Hundreds join Bristol school strike for Palestine

November 3, 2023 –
From Socialist Worker (UK)

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People rally on College Green during the Bristol school strike for Palestine

Hundreds of school, college and university students took part in a strike for Palestine in Bristol on Friday.

Parents rallied alongside students on College Green in the morning. Queues began to form as children waited patiently to take their turn at addressing the crowd. Children as young as four took hold of the microphone calling to free Palestine.

Other primary, secondary, sixth form and university students gave heart-aching speeches about the children being killed in Gaza. One primary school pupil said, “When I take a drink of water, I imagine those children in Gaza who can’t.”

Another echoed this point, saying, “While we’re at home having our food, they are in Palestine not having any.”

One university student said, “You realise this is the age that they are in Palestine when they’re kicked out of their homes and bombed.”

Shortly after pupils finished addressing the crowd, protesters marched a petition calling for an immediate ceasefire up to City Hall and delivered it to Labour mayor Marvin Rees.

Children had decorated the banister outside the council building with red, white and green ribbons—each one representing a Palestinian child killed since Israel’s onslaught began.

Meanwhile, hundreds of university students in Glasgow and Edinburgh staged walkouts on the same day.

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Stop The War Coalition and others have called a day of action on Saturday with protests in towns and cities across Britain. In London, people are set to hold local protests and then head down to the centre of the capital for a mass rally in Trafalgar Square.