the woolich incident

There's another thing I want to talk about.

Yesterday I was doing some volunteering with kids and a significant number of people (including the teachers) were from the islamic community. We were getting involved with those kids to help them learn about nature, enjoy the outdoors and have a bit of fun. When I got home I saw some news about an 'Attack' in woolich, I didn't think anything of it, I rested in bed, went to balance class and then when I came home, the people at the news were talking about this incident being a terror attack.

Then I see a video of that guy talking with bloodied hands. What a sick bastard, he's aware that people are going to take videos and he allows it. I didn't know terrorists had such PR ability. I think the public were mystified.

I've been following the news a lot over the past 12 hours. I've spent one of my jobs working to improve community relations. Part of my volunteer work is to improve  community relations, where I live in london, the islamic community is a very specific group of people who are usually hard to reach that we are making very good strides to make relations better and create an attitude of shared space and having a stake in places we share and the lives we lead in the same space.

I know I don't really get political on this blog but it really upsets me what happened yesterday and it puts what I do as community work in context. In other news, two days ago I have put myself up to do some mentoring and community work over the summer. The project manager said I have good background to be in a position to help these teenagers. Fuck, I still feel like a teenager. I feel weird looking like a grown up to those kids. Maybe I should grow up.

I like doing the community and volunteer work. I live and work in a situation where I can't be overtly political. It worries me hearing about this stuff.