my odyssey to the liverpool palestine protest

musings on white liberalism, the BBC, the beauty of solidarity & what we can do with all these awful situations

The day really starts on Friday afternoon, when I ask my parents if they will come to the National March for Palestine in Liverpool with me this Saturday. They've seen what happened in Lebanon, despite the BBC’s apparent neutral journalism of refusing to report anything going on in Gaza at all.

They say they won’t, that it is not their place as white people to weigh on this issue, that it is too complicated and weighed down with history. 

I say it is not complicated, it is simple. That if we do not show up for people of colour because we are too scared how will they know we back them at all? Surely they will be forced to believe that we, the people sitting at home, are against them? That surely, whoever you are, Zionist or Palestinian, this crosses any possible definition of retribution you could bring up. That it is evil, pure and simple.

I ask them what they think they would've done in Germany during the Holocaust.

My mother tells me she was thinking of writing a letter to her MP.

I say, good. You do that. I am shocked at her, appalled, sickened. My mother, who ran the PTA single handed for years, who volunteered with me at the food bank, who helps refugees with sewing projects, and set up mutual aid networks in London to get older people food during COVID, who sewed thousands of masks and sets of PPE for the local hospital. When I heard the phrase a girl’s greatest tragedy is that she will become her mother, I said, good. I hope so. My mother, a liberal?

And then she tells me that she is worried that there will be violence.

I say that there might be, but it wouldn’t be from our side.

She says that I am forbidden to go.

I say fine. I say that I had wanted to go clubbing anyway. I skulk off to my room.

I pack my bag with food, water and sun cream. I buy the cheapest ticket that I could, with my last £15. I leave quietly at 10, texting my friend my plan so if my parents happen to contact her she could corroborate.

On the platform, I write a letter to my mother. I do not know if I will send it to her, but I need to get the words out somehow.

I travel to Euston, and catch the train to Northampton, then from Northampton to Crewe. Here, there is a 3 and a half hour layover at half 1 in the morning, to wait for the trains to start again. There are several men waiting already in the seats, and anyway, I can not risk my things being stolen, so I know sleep is not an option.

A middle-aged Asian man approaches me. He asks when the trains started again. I say quarter past five. We sigh in unison, and then laugh. He tells me he had emigrated from China to North Carolina to teach sociology at UNC, and that now he was travelling to Edinburgh for a book he was writing.

I say that sounds very interesting, and that all I knew of North Carolina was the song East Virginia. He laughs, and says that he does not know it, but that he will give it a listen.

He asks me where I am headed to at this crazy hour. I tell him about the protest in Liverpool. He nods, says that is good. He says that there were encampments for Gaza at UNC. That he couldn't say anything anti-Israel publicly, because he would lose his job, but that he slips money to his protesting students, to make sure they understand.

I smile and say that sometimes that is the only way.

We talk of Palestine. Of art. Of the state of the British education system. Of my great great grandparents, Jews who fled from Czechoslovakia to Britain at the start of the 20th century. How they changed their names, assimilated, told no-one of their Judaism. How we found out through a DNA test. About how Christians banned Jews from owning lands, which meant they could not become farmers. How because of this, many became moneylenders, because usury was prohibited In the Christian faith. How, when the townspeople racked up debts, or when the king did something wrong, the ire would be directed to the Jews instead, and they would be exiled. I tell him that is where the stereotype of Jews as money hungry elites originate from there.

We talk of communism and capitalism. A man behind us interjects, an Eastern European. He says he was a soldier once.

He argues with me about communism. He hates communism. I say that I never said I liked communism, only that I hate capitalism, and what it does to people's lives and souls. He ignores me. He tells me of the wars he has fought in. He tells me communism could never work, because even if Marx was right, humans are too messy to be able to follow as idealistic a doctrine as that. I agree. Then he says to the professor that the reason America is so messed up is because it's full of amoral, power-hungry men whose only god is money. I agree, and I joke that it sounds like he is actually arguing against capitalism now. He says ha! 

I try to explain it to him. How the three main aspects of capitalism are first, the will to power (which is money), second, money, and the third, a lack of morals to do anything to get the first two, however evil. He does not listen. I know I am right. It is like talking to a brick wall. He refuses to concede anything. He tells me that He tells me that it is human nature to be greedy, and to crave power. I disagree. I tell him I don't believe there is such a thing as human nature, and that it's just an excuse to defend evil in yourself and others. I tell him that the only human nature there is, is fallibility. Fallibility to greed. Fallibility to power. Fallibility to love and friendship and compassion. Fallibility to envy. Fallibility to laziness, to letting the loudest voice remain the “truest” one.

He says I am wrong, but he cannot argue with me. I shake my head, ignoring his talk of how since the start of time there has been power, and those desperate and amoral enough to get it by any means necessary. How it is intrinsic to humanity. How there were Jews who bankrolled Hitler. I shake my head, silent. That is untrue, and antisemitic, I say. But I have said my piece. know I am right.

He says he doesn't understand why I want to fight. I say what is the other option? Either I fight, or I give up and lie down to rot, like Dostoevsky's Underground Man. Or, the professor says, you stick your head in the sand and refuse to comprehend anything that’s going on. Yes, I say. If you are truly ignorant. But if you are not, can you call yourself a good man? For walking past another man while he begs for your help, because you have a mortgage to pay and kids to look after and a job to do. We are all busy with life. But it doesnt mean you can't do something.

People raise their heads from their half sleep, turning around. They are listening, listening to us. Listening to me.

I point to slave rebellions, to Harriet Tubman and the civil rights movement, the Montgomery Bus boycott, the Greensboro sit in. The Black Panthers’  free breakfasts for children. The March on Selma. I talk of the Vietnam War, of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez and Creedence Clearwater Revival and Bruce Springsteen, of the student protesters and the draft dodgers and the hippies. I talk of the gay liberation movement, of ACT UP, of the die-ins on the steps of government buildings, of the AIDS quilt. I talk of the LandBack Movement. I talk of South Africa, of Nelson and Winnie Mandela and the ANC and uMkhonto weSizwe, of the Olympics boycott and of the international sanctions. How all of it did work, however slow it might have seemed at the time.

He says, but it was not Martin Luther King or Malcolm X who signed the 15th Amendment, it was the white men in Congress.

I nod. I know that, I say. But how much longer would slavery have gone on, how much longer would the schools have been segregated for, how much longer would women be disenfranchised, would queer people have to have snuck around in secret, if not for the activism of all those people? Fifty years? A hundred? How many more centuries would white people have kept enslaved people as property, before they became sickened by themselves, before they woke up and understood their own excruciating evil? Would it ever have happened at all?

He shrugs, and launches into another tirade about something unrelated. 

I sigh. This fucking guy, I think. I say I need to go to the toilet.

I switch on Nina Simone, and dance my way down the empty, soaking platforms, waving to the security cameras. I listen to her cry power in her deep sanguine voice.

I think of Gaza.

I play Joan Baez's Prison Trilogy, the saddest song I know. Her voice is strong, mournful, true. In the melancholic orange glow of the departures board, I feel vindicated. He might not have conceded, but I still won. Joan sings:

“In an Arizona jail there are some who tell the tale how

Billy fought the sergeant for some milk that he demanded

Knowing they'd remain the boss

Knowing he would pay the cost

They saw he was severely reprimanded.

In the blackest cell on A Block

He hanged himself at dawn

With a note stuck to the bunk head

Don't mess with me, just take me home.”

At this line, I start to cry a little. 

I listen to Fiona Apple recite her poem When the Pawn.

When the pawn hits the conflicts he thinks like a king

What he knows throws the blows when he goes to the fight

And he'll win the whole thing 'fore he enters the ring

There's no body to batter when your mind is your might

So when you go solo, you hold your own hand

And remember that depth is the greatest of heights

And if you know where you stand, then you know where to land

And if you fall it won't matter, cuz you'll know that you're right

I wipe my tears away. These women hold me fast, hold me upright. They give me spirit and strength again.

When I come back, the group has separated into small clumps. People nod at me, smile at me. Even the Middle-Eastern guy manning the ticket box was listening, it turns out. He shakes my hand. He says good luck with your journey, sister. He says thank you for supporting us. I say thank you. I say it's the least I can do.

The professor tells me I should visit China. He says I am a free spirit. I laugh, roll my eyes. Inside, I am glowing. I say I will.

When the train finally arrives, I feel as though I've been at the station for days.

I let myself sleep for forty minutes on the train. 

I arrive at Liverpool Lime Street at 8:17AM, four hours before the protest is due to start. I am shaking with nerves and excitement, and from the two Red Bulls I have drunk. 

I see people beginning to set up on St George's Plateau. 

I knock on closed shop windows, asking for cardboard. I tell them I am marching for Palestine. A kind girl from Lush finds some for me. She tells me good luck. I thank her.

I sit by the pile of premade signs and watch the people put up stalls and play their protest music through megaphones, Eminem booming across the square. I am here, finally.

I offer to help with the unloading. They shake their heads. No, no. But if you want to help with stewarding or fundraising, you can, a woman says.

Okay, I say. Sounds good.

There's all sorts of people helping out. An old white man and a young white woman. A black nonbinary lesbian. A woman in a niqab, who tells me her father is a Rastafarian and her mother is a Jew, and who is one of the naturally funniest people I've ever met. A white queer autistic teenager who has a hyperfixation on marine conservation. The nicest woman I have met in my life, a Somalian immigrant who now works as an NHS CBT therapist. Young Koreans and old First Nations people, and middle aged Indians. Toddlers sit on shoulders, and babies cry from prams. Even in London, at carnivals, I have never seen such a diverse mixture of humans.

I give the sign I made to a woman in the square, since I can't hold it with my hands full.

They set me up with a Zettle and a bucket, and I weave through the growing crowd, asking for donations. We’re raising money to fund the protest, I tell them. These events cost over £20,000 to put on. 

I target the loiterers at the back, the older middle class people who have the proper cash. I know my people.

People are far more generous than I expect. If they don't give, it's only because they're flat broke like me, or because they've already given. 

My sleep deprivation helps me going up to people with no fear. And people are impressed when they ask about my accent, and I tell them about my journey. People have come much farther, I say. From Wales, even. From Ireland.

We march ahead of the protest, shaking our buckets. I stop into a sandwich shop, and I ask what I can get for the last few coins in my pocket. I have 30p left in my bank account. 

He sees my bucket and my flag cape and my hi-vis, and he says, it’s on the house. Really, I ask? I am so hungry. I ate all my food on the train, but I don't want to scam this guy’s small business.

He puts money into my bucket. There, he says. It's paid for.

When the protest begins, we stand in a line, walking in between the banners, shouting over the din of the music and chanting and drumming.

Though I thought I had asked almost everyone, and it's hard to stop people before they walk past, people still give. My voice is hoarse, and still I yell.

The people gather by the River Mersey, outside the Labour conference to listen to speeches by authors and poets and activists. Even Maxine Peake reads something. Between each speech, we chant From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. In our thousands, in our millions, we are all Palestinians.

It is quarter to four. I am washed out, falling asleep. My mum has texted me to come home from my friends house, that there are chores that need being done. I have told my mum we are in the cinema watching Zach Snyder’s Justice League. That gives me an alibi for at least another four hours.

Someone books me a ticket on a coach, and I get on, too weary to even pretend to protest at their kindness. I fall asleep to Joan Baez, asking me how many years can some people exist, before they’re allowed to be free?

When I wake up, a man called Zuhair is ushered to speak at the front of the bus. He is an Iranian immigrant, born in the 1940s, he tells us. The rain lashes at the windows. He talks of the Iran-Iraq war, of Afghanistan and the CIA and Operation Cyclone. Of meeting Saddam Hussein. Of ISIS and western imperialism. Of the Crash of ‘79. Of Kashmir and Britain. Of Israel, and of Adam and Esau and Jacob. Of the Edomites and the Israelites. Of German Nazism and German Zionism. Of South Africa and the ICJ. He talks for an hour or more without stopping for longer than five seconds, and he never stumbles or forgets what he's saying or has to read from a script. Around me, people are grinning at each other. Something special is happening, I can tell.

When he sits down, the previously silent bus breaks into a rapture of conversations. Somebody mentions the idea of doing caroling for Palestine. 

Oh, sing a song, the women next to her says. Sing Oh Palestine, Oh Palestine.

We sing together, squinting at lyrics on our phones, shaky at first, but then more and more confident. An Italian woman stands up and teaches us Bella Ciao. I show them Blowin’ in the Wind, and they say it is very beautiful. It was written for the Vietnam War, I say. They are stunned. They say, but it is so perfect for now.

I know, I say, tired and sad and excited. I know, I know, I know.

Someone asks me why the young people “don't stay” at the protests. Why they come to one or two, and then stop. I explain that I think it is because we don't know any history that is important. We don't learn about Operation Cyclone or Operation Paperclip in school, we have to seek it out on the Internet. I say, if you want to reach young people, make TikToks. Talk about the history of Palestine, the history of Iraq and Iran and Afghanistan and India. Talk about British colonialism and Western imperialism, because we have never learned. That is what will bring the young people and keep us here. We need to understand in a historical context the importance of what is going on here, especially being in England.

I talk to a woman sitting close to me about her visit to Gaza in February. That the Gazans said to her "We see you. Thank you for your fight. We see you in the streets and in your artwork and your songs and your arguments. Please do not stop fighting for us.” About how she watched children learn and perform the dabkeh dance, so they could feel their history, even if they were kept from their schools. I tell her about my parents. I say, that is the problem with white English people. They have almost no traditions anymore. They barely talk of our myths, our folklore, which used to be whispered from old women to tiny children around the fire, or as they were tucked into bed, like other cultures still do. We are unmoored in our own cultural history, blind to the extent of of our own imperialism. And that is how the fascists creep in and slowly rewrite histories. If we do not learn about how we have influenced this world, moulded it through war and money and power, we cannot ever understand how to change it.

And we have no community, apart from our immediate families. Because of our atheism, we have no church people to rely on. People don’t talk to their neighbours anymore, ask for favours, bring round food. It's because of capitalism, partly, I say. But what happens is people feel the malaise that they know something is wrong, and they want to do something about it. Some join leftist groups, Marxists groups. Some set up community outreach and food banks. Some leave home and find family in gay bars and clubs. And some go online and find far right forums. They take their knives and their guns, and they commit atrocities against their fellow man. And it’s because there's no community, no mental health support, or access to medication, no religion as guidance for morality in a youth culture obsessed with violence because everyone is obsessed with it. Because the Tories are systematically dismantling and privatising the NHS. And because our government and our media is filled with fascists and fascist sympathisers. So they find, or are found, and given their own community, their own morality.  These racist riots we’ve been seeing in Britain aren’t only those people's faults, though, I say. If you read the newspaper for the past five, ten years, if you listen to the politicians from Tory to Labour, most of them are saying the same thing: Stop the Boats. It's like exciting a dog and then telling it off when it bites your hand. 

That man wasn't even an immigrant, I say. The one who killed all those poor little girls at the Taylor Swift dance class. And Valdo Calocane, the man who killed Barnaby Webber, Grace O'Malley-Kumar and Ian Coates, he legally immigrated here when he was 16. That they both had severe mental health issues.

But the people don't care about that. They want someone to punish. Because they're angry, and they have a right to be. I think of my Israeli friends on October 7th, watching them desperately try to call their families in Israel and receiving silence. How out of their mind with terror they were. But they can't take their anger out like this. It's not justice. It's retribution, pure and simple. And it's not even true retribution, because these aren't the perpetrators. If you are angry, turn your ire to the BBC. To the Daily Mail. To America and Germany and Britain, who sell bombs and weapons to Israel, so they can drop them on innocent children and families in the name of Hamas. To Netanyahu. These are the people, the organisations who are perpetuating this. These are the people who need to be held accountable to incitement to violence and war crimes.

When I get back to my house, bumping the barriers on the Underground, it is half ten. My parents call hello to me from the kitchen. I am dizzy with happiness. I have gotten away with it.

The next day, I tell my mum I am writing an article about Palestine. I argue with her again. I ask her to come to the London protest on October 5th. 

She says she will think about it. 

hey! if you read this far, thank you. it means a lot. if u want to come chat or whatever, my tumblr is cropcircling.