These inhumane times are hard to bear. It’s easy to feel helpless in the face of evil. There is one thing we can all do and that is to say or express, in any form we prefer,

NOT IN MY NAME

With Malcolm Atkins, I’ve founded Sing4 Gaza. It’s not a bureaucratic membership organisation more an idea that anyone anywhere in the world can use. We have a fundraiser event on Feb 14 for the Hands Up Project. They support children in Gaza and connect them to children elsewhere in the world. They write profoundly moving poems which Hands Up publish. We hope to connect with some of the young poets on zoom.

Sing 4 Gaza have the names of 20,000 children killed by the IDF. With friends we are recording them. It will take a long time to complete. A bell rings, I read the name of the child and his/her age and a bell rings. Of the three pages of the names I read last week, three quarters of the dead children were under two. They deserve an identity not just a body bag.

Minneapolis

I was stunned to realise that the population of Minneapolis is only double that of Oxford (when the students are here). Every citizen must be affected by the barbarities of ICE.  The wonderful citizens of the city are saying

NOT IN MY NAME

This is my tribute to Renee Good and Alex Pretti, in the style of William Blake,

Make America Great Again

Stand Tall

‘Yea’ shouts the crowd,

Be Proud,

Make America Great Again.

 

Deport five year old Liam in his bunny hat.

Stand tall as you deprive him of his mother.

Be Proud,

Take old Chongli in his underwear into the freezing snow.

Make America Great Again

 

Sneer at outdated empathy.

Be brave with your guns.

Shoot Renee in her car,

and Alex on the ground.

Make America Great Again

 

Ignore the homeless

Ignore the hungry

Ignore the sick

Ignore the unemployed

Be proud

Watch Melania preen and scowl.

Make America Great Again

 

Echo true grit around the world.

‘Yea vote for that!’

Vote Farage, Vote Reform

And beat those puny folk in boats.

Make Britain Great Again

*****

There’s inhumanity everywhere. Yesterday I went to an International Liberty Meeting (Exiled Iranians).We held the pictures of beautiful young people shot in the back of the head by Revolutionary Guards. A Ukrainian living in my village says her daughter in Kviv is without heating and lifts etc. on a 16th floor flat. It’s minus 22 degrees. The Kurds are being treated like the Palestinians and life in the Sudan is hunger and horror. All we can do is not look away but  raise our voices to demand a better world.