Philando Castile | >Re-PHOTO

Garden Bridge, Housing, Domestic Violence, Migrants & Police Killings; Saturday 9th July 2016 began for me in Waterloo, where right wing Labour party members were attending a conference. Then I travelled to Hackney for a Sisters Uncut protest over domestic violence and housing, back to Downing Street for a rally against the scapegoating of immigrants and went briefly to a Brexit debate in Green Park and then south of the river again to a protest against police murders in the UK and US.

Garden Bridge protest at ‘Progress’ conference – Coin St

Lambeth Council were supporting the ‘Garden Bridge‘, a private green space to bridge the River Thames close to Waterloo Bridge, an expensive vanity project with a costing over £200 million with little public gain.

Lambeth residents came to protest as Lambeth councillors and council leader Liz Peck were attending the Labour Party ‘Progress’ movement ‘Governing for Britain’ conference.

The Garden Bridge project was finally abandoned in August 2017, by which time it had cost £53m, including £43m of public money.

Garden Bridge ‘Progress’ protest

Housing Protest at ‘Progress’ conference – Coin St

Also protesting outside the Progress conference were housing protesters against the demolition of council estates and their replacement by luxury flats under ‘regeneration’ schemes by London Labour councils including Southwark, Newham and Lambeth.

The protesters were from the Revolutionary Communist Group, Focus E15 ‘Homes for All’ campaign and Architects for Social Housing who had been involved in various campaigns to stop the demolition of social housing in these boroughs.

They say that New Labour policies, now accelerated by the Tory Housing and Planning Act, makes London too expensive for ordinary workers leading to social cleansing, while making excessive profits for developers, including housing associations and estate agents Savills.

Housing Protest at ‘Progress’ conference

East End Sisters Uncut on Domestic Violence – Hackney Town Hall

Sisters Uncut came to Hackney Town Hall to demand the council abolish all plans to demolish council homes, refuse to implement the Housing Act and invest money into council housing and refuges for victims of domestic violence.

They quoted a Women’s Aid report for 2013-5 which found that over 60% of applications to women’s refuges in Hackney are refused as no room is available.

East End Sisters Uncut-Domestic Violence

Europe, Free Movement and Migrants – Downing St

The Brexit vote had been followed by a rise in the scapegoating of immigrants and Islamophobia, and ‘Another Europe Is Possible’ organised a rally at Downing Street to keep Britain open to migrants, and for policies and media which recognise the positive contribution that migration makes to the UK.

Speakers came from a wide range of groups including Movement for Justice, Left Unity, Friends of the Earth, Newham Monitoring Project, Stand Up To Racism and Syrian activists.

Many from the rally were going to the Brexit picnic and discussion in Green Park afterwards, and I did too.

Europe, Free Movement and Migrants

Green Park Brexit Picnic

Most of those who came to the picnic felt cheated by a vote that was based on lies and false promises, but they came wanting to find ways to make it into something positive for the country.

There were also some who had come to counter the protest with their own picnic for democracy organised by Spiked magazine, and when the people from the Downing Street rally arrived with their placards some of them came over to pick an argument.

Things got a little heated when a woman from the ‘Spiked’ group accused those holding the placards of being unwashed, and there was some vigorous speaking in response. But people from both sides stepped in to cool things down.

Green Park Brexit Picnic

Brixton stands with Black victims

Local black organisers in Brixton called a rally and march in memory of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile and to show solidarity with those murdered by police brutality, both in the US and here in the UK.

Alton Sterling was murdered by police officers on July 5, 2016, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, shot at close range after police had pinned him to the ground where he was selling CDs outside a grocery store. In May 2017 the US Justice department announced there was insufficient evidence to support federal criminal charges against the officers concerned – despite the many videos of the incident and other sources.

Philando Castile was fatally shot at close range after has car was stopped by police in he Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area. There was video of the incident and the officer was charged with second-degree manslaughter and two counts of dangerous discharge of a firearm. A jury acquitted him of all charges in June 2017.

There were many speeches both about these and other US cases and those in the UK, where Sean Rigg, Wayne Douglas and Ricky Bishop died after being held in nearby Brixton Police Station. One of the organisers spoke wearing a t-shirt listing just a few of those who have been killed by police in the UK. An annual protest is held every year in Whitehall against the many custody deaths in the UK, and in 2015 while this was taking place police took advantage of this to strip the tree in front of the police station of its deaths in custody memorials

Some time after I left the protesters marched around Brixton, bringing traffic to a halt for several hours.

Brixton stands with Black victims

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Five years ago on July 5th 2016, Alton Sterling, a 37 year old black man selling videos outside a convenience store in Baton Rouge, Louisiana was shot and killed by police at close range. The incident was filmed by several bystanders and their mobile phone video clip shocked and enraged viewers around the world.

The following day, July 6th, 32-year-old Philando Castile was driving with his girlfriend in a suburb od St Paul, Minnesota, when police stopped the car and asked to see his driving licence. His girlfriend video the events which ended in Castile being shot five times at point-blank range, dying 20 minutes later. The officer who fired was later charged with second-degree manslaughter and two counts of dangerous discharge of a firearm but found not guilty by a jury.

These two cases provoked protests around the world, including this event in Brixton. Shootings of people by police remain common in the USA at around a thousand a year and Black people are around two and a half times as likely to be shot as White. These cases stood out both because the two men shot were not involved in any crime but also because there was clear evidence from the videos that there was no justification for the shootings. Later the families were to be awarded compensation running into millions of dollars in both cases.

Although policing in this country is generally not carried out at the point of a gun, with an average of around 3 people killed by police shooting a year, there have been many cases of deaths at the hands of police, again disproportionally affecting Black people. As I wrote in my account of the protest:

Brixton Police station has been the scene of a number of black deaths in custody, including that of Sean Rigg, Wayne Douglas and Ricky Bishop, and one of the organisers who spoke wore a t-shirt listing just a few of those who have been killed by police in the UK, with young black men in particular being far more likely to die after arrest – or to be shot rather than arrested. Last year police stripped the tree in front of the police station of its deaths in custody memorials on the day of the annual march in central London against deaths in custody.
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The crowd that gathered in Windrush Square (aka Windswept Square after Lambeth Councils re-landscaping to make it deliberately less hospitable) was largely black, and the protest had been called by local black organisers. Most of those who spoke talked about their own experiences of police racism in the local community as well as the shootings that had provoked the protest.

So many people wanted to have their say that the event continued for several hours, eventually going on to march up the Brixton Road to Brixton Police Station and bringing traffic to a standstill for several hours.

But it had come at the end of a long day for me and I had gone home well before that. Earlier in the day I’d photographed protests against the nonsensical ‘Garden Bridge’ across the Thames and the demolition of council estates by Labour Councils, both in Waterloo, in Hackney against domestic violence, at Downing St against Brexit, the scapegoating of immigrants and Islamophobia and a Green Park Brexit picnic and I was exhausted. You can find more about the Black Lives Matter protest and these other events on My London Diary.

Brixton stands with Black victims
Green Park Brexit Picnic
Europe, Free Movement and Migrants
East End Sisters Uncut-Domestic Violence
Housing Protest at ‘Progress’ conference
Garden Bridge ‘Progress’ protest

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

Tag: Philando Castile

Black Lives Matter – Brixton 9th July 2016