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Link to this page: https://www.socialistparty.org.uk/issue/965/26226
From The Socialist newspaper, 4 October 2017
Why I joined: "I wanted to stand up, protest and change things"
Protesting against Trump, photo Paul Mattsson (Click to enlarge)
Catherine MacLennan, Leeds Socialist Party
It was Donald Trump who, indirectly, prompted me to join the Socialist Party. I went on an anti-Trump demo in Leeds earlier this year.
It was great to see so many people who were willing to get out and protest against racism and bigotry. All ages, genders, ethnicities and sexual orientations were there that day - strangers chatting to strangers, posing for photographs, united in a common cause. At the demo I bought the Socialist paper.
Buoyed up by this, I went on the NHS demonstration in London on 4 March and listened to speeches and marched with placards (and a balloon!) surrounded by those who worked in the NHS, had reason to be grateful to the NHS or, in a few cases, remembered the birth of the NHS and wanted to save what they'd loved and believed in for so long.
I bought a copy of the Socialist again, read it, thought about it. Then I realised that I wanted to be one of those people who stands up and protests about what is unfair, works to change things for the better and meets those who I can learn from and exchange ideas with.
The best way to do this, I felt, was to join the Socialist Party.
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The coronavirus crisis has laid bare the class character of society in numerous ways. It is making clear to many that it is the working class that keeps society running, not the CEOs of major corporations.
The results of austerity have been graphically demonstrated as public services strain to cope with the crisis.
The government has now ripped up its 'austerity' mantra and turned to policies that not long ago were denounced as socialist. But after the corona crisis, it will try to make the working class pay for it, by trying to claw back what has been given.
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In The Socialist 4 October 2017:
Catalonia
Solidarity with Catalonia - the people have the right to decide
Exemplary resistance by the people of Catalonia
Eyewitness: Irish socialist MP participates in events
What we think
Socialist Party workplace news
Royal Mail workers set for national strike action
Unison attacks Barts deal after failing to ballot their members for strike action
RMT strikes against removal of train guards spreads
University of Leeds workers walk out
ThyssenKrupp - Tata steel merger
Che Guevara
Revolutionary socialist Che Guevara 50 years on
Labour Party conference
Labour Party conference: Action against establishment sabotage still needed
Socialist Party news and analysis
Monarch abdicates responsibility to workers
Socialist Party reports and campaigns
£11,000 raised in three weeks for fighting fund
Why I joined: I wanted to change things
Chatsworth ward campaign replies to Tory MP's intervention
Surveying Labour councillors - will they fight cuts?
Leeds Socialist Students marks 'International Safe Abortion Day'
Protest outside Ukip conference against German far-right speaker
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