It could be just me, but it seems as if there are a huge number of protests going on, more than ‘normal’. I don’t mean this from the point of view of one ideology or another. I just mean people protesting about things in general. It could be me simply being more aware of protests, but at the moment we have multiple Free Palestine events, Kill the Bill, Anti-Lockdown events, that have all drawn significant numbers of people.

There were two events on the 5th June, both taking place in Victoria Square at the same time (12 noon). (There was also a third protest going in in Kings Heath against the Low Traffic Neighbourhood organised by the Workers’ Party of Britain, and there were some Extinction Rebellion people hanging out and chalking near the intersection between New Street and Corporation Street.)

The two protests that took place in Victoria Square were by BrumLAG (Birmingham Leaseholders Action Group) and a group seeking to stop the deportation of Osime Brown to Jamaica.

The BrumLAG protest took place near the statue of Queen Victoria, off to the side of the square. It was pretty well attended, at least a few hundred were there.

The protest for Osime Brown was around 30-odd people and took place in the section of Victoria Square under the building.

The BrumLAG event was about the issue of cladding in homes. In 2017, Grenfell Tower, a tower block in London, set on fire. The fire was able to spread rapidly because of the type of cladding used in the building. 72 people were killed as a result of the fire.

Safety concerns regarding the risk of fire had been raised before the fire took place.

Many other buildings contain the same or similar unsafe cladding. This has caused serious worries to those living in such buildings due to the risk of a fire.

The BrumLAG protest was focused upon the issue of who pays for the replacement of the cladding. Leaseholders have been expected to pay and their properties have no value. BrumLAG have been making the case that the developers that should be paying for the changes to make the buildings safe.

I did listen to some of the things that the speakers were saying. Unfortunately, they had a fairly low quality sound system. The recordings I made of the couple of speeches I managed to film on my tablet came out pretty garbled.

The Osime Brown event, on the other hand, had a much better sound system. The event was organised by some of the people involved in Kill the Bill and there were several of the same faces there as the event on May 1st.

I am going to be honest and say that I do not know a lot about this case. I will post the leaflet handed out by the organisers below so that you can read what they have to say:

Some of the speakers at this event were also at the Kill the Bill event. The woman with the bright coloured hair was speaking at Kill the Bill. I’m pretty sure the man with the yellow jacket introducing the speakers spoke there as well, or was involved in some way. Joan, Osime’s mother, also spoke at Kill the Bill and this is the first that I heard about this case.

I have embedded the videos below.

Here’s some Birmingham Leaseholders Action Group footage:

I am also trying to offer a Bitchute alternative for my footage, but am having some technical problems uploading. [EDIT: This is now resolved and all the above footage is available on Bitchute}.