We Are London
Last week there was an attack on Westminster. I've held off writing about this for a little longer than usual because I didn't want what I wrote to be a knee-jerk reaction, and I wanted to reflect personally before putting my thoughts out into the public realm.
I wasn't involved personally, although I know people who were and they are dealing with what they saw in their own way. People were hurt. People died. My heart breaks for the families of those people who left their homes that morning and will not return. I can't even imagine how they felt, and are feeling.
I don't understand why those who perpetrate these despicable acts believe that what they are doing will advance whatever cause or ideology they claim to represent. They are hurting innocents, and they are hurting those that they declare to speak for as idiots pop out from under their rocks to condemn an entire people for the actions of a minuscule minority.
And, as with every atrocity of this nature, it has had the opposite effect to the warped intention: people come together, they stick together, and they become stronger for it; despite bigots and imbeciles on all sides attempting to use the situation as a stick to wedge into a crack and break us apart.
I can't put it better than this clip from The Last Leg:
The hosts spoke movingly about the incident and the victims, before offering this view.
I wasn't involved personally, although I know people who were and they are dealing with what they saw in their own way. People were hurt. People died. My heart breaks for the families of those people who left their homes that morning and will not return. I can't even imagine how they felt, and are feeling.
I posted this on Instagram on Wednesday evening.
Image Source: instagram.com/cabaretcatlady
Image Source: instagram.com/cabaretcatlady
I don't understand why those who perpetrate these despicable acts believe that what they are doing will advance whatever cause or ideology they claim to represent. They are hurting innocents, and they are hurting those that they declare to speak for as idiots pop out from under their rocks to condemn an entire people for the actions of a minuscule minority.
And, as with every atrocity of this nature, it has had the opposite effect to the warped intention: people come together, they stick together, and they become stronger for it; despite bigots and imbeciles on all sides attempting to use the situation as a stick to wedge into a crack and break us apart.
I can't put it better than this clip from The Last Leg:
The hosts spoke movingly about the incident and the victims, before offering this view.
I remember reading a passage from a fictional novel that I think of in times like this:
"My dad says that being a Londoner has nothing to do with where you're born. He says that there are people who get off a jumbo jet at Heathrow, go through immigration waving any kind of passport, hop on the tube and by the time the train's pulled into Piccadilly Circus they've become a Londoner. He said there were others, some of whom were born within the sound of the Bow Bells, who spend their whole life dreaming of an escape." AARONOVITCH, 2011
And that's the truth. Being a Londoner has nothing to do with where you're born, I believe. And London survives because of its people, its multicultural, multifaceted people.
Terror, and terrorists will never win. We are London. We are far too busy to be afraid.
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