Pride can be a dangerous thing, but there are times when people stand together and to be part of it makes you feel at peace with your place in humanity. Today Oxford stood up holding the first “Refugees Welcome” demo in the UK and we said we favoured compassion over political and economic expediency. That we wanted to help. I was proud of my city.
A speaker said they had been in Calais last month, they had spoken to refugees camped there who wanted to come to England, the speaker asked if the refugees could talk to the British people what would they like to say. She said that the most common response was “Mercy.”
If you are not touched and cut to the very core by that I question whether you are truly human. Personally I find it hard not to be ashamed that people might even feel mercy would not be offered without question. Then I see the fences and the border controls and I know I have every reason to be ashamed.
raytsbaron 