In August a teenage Deliveroo cyclist, Raven Morrello, was dragged off his bike, roughed-up and thrown in the back of a van by police in Manchester. He was riding his bicycle along a street when a police horse (why do the police have horses anyway??) got ‘spooked’ by the bike. Apparently that was enough of a reason for the police to assault and arrest a 19 year old.
We know that the police can be brutal, that’s why the Black Lives Matter movement is gathering pace in Britain. You can see just how brutal they are by what happened to Raven. The Manchester Evening News website has a video clip of the victim screaming in pain on the ground while the police are pinning him down.
Deliveroo workers are getting shafted from every direction right now. The company is trying to cut their wages by putting them on piecework instead of hourly pay. This provoked a strike in mid-August.
Bosses are attacking them from one side, police from the other. This attack on Raven is the perfect example of how we’re all being treated by the capitalist system. Standing up for him is standing up for ourselves.
Raven is being taken to court in September for cycling without due care and attention and swearing at a police officer. A criminal conviction, for having done nothing wrong, could wreck the life chances of this teenager who’s struggling to earn a bit of money in a badly paid job as it is.
Someone has already launched a campaign and a petition (find it on Facebook) which is getting hundreds of people signing it. We should all support this and get stuck in to fight against this injustice.
