Riot Cleanups - Real Community Power

Amongst the horrific events that began in London and spread last night, there are at least a few little rays of sunshine.

One in particular I would draw your attention to are the riot cleanups, that Charles Jupiter of Liverpool promoted on the BBC earlier today. His words, 'It's my city too', burn to the heart of these terrible events. These riots have been self interested, self centered, selfish vandalism and theft.

Many lives and livelihoods have been ruined by this violence, where hundreds have selfishly trashed the communities they share with tens of thousands.

Our best response now is to give our full support to the Fire Service and Police; and to support them as much as possible with clean ups organised by people from all walks of life: individuals, community groups and unions.

please retweet #riotcleanup and visit riotcleanup.co.uk to see what you can do to help or just to help advertise the better side of our collective community spirit

(Ed, in 2019 - This article really didn't stand the test of time. Even after a week. The riots where a selfish shamble, a shock for which the move by communities to clean up was a positive offset. But there was more than a little middle class snobbery to the response, and it's subsequent highjacking by conservatism. When authority maintains itself through oppression of action, promotion of public ignorance, and accompanying poverty with consummerism, the slipping of authority is going to result in chaos. It is the disorder inherent to hierarchal power. It remains true that the rioters where selfish and self-defeating, trashing their own communities. But the blame lay in the corridors of power and with those that acted as arms of their authority.)