At­til­lah Springer

I imag­ine the peo­ple of Gaza must be glad to know that peo­ple care. That even as bombs rain down on their homes, even as they bury their chil­dren, there are peo­ple out in the world who con­demn this mad­ness, who add their voic­es to a glob­al out­cry against Is­rael's crim­i­nal­ly stu­pid at­tack on Gaza. I feel a great sense of be­long­ing out­side Down­ing Street watch­ing young Mus­lim women and old white left­ies, and kef­fi­ah clad cool sorts hurl shoes over the po­lice. There are thou­sands there. Tens of thou­sands.�Still com­ing up along Em­bank­ment, past Big Ben, up White­hall and pour­ing in­to the heart of Baby­lon­don.

The pro­tes­tors chant a bit­ter sweet call and re­sponse Is­rael: Ter­ror­ist, George Bush: Ter­ror­ist, Gor­don Brown: Ter­ror­ist. It is like the sweet­est mu­sic to my ears and be­cause it is near­ly Car­ni­val I am tempt­ed to start put my hands in the air and put down and shake my de­fi­ant boom­sie in the face of those who are silent on Is­rael's geno­ci­dal mis­sion. I imag­ine the peo­ple of Gaza must feel re­as­sured that so many thou­sands of peo­ple around the world have tak­en to their streets de­mand­ing an end to the mad­ness. I al­so imag­ine they are too busy try­ing to sur­vive to give a damn about us stand­ing out there be­ing cap­tured on film by the po­lice pho­tog­ra­phers.

There is a smell of fu­el in the air and be­fore I know it five or six Asian youths have set fire to a repli­ca of the Is­raeli flag. There is so much anger in their eyes I have to look away. I can't imag­ine what it must be like to live a life punc­tu­at­ed by war. But stand­ing in Trafal­gar Square I am struck by the si­lence of all those thou­sands of peo­ple, lis­ten­ing to the var­i­ous speak­ers, shar­ing food, lean­ing on plac­ards, shiv­er­ing in the cold. It's not of­ten these days that I feel proud to be a hu­man. Less of­ten than feel­ing like I be­long. It is a con­stant sort of con­fu­sion for me that hu­mans can just be so down­right mean to each oth­er. When peo­ple come to­geth­er to lend their voic­es to bring an end to the suf­fer­ing of oth­ers, sure­ly this is a much more pow­er­ful thing than sit­ting at home watch­ing it all un­fold on the tele­vi­sion, mum­bling your com­plaints in­to your liv­ing room.

I imag­ine that these mass out­pour­ings of love and rage on­ly ever hap­pen when hu­man­i­ty comes un­der such threat that those of us who still hold on to some, have to find ways to man­i­fest it. An­nie Lennox calls down shame and damna­tion on the Is­raeli gov­ern­ment as So­ma­li men per­form ablu­tions be­fore their prayers, right there on the Strand, in the shad­ow of Lord Nel­son's col­umn. It is too cold to do any­thing but stand there, shift­ing weight from one leg to an­oth­er. Feel­ing an­gry that all I can do is stand there, in the cold, hold­ing a plac­ard. It is too cold to talk but just be­ing there is warmth enough. Not just be­cause demon­stra­tions are to ac­tivists what ec­sta­sy pills are to ravers. And as I re­flect on the nice­ness of the feel­ing of be­ing part of some­thing, I re­mem­ber the bit­ter taste in the back of my throat when so-called lead­ers ac­cused peo­ple like me of be­ing an out­sider for tak­ing an in­ter­est in what was go­ing on in Chatham with plans to build an Al­coa alu­minum smelter.

How Trinidad is a place where we have be­come as ob­sessed as our so-called lead­ers with care­ful­ly de­mar­cat­ed ter­ri­to­ries that must be con­trolled by the var­i­ous com­pet­ing pa­tri­archies. About how dif­fi­cult it is for us to ex­press sol­i­dar­i­ty with each oth­er, far less to care about what's go­ing on out­side of our im­me­di­ate com­mu­ni­ty. I sup­pose this is the case every­where. Ap­a­thy thrives. Lat­er I meet up with a bredrin from Ice­land who tells me amaz­ing sto­ries about a whole coun­try com­ing to the brink of col­lapse and how this has com­plete­ly gal­va­nized even the most com­pla­cent of the mid­dle class to take to the streets, to take over town halls and cin­e­mas to meet and con­front their lead­ers who dare not treat them with the kind of con­tempt that is read­i­ly avail­able for us here.

Too fan­tas­tic to imag­ine that this will ever hap­pen in sweet and sour T. Too ridicu­lous to imag­ine that Trinida­di­ans will ever care about any­thing enough to take to the streets in their thou­sands. Ap­a­thy thrives, un­less per­haps your wal­let or your life is af­fect­ed. The world is a war zone whether blood is be­ing shed or not. And those who want peace or se­cu­ri­ty can­not re­sist the urge to try and fight for it.