somehow managed to get both the Belfast pogroms in 1920 and the burning of Bombay Street into an 800 word article for the Independent i wanted to make a very clear connection between what we’re seeing happening to ethnic minorities in Belfast and across the six counties with the experiences of our parents and grandparents living under the repressive auspicious of the orange state mostly because I wanted to remind people who might be lured into the traps of racist ideology that our history, and the history of our people, is very much structured by an opposition to those same mechanisms of oppression i knew when all this kicked off that people in West Belfast wouldn’t take the bait, that the anti-colonial, anti-racist politics that runs through the collective consciousness is too firmly ingrained (also fuck the loyalists and their bigotry etc)… but that’s not to say that this can’t change, that the very marginal voices sowing hatred in the community won’t find a foothold (they already have, in all sorts of ways) i basically wrote this article for the people of West Belfast, to reassert our radical opposition to the bigotry and racism that underpins loyalism and make sure that the people who have come here to build lives for themselves know they are not alone, that they won’t be abandoned the way our parents and grandparents were, and that we stand by them in love and solidarity independent.co.uk/voices/bel…