Solidarity with Taksim Square

In my part of North London we have a large Turkish and Kurdish community, with a whole host of very visible political and community organisations . 

Over the past few years I have had the privilege of working quite closely with one of them. They have unfailingly taken the position of working in a non-sectarian way with any section of the Left - or anyone else come to that - who shares their broad aims when it comes to local campaigns, and they have put their enviable facilities and resources at our disposal.

Very occasionally you get from them just a hint of exasperation at the sometimes pathetic nature of the British Left. Whilst we are arguing about the number of revisionists who can balance on a pinhead, and sometimes struggle to  mobilise two men and a dog, they regard any turnout of less than about fifty to a meeting as something of an embarrassment. 

And they are quite right. In so many ways their organisation is a microcosm of what a healthy new movement could and should be like in this country - part cultural, part social, part educational,  wholly inclusive and  none the less wholly political for it.

And I'm writing this because right now I am awe of their mobilisation of solidarity for what is going is Taksim Square. Frankly, they make the rest of us look like we are in a coma.