Join protests to stand up to baddest of the bad guys
FOR a long time I thought I was done with demonstrations.
My parents were both members of the British Communist Party, so a great deal of my childhood was spent travelling all over the country marching in the streets with my mum and dad protesting against various injustices: Ban The Bomb, the Vietnam War, South African Apartheid, Barbara Castle’s trade union reforms.
I was so used to being on demonstrations that when I first came down to London as a teenager the only way I knew how to get about was to start on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral then walk down the middle of the road shouting.
If where I was going was not en route to the US Embassy I was stuffed.
But nothing seemed to change politically and after a while I resolved never to take part in another “demo”.
It was only in 2003 and the anti-Iraq War protests that I returned to marching and realised how much had changed.
OPPRESSED
What I found so heartening was how wonderful the other marchers were. They represented the very best of mankind – the kindness, the decency, the concern for the oppressed shone out of those ordinary people (two million of them in London alone!) who had decided they wanted to voice their opposition to a senseless war.
Of course we weren’t listened to by Blair and his hopfrogs who pressed ahead with their wicked illegal war, but something began on those demonstrations that offers tremendous hope for the future.
We shouted “Not In My Name” amid a realisation that our elected representatives don’t always faithfully represent us. Ordinary people started to realise if the best of us didn’t engage in the political process then the bad guys were going to win.
And that’s who Trump is: the absolute, total, undisputed, utter, unmitigated baddest of the bad guys.
If the people who protest against him represent tolerance and decency, then Trump embodies all the darkness that the human soul is capable of – greed, resentment, racism, religious fanaticism, narcissism, lying, cheating, orange skinism, misogyny, big red tie wearing and terrible comb-overism.
I guarantee if you go on one of the antiTrump demonstrations this week you will feel yourself lifted up by a feeling of love for your fellow demonstrators and you’ll have a sense you are doing something to turn back the tide of darkness that threatens us.
It’s not enough: you need to get involved with one of the organisations such as Stop the War. But marching will be a good start.