'Make Poverty History' 2005
this middle class white guilt parade was the most corporate demonstration i have ever witnessed
Make Poverty Business seemed more accurate a description.
hordes of white middleclass people emphasising their whiteness, while supposedly drawing attention to the poor blacks,
paid tons of money to get to Edinburgh & alleviate their guilt for the day.
'Anyone for white supremacy?'
the statement made while participating in this mass white wearing 'demonstration'
WAS BY NO MEANS EASY to undertake this alone
despite the obviously tongue-in-cheek otherside to my placard
plenty of people took me for genuine Ku Klux Klan [have they ever had a presence in Scotland?] & wanted to batter me [battering most definitely a longstanding tradition in the culture..]
mercifully rescued from the highly tense situation above by a black guy'd been chatting to earlier on - there have always been so few in Scotland - only a black could save me from these drunken men who were too keen to wield their bottles to listen to anything i had to say
.
the rank hypocrisy was graphically evident at the point where people just dropped their 'drop the debt' placards [mass produced] to go to the cash machine, their couple of hours guilt therapy over, back to capitalist business as usual
