Just some thoughts on Woolwich and the aftermath:
I feel exhausted. I’ve been at work all day so the only interaction with the events of today has been through the news and social media. Like everyone else, I’m horrified at the murder that happened today. But I also feel tired, demoralised, and exhausted in advance at how often I’ll have to repeat that fact. I’ve seen people call for hanging, torture, extra-judicial killings, locking up/deporting all Muslims and attacks on mosques. These aren’t strangers on Twitter, but people I’ve grown up with: gone to school with, babysat for, and (in one case) kissed. I haven’t blocked any of you so there’s a human face attached to the group that you hate so much. You’re talking about people like me, my mother, my grandmother. I haven’t blocked any of you because I want you to know that I’m calling you out as fascists.
I hate that I’ve seen friends change their FB names to sound more anglicised: I hate that so many POC I know are rushing to assert “Britishness” as their primary identity. I hate that I feel like I have to insist on the “due process” of law (which I think is fundamentally violent and unjust anyway) because people are calling for torture. I hate trying to pretend like torture and killing aren’t things that the police do everyday anyway.
I hate that this is happening in the city where I was born, where I grew up, and that I love so much. I hate that this is occurring against a backdrop of the increasing militarisation of the urban space, the violence of dispossession and austerity. That this act of violence is seen as worse than the acts of violence that occur every day in areas left to rot, than the acts of violence committed by the British state.
