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| "The case of the 15 activists convicted last Monday of ‘intentional disruption of services at an aerodrome,’ an offence carrying a maximum penalty of life imprisonment, over a non-violent protest which stopped a deportation flight from leaving Stansted airport should not only worry all those who care about the rights of those threatened with removal. It should alarm anyone who cares about the right to protest. The disproportionate charge will have a chilling effect. Amnesty has called this 'a crushing blow for human rights in the UK'; Liberty said it was a 'malicious attack' on the right to protest.” Photograph: Kristian Buus/In Pictures via Getty Image —The Guardian, December 11, 2018 |
“Disease X represents the knowledge that a serious international epidemic could be caused by a pathogen currently unknown to cause human disease, and so the R&D Blueprint explicitly seeks to enable cross-cutting R&D preparedness that is also relevant for an unknown “Disease X” as far as possible.” —World Health Organisation
disease X represents
the flash-drives full of martyred friends
the murals whose eyes you can’t put out
the secret slideshows shown on bedsheets
to comrades hiding in the hills
disease X represents
the breath which we breathe on you
the knowledge we share
disease X represents
our refusal to answer the questions whose answering
is mandated by law, the referral to lawyers
who cannot be afforded, the good work of lawyers
regardless, the virulent brown goulash
served through iron cat-flaps in Styrofoam trays
to the rag-pickers, card-scammers and lesbian mothers
the good and bad migrants, the friendless and their friends
the guerrilla paramedics, organ-grinders and thieves
the class coalescing for want of a class
disease X represents
the willing foreclosure of futures
which do not end in grief, the return of the gaze
the huff of breath rich with pathogens unknown
the tracing of banned words in filth, the moue
the return of the paper unsigned
disease X represents
your refusal to believe we would choose to subsist on so little
your demented insistence on finding out why, as though
the way which you ask us is not itself a cause
disease X represents
the exorcism of the cop which you put in our heads
through the refusal to think ill of our friends, whom we love
through the refusal to mourn the death of those
dead only in the most trivial sense
through the banned touch of hands in the pockets
of concrete overcoats, the obvious erection
on the back of the dirt-bike
running memory cards through the demilitarised zone
the reckless proclamations of love through the encrypted app
sweet enough, we have to hope, to radicalise the judge
disease X represents
the explicit search for the necessary evil
the conscious acceptance of the status of a bomb
the incendiary touch of hands between friends
which brought down the plane from the sky
Matt Broomfield is a poet, activist and writer currently living and working in Rojava in solidarity with the socialist-feminist revolution there. His debut fiction pamphlet was published in 2018 by Dog Section Press, his poetry has been shared across London by Poetry On The Underground, and he is a Foyle Young Poet of the Year and can be found on Twitter at @hashtagbroom.