Normalising abuse

"So how was your day?"

Oh you know… same old, same old!!! Well not quite but the ‘normalisation of the injustices here atPreston New Road Rolling Roadside Protest is hugely worrying and deeply saddening as we watch our right to genuinely peaceful protest, eroded one minute at a time. I was arrested AGAIN as I was on Monday. Today, I made a concerted effort to not linger as long as I did in my dancing near vehicles on Monday (about 6 minutes then and less than 3 today!)– yet AGAIN though they unnecessarily arrested, hand-cuffed and jailed - they just ate half my bloody day with this nonsense. What sort of criminal am I or the other 3 lovely people arrested too today?

It was our 81st Wednesday of the Call for Calm, when the women gather to hold a silence before singing, dancing and rejoicing in life to balance the horrors that go on – it finished as always about 12:30 and some of us continued to enjoy the music and dance. A particularly vile Officer was on duty – 322 who has history of violence and horrid behaviour here in the past 2 and a bit years… he didn’t reach where we were dancing near a staff car – until the car had entered (as on Monday) so (like Monday) they witnessed no obstruction and clearly, it had been brief. He and his team though seemed unhappy that they didn’t get to break us up or do anything other than stand about… we did a ‘conga’ through their lines – we were just lifting the mood and doing what we always do but they seemed aggressive and with 322 on duty, there was ‘something in the air’.

Julie and I sensed it was definitely time to go – as she had stuff to do and I was going to meet my daughter and granddaughter for some sorely needed family time… so off we went, each of us holding one side of the PA system to walk down the hill. We were cut off by police telling me I was under arrest and within minutes, so was Jewel and I heard that Cait and Om also got arrested. I was a bit ranty and emotional and the officer said that due to my animation, he was going to cuff me. I explained the whole sore wrist thing and he did loosen the cuff a little… unlike Monday’s brutal beast.

I’m a bit drained so won’t go on (I know… nice change lol) but pretty much, if you take Monday’s post, half the harm they claimed happened, slightly ease the handcuff agony and got all of us released with NO FURTHER ACTION… that’s the day.

Articles 10 & 11 of our Human Rights describe how they work as a key feature of DEMOCRACY – in fact without them, there is no democracy. So what is peaceful protest? Women dancing at gates of a fracking site and perhaps causing some minutes of delay in the kerfuffle? Surely this… surely? Because IF NOT THIS… then what next?

Understanding the term ‘radicalisation’ is a horrible thing to experience – I have often lost my temper and this results in verbal outbursts but never have I been violent or criminal in my behaviour and yet this cuffing and arrest is featuring twice in one week… very wrong, hugely unjust and so time consuming, painful and downright upsetting. I walked out of jail today feeling grateful that it didn’t result in a charge. GRATEFUL! This is what happens when 'normalisation' of a situation occurs not because it's NORMAL but because it just keeps happening until you accept it. I am now remembering to be bloody livid – how dare they have done this at all… denied my my rights and ruined my days.

As I sat with the anger my thoughts turned to protesting the police and my rage directed itself to them – but they are pawns – used as a buffer zone between us and the actual enemy – those harming our environment (and the government that enables them). The industry would love nothing more than for us to become so enraged with the unjust policing, that we waste our energy and precious (well-informed) anger attacking them… hard to not want to but we have little time, our children are depending on us and we have a far more important job to do.

See you at the roadside <3 span="">