pet and hid­den away by the job cen­tre along with their pri­vate con­tracts due to vested inter­ests. These places don’t find solu­tions for the unem­ployed – they just exist on the laws of prob­a­bil­ity that if there are thou­sands of peo­ple search­ing for a job then some of them are bound to get one. A cou­ple of suc­cess story’s get high­lighted whilst the infor­ma­tion about the likes of me along with thou­sands of oth­ers who these organ­i­sa­tions have failed are mainly hid­den from the pub­lic aware­ness. The solu­tion is cre­at­ing jobs but it seems that these places are more than con­tent in mak­ing us com­pete for lit­tle that’s out they.

The most frus­trat­ing thing about the job seek­ing process is doing long winded appli­ca­tions which aren’t suited for an instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion soci­ety. These appli­ca­tions are nor­mally for entry level jobs and then you don’t get the job after all that. Job seek­ing is a waste of a life­time if it’s fruit­less and the job cen­tre along with their pri­vate con­tracts don’t really do any­thing about it. Their employ­ees are just more than happy to get paid for giv­ing their two penny’s worth that your gran could give you for free. The unem­ployed need a hand up into a job and not more point­less advice from staff at the job cen­tre along with the equally as point­less train­ing courses and work expe­ri­ence that rarely lead into a job.

So back to the occupy move­ment in Leeds which I feel could help the unem­ployed dur­ing their time on city square. We really do need a tent or a mar­quee on the square that offers the employ­ers of Leeds unem­ployed Indi­vid­u­als who want a job. When an indi­vid­ual is sat­is­fied with the job offer then that’s them off the dole and off that part of the square. We can use this tent/marquee to gather news­pa­per arti­cles and blogs on why the unem­ployed feel mis­treated along with dis­il­lu­sioned. It’ll hope­fully kick off a rev­o­lu­tion in job seek­ing where employ­ers go look­ing for the employees.

Even­tu­ally the square could even have other solu­tion tents and mar­quees.  I just feel that the occupy move­ment should be look­ing at short term solu­tions as well as long term solu­tions. For exam­ple there’s a load of home­less peo­ple in Leeds that could be rehoused. Life is short and some peo­ple like me have expe­ri­ence far too much to just sit in a square till my dying days to debate. All I really want is a suit­able career and to be off the dole. I also want a bet­ter world but that comes in time as his­tory has told us. I’d rather live in the 21^st cen­tury than the dark ages.

I am the 99%

I want a hand up and not a hand out.

Damon