Think global, act local

March for the Alternative, Embankment, London. Of 252 pictures in my camera I selected 42 for a Facebook gallery, but which one to blip? Many of them showed the colour and vitality of the march, some of the quirkier contributions and happenings, and locations heavy with symbolism. However, I finally settled for this very quiet, subdued miniature. For me it points up the multiple agendas that individuals brought to the day, alongside the very strong coalition for resistance to unfair social and economic policies. I watched as a young man, from his appearance possibly from North Africa, carefully fixed this sticker to a piece of Victorian street furniture, just by where I stood for four hours as a volunteer TUC steward and watched hundreds of thousands of marchers stream past. The sticker also provokes thought, for example about the differences and similarities between our situation in Western Europe and that of the people in North Africa, and the prospects for real democracy and justice in both regions.