Solidarity with Black Lives Matter.

We would like to offer our full support and solidarity to BLM protesters around the world fighting for racial justice, against white supremacy and police brutality. We would also add that we offer solidarity to protesters involved at the protest in bristol last weekend who are being investigated by the police for doing something which should have happened decades ago, toppling the statue of the racist slaver Edward Colston.

When protesters, who joined the Bristol’s Black Lives Matter demonstration, toppled Edward Colston statue last week they probably didn’t conceive the impact their symbolic act would have. They tore down a statue and helped push discussions around race and history in a new direction. These views voices on Britain’s colonial and economic past have become central to the dialogue.

Black Lives Matter: Solidarity statement

Content warning - racism, racist violence, police brutality, state violence, anti blackness, transphobia, misgendering, misogynoir, colonialism, transmisogyny

We offer our solidarity and compassion to the people in the US and UK bravely resisting the structures of white supremacy and systemic anti-blackness which are endemic in our societies. The murder of George Floyd has furthered a global movement which is provoking tangible change in many countries. Resist the media narratives of chaos and brutality; these protests are courageous, well-organised actions by communities seeking to abolish the structure of racist state violence.

U.S. Port Workers Stop Work in Protest of George Floyd Killing

Dockworkers across the USA stopped work on the 9th June in a show of support for George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement.

Workers with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) stopped work and lay down their tools for an 8 minute and 46 second moment of silence in honour of George Floyd and all victims of police brutality.The 8 minutes and 46 seconds is representative of the amount of time George Floyd was pinned to the ground by Minneapolis police officers on May 25, 2020.

The International Longshoremen’s Association, AFL/CIO (ILA) and United States Maritime Alliance, Ltd. (USMX), representing employers of the East and Gulf Coast longshore industry, also stopped work for a “peaceful protest hour” at all ports from Maine to Texas.

Black Live Matter: Learning From the Past

The Black Lives Matter movement across the world has certainly created a space for resistance against racism, white supremacy and the dynamics of colonialism. Colonialism in the past but also the remains of colonial ideas in the present. The idea that black people and People of Colour, should be "grateful" to the society that offers individuals work and, sometimes, offers asylum and refugee status, is a product of that old colonial mentality that we have to destroy at its roots. The uprooting of the Edward Colston statue that seems to have caused so much uproar is a sign of this on-going and all-pervading colonialist mentality. Surely, it is argued, Colston has brought benefits to the city (of Bristol) and supported in his time a wide range of philanthropic initiatives. The other aspects, the fact that he was a slave trader, can be conveniently put aside as "not relevant" to today.