As the light goes down

This evening I went to a small solidarity vigil near Oxford's largest mosque. In the small hours of yesterday morning, an Israeli flag was attached to one of its doors, and meat, believed to be pork, was smeared on the handles.

Threatening, intimidating, aggressive, racist, and being treated as a hate crime by the police (and pretty clearly not perpetrated by anyone Jewish).

I've been to very few protests over the last couple of years because, after a lifetime of trying to improve the world in any way I can, I've become very sceptical about whether protests, demos and marches change anything at all or, if they do, whether they change things the right way.

But I don't feel I can sit at home as if racism in my neighbourhood isn't relevant to me.

Before I got to the vigil, it was disrupted, I was told, by a known member of the far right. When I arrived the police were talking to him. Apparently he'd complained that some anti-racists had attacked him with placards. The anti-racists said they were holding the placards in front of the phone he was using to film them. I saw the police talking with him before they shook his hand and he got on his bike and left.

There was a lot of anger in the air.

My side was chanting the same slogans it always does. I knew that the next time their side assembles outside a hotel housing asylum seekers, they will chant the same slogans they always do. Although we don't listen to each other, it's the same rhythms on both sides, and sometimes even the same words: "The people _ United _ Will never be defeated". 

Which people, exactly? Defeated by whom, exactly? 

It is so easy to by-pass the brain. It is so easy to dehumanise the people you disagree with.

I stayed for an hour, feeling dispirited and alienated as the trenches were dug deeper. 

I have a lot more to say about the nuanced overlapping conflicts going on this evening, but this is not the place for them. I'm not sure where is.