Quarterly Fundraiser for ‘The State of London’; Hoping to Raise £1,000 to Support My Ongoing Photo-Journalism Project

Please click on the ‘Donate’ button below to make a donation to support my photo-journalism project ‘The State of London’.

 

Dear friends and supporters,

Every three months I ask you, if you can, to make a donation to support ‘The State of London’, my reader-funded photo-journalism project, for which I have no institutional backing whatsoever.

It’s now nine years and nine months since I first set out on my bike to record the changing face of London in daily photographs, and four years and nine months since I first began posting a photo a day — with an accompanying essay — on Facebook, and I’m thrilled that the project now has nearly 5,200 followers, and that so many of you clearly enjoying seeing the photos everyday, and reading the accompanying essays.

I hope, however, that you don’t mind me pointing out that, although it’s free to view and read, ‘The State of London’ is a significant daily undertaking on my part, via my bike journeys, the research I undertake for each photo chosen, sharing on social media, and responding to everyone’s comments, and even if I were to raise £1,000 it would only work out at slightly over £10 a day — way below the minimum wage!

So if you can help out at all, please click on the “Donate” button above to make a payment via PayPal. Any amount will be gratefully received — whether it’s £5, £10, £20 or more!

You can also make a recurring payment on a monthly basis by ticking the box marked, “Make this a monthly donation,” and filling in the amount you wish to donate every month. If you are able to do so, a regular, monthly donation would be very much appreciated.

The donation page is set to dollars, because my PayPal page also covers donations to support my ongoing work to secure the closure of US prison at Guantánamo Bay, and many of those supporters are based in the US, but PayPal will convert any amount you wish to pay from any other currency — and you don’t have to have a PayPal account to make a donation.

Readers can pay via PayPal from anywhere in the world, but if you’re in the UK and want to help without using PayPal, you can send a cheque, or cash (to 164A Tressillian Road, London SE4 1XY), or you can make a donation directly into my bank account. Please contact me if this option is of interest.

Since my last fundraiser, in November, I’ve continued my daily journeys, often in the face of what winter tends to throw at us — too many overcast days, and often quite formidable wind and rain — and I’ve also continued to draw from my archive, sometimes posting photos from the Covid lockdowns that now, thankfully, seem to be becoming a distant memory. For a while, I concede, I was getting a bit jaded, but I’ve recently resumed long distance journeys to the outer reaches of the capital, revisiting places I haven’t visited since before the arrival of Covid, and even discovering new corners of this vast and frequently surprising city, and I look forward to making more of these journeys as the days get lighter and the promise of spring starts to make itself felt.

I’m now aware that the tenth anniversary of ‘The State of London’ — and its fifth anniversary as an ongoing public project here on Facebook — is fast approaching, and I hope that you’ll stay with me to celebrate it. 

If anyone has any expertise in designing websites, has printing facilities, or puts on exhibitions, do get in touch, as I’m always up for finding new ways to get my work out there, and even perhaps to find new income streams; otherwise, I look forward to carrying on entertaining and educating you, and often fanning the flames of outrage as I witness the greed and destruction and profiteering and injustice that is never far away in London, and that often, sadly, blights our lives on a daily basis.

In solidarity!

Andy Worthington
London
February 16, 2022

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Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer (of an ongoing photo-journalism project, ‘The State of London’), film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose music is available via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (and see the latest photo campaign here) and the successful We Stand With Shaker campaign of 2014-15, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here, or you can watch it online here, via the production company Spectacle, for £2.50).

In 2017, Andy became very involved in housing issues. He is the narrator of the documentary film, ‘Concrete Soldiers UK’, about the destruction of council estates, and the inspiring resistance of residents, he wrote a song ‘Grenfell’, in the aftermath of the entirely preventable fire in June 2017 that killed over 70 people, and he also set up ‘No Social Cleansing in Lewisham’ as a focal point for resistance to estate destruction and the loss of community space in his home borough in south east London. For two months, from August to October 2018, he was part of the occupation of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, to prevent its destruction — and that of 16 structurally sound council flats next door — by Lewisham Council and Peabody. Although the garden was violently evicted by bailiffs on October 29, 2018, and the trees were cut down on February 27, 2019, the struggle for housing justice — and against environmental destruction — continues.

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, The Complete Guantánamo Files, the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, the full military commissions list, and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.

Please also consider joining the Close Guantánamo campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.