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Camila Batmanghelidjh, founder of Kids Company, a charity she set up in 1996 to "provide practical, emotional and educational support to vulnerable inner-city children", wrote an article in the Independent newspaper which was seen by many as defending the actions of rioters. Here's an excerpt.
........anti-establishment attitudes are paradoxically helped by the establishment. It grows when a child is dragged by their mother to social services screaming for help and security guards remove both; or in the shiny academies which, quietly, rid themselves of the most disturbed kids. Walk into the mental hospitals and there is nothing for the patients to do except peel the wallpaper. Go to the youth centre and you will find the staff have locked themselves up in the office because disturbed young men are dominating the space with their violent dogs. Walk on the estate stairwells with your baby in a buggy manoeuvring past the condoms, the needles, into the lift where the best outcome is that you will survive the urine stench and the worst is that you will be raped. The border police arrive at the neighbour's door to grab an "over-stayer" and his kids are screaming. British children with no legal papers have mothers surviving through prostitution and still there's not enough food on the table.
It's not one occasional attack on dignity, it's a repeated humiliation, being continuously dispossessed in a society rich with possession. Young, intelligent citizens of the ghetto seek an explanation for why they are at the receiving end of bleak Britain, condemned to a darkness where their humanity is not even valued enough to be helped. Savagery is a possibility within us all. Some of us have been lucky enough not to have to call upon it for survival; others, exhausted from failure, can justify resorting to it.
We all know that violence and destruction of property can never be condoned but when you watch the news on all this, coverage is only about those affected by the violence. There's little or no coverage about what sparked the riots, namely what looks like a police cover up over the shooting of a man (who was a gangster and a drug dealer) or debate about the underlying causes for so many people to be so angry about their lives.
It's been said that "When chaos reigns, men seek order rather than justice"
What do you think?
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