Bodily autonomy is so often underemphasised in debates about UK policing.
I reposted this on Facebook, and a friend remembered passing the London climate change protests and asking the white middle-class college police why they were being all buddy-buddy with the police, making them cups of tea and so on. Their reply was "Well this is a PEACEFUL PROTEST and there isn't going to be any violence." He still remembers the slight satisfaction he felt despite himself when the police rushed them a few days later and started busting heads, and those same peaceful protestors starting racking up the kind of injuries and injustices they were too complacent to even consider possible before. Their belief that only those looking for trouble get fucked up by the police took a serious hit that day; I wonder if they also realised that unlike them, not everyone can just walk off the battleground when they get sick of getting their arse kicked.
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"Friends are allowed to make mistakes. The enemy is not allowed to make mistakes because his whole existence is a mistake, and we suffer from it. But the women's liberation front and gay liberation front are our friends, they are our potential allies, and we need as many allies as possible.” - Huey Newton
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