“We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment (via philosophybits)
Feminist-led protesters have set off 1,000 rape
alarms and hurled them at Charing Cross police station to mark the first
anniversary of the Clapham Common vigil for Sarah Everard which was broken up by police.
They
were joined by Patsy Stevenson, whose arrest while being restrained
face down by officers became the defining image of the vigil one year
ago.
Standing
outside the police station in London’s West End, she said: “One year ago
today, the police waited until sunset to brutalise us at Clapham
Common. Today, we waited until sunset to detonate 1,000 rape alarms at
Charing Cross station.
“Fuck the police.”
Charing Cross was at the centre of a misogyny and racism controversy
last month when a report by the police watchdog revealed details of
officers sharing messages about hitting and raping women, as well as the
deaths of black babies and the Holocaust.
Amid
the deafening shriek of hundreds of rape alarms, which littered the
ground outside the police station, protesters chanted: “A-C-A-B: All
cops are bastards.”
Olga Smith, a member of
Sisters Uncut, said: “When we found out about Sarah’s disappearance at
the hands of a serving cop, we asked the police, how will you keep us
safe? And the police said: stay home. Stay hidden. Carry a rape alarm.
“When
we refused to hide away, when we gathered in grief and anger at Clapham
Common to mourn our sister, Sarah Everard, the police brutalised us.
“Today we say: police are the perpetrators. Police
don’t keep us safe. That is why we have thrown our rape alarms back at
the perpetrators in the infamous Charing Cross police station.” …
… Cassie Robinson, a 36-year-old from London who
attended the protest, said: “I was there last year on Clapham Common,
and the police’s behaviour was disgraceful. I’ve completely lost faith
in the police to take violence against women seriously, and I
participated in today’s protest because I am withdrawing my consent for
violent men to have any authority in this society.”
Wayne
Couzens, a serving Met police officer in an elite firearms unit, was
convicted in September of the kidnap, rape and murder of Everard, who
disappeared while walking home through the Clapham Park area of south
London. …
