"We cannot help everyone, but everyone can help someone"
on Archive
Last October on a trip returning to UK I decided to stop in Calais.
I couldn’t do too much except offering a little help with my two hands to the other volounteers that are working there unloading and packing donations.
The people living in the camp are continuously abused by local police, continuously filmed by the media and by curious improvised photographers but are rarely heard.
So initially, out of respect, I decided that I didn’t want to share too much about this experience with my own voice, but that we should instead learn listening to the refugees own voices. That was probably mixed with the sense of guilt for not being able to commit in helping more.
Now, in reality, the conditions in the camp are so inhumane that makes you realise how much dignity there’s in the people who are fighting to find a better future for themselves and their families.
Makes me sick so much that our governments are ignoring the most vulnerable and innocent at our own doorsteps and I don’t know how to be more angry when they criminalize the gestures of the few compassionate people who are left.
Rob Lawrie, interviewed in this short video, is facing accusations up to 5 years in jail for trying to help a 4 year Afghan girl.
You don’t always have to follow the law to do the ethically right choice. I believe he has an important message to not feel owerwhelmed by the amount of injustice and start doing our little part in changing it: “We cannot help everyone, but everyone can help someone”
Now, some of you can find this video inspiring or easy to empathise with. If this video helps moving your ass from your chair out of social media, please do it!
There are many people helping in Calais and many more are needed. If you’re one of those currently living in France or Britain please seriously join or support one of the organizations that are bringing solidarity.
PS.
If you cannot help directly or in first person send your donations, your old winter clothes or an old pair of shoes. But please, also remember that this video follows one of the uncouncious motives of the “western white saviour” trying to help those “helpless refugees kids”. I hope that one day the humans that are now living in the camp will come and use that old pair of shoes you donated to kick our own asses. Especially the ones of the people who have been waiting, sitting here and ignoring this injustice for years.