stethoscope Tottenham was lively! Stafford Scott an excellent compere as usual, pointing out that the police had closed the station today in co-operation with the protest in stark contrast to the closing down of discussion 9 years previously. A good history lesson - Broadwater Farm through to Mark Duggan.
It was about 50/50 black and white and maybe 200-300 people? One lane of the A10 completely blocked off. The other side down to one lane only.
Speakers included
- the mother of that poor 12 year old kid who got spotted playing with a toy gun through the window of their home - who were then raided by armed police
- several young speakers from 4frontproject in West London who were making banners for the protest yesterday when they found that a 14 year old boy on their estate was being arrested and intervened - which the police spectacularly failed to de-escalate like the twats they are.
- a guy from Forever Family - the lot who marched through Brixton during the reparations march and gave Nigel Farage a heart attack. They've got big plans including a database of police officer's names, numbers etc which possibly will get them into GDPR hot water but let's see. (When Hackney Community Defence Association did this in the 1990s they were subject to a mysterious "burglary")
- some relatives of those who died in police custody
"Even the white people are shouting 'fuck the police'!" was a nice thing to overhear.
A few anarcho-squatter faces from back in the day. Lots of SWP/SUTR and lone Sparts, Brixton Maoists, Fight Racism Fight Imperialism etc. I did not see any Nation of Islam this time (they were there at the last vigil outside Tottenham cop shop I went to).
Good protest support - bust cards, free food/water/suntan lotion, masks. Probably most people were wearing masks. I left about 3pm and it was still going strong.
The music was massively better than the small BLM thing on Stoke Newington common I went to.