Activism

About 50 people braved the melting snows in mid-January to come to the first-ever Peace News Winter Gathering, at the Sumac Centre in Nottingham. The gathering was followed by street theatre focussed on Nottingham arms traders Heckler & Koch.

Gathering participants heard the legendary Keith McHenry, co-founder of Food Not Bombs; the equally legendary George Farebrother of NETLAP and World Court Project UK; as well as workshops on “Killer Drones” (by Chris Cole of FoR and Jim…

Other people go to Glastonbury; I go to Raise Your Banners. Instead of going to Glastonbury, and spending lots of money and seeing a CND stall on the side, I go to support a festival of political song.

There are sort of two parts to the festival. There are a number of political choirs, so in one part of the festival there’s a showcase for them, and so there was the London Socialist Choir, and Red & Green, and then all the northern choirs.

This year the festival was in…

When I go, I feel revitalised, and reawoken, and really stimulated. I used to think maybe it was a bit lifestylist, and fetishist, but actually the level of debate and discourse I reconnect with when I go is really inspiring.
It’s actually more inspiring than any other forum I go into. I learn a lot. It could be more focused, but ultimately I feel I’m back with “my gang” and my mates. It helps keep things real and radical.
It reminds me to not make compromises, to keep believing…

It was a long time ago that I read The Women’s Room, nearly 30 years ago now. Another time in my life, almost like another life. Sometimes life can be like that, the feeling of having lived a number of lives in one life, like a snake shedding its skin and starting renewed.
I was given a copy of The Women’s Room by a woman who lived in a flat downstairs, I read this book that proclaimed to “change lives” when I went into hospital to give birth to my first child. At the time I had been…

“I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” 2nd Corinthians, 12:10

As a devout Catholic and political activist, that quotation has always stuck out in my memory. There’s a great tradition in my faith of finding strength in times of struggle. And it’s no great secret that those of us in the activist community have a multitude of obstacles in front of us: police barricades, political manoeuvres that leave…

Because it takes so many years to actually get anywhere, even in the council election, I’ve found there’s more focus on building a campaign than actually becoming a part of the “party machine”.

I’ve never felt the sort of necessary dedication needed to actually get elected for office. I’m not really a party animal.

I’ve been surprised by how much more time people spend talking about tactics than they do talking about policy.

I think so many people who stand for office…

Guilt is the feeling that “I can’t do enough”. That as much as you try to go to all the meetings you can, do all the bits and pieces you can, you never feel you’re doing enough.

I also think sometimes when you find yourself getting to burnout, then a big part of not being able to recognise what’s happening is the feeling that “I can’t stop because if I stop, it won’t get done”.

That is, we think we’re very, very important, and of course what we do is important, but there has…

Activism and boredom? I just wouldn’t connect the two things. Honestly, they are just two unrelated things in my mind.
Activist, male, 40, Milton Keynes

The most boring thing I’ve ever done in connection with activism was making boring phone calls. Making hundreds of phone calls trying to mobilise people to come to an event, using exactly the same words to each person.

Going on big rallies with the same speeches and the same people over and over again (and it’s…

When I was younger and more active in the peace movement, I would say to people who said “I was once in CND”, or who were a bit too old for active service: why once? You can still write!

Pithy letters to the press – that's one thing you can write – or inspiring verses if you’re a bit of a poet. And of course people who are in prison - who've gone the distance - need support.

Now I’m in the category of the has-been-active supporters, but I can still lay down in the street with…

A very long time ago, in 1994, I managed to use my membership of the Royal Horticultural Society to obtain the freedom of an imprisoned peace activist!

There had been a protest in Farnborough, against the sale of Hawks to Indonesia, and my daughter had been arrested for filling British Aerospaces’ fountain with red dye and taken to the police station. I was asked to go up there and try negotiate her release since she refused to give her date of birth.

At the reception desk, I…

On 17 September, the Department of Health announced that it had identified nine personality types of heavy drinkers who are at risk of liver damage and other alcohol-related illnesses. By pure chance, on that same day, Peace News announced that it had identified nine very similar personality types of “heavy activists” who frequent meetings rather than pubs, and who are at risk of brain damage and other activism-related conditions.

The nine personality types are:

“De-stress…

I am from a large and close family, and while most are supportive of our peace work, there have been occasions of conflict. I hate falling out with anyone, but in particular with people I am close to. So when one family member told me I shouldn’t be taking our small children on a large anti-war demo, I was very upset. We had a painful discussion about it, I stood my ground, and later I was touched when that person came to a vigil I was organising. She still disagrees with me, but I think we…

I would like to dissent from the celebration of May ’68.

In 1968, I was an editor of Freedom, the anarchist paper, at a time when the anarchist movement was growing rapidly. Anarchists were exploring the potential of nonviolence

Both the Committee of 100 and CND had moved a lot of people towards an understanding of what the state was doing secretly such as the regional seats of government which were placed to rule over the country in the aftermath of a nuclear war.

In…

I suppose one of the things is that I don't see myself as “black”. I don't give myself a label. I'm just trying to stay alive, and do the things that can make that happen.

I am surprised and a bit disappointed that there are not more black people in the activist circles I move in. I'm mostly into permaculture and other things that grab my interest, like planting trees or getting involved in cooperatives or car- bon reduction.

I'm surprised and I don't know why there aren't…

Reading has changed for me over the years.

Much time is now spent reading a computer screen: emails, websites, blogs. Communication is much easier but there is so much of it that it is hard to choose.

There is instant access to every campaign, every injustice. The unreasonable and the inarticulate can also have their day.

And yet along with the potential to overwhelm comes the opportunity to select. Social networking sites like Facebook offer advertisers the chance to…