Activist and content creator Ani Says has been arrested yet again by the Met Police while out protesting Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its apartheid in the Occupied Territories.
Ani Says: arrested again
On Saturday 11 October, Ani Says was attending the national Palestine protest in central London – kind of. After a previous unwarranted and racially-motivated arrest and subsequent bailing, cops banned her from Westminster. So, Ani Says was going to Southwark instead – where she can go.
However, cops once again targeted her after she claims Zionists doxxed her. The reason for the arrest? Reportedly this time, for using the phrase ‘coconut’:
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Cops took her to Charing Cross police station (again). BBC Panorama recently released undercover reporting detailing racist and misogynistic attitudes within the Met Police.
Rory Bibb, the Panorama reporter, spent seven months in the custody suite of Charing Cross police station as a designated detention officer. In that time, Bibb recorded a vast array of truly heinous and discriminatory remarks and actions from the officers around him. His sterling work resulted in the suspensions of eight bigot cops and one other staff member.
So, cops dragging Ani Says there for the second time is not without fucking irony. However, the fact the Met reportedly nicked her for using the term ‘coconut’ is even more problematic.
Yes. Yes you are coconuts.
Remember teacher Marieha Hussain being charged – and then acquitted – with a racially aggravated public order offence? What did she do to warrant the cops paying attention to so-called racism? Well, she was the person who held up a sign calling Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman coconuts.
Yep, that’s all.
For the uninitiated, calling someone a “coconut” is a casual way to suggest that someone who is brown on the outside, is white on the inside. In other words, whilst being brown they are committed to whiteness above all else.
It’s hardly a new term, and documents a social reality that doesn’t often make it into the mainstream.
It’s a complex articulation of racial dynamics and hierarchies. Yet now, it appears cops have weaponised it again, this time against Ani Says.
The usual characters who love to defend freedom of speech should be up in arms about this. But, they’re not – perhaps because they’re contrarian fuckwits with no real understanding of race, class, and white supremacy.
But, we digress.
It’s an absolute outrage that Ani Says has been arrested.
And, for what it’s worth, whatever the context her message was and whoever it was aimed at, Ani Says would not have said it lightly. It will have been one that accurately characterised the complex racial dynamics of coconuts, who happily use their skin colour to leverage whatever tokenistic support they can before making decisions that make the lives of Black and Brown people much, much worse.
Solidarity with Ani Says. The Canary will continue to monitor the situation.
Featured image via screengrab
By Steve Topple
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They should just claim they are referring to
