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Thursday May 04, 2006

Anti-BNP rally

I am so tired that I can't actually feel the lower half of my body. And considering I have spent the last 11 hours on my feet that is no exaggeration. But, bloody hell, today has been worth it.

Today [April 29th] was the day of our Love Music Hate Racism Rally in Trafalgar square. Its aim was to explain to people the threat that the BNP pose to our society and to encourage people not to vote for them in the up and coming elections as well as raising money for the cost of the even and future events. I also helped out at this event last year, my first ever event volunteering for LMHR.

The day began, rather traumatically, at 7am. Up bright and early, I met friends at 9, and we hopped onto the district line from Upney to Embankment and short walk from there to Trafalgar square for our stewards meeting at 10:30. (Although it wasn't quite as simple as this as a short excursion, which should have been 2 tube stops took 6! Grrr.. engineering works. ) So, slightly distressed, we arrived at Trafalgar Square 15 minutes late.

Soon after we arrived (and tried to stifle our excitement about the fact Belle and Sebastian were sound checking on stage!) we had a short meeting just to let everyone know what we would do in the event of an emergency, why the event was taking place and what we would all be doing. We were all put into groups depending how we were helping on the day – some were on stalls, some were helping backstage, some were stewarding, some were collecting donations. Our group as with last year (which included me, Frances, Leah, Kirsty a few of her friends from school (Mira, Kafiya, Miriam) our group leaders Pheobe and Jess as well as any random helpers who were about when we needed help!) were on the stalls! The next thing to do was set up our stall. This basically  meant carrying (dragging.. ) lots of boxes from the van to our stall and then from there to another place.. and another place.. and another place.. until they decided they were happy with were it was and then putting out all the Merch - T-shirts, badges and pamphlets - making it look pretty! We so won at this! All stalls paled in comparison to ours! =D Then all we had to do was wait about for everybody to start flooding in and have a laugh..

And it really is a laugh. . Even if it is hard work and you get tired after a while .. especially after 11 hours WITHOUT a chair.  All the people we work with are incredibly awesome. Being on a stall basically just involves selling people the merch, giving out information and talking to people  - especially all the randomers that come along who this year included funky dancing lady, two men dressed elvis style, and a town crier! In fact the only people who weren't at all friendly were one of bands who performed  - The Paddingtons. Everyone going in and out of the backstage area donated by throwing some change into our donations bucket as they went past but.. no.. They were too good for that! They just laughed at us and walked past! At which point Kafiya called them all anorexics and got given the finger. The lead singer even demanded that someone go find some gaffer tape for his shoe and expected her to put it on his shoe for him and then walked off when she refused! How rude huh? There are some even dodgier backstage stories about them but I wont tell them here.. All of the rest of the bands were ace though! We got to go off every now and again into the crowd to see whichever bands we wanted to see. The band of the day had to be the Metro riots. They were only on for about 10 minutes but their set was amazing. Their sound was so big it managed to fill the entire square and get everyone dancing. They've been ace every time I've seen them and they are incredibly nice guys too. Another high point band wise were Boy Kill Boy who invoked mass sing-alongs and Lethal Bizzle who even got the indie kids excited with his version of 22 Grand Job.

About half 6 we started packing up as everyone began to disappear into the crowd for the last band of the day – Belle and Sebastian. They were great! We didn't manage to get our whole group to the front so we moved away from the stage and danced around, our collection bucket in the middle, with anybody who decided to join us! Much fun! As soon as it was finished we conga lined back to to our stalls to serve the massive crowds which had left the stage and swamped us!

After another two hours or so of running about and getting whatever people wanted we finally started putting everything away until next year! And judging by the success and the amount of money we took this year (About 5 times the year before by my judgement!) we'll be able to put on something even bigger and better!  At last when we'd hugged everyone goodbye and almost everyone else had gone home we left Trafalgar square, at 9pm, exhausted, and much in need of some food! That way everybody – there's a Pizza hut!!!!!!

Posted by Carolynn ( 12:23 PM )
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