Saturday 29 October Sermon on the Steps

Read Ciaron’s full sermon here.

The multi-faith, multi-denominational, multi-representative forum is being co-ordinated by volunteers based at Occupy London and will include readings and reflection, prayer and short speeches by representatives of different faiths, and non faith, with the theme of Love, Peace and Unity.

Catholic Worker Ciaron O’Reilly delivered a sermon about the need for active solidarity with those suffering at the hands of the state for their nonviolent resistance, including Bradley Manning.

Here’s an extract:

This nonviolent experiment in justice and peace outside St. Paul’s Cathedral, like so many others including Jesus community, may end in the violence of the state sweeping down upon it. But that won’t be the end as it wasn’t for Jesus community. Already our brothers and sisters have been batoned, maced, tasered and arrested in the U.S. and Australia. Our brother Scott Olsen remains in a critical condition in an Oakland/California hospital.

What is needed now, and always, is nonviolent resistance and the solidarity that sustains it. I truly believe if 1% of the 2 million people who marched in this country in 2003 against the war on Iraq had gone into nonviolent resistance to the point of imprisonment – in the spirit of Ghandi and Martin Luther King – and the other 99% who marched had proactively supported them… we could have stopped that war. We still can!

So there are some folks here sleeping rough, some who will be arrested and some who will be injured. We need to surround them throughout these experiences designed to intimidate and defeat with proactive solidarity, so they come out of those resistance experiences stronger than they went into them.

We need to support our resisters, casualties and prisoners.
Free Bradley Manning, Free Julian Assange and Free Michael Lyons.

Read Ciaron’s full sermon here.