Marching as ritual
I’m walking alone, masked-up and nervous, scanning the crowd outside Caffe Nero on Regent Street for anything that suggests I’m in the right place. I’ve come, hesitantly, to meet the Jewish Bloc, hoping to see a familiar face but - at least at first - I see no one I recognise. It’s 14th October 2023.
14 weeks later, I’m at the back of the 141 bus heading towards Moorgate, flanked by six friends, on our way to meet more. We get off the bus before it diverts away from the huge crowds of people gathering at Bank, manage the logistics of relieving bladders and caffeinating bodies, and head in the direction of the rumbling drums, where we find a bloc of 3,000 people setting off from Old Jewry. It’s 13th January 2024, and the biggest turnout the Jewish Bloc has seen since demonstrations began in October last year.
Photo credit: Jacob Lazarus
In the 15 weeks since 7th October, Palestine Solidarity Campaign has organised seven National Marches for Palestine. Initially a weekly event, they have now become fortnightly (with a break over the new year), and have seen between ~300-800,000 people travelling from across the UK to march through central London.
These marches have become a ritual for many of the ~500,000 people that show up each Saturday; a ritual that reenergises us and reminds us that we are part of a vast, diverse, powerful movement. Every other week, we have the chance to look around and count our allies, and to be counted amongst them. We are reminded of our collective strength in a way that we simply cannot be through a screen, through likes or retweets. We are emboldened by our collective power.
Faced with the scale of the fight in front of us, we can look around and understand the potential we have to meet it. It might not be the protest itself that makes the change (indeed with each passing week it feels less and less likely that it will be), but knowing how many we are is undoubtedly helping us to act more effectively and bravely. This at least has been my experience of marching with the Jewish Bloc. With each march I see more faces I know - many I haven’t seen in years, and others who I know well and never would have expected to see at a march. It has been heartening to watch as more and more people I know and love take the steps to show up.
As the situation in Palestine gets worse and worse, as we watch genocide unfold and come to terms with the UK’s complicity in it, the shock, rage and helplessness of those of us watching around the world grows and grows. The PSC marches have responded to the yearning that many of us feel for ritual in times like this: we need somewhere to take our overwhelming despair and anger. When we are experiencing collective grief, we need to find spaces to hold our grief as a collective. These marches have created a container in which the full scale of our grief, anger and desperation can be held. We are given permission to shout, to sing, to dance, to cry, to laugh, to be silent, to talk about the situation or not; we stamp through the streets of London, allowing our heartbeats to sync up with those of the people around us, slowing our heartrates down and thereby allowing our nervous systems to calm, if only a little. They are also exhausting, these marches: they are overstimulating, the release of emotion is tiring; the navigating of large crowds is a lot for many of us to handle; not to mention the many many thousand steps being walked from the start to the end of the route. But there is perhaps catharsis in this physical exhaustion.
Photo credit: Jacob Lazarus
This ritual is strong. It has to be: it’s holding immense amounts. So what does the strength of the ritual rely on? What makes this this container so strong?
Same time, same place
There is power in consistency. Much like a religious service, these marches happen on the same day (Saturday) at the same time (12pm) in the same place (central London). The consistency is powerful for building trust, community and habit, and may even allow us to build other rituals of our own around it.
Escape from the mundane
These marches ask us to step out of the mundane, to change our routines to accommodate them. They give us the chance to walk through streets we might not know, surrounded by the beautiful, old buildings of London or along the Thames; we walk in the middle of the road, which we would never normally be allowed to do. The escape from the mundane makes this special, and marks it out from the day-to-day.
Chants, songs and drums
We have come to know the songs, chants and drumbeats: we feel the familiarity of them in our bodies. Much like a football team, we may feel a sense of ownership over these chants, as we are given permission to shout or sing them at the top of our voices, and we are joined by those around us. Singing communally is proven to be good for us; the drum beats help us access a more embodied state; they simultaneously seem to calm us down and rev us up.
Familiar faces
The more we attend these marches, especially as part of a ‘Bloc’ (e.g. the Jewish Bloc, the Queer Bloc, the Palestinian Youth Movement Bloc etc.), the more we come to recognise the faces of the people around us. We begin to experience a sense of belonging that keeps us coming back. We may even be forming or fuelling relationships that exist outside of this ritual - relationships that we might leverage to organise and take action. This has certainly been my experience of organising with Na’amod.
To be visibly a part of something
The Palestinian flag, the image of the watermelon, the colours red, green, white and black; placards and badges and banners and flags… People joining these marches are easily recognisable for the colours, imagery and accessories that have over time come to be associated with the Palestinian solidarity movement. This means that, even if you go to a march alone, you know where to go and can easily slot in. It also means that, for those traveling to/from the marches, the solidarity extends further: connecting people in tube carriages who recognise one another by their badge or their placard, who might exchange a smile, or strike up a conversation.
A strong invitation with a low threshold
The ask is simple: join us for a slow, accessible walk from point A to point B. Anyone of any age can join - from babies to great-grandparents. You can leave at any time, you can join at any point; you can come one week but not the next. You can join or you can simply watch. Crucially, the march will carry on without you, but it will also be stronger for having you in it.
* * *
I have been thinking recently about how we can better leverage rituals to help to fuel and sustain movements for social justice. If we had more rituals embedded into our activism, would we see less burn out? Would our action be more effective? My instinctive response to these questions has always been “yes”, and the PSC marches have confirmed this belief for me. They are not easy to create - they require time, thought, energy, capacity and trust - but we truly need rituals like this, especially in times like this.
18th January 2024