Demonstrations - Have you? Would you?

I feel humbled, BradfordLass72.

I have always (maybe less so now) been a very shy person and my mother, who had very strong opinions, did not in any way encourage me to think for myself. I know it sounds pathetic, but when your opinions are constantly slapped down as a child, it becomes very difficult to have the confidence to express yourself as an adult and then go against the flow and stand up for what you believe in. It probably didn't help that I won a place at a Direct Grant school where I felt socially out of my depth. How I would like to go back to that little me and shake myself by the shoulders and tell myself to be myself and hold my head up high!

When my children were small, there was just one mother in our very conservative village who went regularly to protest at Greenham Common. I have always felt ashamed of not joining her when I had the chance.

The Painted Apple Moth incident is truly appalling.

My very first march was with CND - and that takes me back some humpty-seven years.

I've since been on numerous marches and protests, none of which did much good I fear.

Perhaps the cause which made me most angry was in 2002 when the local Council (spurred on by govt) decided to use crop-dusting aeroplanes to spread insecticide over everything and everybody (including primary schools and kindergartens), to kill Painted Apple Moth.

At the time, I lived in a rural area and there were little traps hung in trees to attract these moths with pheremones.

The Council and Dept. of Conservation found not one single moth before the date of the first spray but decide to do it anyway.

Some people became so ill they needed hospitalisation.
To this day, they still suffer the effects.

Some needed to be evacuated from the area completely and put into hotels in other cities until all the insecticide diminished.
It killed millions of good insects and still, not one moth was ever found.

I went on a march with Kurdish people, protesting at what Saddam Hussein was doing in Iraq but this month, when another march against Turkey is taking place, I'm just not up to the 2 km hike they've planned.

I'll be with them in spirit.

Thank you, Whitewavemark2, I will.

amagram may the force be with you?

I’ve been on various protest marches all to do with peace.

All of them enjoyable, meeting like minded folk. All peaceful and civilised.

I can’t go on Saturday because of mum, but you can represent me ????