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Today in Focus

A moral victory: what the acquittal of the Colston Four means for future protests

Today in Focus

The Guardian

Daily News, News

4.5778 Ratings

🗓️ 10 January 2022

⏱️ 31 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Last week a court acquitted four protesters who helped tear down a statue of the notorious slave trader Edward Colston. Damien Gayle describes what the case means for future protests and one of the defendants, Sage Willoughby, describes the jubilant moment the verdict arrived. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/infocus

Transcript

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0:00.0

This is the Guardian.

0:09.6

Today, what is the acquittal of the protesters

0:12.6

who tore down the statue of the slave trader, Edward Corston,

0:16.7

mean for the future of activism?

0:18.6

The

0:29.3

On the morning of June the 7th, 2020,

0:31.6

a mass march had been organised

0:35.0

in the centre of Bristol under the banner of Black Lives Matter.

0:41.4

10,000 people turned up to march in solidarity

0:45.2

with Black people and against racism.

0:50.3

They went past where the statue of Edward Corston

0:52.6

sits in the centre of the city.

0:55.9

As that happened, around 3,000 participants

0:59.6

called into police estimates ended up leaving the main march

1:05.4

and congregating around the statue

1:07.9

where they started pelting it with eggs

1:10.0

and chanting, pull it down, pull it down.

1:15.2

One of the people in the crowd that day was sage willaby.

1:20.0

It's been years and years of campaign

1:22.8

that the statue has come down

1:24.8

and it's like it's different to have

1:28.6

100 years my dad's shouting through the corridor.

...

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