In the face of ongoing Draconian state repression, Youth Demand has successfully disrupted London once again in two acts of mass civil disobedience.
The latest actions come amid a sweep of crackdowns in which cops have nicked protesters under the Tories’ dodgy pre-crime laws. However, clearly protesters remains undeterred – as they took two more actions across the capital.
Youth Demand supporters have shown once more that they won’t be silenced from calling out the UK government’s disgusting complicity in Israel’s continued genocide.
More state repression of Youth Demand activists
First, on Saturday 12 April, Youth Demand initiated a series of swarming roadblocks. Around 50 Youth Demand supporters blocked traffic across London. Unsurprisingly, cops clamped down and arrested eight of the activists:
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The Met nicked activists across the multiple locations Youth Demand took action. On Vauxhall Bridge, an activist defiantly shouted for a free Palestine as police escorted him into the back of a van:
And at Elephant and Castle, a large group of cops turned up and arrested a protester despite the fact he’d already vacated the road:
Youth Demand supporter Becky, 43, a mother of two from East London said:
I have taken part in almost every National demo, local demo and rally since October 2023 and with the scenes we are seeing coming out of the Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon, becoming more and more deranged, criminal and heart shattering, the need to escalate to make our leaders act has never been clearer.
We are tired of the lies, the gaslighting, watching a genocide on live-stream, while being told the real victims are the people committing the atrocities. Asking politely for those who are funding, supporting and complicit in these acts, in the way that they want us to ask them, is not working. We have to disrupt in the only way that makes them listen, to make problems for the system, that puts our bodies on the line, on the levers of power and profit.
I am a mother of two children and I am terrified of being arrested and put on remand away from them for months on end, but this fear is what the state wants. They want us to feel like it’s easier to be apathetic and just carry on with our lives. And this fear is a tiny, tiny taste of what mothers in Palestine have lived with for 76 years. Knowing your family could be torn apart at the drop of a hat.
I want my children to see what it looks like to do what’s right, before doing what’s comfortable. I don’t want them to live in a world where children around the world are burned in their babygrows day after day, for a year and a half, while we all look on and shrug our shoulders. If it were my children, I would want mothers, anyone, across the world to do everything in their power to try and make it stop.
Youth Demand: no more business-as-usual in the City
Youth Demand followed Saturday’s disruptions with more on Monday. At around 9.30am, up to 40 Youth Demand supporters in two teams stepped onto pedestrian crossings at Holborn and Southwark Bridge. There, they unfurled banners reading “Stop arming Israel” and “Make the rich pay”:
The group of activists disrupted the traffic for approximately 20 minutes at each location.
However, members of the public responded to the activists with violence. First, a driver tried to circumvent the protesters blocking the road. Footage shows the driver mounting the pavement and inching into a protester:
Eventually, the protester had to move as it was clear the driver was putting her risk and would continue to drive into her if she didn’t. The driver then proceeded to drive along the pavement, where pedestrians had to move out the way.
Then, in another instance, a member of the public violently assaulted Youth Demand activists. The clip shows a man shoving the activists onto the ground. Following this, he did the same to protesters in the way of an approaching Met police van:
This echoes other recent Youth Demand protests. On Friday 11 April for instance, a lorry driver also attempted to drive into protesters blockading the road.
Similarly, the assault of Youth Demand activists also isn’t the first time members of the public have done this – within the last week at that. In one previous case, a passer-by also violently shoved Youth Demand protester Zahra from behind – knocking her out and causing her to have a seizure. As a niqab-wearing Muslim woman, Zahra underscored how the assault was likely motivated by Islamophobia. Prior to that, on 8 April, another servile member of the public had assaulted activists and attempted to steal a journalist’s camera.
Violent public: doing the bidding of the Israel-supporting elite
So, it appears subservient citizens – backed up by a repressive state wielding far-reaching anti-protest powers – continue to feel emboldened to enact violence against Youth Demand protesters.
Of course, it’s a damning indictment of some of the public’s mood around Gaza, and the right to protest more broadly. Israel is committing literal genocide right before the world’s eyes, with the tacit support of the UK government, and some members of the British public think Youth Demand are the problem. As the Canary’s Steve Topple previously wrote:
They are peacefully deploying mid-level civil disobedience in the face of cataclysmic world events. Yet here in the West, agents of the state and the public still believe they can go about their daily business like nothing is happening – and that any disruption to this is disastrous.
In a nutshell, the public who’ve attacked Youth Demand is doing the bidding of the elite. Conscious or not, they’re maintaining the violent status quo that sees the protesters calling out genocide banged up, while the perpetrators of that genocide and its complicit British political establishment handmaidens walk scott-free.
19 year-old student Toby Ellwood from West Sussex was among those taking action:
I am taking action with Youth Demand today because we are watching our government actively participate in the slaughter of thousands of Palestinian people. I think that we all have a duty to stand on the right side of history and disrupt and show our genocidal government that we will not be silent.
Our government wants to keep doing business as usual and lining the pockets of their billionaire friends while our climate collapses and we watch children in Palestine be mutilated by genocidal colonisers. We have to take action because we cannot bear to watch the suffering created by the system of the bloodthirsty elites.
Take action to stop a literal ongoing genocide
Youth Demand’s continued actions come against a backdrop of Israel’s ongoing genocide and its forcible displacement of Palestinians in Gaza. The genocidal and apartheid state also continues to routinely dent access for aid and medical evacuations. Palm Sunday was sandwiched between its two latest actions. It was during this that Israel destroyed parts of the last remaining functioning hospital in Gaza with an airstrike. Israel has repeatedly hit hospitals in airstrikes despite the fact they are protected under international humanitarian law.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday that Israel’s military had completely surrounded the southern Gaza city of Rafah and established a new security zone as it continues and expands an offensive in the Palestinian territory. According to the UN, Israel has designated two-thirds of Gaza “no-go” zones or placed under evacuation orders. This is since it violated the ceasefire on 18 March, resuming its genocide and campaign of ethnic cleansing. As a result, it has left 390,000 Palestinians — almost a fifth of the 2.1 million population — with no safe place to go.
World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has warned of more disease and deaths. Notably, he has implicated Israel’s blockade of aid entering Gaza as the cause for this. More than 10,000 people need medical evacuation abroad, and at least 60,000 children are malnourished. He said Israel denied or impeded 75% of UN missions in Gaza in last week.
Israel has persistently denied that its political leaders or military have committed war crimes during its assault on Gaza. It has killed more than 50,000 people. The UK continues to support genocide by supplying arms, whilst conducting more surveillance flights on behalf of Israel over Gaza than any other country.
Sign up, and turn out to support Youth Demand
Young people will not accept these crimes against humanity and we will not be led by war criminals and arsonists. We cannot allow those in power to get away with facilitating the systematic annihilation of an entire culture. It’s time to take to the streets day after day and to demand better. Only sustained mass resistance can put an end to this genocide.
Youth Demand is therefore calling on everyone to join them.
On Tuesday 15 April, supporters will be outside BBC Broadcasting house, Portland Place, to call out the public broadcaster’s complicity. Sign up to take action at youthdemand.org.
As the state and public’s violent attempts to silence Youth Demand ramp up, it’s more important than ever people turn out to show unequivocally that the UK cannot continue business-as-usual while Israel’s brutality continues with impunity.
Featured image and additional images/video via Youth Demand
