*all loved up*

Eeee! Attended a workshop at the European Social Forum this weekend and it has totally renewed my faith in left-wing political activism! There are always a lot of kids at these lefty-activist gatheings, and fair play to them. But at the meeting I attended, and at the obligatory ensuing pub and restaurant rehash, it was an older crowd, a group of people who came together during their student days in the 1970s and have been working ever since to promote awareness and a voice of active dissent to social repression in a certain Middle Eastern country. Okay fine, so they haven't brought about regime change or anything. But it's the fact that they're genuinely building solidarity and working towards change without trying to further their own personal agendas that I found so refreshing. Maybe it's to do with the fact that these are people who've already established themselves in various fields - they've already got "day jobs" and they're not looking to make names for themselves as political messiahs, they just want to get things done. Go old-timers! The youth these days are going to hell in a handbag anyway. But yes. Working with and within the unions to draw attention to the issue and hopefully make it heard in the mainstream political press. Not fighting amongst themselves, no splitters, no scabs. Just unity and solidarity, and I'm going to stop this right now before it becomes any more bile-inducing.... Sorry. But yes, the Left and I are all loved up again, and in guise of a rose, I'll be writing a feature article profiling the situation. For various reasons, it may be the trickiest piece I've yet had to write.