How representative of the United Kingdom is the OccupyLSX protest? Very much so, as I will now report…
Philip Brennan | PhilipBrennan.net | 18 October 2011:
When I went to the OccupyLSX protest yesterday, as reported here, I have to admit that I expected that the vast majority of the people there would be white English. I thought that most of them would either be ageing New Age Hippies or well-to-do white middle class former university students who have wound up on the dole queue through no fault of their own. In my early days of protesting the Solsbury Hill bypass, and similar protests, the vast majority of my fellow protesters did come from these demographics.
What I did find was refreshingly, and completely, different to what I had expected. While the majority of the protesters were indeed white, there was a very healthy minority from other groups in society – and they were in proportion to the rest of society as a whole. There was no racial division here, just a group of people of a wide variety of racial and religious backgrounds working together for a common cause – to occupy the land in front of Saint Paul’s Cathedral.
I remember seeing, in particular, a Hashidic Jewish family visiting the camp to see what “all the fuss” was about. They were made to feel welcome by all in the camp, and they stayed for some time talking to the protesters.
It appears that the system’s deliberate attempts to sow discord between various racial and economic groups in our country is, for the most part, failing miserably. Yes, there are useful idiots in both the BNP and the EDL who buy into Islamophobia hook, line and sinker, but they are in a very small minority. The manufactured fear of the “other” perpetrated by both our own government and the Main Stream Media is evidently not working very well.
This, too, bodes very well for the future
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