This is the editorial from today's edition of the Andytown News, our sister paper in Belfast:
If you think a week is a long time in politics, then what can one make of the five days between our newcomer communities being feted at the Best of the West Awards on Friday past and black and brown people being burnt out of their homes on Tuesday night?
Those being saluted at the Best of the West gala included vital workers and the newcomer leaders who founded the Zain supermarket in Andersonstown - after a previous store had been torched by racists in South Belfast.
The crime of those being driven from their homes was to be non-white and vulnerable, easy prey for wannabe tough guys defending (mar dhea) their communities. Last year it was revealed that half of those convicted of violence against migrant communities in Ballymena had convictions for domestic abuse. So much for patriotism.
Those in leadership positions who point to the horrific knife attack by a black refugee on a man in North Belfast on Sunday night as an excuse for this orgy of racist violence are simply carrying water for thuggery and fascism.
They are also lining up with the most egregious elements of loyalism and international far-right firebrands, from the White House to Whiteabbey, whose claims to be defending 'western civilisation' (that, indeed, would be a good idea, as Gandhi remarked) are risible.
The scenes from East Belfast of mobs baying for black and brown blood as they storm down terraced streets are more reminiscent of Bombay Street 1969 than they are of the Battle of Britain.
Justice Minister Naomi Long fearlessly called out those trying to present racist attacks as representing legitimate concerns about immigration. Likewise, independent councillor Paul Doherty was able to demonstrate the true spirit of West Belfast by providing succour to a family fleeing loyalist/racist rabble. Throughout, community leaders in the west of the city, in particular, were quietly moving fearful families from their homes into alternative accommodation on Tuesday night.
However, questions need to be asked about why proud communities in North and West Belfast which stood up to and saw off pogrom, internment, military occupation and, latterly, Covid, ceded key junctions in the city to nameless agitators who declared their plans to block roads over social media.
Cancelling GAA games, closing supermarkets, shuttering restaurants and pubs, dispatching staff home early 'to shelter in space' left loyalist gangsters in control of our city — with the assistance of a handful of nationalist know-nothings.
Is this really our future? To retreat to our homes the moment a social media warrior takes to his keyboard? If so, it will be a monumental betrayal of those who brought us the peace we enjoy today.
The late Gearóid Ó Cairealláin used to talk about the need, in the face of adversity, to display "the spirit of 1916". He might as well have said the spirit of 1969 for what he was talking about was the refusal of nationalist communities to be intimidated or cowed by bully-boys and bigots.
That spirit is much-needed right now. However, it is needed not in homes, where we shelter in space with curtains pulled scrolling X, but on our streets. Otherwise we will see 1969 being played out all over again, but this time with defenceless people of colour standing in for defenceless Catholics.
