Being pro-Palestinian on the Coast (and perhaps in other places) is a little like being a Communist Party member in the old days, existing on the margins of mainstream society, something akin to a nutter or a religious extremist believing in a narrative which challenges the mainstream narrative – or the lack of one.  In fact, the latter is the case, for there is no mainstream narrative other than the story of the accumulation of private capital (house, boat etc) and the personal dramas of relationship. There’s no idea of how the power structure works, of colonialism, imperialism, power blocs, racism, monetary system and controls, military alliances, media hegemony, the distraction of the spectacle, the resource battles, North versus South… None of this is known except as a form of fragmented gossip and the threats of local disasters, gangs, scams and bankruptcy – producing a generalised paranoia that it is the duty of government to alleviate.

Because genocide so thorough and blatant as what is happening in Gaza is so horrifying one is compelled to try to tell the story and in doing so, in the same way as the mask of the global system has been ripped off,  the local one is lowered: the horrified frozen stare of the bank teller when the Palestinian flag flutters and Gaza in the form of a petition, walks through the door; the neatly dressed petit bourgeois New World shoppers in the spacious car park which allows no gathering or intimacy; and then to the Warehouse where the lumpy working class are more welcoming and interested in our story of oppression, until the manager, a brisk, broad shouldered blonde who obviously tolerates no nonsense comes out and sends us on our way: This is private property and you guys don’t have permission.

How long would the seller of the People’s Voice last outside the Warehouse, a corporation which has taken over the colour red? The question is extraordinary. But actually, until the paper is being sold at the Warehouse entrance there is little hope. What I mean by this perhaps absurdly nostalgic thought, is that until a coherent version of the world order is being articulated to the working class, even if that coherence is largely ignored, ‘There is no alternative’ will rule the day.