Quarterly Fundraiser: Seeking £1,000 For ‘The State of London’, My Unique Reader-Funded 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 of ’The State of London’,

Every three months I ask you, if you can, to make a donation to support my unique, reader-funded photo-journalism project ‘The State of London’, which over 6,000 of you follow on Facebook — and nearly 1,500 on Twitter.

Long ago, in the mists of time, when David Cameron’s Tories had only been in power for two years, Brexit hadn’t even been conceived, and London was gearing up for the jingoistic orgy of nationalism that was the 2012 Olympics, I set out on my bike, with a little point-and-shoot Canon camera, to record the changing face of London.

That was in May 2012, and five years later I began posting a photo a day from my archive, and from the photos I was still taking on a daily basis, on ‘The State of London’ Facebook page, along with accompanying essays — about cynical council estate demolitions, the proliferation of new high-rise office blocks in the City and Canary Wharf, as well as photos taken on the sometimes long distance journeys that I undertook through London’s 120 geographical postcodes.

It took until February 2019 — four years ago — for me to finally upgrade to a camera worthy of the project — a Canon PowerShot G7 X Mk. II — and to devote more time to researching the subjects of the photos for the accompanying essays that became more detailed, and in which, as well as monitoring London’s changing face, I also began to take much more interest in the city’s history.

One year later, Covid hit, although I continued to cycle every day, chronicling the apocalyptically deserted West End and City throughout this period (in what I hope will, one day, be a ‘Lockdown London’ photo book), and continuing as the capital eventually began to awake, with, grimly, those with power and money desperately attempting to revive “business as usual”, even though the gulf between the rich and poor had reached gargantuan proportions, and even though the urgency of the climate crisis really can no longer be ignored.

And this is where we’re still at today. Dirty London’s gulf between its super-rich and its chronically poor grows ever wider, its streets are still traffic-choked, with almost no efforts made by politicians to tackle the climate crisis (or the city’s deadly air pollution), while developers, architects, the construction industry and their political enablers continue to turn as much of the capital as possible into dystopian new developments whose environmental toxicity and colossal failure to address the very real housing needs of ordinary Londoners beggars belief.

One way or another, all of this is unsustainable, but I don’t have a crystal ball to see how it will end; all I can do is promise you that, while I can, I’ll still be out on my bike recording it, in photos and essays, and welcoming along as many of you as are interested in accompanying me on this journey.

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 £10, £20, £50 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.

Andy Worthington
London
February 16, 2023

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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.