The Palestine March yesterday, June 1st, was Sheffield’s largest since October 7. We set off at 13:00 from the statue of Anti Corn Law poet Ebenezer Elliot, in the city’s Weston Park, on a two mile route that took in the occupation at University of Sheffield Students Union.
The longer this slaughter goes on, the more people initially apathetic or even hostile are drawn in. In almost all cases they find it exhilarating. The thrust of modern life, with technology at the service of profit not people, is towards ever greater individuation – and in that individuation, to atomised alienation. We are individuated yet social animals, but the momentum of capital is to suppress one half of who we truly are while relentlessly overpromoting the other. In protest we rediscover our collective nature, and that frightens those who rule from behind the chimera of democracy.
For one like me, his days spent largely in chosen solitude, it’s especially therapeutic. Not that any of us is here for that. It’s just a bonus.
Here’s a question.
It’s not dad’s fault he looks like Keir Starmer.
Let’s ask again.
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