Why Lives Matter
For a long time, you have been told that your life matters, that you are important, and you believed it. You felt it was true.

You knew it wasn't. You wonder, now, why other lives matter, visibly and proudly. You wonder why nobody is saying your life matters, when you know it does. Sorry, you know it should.

But for 400 years now, since the idea of races was invented to split poor white from oppressed black and ensure that divide and conquer kept power where power must be, you've been told that your life matters. (Yes, before that people were suspicious of other groups, and did bad stuff to them, but it was different - it wasn't a deliberate policy of the powerful.)

But for a decade your life expectancy has fallen. For a generation, wages have stagnated, at best, and decreased in many cases, as the jobs your dad and his brothers did have gone elsewhere. Easy. Blame the Asians that came here and built mosques where there used to be a pub, and the other visible migrants that have taken your jobs.

You wonder why everyone is saying Black Lives Matter, and feel left out, because you're white and you know that the way you're treated is awful. I get that. But try to recognise the suffering of other people. Understand that the opposite ofBlack Lives Matter is not white lives matter or all lives matter. And it definitely does not mean White Lives Don't Matter.

Look in that direction. I understand why you look that way. Your gaze is directed that way. The media, the political classes direct you that way. And it makes sense, in an immediate and experienced way, because you and your family have seen it change.

I ask you to look upwards, to direct your gaze at the people that have benefited from your labour since 1066, and benefited from slavery and colonialism these past four centuries, who herded your ancestors through acts of enclosure and the industrial revolution. And, let's be blunt, sent your Irish ancestors across the sea to Liverpool and spread them across the country via canal building projects. Because you know that a lot of us white, northern working class people have significant Irish ancestry; many of us don't know that the history of the Irish has a lot of similarities with how Africans, Asians and Native Americans were treated throughout recent history.

Because, like it or not, you are victims of the same forces that have left us rightly saying Black Lives Matter. You have been lied to by the elite, and benefited from the way they've outsourced your jobs to developing countries, which has helped obscure the truth. These forces - rich, established, land owning forces from the British elite - have controlled the narrative around migration, knowing that if we were to unite with the working class migrant, we'd have more in common than divides us. Remember that migrant followed the money stolen from their homeland, came on the promise of a job in the mother country, and then saw that job sent back to where they came from. Remember that the owners of the media are the same people that fill parliament, that own the companies, the banks, that hold the power.

All lives should matter. White working class lives matter less than white upper working class lives, in a very real sense. But right now, this is a key moment in the fight for racial justice.

You might feel powerless about this or neglected. I get that. I remember the feeling of seeing confident, wealthy children dominate a place, with no doubt of their sense of belonging. I know that feeling that you aren't as valid in a place as someone else, and the anger that sits below that surface. That feeling is why I care about this, and why I have some degree of empathy and understanding for what other people feel when they're victims of prejudice.

You are a victim of a prejudice. It is called classism. It is everywhere in our society, from the way queues at Primark are reported to how football supporters (and players) are portrayed in the media. Many of us have taken this in and turned it on ourselves. And, under pressure from the media, from the messages we've had drilled into us for hundreds of years about how exceptional the Englishman is, we turn it on others. I hate to say it, but it's trick. That isn't to say you should hate yourself,  in any way. It is to say that you should love others and raise them up. In doing so, you will raise yourself up.
How do you make your lives matter? It isn't by doing down Black Lives Matter. Support it. Try to understand that other people are treated badly, and often much worse, than you are. Don't turn your anger on other working class communities. Support them. Work constructively in your communities to make a change, organise and unite, to get back the infrastructure and opportunity that has been lost in so many white working class communities.

And, one day, turn your anger upwards, to the people who've held us all down. Work together, with working people of all races and religions to free us all from the system that divides us, the ideas that control us. You, me, our black and Asian neighbours, the Polish guys down the road, when it comes to it, we share an oppressor, we share a need for dignity, and the best way to get what we deserve is to work together.

Your life should matter more than it does. Thoughtless banners, fear and prejudice won't get you there; working class people working together will.