socialist environmental alliance header

Vote for an SEA candidate

Index

S. E. A. Statements

SEA welcomes support for "Civil Rights for All" March

Thursday 30th September 2004

The Socialist Environmental Alliance has welcomed the wide support expressed for Saturday's "Civil Rights for All" march.

The SEA proposed the march just three weeks ago, in response to the spate of homophobic attacks in Derry and racist attacks in Belfast and elsewhere. The Rainbow Project immediately came on board. Other groups, including other political parties, have since followed.

All local elected representatives have been invited to attend. A number have said that they will.

The SEA sees the march as an opportunity to advance progressive politics in a non-sectarian way. The demands of the demonstration do not reflect the interests of one community vis-a-vis the other. Instead, they map out a way forward for everybody at the bottom of the pile. It's the people at the bottom who suffer when civil rights are denied.

It we stay silent about injustice to any group---black people, gays, Muslims, whomever---we render ourselves less able to fight against injustice affecting ourselves.

The remarks made by Gregory Campbell of the DUP about the march do not serve the interests of working class Protestants. He says Protestants should steer clear of a demonstration looking for fair treatment for Seamus Doherty, for example. So what's his answer when the police ride roughshed over the rights of people, particularly young people, in Nelson Drive, the Fountain, Tullyally etc? As they do.

Unionist politicians frequently sing dumb about injustice to Protestants, even the State murder of Protestants, because they fear that opposing injustice might lead them into opposition to the British State. They fear that combatting injustice generally might lead towards association with political groups like the SEA.

Campbell tells Protestants it's their duty to their community to shun an event calling for equality for gays, blacks and Muslims. In what way is this supposed to help young working-class Protestants who are systematically denied equality, in education, for example? Are they supposed to feel OK about being trampled on because other groups are trampled on, too? What Campbell is urging on them is stupid.

There are Nationalist politicians who are only too happy to mirror Campbell's attitudes. Some of them echo Campbell exactly in suggesting that the original October 1968 march was a Nationalist event. It was not.

People living in areas like the Fountain have good reason to feel surrounded by hostility. They are regularly attacked. But it is not possible to deal with injustice in one community without also dealing with injustice in the other. It is fantasy to imagine people living at ease and content under the law in one neighbourhood while people in adjacent streets are burdened down from oppression. We'll end injustice together or we won't end it at all.

The SEA calls on its supporters, Catholic, Protestant, atheist whatever, to march with us on Saturday to proclaim that there's a better way forward, the radical socialist way, than forever pitching one community against the other.





SEA Logo

Software error:

DBI connect('sitestatistics','sitestatistics',...) failed: Access denied for user 'sitestatistics'@'localhost' (using password: YES) at /home/socialiorg/public_html/cgi-bin/sea/DbUpdateLog.pm line 46

For help, please send mail to the webmaster (root@localhost), giving this error message and the time and date of the error.