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Rainbows

I want to note this down before the landscape changes: there are rainbows all throughout South London, and there have been all Summer. All throughout the UK, in fact - but as the change is more noticable in landscapes that are particularly familiar, this is something that's jumped out at me as I've walked around my neighbourhood and in particular in the residential areas. Since the onset of the pandemic, firstly children's drawings started turning up in windows facing out into the street: usually an A4 sheet of paper with a rainbow, often a rainbow over a house, and a heart, and a 'we love our NHS' (National Health Service). These were followed by chalk drawings on the streets - big community drawn rainbows and messages of love, thanks and support for health workers. Then businesses, of course, had to start showing these colours too. But it still strikes me that most rainbows still belong to the community, the majority drawn by children, and these can be seen in walks around residential neighbourhoods.

The rainbows are, outwardly, all about the community celebrating and giving thanks to the work of the health service throughout the pandemic - though when these symbols have been held up by the state as well, they're also something of a smokescreen and a dog-whistle for national celebration rather than critical political astuteness - one thing no-one seems to mention about rainbows is: they're supposed to have a pot of gold at the end, and I've seen our national health service gutted, under-funded and sold off in parts to various forms of private ownership over the past decade in austerity measures.

The CEO of my organisation e-mailed all staff today to confirm that no-one would be returning to our city-centre office space this year, with the rise again in cases of C-19 and new government guidelines to shut down office workplaces. They're going to review the situation again in January, and I just hope that I can maintain enough security to keep a roof above my head throughout all of this - as well as for those around me. But I know that many are already going through hard times, and many more to come. The state has reduced its support of 80% pay for those eligible, down to 20%. That can pull in as little as a third of monthly rent for what's considered 'cheap' rent in a shared living space in this city - and a temporary ban on evictions that ran throughout Summer has been lifted, risking the security of homes for tens of thousands of people.

The tension between the imperative for 'business as usual' and what the life blood of capitalist economy truly is has never been clearer in my lifetime; human lives are at stake beneath this all, and are being put under immense pressure to be churned into unsafe conditions in order to maintain economic 'health'. State decisions at this moment become necropolitics; a governance over life and death - over whose death is permissible in the eyes of capital. I hope we can improve a critical, community literacy and astuteness within how this plays out in the coming months, and that the opportunity for deepening social fractures isn't so easily rounded upon by right-wingers. That community literacy needs to develop from the same base of sentiment we see in the neighbourhoods with the rainbows. But rather than this largely affective sentiment, we may have to get sharper, clearer, more direct in what we demand for our wellbeing (quite literally, for our lives). I should like to see these signs across town that say 'No evictions - homes for all' — and this purely as a starting point for a different kind of society.

A rainbow I saw tonight (image file)

Tags: #NHS #Covid19