Hoods, Freedom & Dancing

I love the Hackney Gazette. Mostly because it comes free through my postbox, its local and not stapled, meaning I can read it page by page as I walk my dog and use it to scoop his poo off the pavement. I dont though agree with it's big brother policy of posting photos of looters so that we can all pretend to be hey-diddly-doo neighbour vigilantes in Fahrenheit 451. Reminds me of the graffiti I saw in Greece, 'WE WEAR OUR HOODS UP SO YOU CAN LOOK US IN THE EYE'

A friend of mine just wrote to me: 'the only forces who feel empowered to express themselves in our society r the yobs who riot for flatscreens. the rest is divergence...'

As usual I find myself somewhere in between all stances and I still go with Emma Goldman's philosophy, if I can't dance I dont want to be part of your revolution:

'I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. "I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to be beautiful, radiant things." Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world — prisons, persecution, everything. Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own closest comrades I would live my beautiful ideal.' (Goldman 2006)