Monday Stockwell station vigil. Pictures and report.

Guido | 26.07.2005 12:04 | Repression | London

On Monday evening several hundred people gathered to remember Jean Charles deMenezes at Stockwell tube station.

Some of the hundreds.

Remembering Jean.

One of Jean's workmates.

A strong showing from the...

...local Latin American community.

The placard says it all.

Dozens of people had arrived a full half hour before the vigil started to lay flowers by the entrance to the station. By 6pm there were several hundred in attendance mostly from the local Latin American community. The vigil was marred for many by several loud arguments that broke out from the very beginning of the proceedings. On one hand the organizers from the Stop the War Coalition could have done more to facilitate contributions from those in attendance as well as the speakers they had lined up. On the other the heckling from one organized (mostly American) group in the crowd was totally disrespectful to the occasion especially when they shouted abuse during the minutes silence called to remember Jean. Fucking idiots.

This aside the speeches on the whole were very good especially the ones by the local Brazilians and Portuguese who had shown up for the vigil. Considering the short notice the turnout was very good and the local anger was plain to see. Sadly a lot of people left before the end, which was a shame because they missed a very good spontaneous march.

Guido
e-mail: guidoreports@riseup.net

Comments

Hide the following 6 comments

what was the heckling about?

26.07.2005 15:17

cheers for the report!
what were the hecklers trying to say?
also interested to know what the loud arguments were about...
xx

wondering

"hecklers"

26.07.2005 16:34

"Hecklers" weren't "hecklers" if I recall, but people from Brazil demanding a go on the megaphone. There was a large number of people from Brazil that didn't want to hear the stop-the-war coalition speakers and wanted to express themselves. Eventually, I believe, everyone who wanted to speak did manage to. There were also people expressing quite vocally their opinion that we should engage in mass civil disobedience, which is of course true, but I'm not sure last night was the time for it.

Guido, I've lifted one of your photos for my blog[1]. I was at the vigil yesterday and live really close to there.

[1]

http://paganarchy.net/blogs/sean.php

Sean

Political capital

26.07.2005 17:43

Is it right that political capital should be made from a vigil ?

Tony

Hecklers

26.07.2005 18:10

The heckling seemed to be coming from the Global Women's Strike group who were standing just in front of me. They were demanding that the members of the family and friends should be allowed to speak (a fair enough request, of course).

Local members of the Stop The War Coalition did make an effort to reassure them that there would be speakers from the family and the Brazilian contingent at the demo but then they kept on heckling . . . even during the one minute silence.

I wasn't very impressed with their behaviour to be perfectly honest . . . and they also tried to prevent the Iraqi man from addressing the crowd on two separate occasions. Seeing as some of Global Women's Strike people were American this was very unfortunate in the extreme.

Pete

So they were the 'Global Womens Strike'?

26.07.2005 19:30

If you are refering to the women with the home made placards who were indeed American then their behaviour was disgusting. They seemed to decide from the word go that:
They were in charge, that Muslims were not allowed to speak, that this was nothing to do with the war and that this was a suitable opportunity for a sectarian confrontation between rival trots. The way they rode across the feelings of everyone present including the freinds of Jean was a disgrace.
Firstly was Jean not murdered because the pigs thought he was a Muslim? How dare they judge the suitability of speakers on the grounds of their religion! Did they call this vigil? Do they have any connection to Jean's family? Where did their mandate come from to wreck what should have been a dignified occasion?
More to the point why did several hundred people allow what was probably no more than 8 attention seeking scum get away with this??? Myself I have little time for the control freakery of the SWP/STWC. However I would rather see them challenged by coherant argument than a bunch of nutters who make the Sparticists look sane. If they had wanted to alienate South London's Brazilian community and boost the local SWP's credibility then the 'Global Womens Strike' certainly succeeded.

4th Bomb Survivor - Interrogated by police

11.12.2006 22:56

Not sure if you've read this blog before but this black guy who was interrogated by Anti- Terror Branch, ran from the scene of the 4th bomb on a bus in Tavistock Square and felt he could have been shot by SO19 as he ran from the bus.

Gives an interesting insight.

http://daniel77witness.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_archive.html

Capacity
Homepage: http://daniel77witness.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_archive.html