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2 June 1967: Berlin police kill Benno Ohnesorg

This week in working class history


29/05/2025

On 2nd June, 1967 the Shah of Iran visited West Berlin. Some recent revisionist history implies that pre-revolution Iran was a liberal paradise, but the Shah was a brutal dictator. On his state visit he was accompanied by so-called Jubelpersonen (“Persian celebrators”) – members of his secret police. Jubelpersonen attacked student protesters in Schöneberg in the afternoon.

That evening, the Shah visited the Deutsche Oper. Once again, he was met with protests. This time, it was the German police who attacked the demonstrators. One policeman, Karl-Heinz Kurras, fired a shot which hit 26-year old student Benno Ohnesorge in the back of the head. Ohnesorg, who had been attending his first political demonstration and whose wife was pregnant, died in hospital. Kurras was later acquitted of his murder.

The police killing of Ohnesorge is seen as the catalysor of the German 1968 movement. Sebastian Haffner argued in konkret that “with the student pogrom of 2 June 1967 fascism in West Berlin had thrown off its mask.” SDS leader Rudi Dutschke called for the expropriation of the Springer press, accusing them of incitement to murder. Dutschke in turn was accused by professor Jürgen Habermas of “leftist fascism”,

As the US slaughter continued in Vietnam, the SDS continued to mobilise both anti-war demonstrations and a historic Vietnam Conference in the TU in February 1968. In April 1968, Dutschke was shot by a right winger. The 1968 movement ultimately fragmented, with different members turning to terrorism, the Green Party and even fascism. But for a while, when state terror was clear, even Germany saw united radical protests.

Just Stop Oil: the shock-factor campaign that actually achieved its goal

You’ve probably heard of them, even if you think you haven’t


28/05/2025

Two Just Stop Oil protestors kneel in front of the Van Gogh sunflowers painting that they have just covered in soup. One holds the empty can of soup in their hand.

Spattering tomato soup across Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, invading Rugby pitches in Twickenham, exploding confetti on an unsuspecting Sigourney Weaver mid-soliloquy: Just Stop Oil’s (JSO) infamy is impressive considering its mere three-year tenure. Branded petty, absurd, and obnoxious by a bevy of media outlets, and trolled relentlessly online, they shot into public consciousness with the subtlety of a flying brick and a burning planet as their backdrop. On April 26th, 2025, the group held its last demonstration in the centre of London––a peaceful and comparatively mundane march from parliament to the headquarters of Shell. Having ostensibly achieved its original aim––the United Kingdom’s government stopping the issue of new oil or gas exploration licences––their neon hi-vis jackets have been hung up. Direct action has officially been called to a heel. But the group is not surrendering in the fight for climate justice. 

During JSO’s three years in action, its supporters were reported to have been arrested 3,300 times, imprisoned 180 times, and currently 11 of its members remain incarcerated. Sentences range from conspiring to create a public nuisance, to criminal damage, to disruption of traffic. Just this week, nine of its activists avoided jail, with the judge ruling that no harm was caused. Despite her ruling, she reprimanded the protestors––arrested at Heathrow Terminal 5––for treating the courtroom as an “extension of the protest.” Her reprimand was due to what she considered to be a lack of remorse and accountability. For JSO members, however, it seems that they differ from the judge as to where accountability ought to be taken. 

They worked in extremes. But the crux of their argument was that the situation was extreme. Their high-profile tactics were disruptive, but nonviolent. The effects of climate change are more than a nuisance: they are fatal. 

 “In spite of the guilty verdict, of being held in prison and of my impending sentencing, I feel completely at peace. I acted in line with my conscience and moral convictions. I told the truth at trial, both about the climate crisis and about my actions and intentions. I know I acted nonviolently: without violence and actively against violence. I acted to prevent the real Public Nuisance that is climate breakdown,” wrote Ella, a 22-year-old member currently serving time in a women’s prison in Manchester after being found guilty of conspiring to create a public nuisance. 

Protesting laws in the UK have become more stringent in the years since the conception of Just Stop Oil; the Public Order Act 2023 was specifically introduced to target climate activists, providing law enforcement agencies with greater powers to combat so-called “disruptive” protests. The new legislations countering such activity have not been met with universal acclaim. UN Special Rapporteur Michel Forst expressed his concerns to the BBC following the imprisonment of Dr Patrick Hart, who caused thousands of pounds of damage to fuel pumps during a JSO demonstration, saying, “In France you would receive a small fine, never prison. But in the UK peaceful protesters receive 12 months in prison.” The Joint Committee on Human Rights also called for the measures within the act to be watered down, citing the importance for residents of the UK to exercise their democratic rights. 

The blockage of roads, interference of public events, damage to art and culture, and impact on emergency services spawned by JSO-led protests dampened its popularity somewhat in the public eye: inevitably, vandalism and inconvenience can lead to alienation. But their methods are the same that have been employed by activists throughout history: it could be argued that high-profile, disruptive, obnoxious tactics are those that have spurred the most change. 

The Suffragettes engaged in relentless civil obedience under the motto “Deeds, not words.” Much like JSO, they were viewed as nuisances, the subjects of much mockery and accusations of overblown hysteria. Criticisms of JSO’s actions as ostentatious, unruly, or inconvenient prove that their formula worked as planned: isn’t every protest intended to be attention-grabbing, to disrupt, and dismantle? The response of the government to introduce stringent laws against such protestors seems to send a message that compliance and submission must be practiced, even when infringements on human rights occur around us. Peaceful marches may not immediately seem to challenge or disrupt, but they are still fundamentally radical, still conceived with the intent to draw eyes, change minds, and crucially, show solidarity. 

“This is how civil resistance works: applying nonviolent pressure until we force change to happen,” the Just Stop Oil website reads. “It’s how the Freedom Riders forced an end to segregated buses in 1961. It’s how disabled people won accessible transport in the nineties and how Just Stop Oil won no new oil and gas licenses in 2024. We know how to win, but it’s going to take all of us.”

The fierce crackdown on activism was undoubtedly a factor in the group drawing to a close. The official line remains that the battle was won, their demand realized. But they’ve advised they will be taking a “different approach.” Coy as they have been about future plans, the message seems to be that outrageous antics will be dialled down. But while they may be retiring from civil disobedience, they are not retiring from their climate goals. The end of JSO is less of a shutdown and more of a reassembling. Like any good team preparing for battle, they are overhauling strategy based on the opposition. Public hostility and controversy were necessary tools for applying pressure to the government to stop oil. Now they need new devices. 

In 2023, John Wight wrote a piece for Medium asserting that JSO was a failure. Echoing sentiments of many of the British public, he qualified their protests as devoid of self-awareness and empathy for the everyman. Theatregoers largely booed as Sigourney Weaver was wheeled offstage in the midst of The Tempest. Yet JSO protestors remained resolute, always remaining at the scene of the crime to take ownership of disturbances. “I can’t sleepwalk [my children] into a future of food shortages, life-threatening storms and wars for resources,” lecturer Hayley Walsh, one of the activists arrested at the West End said in a group statement. “Years of writing to MPs, going on marches and teaching my students to be more sustainable hasn’t seen the urgent change needed.”

A new podcast, Sabotage, launched with the goal of examining JSO’s tactics. Its hosts are nothing if not thorough: they worked to gain the trust of JSO and obtain interviews––no mean feat considering how tightly their ranks were closed. They approach the group with curiosity and openness, and what comes of that is a deeply human depiction of a coalition steeped in infamy. It’s a peek behind the curtain, but instead of revealing a man masquerading as a wizard, it’s a vibrant ecosystem stocked with plentiful courage, brains, and heart. The hosts noted that many of the activists were quiet, shy, self-possessed: not the dramatic, over-stimulated troublemakers painted by the media, but compassionate beings led by deep conviction. 

The podcast also contradicts what naysayers have been alleging for years: it posits that their demonstrations were successes. Yes, they were lambasted by politicians and citizens alike, they were arrested and sometimes locked up, and they were widely mocked––but every stunt saw a sharp increase in donations. Even the ramping-up of police action against protestors has indicated success: a reaction wouldn’t be necessary if the action didn’t cause concern from above. 

Their website now turns focus towards the necessity of a political and economic revolution, citing the role of corrupt politicians and self-serving billionaires in the climate calamity. “We’re just getting started,” they promise. They’ve already proven themselves as one of the world’s most effective climate campaigns: the lull is momentary, but the rebellion is still in motion.

“Fairness, aspiration and opportunity for all”

Australians tired of Labour’s empty mantra


27/05/2025

The Australian federal election took place on Saturday 3rd May, and, while many Australlians felt a momentary sense of relief, they didn’t end up with Peter Dutton—sometimes likened to Voldemort from Harry Potter—as Prime Minister, they are quickly reminded that the one elected, Anthony Albanese, is not much better. 

Several notable events occurred in the wake of the recent election. The Australian Labor Party (ALP) won its largest-ever majority with 97 seats out of 150, and Anthony Albanese is the first Prime Minister to regain his position since 2004. Despite Peter Dutton’s feeble attempt in his last week of campaigning to wage culture wars, the Coalition (the Liberal and National Party) scored their lowest vote in the party’s history. Peter Dutton became the first opposition leader to lose his seat.

The Greens came into the election with four seats in the House of Representatives, but, despite receiving their highest number of votes nationally, retained only one. Adam Bandt, former leader of the Greens, conceded defeat in his electorate of Melbourne where he was the member since 2010. 

Bandt attributes this loss to the massive swing away from the Liberal party due to the “Trump effect”: Dutton positioned himself as part of the populist right associated with Trump, pushing voters away from the Liberal party. 

What does this have to do with the Greens losing seats? Many former Liberal voters are more likely to shift their vote to the ALP than the Greens; and under Australia’s preferential voting system, a Liberal supporter is unlikely to rank the Greens second. So, the ALP’s monumental win wasn’t due to their strength, but rather the laughably bad campaign of the Liberal party, which included promises to establish nuclear power in Australia and sack thousands of public servants. 

Despite the left’s criticisms of the Greens party, their loss in the House of Representatives is a setback for Australians who support the Palestinian movement. The Greens continuously called for an end to the occupation in Palestine, Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and for Australia to place sanctions on Israel.

The ALP, on the other hand, has continued to endorse Israel as an ally. Under Anthony Albanese, the government froze $6 million in funding to the UN aid agency in Gaza, and approved military exports to Israel. They have also attempted to delegitimise pro-Palestinian protests by labelling them as violent and antisemitic.

Additionally, when Fatima Payman, former ALP Senator, argued for sanctions against Israell, she was met with criticism from the ALP and was labelled as antisemitic for saying:  “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”. 

When Payman crossed the floor (voting against a party’s position) on a motion stating the urgent “need for the Senate to recognise the state of Palestine”, she was told not to join caucus meetings for two weeks. 

Albanese suspended Payman indefinitely after she told ABC Insiders she would cross the floor again. The ALP once celebrated Senator Payman as the first hijab-wearing Muslim woman in the Senate. This pride disappeared when Payman challenged the party line. 

The ALP’s claims to value diversity aren’t the only lies they’ve been dishing out. On the night of the election, Albanese said in his speech: “Today, the Australian people have voted for Australian values, for fairness, aspiration and opportunity for all.” But where exactly what the ALP claims to stand for? 

Is it “fair” that the number of women killed in gender-based violence has been increasing under the Albanese government? Is it “aspirational” that between 2002 and 2024, the house price-to-income ratio almost doubled, and homelessness increased by 25% in the last five years? Is it “opportunity for all” that First Nations people are significantly overrepresented in the prison system? From June 2023 to 30 June 2024, the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners increased by 15%, now accounting for 36% of total prisoners, despite only representing 3.8% of the population. 

Aside from these horrific numbers, Australia has the largest proportion of inmates in for-profit prisons globally, meaning that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are being incarcerated for profit. 

This doesn’t sound very “fairness, aspiration, and opportunity for all” of Australia. 

Sadly, it isn’t surprising that the ALP exchanges lives for profit. 

Notwithstanding the number of homes and habitats in Australia that have been ravaged by drought, fires and floods in recent years, the ALP ignores the climate crisis and actively contributes to the destruction of Australia’s environment. According to government data, Australia exported 57 million tonnes of coal between October and December 2024, marking the highest-ever coal export recorded for a three-month period.

Not only has the ALP approved over 28 new coal and gas projects, they have also scaled back Australia’s environmental laws, despite promising to improve them, limiting the government’s ability to reconsider environmental approvals when an activity is harming the environment. 

Then again, why dwell on the past when the ALP has made new promises they can backpedal on in their next term? Australians can look forward to (if we’re lucky!) the ALP putting $8.5 billion into Medicare, allowing access to 5 percent deposits for first-home buyers, and outlawing supermarket price gouging, delivering a small tax cut that, by its second year, should save taxpayers a whopping $10 a week, and taking 20 percent off all HECS debts (student loans).

But how much will these promises change the lives of everyday Australians? 

Is offering a 5% percent deposit on homes going to combat Australia’s dire housing crisis and end homelessness? Everybody’s Home, a coalition of housing, homelessness and welfare organisations, argues that Australia’s social housing growth is failing to meet demand. The government’s five-year target of 1.2 million homes, according to spokesperson Ms Azize, will still result in a shortfall of 640,000 homes. 

Can outlawing price gouging really do much to alleviate the strain of the cost of living crisis? Price gouging is already outlawed in other parts of the world, including the European Union, which prohibits “imposing unfair purchase or selling prices” (the definition of which is rather murky). And despite the ban, actual enforcement is rare, and, as we can see in Germany, the cost of living is still rising and, for many of us, unaffordable. 

As the ALP continues to ignore the causes of the diminishing living standards, namely the transfer of wealth to the rich, their policies will do little to improve people’s lives. They’ve prioritised profit over people while claiming to be the lesser evil. Everyone deserves affordable housing, healthcare, and education, yet the ALP hands these out in scraps.

But our industry, education, housing, and healthcare system shouldn’t exist to benefit the rich. 

This is what newcomer-party Victorian Socialists (VS) claim to be fighting for. Established in 2018 as a collaboration between the Socialist Alliance and Socialist Alternative, the VS declared to push back against the war waged against workers and the lie that both the ALP and the Liberals perpetuate: that there is no alternative to capitalism. 

The main goal of the party is to abolish capitalism in Australia, which, according to the party’s aims, must be achieved through workplace, community and political organisation. 

The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) candidate, Morgen Peach, has criticised the VS, labelling them as a “pseudo-left” party that promotes the Greens as allies that instead of mobilising workers, attempts to appeal to the powers that exist within the framework of capitalism. 

However, others have argued differently. Gary Pearce writes that an important part of VS’s strategy is “not to seek to represent a largely passive constituency in government, but to fight alongside different communities”. The party has involved themselves in and organised protests opposing wage theft, public housing sell-offs, and Israel’s occupation of and genocide in Palestine.

And while the Victorian Socialist party does commend the Greens party on being one mainstream party that offers a “left alternative”, they denounce the Green’s focus on “gentrified inner city seats” and their unwillingness to campaign and immerse themselves amongst working-class migrant communities. 

Australia’s desire for a left-alternative is evident in the election results in Thomastown, Epping Views and Campbellfield, where the VS saw a vote share increase of 15 to 20 percent. For that reason, the VS, on 11 May 2025, decided to expand the project across Australia. James Plested, VS communications manager, writes: “Where socialists can run a decent campaign, we can gain a hearing and often win people away from voting for the faux anti-establishment parties of the far right.” 

The party aims to build branches in every state and territory, and eventually, every city and town in Australia, claiming that “The more of us there are coming together across Australia to fight the rotten status quo of capitalist politics, the more powerful our movement will become.” 

While the VS are expanding nationally and provide a left alternative, Australians have a responsibility to do more than simply wait for the next election to vote. Because, in the end, what is important is not an extra seat in the Senate or House of Representatives, but actively working and organising to achieve a better world where equality, freedom and justice apply to everyone. 

Keir Starmer: Clickbait Politics, Real-World Harm

An opinion on the prime minister’s disappointing at best, dangerous at worst political strategy—or lackthereof


26/05/2025

It’s hard to explain the feeling UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer gives me, but here goes.

For me, Keir Starmer is less a politician and more a mid-Ryanair-flight scratch card. A laminated ‘‘Live, Laugh, Love’’ quote blu-tacked to the wall of a Jobcentre. A “conscious” tech company’s big picture mission statement. Or a softly whispered ‘‘you got this’’, delivered with a slow, pitying pat on the back.

If you’re not following: he’s like something supposed to give you a bit of hope, but that leaves you feeling even more bleak and directionless than before. That’s Starmer. A semi-deflated, grey balloon at a resignation party and the UK’s very own numero uno.

Too harsh? I think too kind. Scratch cards, pitying pats on the back, and laminated quotes in Comic Sans are harmless, cringeworthy artefacts of modern life. Keir Starmer’s recent policy swings are harmful and so far, the harm has been aimed at the most vulnerable.

Just last week, Starmer reached a new low, declaring that the UK has become “an island of strangers.” A line so soaked in dog-whistle nationalism it could’ve been ghostwritten by The Sun and premiered on GB News. Which, in a sense, it was. 

GB News was the only broadcaster granted access to the press conference where Starmer unveiled his new immigration white paper. Not the BBC. Not ITV. Not even Sky News. Just GB News, a channel where facts go to be softly strangled by bigoted opinions dressed in Union Jack onesies. Fittingly, the white paper itself reportedly reads like Reform UK fanfiction, just with cleaner formatting and no typos.

In its new Labour font, the paper takes a sledgehammer to legal migration: longer waits for settlement, stricter visa rules, reduced access to family reunification, and tougher language requirements. Starmer frames it as fairness—a way to reduce exploitation, boost British wages, and encourage integration—but in reality, it’s theatre. A crackdown crafted for clickbait headlines, not human lives. And the people who bear the consequences—migrants, workers, families trying to build a life—are left in greater precarity than ever.

It’s a clumsy attempt to peel off Reform UK voters by mimicking their language and posture. The problem is, the act doesn’t land. It’s like watching someone attempt to speak fluent populism after skim-reading a scribbled summary of Nigel Farage’s greatest hits off the wall of a pub toilet. The sentiment is borrowed, the delivery is lifeless, and the result is a favourability score continuing to nosedive across almost all party lines: too hardline for the left, too weak for the right, and too obviously rehearsed for anyone to respect. 

But the failure of this performance isn’t the real danger, it’s what it enables. When the language of the far right becomes the language of power, hate is legitimised, and cruelty gets policy teeth. It doesn’t win over voters. It shifts the centre of gravity, with the cost most felt by those already living at the edge of safety and recognition.

Depressingly, Starmer’s record makes this shift feel less like a miscalculation and more like a pattern. 

On trans rights, he also folded. He once supported gender self-identification but now he backs a legal definition designed to exclude trans women from recognition and protection. It’s not clarity, it’s cowardice, and a deliberate decision to appease a hostile conservative press obsessed with culture war. 

A similar evasiveness defines Starmer’s stance on Gaza. Despite the murmurings of restraint and carefully worded appeals for calm, Labour has overseen an increase in UK arms sales to Israel—a quiet but bloodsoaked complicity that renders its appeals for de-escalation, or talk of trade pauses, entirely meaningless.

And even more revealing of Starmer’s character is the bizarre way he speaks about Israel: consistently gendered, imbued with vulnerability, he talks of “her right to feel safe, her need to defend herself.” In contrast, trans women, Palestinians, and asylum seekers, receive no such empathy. A nuclear-armed, genocidal state is granted personhood; real people are denied it, along with their safety, their dignity, and their lives.


For the record, I was never under the illusion that Starmer would return Labour to the Left. The man’s not exactly a Trojan horse for socialism, he’s a former cop in a suit. But there was, perhaps naively, a hope that he wouldn’t bend so completely to the altar of the right-wing press. That he might follow through on his own meagre promise of “evidence-led” policy making. That he’d show a shred of moral backbone or at the very least, behave like someone who understands what’s at stake.

Instead, he thinks the Daily Mail might warm to him if he clicks his heels and whispers “secure borders” three times. And to top it off, he’s not even good at it. He’s doing it with the conviction of a man so unsure of his own message, he could be replaced mid-sentence by a pop-up ad for tax-relief on pensions and no one would notice.

But all jokes aside: the result is politics that are not only empty and embarrassing, but dangerous and inhumane.

We need New Strategies

Speech at the Palivision concert, 17th May 2025


24/05/2025

Ladies and Gentlemen, Friends and Comrades,

We are living through a turning point in global history –  a moment of unbearable horror, but also of enormous possibility.

Right now, Gaza is being starved, bombed, and buried alive. Over 54,000 people have been killed. Israel calls this new phase of atrocity Operation Gideon’s Chariots. That name says it all. A chariot isn’t just a weapon –  it’s a symbol of empire. It’s what Pharaohs rode into battle. It’s what Gideon rode in the Bible – a divine machine of conquest. This isn’t just militarism. It’s mythology. It’s theology turned into airstrikes. A fantasy of domination dressed up as defense.

Israel’s goal: to crush the Palestinian resistance against the genocide, to cut Hamas off from a prisoners deal, to seize the land. They have already started to expand the buffer zones – areas they won’t return. They are trying to break gaza into isolated pieces. Palestinians are once again pushed to the South, their movement is restricted, Aid is conditional and hunger is the settlers most powerful weapon. They are encouraging what the settlers are calling “voluntary emigration”. We all know it is ethnic cleansing. This is Israel’s blueprint: 77 years of ongoing Nakba. 

And like every empire before it, Israel believes it can crush a people’s will — to live, to fight, to dream. But Gaza has not been defeated nor can it ever be defeated.

That is the contradiction at the heart of this moment. After nineteen months of total war, Israel has not disarmed Hamas. It hasn’t broken the resistance. it has lost in ront of the eyes of the whole world. It hasn’t even secured its own soldiers.

If they invade Gaza again, they’ll meet what they met in Rafah, Shuja’iyya, Khan Younis, Beit Hanoun: organized, armed, living resistance. 

The misbelief that through absolute destruction and death, resistance will end. But every bomb creates more resistance.

And the cracks are spreading far beyond Gaza.

The Arab regimes that normalized with Israel – the same ones Trump paraded around under the so-called Abraham Accords – are exposed. Their people are in revolt. Protests in Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, Bahrain – not just against Israel, but against the regimes that collaborate with it. And let us not forget Yemen’s friendship and resistance next to Gaza. 

Even Netanyahu’s strongest allies are showing strain. The Trump administration is back – louder, crueler, and openly aligned with Israeli apartheid. This is the man who moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, normalized ethnic cleansing, deports Palstinian Students and now dreams of turning Gaza into a “freedom zone” – a casino economy built on genocide – while floating plans to deport Palestinians to Libya.

European leaders hedge. They talk peace while signing weapons contracts. We demand liberation while organizing against militarization and fascism. And even the western media, after decades of painting Palestinians as terrorists, is slowly but finally showing the truth: massacres, famine, ethnic cleansing, genocide.

But don’t be fooled. This didn’t come from journalistic integrity. It came from the streets of this world. From the student occupations. From striking dock workers. From migrant protests. From you. From us. From below.

Because Gaza bleeds, Israel imposes a hunger blockade. Starvation is being used as a weapon. Children are dying not just from bombs — but from thirst, from a lack of insulin, from bread that never arrives. This is not a natural disaster. It is a calculated system of extermination. And the world watches as Israel tries to find its very own final solution. 

And what do we get from our governments? In Germany, we get bans on protest and special treatments by cops, we get riot police in university halls, we get defamation. You know of all this that is happening.

But let me be clear: We don’t need their permission. We don’t need different slogans. We need new networks. New alliances. New strategies.

We need mass-based, revolutionary, anti-imperialist organizing — not hashtags, not managed grief. But real internationalism from below:

From workers who can shut down weapons shipments.

From students who can occupy the institutions of war.

From tenants, migrants, and the unemployed who can’t be co-opted or bought off.

Because this system that starves Gaza, it can starve all of us. If it can bomb Rafah, it can bomb Khartoum. If it can lie about Palestine, it can lie about all of us.

We need more than protests. We need coordination:

Demonstrate in a connectable way. 

Blockade the weapons factories.

Strike the supply chains.

Occupy the offices of war profiteers.

Refuse to let the state define what solidarity means.

Our solidarity must be loud, determined and unapologetic.

And let me say something personal here. For me, Palestine was never just a political issue. It was the place where I first saw and understood empire – and resistance.

Let Palestine not be a victim. Palestine is a teacher. A school of revolution. Gaza is showing the world that even when starved, people fight. Even when buried, they speak. Even the many who are dying – they will live. Through Gaza. Through the child pulling rubble off a sibling. Through the poem smuggled out in the margins of a notebook. Through the fighter who won’t surrender. Through the chant echoing from the streets to campus walls to refugee camps. Gaza is not only where they fall. It is where they rise. Not just in memory – but in our movement. So let us at least bring them honour and glory.

The future will ask us: Where were you when Gaza was burning? Let our answer not be  silence. Not a thought. Not a tweet. Not a hashtag.

Let it be a movement.

Free Palestine – from the river to the sea – not in theory, not in words, but in struggle.

Thank you.