My people are carers and warriors,
they carry fierceness and tenderness in equal measure,
they are exploited and ignored.
Dismissed as feral fuckwits and dole scum,
they make good liberal citizens step back in disgust and are the revolting subjects of neo-liberal society.
Each of them would take a bat to the head of someone who hurt those they love.
They are fiercely protective of their people and are loyal to a fault.
In many ways they are the ideal revolutionary,
but because of the ways in which capital and state apparatus has impinged upon their lives,
and successfully atomised the working class as a whole.
My people have been ignored.
Photographic commission for Chav Solidarity By D Hunter.
A collection of essays pick apart the lived experiences of its author. Hunter uses his experiences as child sex worker, teenage crack addict, violent thug and community activist to examine the ways in which our classed experiences shape the ways in which we think and do our politics. Chav Solidarity is part autobiography, part meditation on trauma, class and identity, and part one-finger salute into the face of respectability politics. The author likes to give free copies to prisoners and others without the means to buy them so the cover price reflects this “benefit”.