tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11490631807399096182024-02-20T03:03:37.509-08:00HomelessTony Lathamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17820133044454243859noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1149063180739909618.post-64164240980370998622013-01-09T04:05:00.001-08:002015-09-25T07:05:17.616-07:00Homeless<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
2012 will be the last year that an abandoned office complex
on Galleons Reach, at Royal Docks, will be used to shelter <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city></st1:place>’s homeless for five
days at Christmas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Built</span>
to house a now long departed-abroad-for-cheaper-labour pharmaceutical company, the Ivax Centre actually stands on a sort of giant jetty or reach and
through the large windows you realize you are looking out towards the blazing
sky-lines of Canary Wharf and the central London cluster beyond. To your left,
also directly opposite on the other side of the dark river, the low horizon of
Thamesmead, and directly behind the darker mix of industrial and new build
apartments the windows of which invite you to envy the moneyed people within.
This was the nightview beginning some two feet from the floor to the vast
ceiling.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
Tonight, Christmas Eve where were the people I knew? What
were they doing tonight? Fifty years of age in less than a month and I knew I felt more akin to the three hundred men and some women asleep at my feet on narrow
low-slung canvass beds, beneath thin blankets brought up over each face so
that, bar the temperature, the incongruous penthouse views, it looked like a
morgue. I was overwhelmed and choked on sudden tears and a well of sadness.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<o:p> </o:p>The spectre of homelessness has been casting an
indiscriminate shadow over every part of the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">UK</st1:place></st1:country-region> since the recession in 2008, no
one is safe, individuals, families, middle-class, working class, defaulting on
mortgages, redundancies, joblessness…</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
But where are the people I know? What are they doing and why
does <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">London</st1:place></st1:city>,
some several miles in the distance, seem to have its back turned on these lives
spread out here before me.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<o:p> </o:p>I said after, ‘There were mobile phones’ and someone (I
forget who) screeched. ‘That’s all they have’. Who were ‘they’ texting or
naively bothering to be friends with? Do you still post a round of ‘Merry
Christmas’ on your Facebook wall knowing the brutally stark fact that not one
of the 198 ‘Friends’ has invited you to dinner…or worse, have not been worth
bothering to tell of your plight to, either for shame or, and more likely, because
the moment you write, ‘I am homeless, need a friend for Christmas’ the
collective silence would be deafening and Facebook, that knee-jerk friend would
become a scorched void or at best a useless litany of ‘Hug x’s.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
I had Christmas dinner at home before I began my
10.15pm<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>shift. I had the full
trimmings…I wanted for there to be absolutely no doubt as to why I was
volunteering. I had been invited to a party in Brixton the day before, and
though I was a bit out of sorts and did not go; it was still an invite to
socialize, and to food and drink and in the hub-bub of middle-class chatter you
could pretend in theatrical tones you were keeping your head above water and
list, along with a hundred others, your life in headlines, while a convoy of
mini-buses moved silently away from central London to the derelict Ivax Centre.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
Joyce Vincent<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the young social woman who had laid dead on
her sofa for three years after having wrapped Christmas presents (for whom for
God’s sake?) with the TV on…no one tried to phone, or call round; did everyone
assumed she was having a good time? I have taken evasive action before, gone
away on retreat, but at these events there is a strained bonhomie, which peaks
then sags lamentably the day after the whole dreadful affair is over; the
elephant of loneliness-at-Christmas plonked firmly on the lawn throughout.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
Of course, some have gone to visit relatives or having
relatives come and stay; this is not always idyllic and I have noticed in my
youth a sort of kamikaze-type atmosphere in the clubs in the lead up to
Christmas, a collective last-ditch surge of individualism before being once
again slotted back into the family hierarchy as brother, sister, outcast,
ugly-ducking, favourite, resented, disappointment. For others it is a lovely
time. I do not get on with my mum; we do not like each other. Well, I’ll speak
for myself, it takes an enormous amount of pretence to…well pretend. Two
sisters both close to my mum. ITV reruns, fold-up table, side-by-side on the
‘couch’ like sardines; I guess that pre-Christmas hysteria racket is the sound of a
few hundred thousand fantasists and snobs crashing back down to earth.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<st1:city w:st="on">Mobile</st1:city> phones…What does
someone who knows someone who is sleeping in an abandoned office text them ‘You
say you’re in <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">New York</st1:place></st1:state>
but my Google maps tracked you to the Ivax Centre mate. Is there a rave on?’ And referred, checked and bussed in from <st1:place w:st="on">Covent
Garden</st1:place> you text. ‘Nah, I’m volunteering for Crisis for Christmas
with all these homeless people’.Of course the young Irish always lied about the work they
were doing and the places they lived in when writing home from the New World to
loved ones and it was obvious that this is what was at play on Christmas Eve
and at the Christmas day night shift; God knows what lies were being told to
relatives in Poland, France, Africa, Russia and here at home in the UK. This
ship was on the <st1:place w:st="on">Thames</st1:place> but going nowhere.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
During my toilet shift where, in pairs, we would sit outside
the male and female toilets and after each one came out we would, with rubber
gloves on, go in and clean the toilet seat and sinks used, a man would enter
the cubicle and stay in there for half an hour or more. With an acre of
sleeping space around him this put his default setting learned on the city
streets into stark relief;. Another sign of entrenched sleeping habits found
some preferring direct contact with the floor, while one young blond
long-haired English guy, we were told, would be allowed to sleep in a cubby
hole on the ground floor under the stairs with all of his belonging in two
bags.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<o:p> </o:p>There was an academic whose theses were poring out in an
unboundered torrent; upper-middle class, mid-fifties, beige chinos, cardigan, his theory or
theories were otherwise fascinating but for the fact that the longer he talked the
more he appeared as insubstantial as a cardboard cut-out; it was an involuntary
vision, that crept in at a point at which the individual claims and grandiosity
seemed the most over-bloated; paradoxically you felt you could move just a
fraction either side to glimpse the serrated board behind. At one point I
recognized myself in him or a warning; at some point his erudition had parted
company with reality and I imagined that the red-statements had begun to pile
up as fast as the second-hand books. He was taking my female partner hostage
with his enthusiasm and at one point; we found our motives as volunteers being
woven into his doctorate.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<o:p> </o:p>We were shown to a corner of the second floor, the six, foot
five Aussi volunteer with huge hands and I, and told not only to watch over the
sleepers, for whom it was the first time in months they could allow themselves a
deep sleep, but a huge open window was indicated and we were told that the
young man who would occupy the bed directly in front of us, might periodically
try to get by us to throw himself out of it. Our co-ordinator or Green badge.
An Arab-looking man with a home county’s accent in his forties or early
fifties, hunched slightly at the shoulder, short hair dyed a faded purple,
open-faced, caring, world-weary. We were made aware that the young man who
would try to get to the window had mental health problems. I recognized
schizophrenia. The giant Aussi barred the way, and after saying he wanted to
sleep in the small landing in front of the large open window, between the
volunteer’s toilets and the lift, he trotted off. </div>
<br />
The average life expectancy of these guys is forty-seven’,
said one of my partners on the early morning Christmas Eve shift. Forty-seven?
Who came up with that statistic? I looked out at the sea of bodies covered with
the thin blankets even the face, aged between twenty and around thirty five to
guess from those who rose intermittently to go to the toilet. Worn down by
rough sleeping I guess. Or you reach an age where the cold kills, even so, a
vague selfish feeling that I had passed this age surfaced briefly… I was a
survivor…so far.<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
</div>
It is easy to die of loneliness in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">London</st1:place></st1:city>; we’ve intellectualized it to put
distance, no doubt between it, and the horror of its reality; atomized. We have
all become atomized. This used to mean the ’me’ generation but that suggests
something we’re all in on together. Atomized means totally isolated as
individuals. If you go down there is no one to witness your descent into
vagrancy; it suggests that although you chat away on social media, turn up for
work, consume goods in you local supermarket and coffee chain, watch national
events on TV you are simply filling a seat that could just as well be filled by
another faceless soul. Should you no longer appear on Facebook there are plenty
of others to chat to. Again Joyce Vincent decomposing in front of the TV is
testimony to the fact that our sense of belonging is an illusion, and the
turn-over in smiles and customers at your retail outlets dictates you will not
now be missed. Fear of homelessness comes with the yawning revelation that of
all your activities in your structured life you have failed to make a lasting
impression as an individual. Without money, even some change in your pockets as
far as <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city></st1:place>
is concerned you are a none person; access denied, all areas.<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
I asked someone whose flat I went to over a ten year period
and who had been to mine what books he thought I liked. He did not know. My
modest bookcases have been staring him in the face for over a decade. I have a
select number of authors about whom I am passionate and whose works I have a
collection. I knew he was a fan of Nick Hornby and Tony Parson. I had found him
an unread edition by the first author on more than one occasion because I ‘had
borne him in mind.’ I asked this friend a few other questions which confirmed
that all those things I held dear, he had not bothered to acquaint himself
with; it is these ‘frenemies’ who let you slide without noticing or caring that
you have.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
</div>
In the semi-darkness there is random snoring coming from
beneath the blankets. There is a couple over there; beds pulled together,
spooning. She against the wall, him, protective in sleep. He is wearing some
thermal long-johns made of the latest synthetic fabric; six foot two, three,
short brown hair, long torso, swimmer body, twenty-three-five; like an Olympic
swimmer really. Someone’s mobile alarm goes off. An alarm set for a job he once
had. Reassured by the presence of us volunteers silhouetted in various corners
in pair, the rough sleepers have fallen into the deepest sleep they have had in
well over sixth month.<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
Who are the people who kick rough sleepers, and sometimes
piss on them? It’s that the ‘I’m alright hubris of alcohol’. Outside, fiery in
the distance that cruel London spilling out of the clubs and bars, rising up
way beyond Galleon’s reach; but it is the London of the variously lit skyline
of the banking area, the Gherkin, that Saurean’s tower symbolisms of a global mammon
and a sold-out city, The Shard- it was that London that had gone astray, had
disconnected from it’s own reality a reality which lay hidden well out of view,
here on the industrial thin carpet of an ex pharmaceutical company, itself
having fled Britain in search of cheaper labour. </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<o:p></o:p>Housing benefits for the jobless have been capped, private
landlords who have no affiliation, nationally or otherwise to anyone or
anything but their own atomized greed, are, increasingly no longer renting to
those receiving benefits, the social housing stock was sold off in the eighties
and nineties in the right-to-buy scheme promoted by that arriviste bitch and
there are no jobs; in December 2012 there were 30 jobs advertised with London
Underground; 300.000 applied! This isn’t the only rough sleepers centre we were
told to keep secret in the run up to Christmas.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
</div>
Oh she looks middle-class and trendy, scrapping her blond
hair behind her ear, me looking for the tell-tale volunteers badge; she hasn’t
got one; I instinctively looked away. Though I don’t know her, as I watched her
look for her bed while walking along the precarious tight-rope of her dignity,
she was that natural fibres, artistic sort I was familiar with; she was Nell,
Tammy, Cathy, in this climate it was not unimaginable to see either of them
here Nell having been made redundant from the Library, Tammy from the
Photographic Archive, and Cathy from her Teaching jobs. No I felt a stab of
recognition and I instinctively knew that had she been any one of these women made
homeless in mid-life, they would not be able to recover from being recognized.<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<o:p> </o:p>We were told that the nightshift involved watching over the
sleepers because some, not used to sleeping indoors would wake- up or not be
able to sleep and we were there if they needed to chat. Using the toilet shift
a man was talking to my then female shift partner. ‘Some haven’t spoken to a
woman in months, even<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>years’, our
co-ordinator had said’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Are our women
are cold and materialistic…like our men…maybe the women are kicking and pissing
on rough sleepers too…or that won’t be long in coming.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘There’s a secret millionaire here’ said the
man in his late thirties. ‘He’s gonna find me’. And I caught myself thinking,
‘Don’t you have to be doing something for yourself before the secret
millionaire takes up your cause?’ I realized I was basically saying as I stared
down at him with his hope and enthusiasm ‘but you’ve nothing left to work
with’. Like a deafening dull thud I knew that reality star millionaire’s and
the watching public were not motivated by pity.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
No one could find the thermostat on Christmas Eve and the
building was stifling, none of the main of the wall to wall windows opened and
there was a musty smell of wood-fires and stale sweat, but not unbearably so;
there were showers here. The centre had been open since 22<sup>nd</sup> of
December and the last night would be the 29<sup>th</sup>, a seven day reprieve
from the hunt for somewhere warm to sleep, a respite from ferreting for food,
and a holiday from being insulted, victimized and murdered.; on the shift later
on, gaurding the bottom of the stairs the human spirit in some reached heights
of childish skittishness as they slid down the banisters and caught themselves
skipping, like wildebeest who prance and careen with joy once they finally
reach pastures green after a long and dangerous migration.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
Over excited not all had gone to bed, some sat around
socializing in the wide-Awake room somewhere in the first floor.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
Some of the homeless seemed to come up from the wide-awake
floor in groups of two’s and threes, all ethnically the some and whose beds lay
side-by-side; a strange pact; ‘let’s go to London for and stay at a refuge for
the homeless, ’ although... Obviously, it is more complicated than that. For
one, you have to be referred. Referred comes with the condition that you won’t
be any trouble. Although from the several fight broken out around the Brazilian
Beach Bar, or sheltered drinking area, that particular some have slipped
through the net. Many North African had needed to flle from <st1:country-region w:st="on">Tunisia</st1:country-region> and <st1:country-region w:st="on">Morocco</st1:country-region>
during the Arab Spring, and although most now inhabit the parks and squares of <st1:city w:st="on">Paris</st1:city> and other French cities, some made it across to the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">UK</st1:place></st1:country-region> and this
group of cleanly dressed young men in the corner sharing Magrebin music through
a phone may well be the lucky ones.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
The lost generation; between, well, where to start? Where
the baby Boomers end? I can not guess what it is like to be young and in
competition with thousands, nay millions of others for jobs that are not there,
to be told constantly by an over-privileged out-of-touch banker/proxy Prime
Minister with an obvious sadistic and craven streak, that you do not deserve
the pittance you get, and that he is clearly willing to exercise a mercantile
and mercenary instinct by employing the dog-eat-dog divide and rule and set the
‘mob’ against itself. If we are going to maintain our dignity it is best if we,
to a man and woman, ignore David Cameron’s inane utterances and all reports
thereof completely. To pit neighbour against neighbour and stoke up resentment
and ill-will by saying, at the budget announcement in Parliament. ‘You go out
to work and your neighbour is still in bed’ and to receive a cheer in the house
from these dogs of divide and rule also fat-necked bankers, and, furthermore to
use terms like ‘Strivers and skivers’, is irresponsible in the extreme; It is a
relentless decoy away from their own affection-starved money-addicted selves.
All bankers, meaning David Cameron and his ilk, I believe, should be imprisoned
for treason; end of.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
I have slept today, intermittently, know that my sleep
cycles will be temporarily upside-down due to night shifts, yet surrounded by
three hundred slumbering souls…Of all the things offered over Christmas, the
company of fellow human beings, homeless and volunteers alike, Christmas
dinner, sleep, deep unguarded sleep is the one luxury prized the most, and
some, if not most lie in as late as they can, or come to their little space
early to catch up on and indeed store up on sleep as though it were a basic
commodity like rice, our flour. At debriefing one of the middle-aged male
co-ordinators held back his tear. “A young man came to me and said ‘Thank you,
It’s the first time I’ve slept well in six months’ “. Reminded of our roles on
day two, Christmas Night as ‘floaters’, walking around silently, like
protective angels, instead of sitting, my partner, a well-preserved forty-seven
year old who West Indian guy from Ilford who had cared for his ailing mother
and father until both had died- “ you may feel like you aren’t doing anything,
said our co-ordinator, but just by being here allows them to feel safe enough
to sleep deeply”. On the last night, I was told by a co-ordinator, before they are let out into the hostile world again, you can hear the anxiety in their sleep; alot cry.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
I don’t mean to blow my own altruistic trumpet here, but me
and the West-Indian guy were both elected by accident to be patrolling
guardians of the sleepers or ‘floaters’. The days prior to Christmas night this
role had been reserved for the head co-ordinators while pairs of volunteers
were placed in strategic angles to watch, sedentary, over the snoring covered
rows.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>between the briefing and the selection of
groups of twelve that I had the urgent need to pee. On my return from the
toilet, which must have taken less than five minutes, all the teams had been
selected and had departed for their various sectors; I was suddenly a spare.
The head co-ordinator looked a bit baffled then told me to find Sue on the
second floor, they were apparently one short. Joining the group who waited
silently to relieve the day shift, even though I was now indistinguishable
within the team, I noticed the late arrival of the West-Indian guy, who also
had been distracted at selection having checked on his belongings for what was
a nano-second, (the selection and turnover is necessarily rapid)-again , every
one was selected for designated seated surveillance posts and, miraculously, we
found we were spare again. ‘This is a very special role’. We were told.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
Thus on Christmas night we did two three hour stints walking
up and down separated but keeping an eye on each other, in the vast darkened of
the abandoned ex-pharmaceutical offices, surrounded by the incongruous duality
of penthouse views and mass homelessness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I don’t know how many miles I walked that night within that space, alert
to every sound, nocturnal muttering, groan of anxiety, involuntary yell, fart,
chorus of snores, but my body seemed to slick into a solid mode, almost primed
like a predator; something had set like a statue or benevolent gargoyle or
stone angel; my back had long began to ache, in the middle, either side of my
spine…as though to counter-balance my relentless vigil.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<o:p> </o:p>A young mixed-race guy had entered the sleeping area and was
spraying Air Freshener through the giant dormitory. He had already passed one
of the co-ordinators before he could be stopped. There was a collective groan,
which belied the depth of sleep. The place now stank of artificial pot-pourrie.
In a corner the older green badge,- lovely man, his fourteenth year, also bent
forward with the nightly and yearly burden of his twelve hour vigils - he was
having a firm whispered word with the young mixed-race guy. Someone mentioned
that in such a closed space the Air-Freshener could induce asthma attacks and
on cue a figure sat up and I heard the double staccato release of his inhaler.
As an asthma suffer, and asthma having at its core fear of abandonment, I felt
a flash of anger at the young man’s irresponsibility and arrogance at spraying
his fellow rough sleepers with chemicals while repeating ‘It stinks in here’.
Well, it may stink in here but you’re in here too, mate and you don’t raise
your status by stepping on those already in the gutter…mate. Oddly enough
though, it admittedly did transform the pungent spaceship into a, if somewhat
synthetic, woodland glade.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
The feeling that I, were I in their situation, would be
dealing with it with less grace, haunted me throughout. Would my pride and
arrogance render me the barking street orator railing against a general public
who had abandoned me; no doubt. I would lack the humility for a quiet demise.
Homelessness is in direct contrast to the naïve premises that everyone is
basically there to rescue everyone else, the fact that this is a basic fallacy
was illustrated recently at Hammersmith station during evening rush hour six
months ago. I was meeting a friend to see Edgar Allen-Poe stories at The Lyric
Theatre and had arrived early. On exiting the ticket barriers I noticed gangs
of police in the main hall of the station. Each gang of threes and fours had
surrounded a man or a woman who they were in the process of literally
strip-searching. It could in no way be mistaken for a <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">London</st1:place></st1:city> transport ticket inspection; it
targeted ethnic minorities. Contents of bags were spilled over on to the
concourse, trousers were half way down revealing underpants, skirts lifted up
the owners were Pakistani, blacks. A group led an old Eastern European Big
Issue seller away in custody. Flat-jacketed men and women patrolled the scenes
of mass search and arrest, jack-booted chests puffed up, while, to my
astonishment hoards of commuters poured into the station from the offices
around and refused to acknowledge the Nazi-style round-up acting itself out
before them; they were literally sleep-walking en mass! Not one person stopped
to enquire why individuals were being thus humiliated in full view. The scene
was horrifically reminiscent of public humiliation of the Jews in pre-war
Germany or Lithuania, the photographer catching the victim kicked to the ground
while smart shoes, trousered and stocking-ed-legs rushed by; Sleepwalkers. I
went to Rymans on <st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Kings Street</st1:address></st1:street>
, bought a huge piece of cardboard a black marker pen and wrote, WAKE UP. THEY
ARE STOPPING PAKISTANIS, BLACKS AND ETHNIC MINORITIES, SAY SOMETHING. REMEMBER
NAZI <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">GERMANY</st1:country-region></st1:place>,
REMEMBER LITHUAN. </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
Like a walking sandwich board I approached the general area
of the search carried out hitherto totally unchallenged by the hoards of
Londoners on their way home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Done
searching one man a group of five police men and women approached me and my
orange one-man protest. As soon as they were next to me one said, “Can we have
a word about that sign”. My goal was to stir protest not provoke the police; it
was beyond that…I was beyond that. I immediately began yelling the content of
my protest for all to hear. WAKE UP! THEY ARE STOPPING PAKISTANIS, BLACKS AND
ETHNIC MINORITIES! SAY SOMETHING! REMEMBER NAZI <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">GERMANY</st1:place></st1:country-region>, REMEMBER LITHUAN! The five
police officers, as one, all jumped away from me as though by attempting to use
the crowd I had shown them a sudden and clear refection of themselves and they
had been instinctively jolted out of the mirror’s and their own hideous line of
sight. </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
</div>
Ironically, It was an old African caretaker or security
guard who moved my protest outside, and even more ironic was my near physical
confrontation with a Lithuanian who took umbrage at me mentioning Lithuania’s
treatment of the Jews, saying “We we’re occupied’, or ‘there was a war on’, or
some such excuse. I should have said-, indicating the secret police-style
immigration sweep, (for that is what it officially was) – ‘well mate now’s
you’re chance’. He totally missed the point and went his way apoplectic with
indignation. Another guy said ‘Fuck the Jews’, and sauntered off with his
Muslim mates. But it was the collective ability to edit out what we do not want
to see that horrified and still horrifies me. Were you there, passing through
Hammersmith Station during the evening rush hour while fellow human beings were
being humiliated, or did you feel the warm embrace of blind elitism?Tony Lathamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17820133044454243859noreply@blogger.com0