When I was young, I was quite an Anglophile. I listened the BBC World Service, I watched Monty Python’s films and TV shows, I watched gritty British cinema set in Thatcher’s 80’s landscape, and I listened to all the British punk and new wave bands that came in the wake of the Sex Pistols and the Clash. Looking back the only thing I didn’t consume was contemporary British Literature. Only the classics from George Orwell and older. I never imagined that I would one day come to the UK and live in London for 25 years. Half my life now.

It is not the sort of thing that A Mexican kid from Mexicali dreams about. It was not part of any plans I had as we illegally emigrated to the United States and ended up in Fresno. I wanted to please my family, so I studied hard and had ambitions to study law, politics and history. Not once under the age of 20 did I dream of living in Europe. I also never dreamed I would end up being a Photojournalist.

And yet here I am living in the London Borough of Enfield. It seems as normal as anything and only when I reflect on my journey does it seem slightly preposterous.

My mother was a cleaner. A single mom who worked in a hospital raising me and my three younger sisters. My mother grew up about 70 miles south of Ensenada on a family farm which grew corn and watermelons. My grandfather was a refugee from the Mexican Revolution which ravaged his home state of Puebla. He worked as a farm hand both in Mexico and Southern California when the border was open. He worked almost 20 years in the fields of Orange County before saving up enough money to buy land in Baja California. His first 5 children were born in the United States and are American Citizens.

I tell you this brief incomplete backstory of myself because I wanted to illustrate one point. I am immigrant twice over and I am working class. It is something I am proud of. I look back now of the time I lived in America and I think the political culture tried to beat that consciousness out of me. The culture ingrained in me some unspoken desire that I should strive to be and identify as middle class and if I was lucky, be rich.

Living in London, the UK, Europe and one thing I know is that class matters here. Thatcher tried to import that American Dream mentality and it has in some respects succeeded. Many Brits now think that the only thing that matters is our own personal initiative. Failure and poverty is a personal fault. Don’t blame society for your ills. The Labour Party under Tony Blair came to power soon after I settled here. Under Blair, The Labour Party ditched its socialist label and co-opted a lot of Thatcherite ideology in order to become “electable”. Winning elections seem to redeem this policy direction.

To me this was part of a wider trend in Western Democracies since the end of the Cold War that pronounced Capitalism the victor and Communism (but really they mean Socialism) the loser. No longer in fear of Communism, a lot of western democracies stopped paying lip service to equality, good social services, and a generous welfare state. And since 1989 inequality has grown and grown because the Bolsheviks don’t seem to be coming and taking all of our stuff away anytime soon.

Once I became a British Citizen I voted for the Labour Party in 2001. Soon after came 9/11 and the “War on Terror” which Tony Blair happily signed up to and I stopped voting for Labour in protest. I voted Green in 2005 and in 2010 general elections. In Britain’s first past the post system, it was really a protest vote. In 2015 I voted for Labour again because the new leader Ed Milliband seemed to be stepping back from Blair’s policies and once again talking of Socialism. The Labour Party lost anyway, The Conservatives won and soon they gave us Brexit.

Ed Milliband resigned after the defeat and under a new system he created there was one man, one vote elections from Labour Party members who chose the party’s new leader. As a photojournalist I covered those Leadership elections and as a Labour Party member (I joined in 2015) I participated. I was going to vote for Yvette Cooper because I thought the party needed a female leader. But watching the campaign I listened to her and her fellow candidates Andy Burnham and Liz Kendall say the same things over and over again as though reading from a script. And what that script said was the Conservative’s austerity plans must be continued, that addressing inequality must take a back seat to fixing the economy after the financial collapse of 2008, that the neoliberal policies of Thatcher and Blair must be maintained, that basically there was nothing really wrong with how things were. The fourth candidate in this election was Jeremy Corbyn. A long time unapologetic left wing member of the Labour Party, Corbyn wasn’t given a hope in hell of winning. Corbyn himself probably didn’t think he would win so he just stated what he actually believed which was in Socialism.

I have never been this excited about politics, ever. Living in Europe I realise how right wing the Democrats in the USA have been until recently.

Corbyn espoused taking back all the public services privatised under Thatcher and Blair – like the railways and utilities. He supported higher taxes to properly fund the National Health Service, public housing and public education. He espoused higher taxes for the rich to address inequality and he wanted a completely different foreign policy that abandoned the war on terror, ditched the British Nuclear arsenal and promoted peace. And he wanted to tackle Climate Change in a meaningful way.

Corbyn won and in 2016 after being challenged again in the wake of Brexit, won again.

In the 2017 general election when every single pundit predicted that the Labour Party would be wiped out under Corbyn, they did as best as is possible without winning and deprived The Conservative Party under Theresa May a working majority in Parliament.

I have never been this excited about politics, ever. Living in Europe I realise how right wing the Democrats in the USA have been until recently. Corbyn represents real change from the neoliberal agenda that has dominated since Reagan and Thatcher.

But since his election as Leader of the Labour Party Corbyn has been vilified not only by the right wing press but also by many people who I consider myself very closely aligned to politically … or so I thought.

Corbyn was at first vilified for being an apologist for the IRA and for being a Marxist. Corbyn long espoused speaking to the Irish Republicans during the Troubles when no one dared. One of the great things Tony Blair did was talk to the IRA which led to the Good Friday Agreement. So the argument of talking to the IRA made him a terrorist sympathiser seemed ludicrous in the context of recent history. He was vilified as a Marxist for his unapologetic socialism even at the height of the cold war. He was vilified as a peacenik for being against Reagan’s Cold war policies, for being against the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and countless other military interventions. But on reflection History seemed to vindicate his views over and over again.

But now the biggest and in my view the most damaging attack on him has been that he is anti Semitic.

Corbyn has long been a supporter of the Palestinian struggle. He has supported the Palestinian Liberation Organisation since he became an MP. In the 80s of course the PLO was treated as a terrorist organisation. Corbyn talked to the PLO, the ANC and the IRA in the 80s when almost all mainstream politicians didn’t in fear of being labelled apologists for terrorism. Now every mainstream politician talks to them. But Corbyn has also not been afraid to speak to Hezbollah and Hamas. The ANC, the IRA and the PLO all had left wing, socialist, anti imperialist tendencies, while Hamas and Hezbollah have their ideology in their struggle rooted in political Islam. Before Corbyn became leader of the Labour Party no one to my knowledge ever accused him of anti Semitism. Maybe this was due to the fact that as an MP on the fringes of parliament no one took much notice of him. The Labour Party under Blair and Gordon Brown had large majorities and did not need Corbyn’s support.

We have a grown comfortable with our free spending capitalist consumerist society. Probably anyone reading this is …

After he became leader the right wing press as well as many pro Blair Labour party MPs accused Corbyn of being an apologist for the IRA and of being a Marxist. Both charges didn’t really stick since the world had moved on from the politics of the 80s. They tried to unseat him for his lukewarm support for staying in Europe during the referendum campaign. Something I admit bothered me a bit because I am very much in favour of staying as part of the European Union. Corbyn won a leadership challenge decisively after the referendum even though the party is heavily pro European. Corbyn’s policies as described in the election manifesto of 2017 nearly led to victory.

So in my opinion, this is what has led us to the charges of anti Semitism. His critics have failed to dislodge him over policies and over Europe and have turned to charges of anti Semitism to get rid of him.

When Ed Milliband reformed the election rules of Labour, he basically got rid of the Union’s block vote in which unions in effect voted for their members and could deliver thousands of votes for any candidate they favoured. In its place was one member, one vote, along with an ease to joining the membership through low fees and via the internet. Corbyn’s leadership campaign as it gained momentum inspired many to join the party and vote for him. By the end of his victorious campaign the membership swelled to over half a million, making it the largest party in Europe based on active membership. There is no doubt that among those vast numbers, anti Semites, possibly who liked Corbyn’s criticism of Israeli policies, joined the party. Among those numbers it is also highly likely that campaigners and sympathisers of the Palestinian struggle also joined because they saw Corbyn as like minded. I don’t defend anybody who is anti Semitic. Any racists should be kicked out of the party once identified. Problematic too is that many pro Palestinian members don’t have the ability to articulate criticisms of Israeli policies without venturing into the language of anti Jewish rhetoric. They may not mean to be anti Semitic but they write stuff that sounds like age-old tropes of anti Semitism. The trouble with mass membership in which joining is quite easy is that no one is vetted until they do or say something stupid. And critics of Corbyn have used the undoubted stupidity of some new members to blame him personally for the views of every one of these idiots. The charge that can be laid on Corbyn’s doorstep is that he and the Labour leadership did not take it sufficiently seriously to deal with it promptly.

There is a lot of hostility to Corbyn over Israel. The political mainstream is still very sympathetic to Israel even if they always make sure to mention that they are supporters of a two state solution. But I truly believe the winds of change are coming. Decades of settlement building and the right wing nationalist policies of Likud led Israel have turned many young people and people of colour to view Israel very critically.

I don’t think Corbyn is anti Semitic. In my experience of life Racists don’t tend to be selective of who they hate. Corbyn has a long tradition of anti racist causes. He has always maintained that his inspiration in politics and activism has been the “Battle of Cable Street”. In 1936 the police were sent to protect a march by fascists led by Oswald Mosley through Cable Street, a then predominantly Jewish neighbourhood. Left wing groups and the Jewish community turned out in force, 20,000, to stop the march by 2,000 fascists and 7,000 policemen. The left won. Corbyn has also famously been photographed being arrested in the early 1980s for demonstrating against Apartheid.

What Corbyn represents is real change. And that is what scares people. After 38 years of Neo Liberalism in the UK, even people who purport to be left wing are scared of real change.  Neo liberalism has got us loving our mortgages, our credit cards, our far-flung holidays, and our consumerism. Climate change and growing inequality are a threat to this consumerist lifestyle. Many purported left-wingers are in fear of the value of their bubble inflated home coming down. We all say we want to tackle these problems without any costs to us. But a growing consensus, especially among the young, is that the world has to change. We have a grown comfortable with our free spending capitalist consumerist society. Probably anyone reading this is not homeless, not near bankruptcy, not in fear of their kid’s education. Everyone reading this probably recycles, tries to use public transport as much as possible, and is aware of the problems facing this planet. What we all fear is real change, even change that we know we need. The most to lose out under a Corbyn government will be the rich and the corporations. Their taxes are going to go up and they will probably start to be taxed not just on their income but on their wealth. And the means by which they accumulate wealth will probably also begin to be heavily regulated.

A lot of vested interests are afraid. The rich and the corporations have their hands on the levers of power, they have the ears of the lawmakers in a way we don’t. They own most of the media on who we depend on our information to make educated choices in our democracy. They own the wealth that has increased exponentially unchecked since 1989. I don’t think Corbyn is radical to the degree that he will actually try to end capitalism, but he will probably tackle inequality and climate change in a way that FDR tackled the Depression. I am tired of talk and I want change. I doubt the world will be fixed completely if Corbyn is elected. He will still be the leader of a reluctant moderate party wary of radical change. Change in a democracy has to be consensual by default and the very act of legislating will be slow. But my hope is that it will be in the right direction. My life path has been a strange one, but at least I have seen a lot of the world and have been witness to many amazing events. I always tell people that I was dealt a bad hand in life but I made the most of it. I am aware that a lot of luck and chance took place to be where I am at. Only recently in speaking to my mother have I truly realised how precarious we were economically. One broken leg or serious illness and my family could have been destitute. My mother never shared stress over late payments, of having to borrow money from family and friends so me and my sisters could eat. The first time I truly began to realise how poor we were was when I had a chance to do a London semester while in high school. All the kids that wanted to go went, except me. The costs were way beyond what my mother could ever manage. I was upset but I accepted the decision. So my chance to visit what became my future home was delayed by 13 years. I think I honour my mother and her struggles when I make my political choices. So I don’t buy all the scare tactics that tell me I shouldn’t vote for Corbyn. My gut feeling and life experience tell me he is someone who will steer my adopted country in the right direction.

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