Day 7: Walk to the Parliament

Day 7 of our strike for safeguarding our pensions and improved working conditions. The day started off wet. I took the bus into town and arrived on the Drummond St picket line shortly after 8. It started off with only 3 of us. Our numbers grew and around 10 we decided to picket Old College again where we joined the Women of Colour picket. Today's topic included crofts with a train shed on Shetland and which island to escape to. The time passed really quickly. For days we were in our little picketing bubble of 10 to 20 people. It came as quite a surprise when we got picked up by the walk to Parliament for the Rally for Education. Our walk included people from all Edinburgh universities and was pretty big. The student union called the rally to highlight their issues: 12% of students have experienced homelessness and 35% considered to drop their studies because they can't afford them and many students (I forgot the statistics) rely on commercial loans. Again, I hadn't thought about their issues. Hearing from them opened my eyes some more. We are all being exploited by the same system.

Today was a crunch point for our pension fight - the Joint Negotiation Committee has formally voted to implement the pension cuts. I will lose about 20% of my pension which comes on top of the losses from previous changes. I blame the senior management that is too cowardly to stand up for their workers. And I blame the Tories for introducing fees and marketisation of education.

I am angry and I am tired. Spending time with my colleagues on the picket line gives me strength. I am not alone with my ideas and views. We all have slightly different perspectives, views, concerns and ideas. Talking to each other helps to understand each other and build empathy. We are not an anonymous wheel in a big machine. The state is trying to atomise us. We must resist and find our collective power. Tomorrow I will go back to work, do my stuff and together with my colleagues will work on building the communication networks required to form community.