Sleeping out on College Green, and the latest about Chelsea Manning (formerly known as Bradley Manning)

Hello!

It's been a little while since I blogged again, hasn't it? I've been meaning to blog about The Sleep-Out for a while, but things happened and I ended up not getting around to it until two days it was over.

So. Two nights ago I slept on College Green in Bristol. Not in a tent or anything, just me, fully dressed, in a sleeping bag covered in a bin liner, with the remains of my supper of custard creams and bottled water tucked in at the bottom next to my toes. And it wasn't just me, there was a whole host of other people there. The intention for this was to play at being homeless in opposition to the horrendously unfair Bedroom Tax, which I have talked about on previous blogs. It was a good experience actually. I met some cool people, increased my own understanding of the bedroom tax, talked to some guys who had actually been made homeless because of it, and most importantly of all, gained more signatures for our petition.

Our petition needs to get 3,500 signatures by the end of September. It's only Bristol-based, but is part of an overarching campaign that is going nationwide. The aim of our petition is to persuade the council and Mayor Ferguson to support a No Evictions policy, and to refuse to implement the Bedroom Tax. The link is here, so if you have a Bristol postcode, please sign it if you have not done so already:

http://epetitions.bristol.gov.uk/epetition_core/community/petition/2322

Some people have said to me that it doesn't affect them. They don't understand that the Bedroom Tax is part of a movement of austerity that will affect everyone at some point. Cuts are being made to everything that is there to help people, and this is part of that. There is no intention to it either; it won't solve the financial crisis because it actually costs the taxpayer £6,000 to evict someone. All this does is target those who are less fortunate.

There is one more thing I want to talk about, and that is the soldier who I have talked about in the past under the name Bradley Manning, but will henceforth be referred to on this blog as Chelsea Manning. You may or may not have heard that she is now identifying as a woman, and will be starting hormone treatment as soon as possible. Anyway, she was sentenced to 35 years. Not good.

However, I do feel that from this point, the Free Chelsea campaign can only go up. It might not be for a while, but I feel confident that if there are enough like-minded people (and there are) Chelsea will be freed and one day, will be honoured as the hero that she is. I have in the past referred to her as a modern-day Mandela, with one exception: South Africans often think of Mandela not just as being a great hero, but also as a personal friend or a member of their own family. With Chelsea, we go a step further. Her supporters are literally her. We all feel her pain, and we will all do what we can to achieve her freedom. Please sign this petition (you need to make an account on the White House website first):

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/restore-united-states’-human-rights-record-and-grant-clemency-pvt-bradley-manning/L7zHZv4r (for the record, Chelsea has requested that her former name of Bradley continue to be used on petitions, which is why this petition still refers to Bradley Manning.)

I will leave you with a rather humbling letter by someone called Aura Bogado about how she feels that she failed Chelsea Manning. I think all of us have felt like this at some point, but it is always possible to make up for it, I feel:

http://www.thenation.com/blog/175877/open-letter-how-i-failed-chelsea-manning#

Take care, everyone. Peace out x

What makes you proud to be British?

Hi everyone.

Yesterday I went to a socialist meeting in Bristol, discussing predominantly the Monarchy and whether they have a place in Britain today. Now personally, I don't support the Monarchy, for the following reasons: a) I don't like it that the Queen has a say in legislation without earning that role; b) I don't like it that they all have to be within the Church of England, as I believe that within secular Britain, no religion should have any value over any other belief or faith; c) In an age where people are struggling to stay afloat, there aren't many jobs around and people are having their benefits cut, I don't know how we can justify spending the amount of money that we do on the Monarchy. I'd be fine with having them there if all of these points were sorted out, because then they wouldn't affect me. However, I do think that the best idea would be to discontinue the Monarchy, because in my opinion they are the ultimate example of rich, middle-class families being more important than the common folk. I think that this is an idea that has largely been abolished in this country, yet we still have the Royal Family, who keep that idea going.

At this meeting, a lot of ideas and thoughts were thrown around concerning this subject. One of the most prevalent ones was that in an age when most people have very different values to how we did fifty or sixty years ago, how is it that we still have this Royal Family as a big part of British culture? It was actually pointed out that more people seem to care about the Monarchy now than they did ten years ago. My answer to that is the way that the Royals have been portrayed by the media. Maybe it's just because I'm quite young and have only become aware of these things in recent years, but before Prince William and Kate became engaged, no one seemed to care one way or the other about the Royal Family. At that time, the media portrayed them as Britain's Next Big Thing. Kate has the Girl Next Door story about her, with the idea that any girl could marry her fairytale prince (which of course isn't true; she is from a very wealthy and notable family) and the two of them seemed to represent an idea for the future of everyone. For some reason, everyone seems to like young, attractive people who represent something; sometimes it's a pop star or a reality TV show contestant, and this time it was a young prince and his partner.

I pity the newborn prince, I really do. I question what sort of life he is going to have. In the photos of William and Kate as they leave the hospital, they are waving at the cameras and smiling at the public, and it all looks very superficial. Neither of them appears especially fond of or interested in their child. I think that over the last twenty years or so, it has become clear that these people care more about their own reputation with the public than about their personal relationships with one another. So long as they look fantastic on the surface, none of the rest of it matters. I imagine that Prince George will be brought up predominantly by staff, and not have a particularly close emotional bond with his parents. He'll grow up having to perform Royal duties, and then one day become the Head of State and Head of the Church of England, and probably have a perfect wife and a few children of his own, and the whole ghastly thing will start all over again. In a society that has more important things to worry about, why is this still relevant?

There was one specific question that came up at this meeting which fuels the title of this blog. Apparently recently there was a television programme about what makes people proud to be British. I haven't seen it (though I may watch it just to see what I am dealing with), but apparently it was all to do with Union Jacks and afternoon tea and all that nonsense. I'd just like to say that personally, I am very proud to be British, but I am proud to be British for a totally different reason. I am proud to live in a country where there is basic democracy (although I know that that can be improved), where there are a variety of different cultures, ideologies, faiths and beliefs. I was lucky to have gone to a secondary school that had a huge variety of people with different backgrounds, and a high number of ethnic minorities. I think this has made me a very open-minded person, and stopped me from becoming a middle-class pseudo-snob (a pseudo-snob is someone who on the surface does not appear to be snobbish, but deep down is more so than they would like to be. A lot of my friends would fall into that category.) I'd like there to be a lot more integration, and a lot more awareness of the differences and similarities between people. I love interacting with people, and also watching people interact with one another. Sadly, I feel that in recent years, this is something that is being driven out of Britain, as we seem to be getting back to a state where the rich are more powerful than the poor. I find this very disappointing; I'm going to do what I can to get back to how it was a few years ago, when less people cared about such things.

One more thing... I heard about this at the meeting, and I can't believe that I missed it at the time, but it was on the same day as Bradley's trial, so I was probably focussing on that. A group of disabled people have gone to Court protesting that the new 'bedroom tax' discriminates against them, because many of them have to sleep in a different room to their partner, for one reason or another. They claim disability discrimination, and the judge said that it wasn't disability discrimination. There will be an appeal, and now that I know about it, I will be following this case avidly. At the moment, I am going out quite a lot trying to raise more awareness of this bedroom tax and get more signatures on our petition; hopefully, it can be stopped for good. I think that people power is often underestimated. The more people there are willing and committed to fighting this cause, the less chance there will be of it being forced through.

Take care, everyone! More blogs soon.