‘If you set aside the whole protesting and getting arrested and going to jail and talking about one’s faith all the time stuff they were basically normal’, notes Frida Berrigan in this compelling reflection on her upbringing in a resistance community in Baltimore, and her current role as radical parent.
The ‘they’ are her parents, renowned Catholic peace activists Philip Berrigan and Elizabeth McAllister.
Quoting American poet Wendell Berry’s injunction to ‘be…
Sieben Linden ecovillage in winter. Photo: Herbst77regen
‘I was a bit worried about the project of self- sufficiency, and how few differences there were between them and mainstream society’, said Leslie Barson, describing her recent stay at a prominent eco-village in Germany.
Barson spent a month taking a course at Sieben Linden, an eco-village formed in the late ’90s that is aiming to find a more sustainable and self-sufficient way of life. During her stay there, Barson noticed some…
Last year, my friend was thrown out of an eco-action gathering. I can still taste the anger I felt when I heard the news. The organisers were in their early 20s. My friend is retired and has been centrally involved in these gatherings (and in eco-defence) for nearly 20 years. My lips still set in a hard line and my jaw clenches as I think about it. I freely admit I jumped to several conclusions – I bet he behaved like an idiot. I bet they didn’t care who he was or what his history is. I bet…
I’m writing this on the very eve of what a folkie of the ’60s, Nigel Denver, used to yearn for in song. He sang about the ‘Scottish Breakaway’ and maybe it’s come about or even came aboot.
During the Thatcher years, Westminster presided over what seemed an unstoppable diminution of the power of local authorities to control their own affairs. Instead central government took over to the extent that LAs seemed doomed to become collectively a powerless rump. How odd it is now to hear…
I don’t think I cry in public that often: just cinemas and theatres, weddings and funerals. Not demos – demos are for anger, for demonstrating coherent, rational opposition, for keeping your wits about you and being prepared for action. But when I saw the orthodox Jewish anti-Zionist bloc at the Gaza demo in Leeds, my throat tightened and the tears started running down my face. A friend appeared and I held on to them for about five minutes, sobbing. An unexpected reaction.
At the time…
I lick my lips and my eyes flick to the ceiling before I answer: ‘£450 a day.’ I’ve been dreading this moment, of telling ‘a client’ that my daily rate is likely more than twice their weekly income. And here is ‘the client’, a group of new co-operators in a Bradford Community Centre that’s seen better days. I backtrack almost immediately – instead we agree a total figure for helping them to reach certain goals.
This daily rate is justifiable, indeed within my consortium of advisors we…
I was injured at a blockade once. My affinity group was at one of the gates of the base; I was in the support group, I wasn’t sitting on the ground. I tried to put myself between them and the police, a policeman grabbed my arm and he swung me away. I twisted my ankle, I rolled around a bit in pain. The first aid person said it was a sprain, gave me a bandage and painkillers. I hobbled off.
I was shocked, I suppose. It took quite a long time to get over, it took over a year to get…
Last night, 21 people crowded into the Friends Meeting House in South Villas, Hastings, to hear Peace News co-editor Emily Johns tell the story of Walden Pond Housing Co-op, which was set up in 1998 and now owns a house and a flat in the town.
The main point of the evening was to explain 'How to Set Up a Housing Co-op', with a lot of help from the Radical Routes handbook of the same name (44 pages, £3 or download for free…
When I gave birth to my child, there he was, he was a boy! So different from me. If he had been a girl, I would have looked ahead at his childhood through the template of my own. I remember thinking: ‘Oh no, I don’t like football, I’ll need to get to grips with boys’ interests and needs’. I nevertheless gave him my dolls’ house furniture and found that he was his own person, didn’t like football anyway, and we did pretty well on gender, power and politics over the next 18 years.
But…
15 December
Edge Fund launch, London
Migrant Artists Mutual Aid had mixed emotions about applying for money from this new initiative, which is a new approach to grant-making that wants to assist groups working for systemic change.
The irony is that part of the systemic change that MaMa is working for is to create confidence in mutual aid and not in charity, to create an organisation that is not dependent on other people’s money. But I found myself at the…
Part-trade show, part-international conference, part-jamboree, Co-operatives United was enormous. The biggest co-operative event in decades combined serious business and lots of fun in one huge melting pot. Young people rubbed shoulders with Russian business leaders, mime artists with Malaysian bankers, while co-operatives large and small talked and worked together.
This event was…
Co-ops are not inherently revolutionary – they meet the needs of their members, whatever those needs might be. For those of us who consider ourselves revolutionary, co-ops are a good a vehicle in this capitalist world for creating stability, creating income, meeting the needs of ourselves & our communities and walking the walk of non-hierarchy, non-exploitation, collective action, self-reliance, common ownership and mutual aid.
Radical Routes is a federation of co-ops which serve…
She said: What is history? And
he said History is an angel being
blown backwards into the future
He said: History is a pile of debris
And the angel wants to go back
and fix things To repair the things
that have been broken But there
is a storm blowing from Paradise
And the storm keeps blowing the
angel backwards into the future
And this storm, this storm is called
Progress
The Dream Before (for Walter Benjamin)…
27 September
Liverpool Public Enquiry Office UK Border Agency
We are going to have dinner at Anne’s after Fatoumata’s interview at the Home Office. I am meeting Fatoumata, but get lost and can’t find the centre. I should have printed a map, then I see a flash of pink hair which I realise is Penny walking up the road with Fatoumata!
After I got my residency papers, Anne and I launched ‘Migrant Artists Mutual Aid’ to raise money for a specialist solicitor for Fatoumata and…
Sundown Monday
Blessed are all things that come from the grape.
We are having a dinner with all the people getting ready to move into Rose Howey House, the old bail hostel that my co-operative has been trying to buy for three and a half months, it's Rosh Hashanah and we are eating apples and honey and home made vegan challah before an important meeting. Rob brought a bottle of kosher wine, splashed out and got the expensive stuff. The cheap stuff is made in New York,…
