Let me be clear from the get-go: I wholeheartedly support direct action. Protests, demonstrations, strikes, sit-ins, blockades, disruptions. I've been involved in such actions and I will be again. When the cause is just and the response is warranted, I'm not even too concerned if people act outside the law. Some laws are bad. Some laws are part of the problem. Some laws cry out to be broken.
But not everyone has the option of acting in such a way. For reasons of health, disability, poverty, family responsibility, caring duties, geographical location and a dozen other things, not everyone can be on the Trafalgar Square frontline or offer themselves as an arrestable on Westminster Bridge. We stand with those who can and do.
For those who can't, using their voice online is important. It's a way for the isolated to feel connected, for the powerless to access power and for those without community to belong. It isn't an easy way out or a virtue-signalling means for liberal snowflakes to pontificate from ivory towers. The verbal abuses and death threats are no less damaging for being virtual. The opposition is no less real for existing in cyberspace.
Ideas and discourses are created, debated and disseminated all over the internet. Corporations, climate change deniers, homophobes, populists and fascists have strong voices online, often acting in tandem. They know the importance of reaching and influencing. Their voices must be countered wherever they appear: on our streets and on our screens.
Everyone has a voice. Silence is complicity. Wherever you are.
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