It’s important to remember, everyone at protest camps is a volunteer. No one is being paid to do the hard work that keeps these spaces running.
When I arrived at Balcombe, the tech setup was a disaster. All the camp’s power came from draining 12V car batteries, charged at sympathetic locals’ homes, then brought back to the camp. This was repeated daily, with batteries quickly destroyed in the process. Ironically, the system meant we were running the protest camp on fossil fuels.
I like a challenge, so I set about fixing it. It wasn’t particularly difficult, just messy. After half a day of scrounging and assembling, by evening I had a functioning solar setup that could reliably charge two phones, indefinitely, as long as the sun was shining. It was a small start, but it showed how we could scale to power the whole camp sustainably.
The next morning, I got out of bed to plug in some phones, only to find my work ripped apart overnight. People had raided the system for components to power the party camp’s music. The battery was flattened and ruined. So, it turns out the real problem wasn’t technical, it was social.
The camp was full of capable people, but many had checked out. Why? Because they’d experienced variations of this same problem before, nothing could be built, nothing would last, everything was transitory and broken.
Tackling the social mess, the first issue was the presence of a few absolute loons. These people weren’t just chaotic, they actively blocked any attempt to build lasting infrastructure. The solution? Push them out. It wasn’t clean. It wasn’t gentle. In both cases, it was emotionally intense.
One was mediated out by sharing gear so he could set up his own space elsewhere. The second, when confronted, left of his own accord and took his stuff with him. Harsh, maybe, but necessary. After they left, the camp could finally begin to function.
The “commons” problem, the second issue, was more subtle but probably created even more resentment: equipment and resources were treated as a free-for-all. Everything was “held in common,” which meant anyone could use gear however they wanted, and they did. Batteries were destroyed, cables fried, expensive equipment thrown into a growing pile of broken tech.
The solution? Gently focus control, we set up a tech tent and simply sat there, every day, asking people what they needed and why. No outright “no’s,” just a filtering process. It worked, tech requests slowed, and we regained stability. But behind the scenes, it built up quiet resentment from the “crew” who were used to unaccountable access and immediate replacements at the camp’s expense.
What followed, after the transition, the tech space became… boring. It worked. Phones charged. Laptops powered. Media and legal teams did their jobs. People even checked their Facebook.
And yet, success bred silence. The loons were gone, but the resentment lingered. And sure enough, the backlash eventually came, just not in the way you’d expect. But this is another story…
This reflection is about more than batteries and solar panels. It’s about the fragility of collective space, and how real sustainability is social before it’s technical. We need to defend space from dysfunction, as much as build within it.
Fixing protest camps means navigating both power systems and power dynamics. And if you don’t balance both, you’ll be back to chaos by morning.
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