BSix College students: Politics is corrupt, nothing will change

OBV welcomed students from BSix College, Hackney on Tuesday, 21st June 2011 to experience political campaigining first hand.

After a short introduction by Jyoti Bhojani and Teasha Bayles the young people had to explain their thoughts on what they felt about politics just with one word. And it was not really surprisingly that most of the words had a negative expression, for example: corrupt, cheated, inequality and nonsense.

One student commented, “I don’t really care for politics, because nothing will change, nothing will happen so why I should be involved?” whilst another said, “Politics is corrupt, nothing will change”.

Countering these negative views of politics could not be done overnight, but OBV sought to offer an alternative view – one of empowerment. OBV Director Simon Woolley explained to the students how important it is to participate in politics. He showed that 15 years ago nobody cared about the Black community, who suffered a lot of injustices and violence against them. So people became frustrated and angry, some engaged in violent protest. But Woolley and others at the time, realised that it was not the way to ultimately successed, and alternative approach that spawend a movement was born.  So Operation Black Vote was founded to demand justice and equality through political education, participation and representation projects.

The questions that everyone has to ask oneself , not only these students, is : What is my role to make society better? Do I have the courage, the ability and the vision to make a change?

The students were given an opportunity to test these questions which involved preparing a campaign for or against the education reforms to the Education Maintenance Allowance.

At the end of the session we asked again about the feelings the students felt towards politics and a few opinions changed. We hope that everyone of these students will think about this experience and will get involved as a political or civic leader of the future. To say it with Simon’s words: “We are the architects of our future, don’t wait for politicians to create and change it!”

Jennifer Jahreiss, international OBV intern.

Picture: BSix College students and class teacher with OBV staff members