London is burning. Rioters continue to plague the streets of the U.K. capital and violence is spreading to other cities including Manchester, Salford, Liverpool, Nottingham and Birmingham. Last night, three young men died during riots in Birmingham.
Depressing and strange times to be sure, but some times, in its darkest hours, humanity manages to shine its brightest. The citizens of these embattled U.K. cities are fighting back. Not with violence but with trashbags (or bin bags, as our friends across the pond call them), brooms, tools, helping hands and strong backs and friendly words to neighbors whose homes and businesses have been destroyed.
Pop star Kate Nash has been helping to coordinate and report on grassroots cleaning efforts via her Facebook and Twitter feeds, which have been full of meet up times and locations, donation suggestions and encouragement for those who are struggling to preserve their neighborhoods and help their neighbors
Nash wrote an eloquent piece in her blog about the riots, which I’ll include in abbreviated fashion here:
“I heard them branded as “exciting”early this morning. I can verify that for most of the people that were not out rioting, it was absolutely not an exciting experience. It was depressing, sickening, worrying, it made us afraid, sad and angry… …There are clearly political issues underlying, there is clearly a massive number of people that are excluded from society, the questions I feel need to be addressed are “why and how are they excluded?” “why do they seemingly have no conscience or sympathy towards other human beings?”and “what can we do to change that?” We simply cannot ignore what has happened and although it is a positive thing to bring about change I just can’t deal with the riots being praised and labelled exciting.
What is exciting to me and what really felt amazing yesterday was how many people were out in the streets yesterday, all day and night, people literally sweeping the streets, taking the broken glass out of windows, glueing wood to broken doors, talking to strangers, from all different types of class/race/gender and backgrounds. The atmosphere was positive and protective.”
You can read the whole post here. You can also follow Nash’s Facebook page here for updates on the riots from a street view level as well as links to donation centers and ways to help.
