At the start of this week, we had another protest about Tudor Street Day Centre, a campaign which I've previously written about here and here.
I was going to write about this protest earlier than this, but to be completely upfront and personal, I haven't been mentally stable enough to do so. My mental health has fluctuated a lot since I was a child; sometimes I just find it too overwhelming to really put my mind to the cause of activism. This year in particular has so far been quite difficult for me, both because of events in my personal life (had a couple of bereavements and just various other difficult things going on) and because there is so much in the world that I want to sort out that I feel like I'm not always quite sure where to start. This world is so incredibly overwhelming, and with constant warnings about things like climate change, artificial intelligence and the risk of nuclear war, it can cause us to just go a bit crazy. I know this as well as anyone.
The tragic thing is that this feeling, of being utterly hopeless and unable to change our circumstances, is the very thing preventing us from doing so. If you find the energy to fight and change your circumstances, not only might you be successful in changing them but the fight itself becomes somewhat therapeutic. You'll meet people who have similar feelings to you, be able to share ideas and maybe gain the knowledge that you're helping someone, somewhere.
That's what I want to get onto here. As I've written about before, I'm heavily involved in the campaign to save Tudor Street Day Centre, a building in Abergavenny, South Wales that prior to closure in 2020 was a hub for adults with learning difficulties and mental health problems. This is a somewhat smaller and less national campaign than previous campaigns I've worked on. I got involved because my partner Owen used to work there before he met me, and last year published the novel Vulnerable Voices, which is loosely inspired by his experiences in this role. Around the time of the publication of the novel, Owen started talking more to the people from his former workplace that partially inspired its characters, found out that Monmouthshire County Council was dragging its feet about re-opening it subsequently to COVID and started a campaign for the building's reuse. I've used my experience of protest and of social campaigns to contribute to the movement as best I can.
Now it's about a year later - the council was extremely destructive for a while and to an extent still is being, but I do think there is a sense that we're winning. One thing that has disappointed me though is that occasionally I've felt that there's a slight level of snobbishness from other activists I know. I'm not thinking of anyone in particular (in truth, most of the people who have been like this I don't even know personally, they're just people I've interacted with on online forums) but I think there is a feeling that in the grand scheme of things a campaign like this perhaps doesn't matter as much as other things. And I think this is a real shame. Truthfully, this has been one of the most fulfilling campaigns I've worked on. It's been amazing to witness a group of very vulnerable people and their carers, people who often don't have the time and energy to speak out or feel at all empowered to do so, get behind a campaign to actually stick up for their rights. That's one of the things that has meant this one matter so much to me. Often at protests, it's just the same old faces over and over again - people like myself who already have a strong sense of standing up for what is right. This time, for the first time ever since I've started protesting, it's predominantly people who have no experience of this kind of thing at all, people who just want things back the way they used to be. And, crucially, it does seem like we might just be successful.
One of the most important things to know in life is that the world only exists from the perspective of each thing that lives on it. The Prime Minister lives on the same planet as us, but he does not exist in the same world as us - our experiences and outlooks on life are so incredibly different that we cannot possibly live in the same world. And for this reason, the only way to change the world is to change someone's world. If someone's quality of life becomes better as a result of something you've done, you've made the world a better place just by that. It doesn't need to be a big global thing you're working on, just something that makes another person happy. Making that other person happy might give them the boost they need to go and do something worthwhile themselves, and then we create a ripple effect across the whole of society. Some campaigns are of course bigger than others - I'll accept myself that the campaign I'm currently working on is a lot smaller in scale than a cause like fighting climate change - but that does not make it less valuable. And that doesn't mean it's not time well-spent.
We can all be activists, and we should be. Everyone has different skills and different levels of ability. Merely talking to someone can be activism, if you're saying the right things. I think there is hardly anyone, no matter what situation they're in, who isn't at some point in a position to do something to make the world better. You just need to acknowledge that fact, and take those opportunities when they come.
Here's a news report of our protest at the start of this week:
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