NaBloPoMo Day 23 - Occupy X

Normally I would do some sort of X Factor blog (since I didn't do it last night) but today there is a bigger and much more inspiring story.

Today Libya celebrated its liberation from Gaddafi's dictatorship. It is a nation that has suffered under a brutal tyranny designed to entrench the leadership, and a people that for too long have been denied freedom. But today Libya is a nation that looks forward to the future and the hope of democracy. While the people remember their dead and the wounded recover, they are hopeful for better things; for simple things like the freedom to choose their leaders and freedom from the threat of death for descension. I celebrate the liberation of Libya and I celebrate the sacrifice that her people made to rebel against the rule of a corrupt man and his family.

How sad and how shameful that the Occupy protests that are taking place in London and cities in America should compare themselves with Libya and the Arab Spring.

I defend the right to protest and I applaud organisers of the OccupyLSX protest for how peaceful it has been. In recent years too many peaceful demonstrations have turned violent so it is a relief to see a well organised protest that is not aggressive in any way. However, I do take issue with this protest on a number of counts, the biggest of which is the association with the struggle of other nations where liberty and freedom are just words in a dictionary. If they think their campaign has any similarities with that of the Arab Spring, they need a wake-up call. Perhaps they should go a volunteer in Libya to get a taste of what revolution is really like.

These protests are Anti-Capitalist, Anti-Establishment, and Nihilistic. They offer no solution, no programme or suggestion for reform and many of the interviews that I have seen have revealed protestors views and reasons for joining in to be naive at best. It saddens me that these people can't see how fortunate they are. Here's a crazy idea, guys, why don't you get involved in politics - become a Local Councillor or an MP - and try to change society for the better? Or is that too much like hard work?

Ten Years On

Ten years ago today I was on holiday with my husband. We were broke so we'd got a cheapo deal to Tunisia. The hotel was basic, the food was dire, but it was our first anniversary on the 16th so we wanted to do something special to commemorate it. We had only been there a day or two when, passing through the TV area, a gathered crowd caught our attention. We stopped and joined their number just as the second plane hit the world trade centre.

I will never forget that day. I cannot forget the moment that I recognised the structural damage and stresses on the Twin Towers and muttered those immortal words: "Those buildings are going to come down." It has left me with a strange sort of guilt that I can't quite explain and it's a guilt that still makes my blood run a little cold. Even now, ten years later, whenever I see footage of the attack, or even just see images of the Towers in movies and on TV, I am transported back to that day and it still causes a lump to rise in my throat and a tear to form in my eye. I feel that same sense of powerlessness and there's a weight that rests on my heart for the thousands of people who lost their lives, and the families that had to carry on without them.

After we returned home from that holiday, I remember writing about the tragedy. I wrote about how it made me feel and about my hopes for the future. Everyone was already saying that this event was a game changer; I hoped that would be the case. I hoped that the scale of the tragedy would make terrorism (on any level) so unthinkable, that innocents would never again have to die in the name of a cause they were not connected to. I also hoped that the reaction of the Western World would be mighty and that it would be etched in the memories of foreign nations forever so they would know not to mess with us again. But I desperately wanted it to be the right response, one that was reasonable and measured and one that punished those responsible rather than the innocent.

What we hope for so rarely comes to fruition.

But there's still time.

As we look back and remember where we were and how we felt and as we remember the innocents that died, and the wider impact of those deaths, lets not forget the time between now and then, the good that has come out of 9/11, and also the evil. As we remember the 2,977 victims of that day, we should also remember the thousands that have lost their lives or suffered injury since then as a result of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Let us also think of the terrible things that happen every day, from events that have a national impact like the 7/7 bombings or the recent riots, to the things that you don't always hear about like robberies, assaults and rapes. For the sake of the victims of 9/11, let us take our anger, our outrage and our fear and turn it into something more productive. Let's live our lives in a way that makes our world a better place; the only way that will happen is if we choose to be compassionate, considerate and thoughtful towards each other.

Tweet Me Right

In typical knee-jerk fashion yesterday, David Cameron made the suggestion that BBM (Blackberry Messenger) and 'other social media' could, in future, be turned off in the event that services were being used to harm. Twitter is my drug of choice and I have given much thought to its role (and the role of similar instant messaging services) in the riots.

I acknowledge the role that it played in escalating the violence and focusing trouble. Throughout Tuesday there were mad rumours circulating. Some people claimed things were happening when they weren't and others said there was trouble in places where there was none. Social media undoubtedly made it easier for people who were up for it to know where to go thereby swelling the numbers of rioters, and social media also allowed the criminal element to communicate and organise. If Twitter, BBM and Facebook hadn't existed, would the riots have happened? Surely the answer is yes. Riots happened in the past, long before the invention of mobile phones, never mind internet and social media. If social media had not been available, the rioters would still have communicated, but it would have been word of mouth and by telephone, text message or email.

Furthermore, if it's important to recognise the role of social media in instigating and escalating the riots, it is also important to recognise the positive role it has played. For me, Twitter was something of a double-edged sword. On one hand it allowed me to keep up to date with what was going on but on the other hand knowing what was going on was frightening. I have wondered several times if I would have been better off without Twitter that night; if I hadn't seen the news and didn't monitor Twitter I would probably have been completely unaware of the scale of the violence. I follow a lot of local journalists and broadcasters on Twitter so I was getting a lot of updates and while the flow of information reassured me, it also worried me. On balance, however, I would much rather have information and be able to make a choice, than be cut off. In all likelihood, on Tuesday night, even without Twitter to keep me informed, I would still have been aware of what was going on and I can only imagine how much more terrifying that night would have been without a steady stream of updates.

In addition, we should also recognise how useful social media has been in the aftermath of the riots. The public clean up effort was organised almost entirely on social media. Over the past week, hundreds of people have turned up, broom and bin-bag in hand, to reclaim their media from the hoodlums and show how much they care about their cities. Let's also not forget how social media is now being use to catch the perpetrators. Greater Manchester Police have a constantly updated Flikr stream with photos of people wanted in connection with the riots and have actually been able to catch and charge people because of the information they have published on social media. Even Blackberry Messenger, which is an encrypted service, is considering handing-over details of those that have used the service to incite, organise or boast about rioting and looting. If social media had not been available during the riots, think of the wealth of evidence that would be lost to the police.

I do understand the argument that says shutting down social media would have made the task of containing and policing the situation much easier but it's a mistake to think that should take priority over the good that can come from social media and, I suspect, is a reaction based on a lack of understanding and perhaps even fear of something which is perceived by some as the province of youth. The fact is that millions of people of all ages use social media to communicate, debate and keep in touch. It is a tool and nothing more: A brick can be a lethal weapon but it doesn't stop us from building houses. Let us also be reminded about free speech. I for one do not want to start down the road that allows my government to control what I say, even via one forum. Who's to say that some time in the future a government wouldn't use these powers to stop a legitimate protest, or similar, because they simply didn't like it.

What we need now, instead of rash conclusions is a measured analysis. We need cool heads and clear thought and time to digest what has happened and we need to make sure that the steps we take now move us in the right direction, not towards a future more ominous than the present. If social media poses a problem to policing public order offenses, new tactics and new ideas are required, rather than the technological equivalent of a rubber bullet.

The Riots: A Resident's Perspective

I'm always in a hurry to get home - to see Hubby, to let the dog out, to eat, to sleep, to pee - but on Tuesday evening I came home from work in rather more of a hurry than usual. I had learned via Twitter and a text message from Hubby that it was 'kicking off at the precinct'. As far as I was concerned, the sooner I got home, the better.

Coming off the M602, I could see a mass of people gathered on Cross Lane next to RRG Toyota and my heart jumped into my throat. I have never seen that many people gathered for such a negative reason. Usually when you see a big group of people hanging about it's for a concert or some other similar event. The atmosphere is usually uplifting and positive as those gathered look forward to their dose of excitement or entertainment or pleasure. Coming off the motorway that day was a completely different atmosphere.

I have lived in Salford for almost five years. During that time I have got to know the area and the people really well and have never felt uncomfortable or uneasy walking the streets where I live, even at night on my own. On Tuesday I wasn't even walking; I was in my car and still felt unsettled.

As I turned off Albion Way onto Liverpool Street I locked my car doors and prayed that the lights at Cross Lane, where the crowd was gathered, would be on green. They were. And as I made my way down Liverpool Street towards home, although there were more people than usual milling about, there were thankfully no other signs of trouble. 

Throughout the afternoon and into the evening, we watched the TV news and monitored developments on Twitter. Salford precinct is only about half a mile from our house and there are plenty of shops and off-licences nearer than that, so we were rightly concerned. As matters got more out of hand it was easy to imagine rioters and looters driven away from the precinct by the police, only to spill out into residential streets to regroup. This was a pattern we'd seen in London on Monday night and a pattern which had resulted in homes being ransacked and torched, either deliberately or by accident.

We were prepared for trouble, half expecting a brick come through the window, or to hear our car windows being smashed. I spoke to my Mum, who lives in Scotland and had seen the precinct on the news. I told her we were fine and that the trouble was nowhere near us. I reassured her and made a few jokes even though I felt no reassurance myself; it had occurred to me that if someone decided to torch one or both of our cars we would be trapped, as the fire would block our escape route and would likely spread to the building very quickly. Afterwards I packed a bag with a change of clothes and a few of our most precious possessions that couldn't be replaced, which made me feel a bit better, and when I went to bed, the baseball bat came with me.

As it happens, we saw no trouble on our street at all. There were gangs of young lads moving about for most of the night and we could hear banging and general disturbance in the distance, but the next morning I actually felt a little embarrassed at how alarmed I'd been the night before. I took a quick drive around before I set off for work and saw a lot of damage, but nothing too extreme and the worst of it had already been cleared up.

I look back at it all now and I can be more objective. At the time everything appeared much worse than it actually was, but that's not to play down the seriousness of the situation or how it made me feel. In an article on Salford Online, Rev Hayley Matthews, the Chaplain at MediaCityUK, said this:

"as the drinking (‘free beer!’ (stolen from the aforementioned Bargain Booze)) got underway, cars screeched into the area that clearly were the organised element of the criminal culture... I watched teenagers loot an electrical good sole trader’s shop. Don’t get me wrong when I say this, but if they’d nicked the TVs and laptops I could almost understand it, but they simply brought them outside and smashed them to bits in the street. Young girls on alcopops ‘dared’ each other to go and nick something. Lads tried to break onto Lidl and set fire to it, and mothers sent small children in to fill shopping bags with food and beer because they are too young to be arrested.Suddenly a mass exodus: the precint had been compromised and there were shouts of ‘iPhones! Xboxes! Everything! You can get whatever you want!’ Hoodies went up and scarfs went over faces, in they went and more ‘respectable’ cars started arriving to collect the goods. Youths started arriving with hammers and the women and girls backed off. What appalled me most were the amount of families, and I mean kids in the back seat, involved in all of this. Like some kind of surreal supermarket sweep, winner takes all, what a larrrff! Children hung out of their car windows video-ing it all on their mobiles."


Now, looking back the whole situation makes me angry. I detest how that night made me feel. I resent that these people made me feel unsafe in my own home and that they have had their fun at the expense of my community, particularly as it becomes apparent that the perpetrators were by and large from outside the area. If I'm honest, part of me wants to take the baseball bat and wrap it around a few heads to see if I can knock sense into them. I am furious and I am outraged. I'm also worried because I don't know how to fix this and no-one else seems to know either.

In the short term, charging and prosecuting as many of offenders as possible will help to deter others but it doesn't deal with the underlying problem. These were ordinary people: someone's child, someone's mother or father, someone's brother or sister. They get up each day and carry on as normal, playing with their mates, having a pint in the local pub or going to school or work. What happened to make ordinary folk sink to such detestable behaviour?

If you were able to line up all the rioters across the whole country and ask each of them why they did it, you would get a hundred different excuses. We've all seen the news; we all know what people (rioters, observers, victims, police, Councillors and MPs) are saying and everyone seems to have a different opinion. Everything from bankers to Twitter, from police being too heavy-handed, to police being too soft, from the government cuts, to racism, is being blamed. What that says to me is that this is a riot with no Cause, a view that is further reinforced by the indiscriminate nature of the violence: A small business was just as likely a target as a major chain and a bank was no more likely to be hit than a supermarket or a post office. Businesses, offices, shops and even homes were all fair-game and the police only came under attack when they turned up to disperse the vandals and thieves. There's no ideology here except for a greed for material wealth and a lust for violence.

To my mind, the riots are a symptom of a society too rooted in consumerism, too hung up on ownership and too selfish to appreciate how well-off and lucky we all are. As individuals are charged, we can see few distinct patterns emerging; people who are middle class and relatively well off have been just as involved as council tenants who survive on benefits and the unemployed stand side-by-side with the employed in the dock. It's not about poverty (you cannot make this claim when you're on TV wearing designer gear and carrying a Blackberry and be taken seriously) or cuts. There is a deep seated attitude that has infected some individuals and sections of society. It's an attitude that wants whatever it can get for free and that says it's right if I want to do it and can get away with it and only feels remorse at getting caught. To highlight this, I use the example of the lads Hubby and I caught trying to smash a bus-shelter a couple of weeks ago, long before the riots. He picked up a concrete block and was about to use it on the shelter for no other reason than he felt like it.

We raise our children to think and behave like us, to share our beliefs and ideologies. Society moves and changes incredibly slowly and attempts to deliberately shape it have been known to back fire horribly. So how can we fix it? I don't know. I don't have an answer. And that terrifies me almost as much as the riot itself.

For now, you can make the world a better place by helping to identify those responsible. GMP have photos of their 'most wanted' here. Shop a Moron now!