Hello, rabid readers!
Recently, I have had some truly spiffing times, as Enid Blyton would say (incidentally I have discovered the awesome Famous Five parody Five Go Mad In Dorset - for someone who has read rather a lot of Blyton, it is very entertaining!) Anyway, I have gone off track. Yesterday was great because I took part in two very exciting demonstrations. The first was the big strike concerning the public sector that I talked about last week; the second was a fantastic demo outside the BBC building on Whiteladies Road in Bristol to complain about their bias in Israel's favour when reporting the Israel/Palestine conflict. And with regards to the second, I attended another event this evening, and will be working on the project again tomorrow. I will discuss all of this below.
First of all, the strike. I was out in the early morning outside Amelia Court in Bristol, picketing, selling Socialist Worker newspapers and gathering support. I have to say, to start out with I did not sell as many newspapers as I would have hoped, but by the time the rally actually started at 10.30 I was gathering a lot more interest. I think it was because at that point I had the 'Stand Up To UKIP' petition to generate interest. It's actually a lot easier to sell newspapers if you have a petition or something else to engage someone. If you approach people on the street and say, 'Excuse me, would you like to buy a newspaper?' a lot of the time people are saying no before they even find out what you're selling. If you have a petition, you can say, 'Would you like to sign my petition?', you can get them talking about that for a while and at the end say, 'By the way, would you like a newspaper? They're only £1.' Getting signatures is more important than selling newspapers anyway. As I was saying, the one I was publicising yesterday was to get people from every party to say no to UKIP. I think that a lot of the mainstream parties are channelling UKIP's ideals now, as they have proven to be such a force to be reckoned with. It was quite comical actually, because quite a lot of the time people started to walk past me, only to double back when they found out what the petition was for!
Another thing that came up a lot was that people said that they are part of other political parties that the Socialist Workers. This made me question my own values quite a lot. Over the last year or so, I have been very supportive of the Socialist Workers - I have been to a lot of their meetings in Bristol, sold their newspapers and been actively involved in their campaigns. However, this does not mean that I consider myself to be a part of the Socialist Worker party, not that I have anything against it - as a matter of fact most of the things that I have seen about it so far has been very positive - but because my stance as a political activist is that I must remain entirely independent, and therefore I will not be loyal to any party. I support the Socialist Workers in their campaigns because so far their campaigns have tended to be things that I would support anyway, and they are a platform from which I can keep myself informed about things and work with people in order to help the situation. It is difficult to make a difference on your own, and in this sort of work keeping contacts is crucial in order to move forward. So I respect the Socialist Workers, in the same way that I respect some other parties such as the Green Party, and I will continue to support their campaigns for as long as their campaigns are about things that I personally agree with. If I'm collecting signatures and someone says that they are hesitant because they don't really like the Socialist Workers or they belong to a different party, I say that generally I don't think that the person who created it matters so much as the issue that we are fighting for. If the Conservative Party or UKIP created a petition for something that I actually agreed with, of course I'd sign it, despite my general feelings towards those bodies.
Now to discuss Israel/Palestine. Recently I have found that a lot of my news feed on social media sites has been taken up by people complaining about the BBC's reporting of the conflict, saying that they are entirely biased in favour of Israel. I don't personally watch the news very much as I source much of my information about current events from the Internet, but I am aware from personal friends and colleagues of mine that in this situation, Israel is a lot less innocent than the mainstream media makes it out to be. Two days ago, I was called to an emergency three-day demonstration outside the BBC to protest about the way in which the news portrays Palestine in an overwhelmingly negative light and Israel in a generally much more positive one. Personally I am very much on Palestine's side in this, as I believe anyone who actually knew the facts would be - I used to be a lot more neutral about things, but having spoken to people who were a lot more informed than I am, I have been made aware that Palestine are very much the victims here. This is rightfully their land, and whilst I do not personally have any issues with Israeli people being there on principle (just as I do not object to people of any nationality being anywhere), it is quite clear that the state of Israel is the instigator of all of the violence, and that any violence that comes from Palestine in response is a proportionate reaction.
Yesterday, I arrived and there were about forty or fifty people there. We led some fantastic chants, we got a lot of support from passers-by and I really hope that the BBC sit up and take notice. It culminated in us raising two Palestine flags right above Broadcasting House, which I thought looked amazing! It certainly upset someone at the BBC, who shouted 'Can you take it down please?' from a window, but of course no one paid attention. It was naturally gone by today, but frankly I would have been astounded (but delighted of course) had they left it up.
Today, it was even more successful. We had an even better turnout than yesterday, and I feel a lot more enthusiasm for what we were doing. I led a lot of chanting, and quite a lot of people made speeches - we had an open microphone, so anyone who wished to could talk to the group. I also read out a list of the 98 people that have been killed in Palestine since Tuesday, and their ages when they had been compiled - I'm sure that I mispronounced a lot of the names, but I did the best I could and I feel that the message had come across. At the end of it, I revealed that since the list had been submitted, there had been 9 more deaths - I am sure that there will have been more by the time I have written this blog. There was a lot of emotion involved, but also a lot of optimism and team spirit which is marvellous. We received so much positivity from passers-by, I think the BBC were listening and it really felt like we were getting somewhere. There is another event tomorrow, where we are protesting against supermarkets selling products that are either made in Israel or in Gaza under apartheid rule.
I am so proud of everyone who has attended any of the events that I have talked about here, but in particular the Palestine demonstrations as this is something that I am particularly passionate about at the moment. I will blog again soon about the next event, and about any other political projects that I work on.
Take care, readers!
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