Monthly newspaper and online publication targeting 18 to 35 year olds. The ultimate guide to the hottest parties, going out and having fun. Music, fashion, film, travel, festivals, technology, comedy, and parties! London, Barcelona, Miami and Ibiza.
Issue link: https://read.uberflip.com/i/667501
ISSUE 86 / 2016 GUESTLIST Tell me a bit about you, what is your background? In terms of my background, I have quite a few strings to my bow, I do photography, TV production, but mainly right now I am in artist management. Whereabouts are you from? I was born in London; I'm an East Londoner so I'm happy here, not too far at all. I know you've been involved in the Blackout London protest and movement, before we jump into that, have you experienced much racism in London yourself? I have, in terms of the U.K. it's quite subtle, unless you're a person that experiences it you wouldn't know what is occurring, and because of these experiences and because of the prejudice, you start to behave in a certain way. For instance I was with Denise, the co-founder of Blackout and another lady, both happened to be white and there were a group of older white ladies walking up ahead in their 70s or 80s and as we got closer, I moved a lot slower and moved slowly around them whereas those two didn't even think and just carried on walking and they said, "what was that about?" I said, "you don't realise what just happened do you?" and they were like, "well, what do you mean?" Well usually what happens is sometimes when older white people are around black people they start to feel nervous, they see things in the media and they believe them to be true of all black people, so when you're around them you don't want to alarm them, you don't want to be accused of something that you haven't done and you don't want to upset anybody, so you start to behave in a certain way and it becomes natural, you don't actually realise you're doing it until it's done. This led into another conversation that I had with Denise, she's recently moved to Cambridge and she was like, "it's a lovely village, come and visit me" and I was like, "I don't really want to do that" and she didn't understand why. I said "well, Denise really there's not really any black people there, it's gonna be a village full of white people and I'm not gonna be too comfortable." I've experienced racism in small villages before where I've actually been called a nigger, like straight out and the man was red faced and angry, because I happened to be in his village and not be white and I don't want to intentionally put myself into a situation to feel like that again, and she was like, "Oh, my gosh, I really didn't realise" and I said "that's not your fault, you shouldn't feel bad about this", but this is what happens to us all the time. Was there a particular driving factor in asking you to get up and do something yourself for the cause? Well, it actually came out of a conversation, I've always been involved in speaking up and involved in different organisations, but in terms of I myself, Denise and I had a conversation about Sandra Bland when she was killed in Texas by a cop over there and basically we were just upset, we were angry, we were hurt, we actually physically felt the pain of what this poor woman went through, you know? You could hear her screaming on the tape, and then she just ends up dead, Hot off the heels of their protest, Blackout London, part of the UK black lives matter movement, took some time out with us at Guestlist HQ to let us know what they've been up to, how the movement is progressing and how you can get involved Oshi | Guestlist EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW BLACKOUTLDN