Save Haringey Youth Service disassociate from 'violence' of protestors at this week's full council

The following email, from a group called Save Haringey Youth Service, has been forwarded to me. (For context see video of the protest here and write-up in this post here).

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To everyone,

We appear to have been overshadowed by the actions of some [predominately adult] protesters at yesterdays full council meeting which has taken over the headlines of the press. We would like to make a statement regarding the protest and what we observed.

Today we have been publicly accused of violence following yesterdays meeting and this has upset us, SHYS has been campaigning since October 2010, all stages of our campaign our weapon of choice has been our brains, this is how our youth workers taught us to be and we will not disrespect them nor ourselves by acting in any other way. We have enough violence in our own lives on the streets and do not condone violence as a tool of democracy. We are not here to judge or condemn others who have chosen to use a different tactic to ours, the principal of democracy is to allow choice and this is the choice some may take. We are also not stating that we believe yesterdays protest was violent, that is a matter for personal opinion and a debate we will not be engaging in as it distracts us away from our aim [and coursework!]

Last night two things happened that stood in our minds.

1. We watched Cllr Kober faced the crowd, there are debates about what she actually said to them [and we did not hear] but she did show in our opinion braveness to stand there nonetheless, but she was not alone, standing alongside her all the way was Cllr Gorrie, the leader of the opposition, both stood alone as the only politicians in the chambers. What that showed us is that when needed they can take a stand and they can also work together, but all we have ever wanted was from them as local politicians was to take a stand, possibly together for the public and not towards the public. Maybe if this was done in the first place who knows how different things could have been.
2. One youth worker came as part of the HYC deputation [Sanjay] and others were just there. When things errupted, the police made every effort to get council staff and politicians to safety under guard, but our safety and exit was not considered, we were left in outside the chambers by the drinks machine during the occupation, others who came to support our deputation found themselves trapped on the balcony following what they thought was a queue to the public gallery. Sanjay kept us safe inside, but we watched through the window in horror as the rest of us were trapped between police and adults. Whilst Cllr Kober and Cllr Gorrie were put in a safe room, again we were left there. As the police grew in numbers to challenge the occupiers we were trapped in the middle, of what could have been a dangerous conflict.

Our youth workers and Andrea from the Union risked their own safety to get us out of the situation, they took us all around the building, for what seemed like ages avoiding crowds and police in the corridors until they found a safe place for us. At one point Andrea had to tackle someone to protect us, they soon realised the safest place for us was to get us through the crowd to the back garden and sheltered us through police and protesters conflicts to get us there. Due to the time the meeting started, Andrea and the youth workers stayed with us until we finished [10.30PM] and the youth workers paid for cabs out of their own money to get the under 16s home safely.

For us, this was reinforced why we need to fight as it was symbolic of how we are treated in the world, ignored and not considered by anyone except our youth workers. We would like to thank Berklie, Sanjay, Seema and Andrea for their bravery and will pay you back the cab fair if we ever get a job :-]

Save Haringey Youth Service [SHYS]

Fighting for the right, not the priviledge of a properly funded youth service.

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