Paganarchy Press

Last Saturday, February 18th, Major NutCake and I went to Reclaim Love, a major love-in love-fest at the feet of the statue of Eros in Picadilly in London. The objective of the day: To Reclaim Love for the people. It was a party and a protest and a hippy shindig all rolled into one.

(image from Oscar Beard @ indymedia)

Reclaim Love every year on the saturday before St Valentines day. V Day brings out some extremes in people - on the one hand it is a day of widespread, quite gross commercialism where to prove your love for someone, you have to spend loads of dosh on cards, flowers and sweat-shop teddy bears. On the other hand, most people don't want to get suckered in by what is a consumerist waste machine so Valentines day leads to cynicism right?

Oh-so-many people are oh-so-sick of this ugly commercialism that they do not in any way celebrate St. Valentines day. They do not celebrate this global day of love because they are turned off by what is a blatant dash-for-cash.

Up step the Reclaim Love movement! By Reclaiming Love from the consumerist machine, and by allowing ourselves to celebrate Love in all its raw power, we avoided the worst of both darkened worlds - we don't get suckered in by the need to consume, and we don't poison our hearts with cynicism.

Instead we had a great day! About 1000 people were out on the streets including capoeiristas, puppetistas, funky bro's and funky sisters, clowns, fairies, . It was an all-age, all-gender, all-colour event with the block-rocking Samba Band and the Pedal Powered Sound System.... Saw loads of people there that I hadn't seen in ages: old friends, lovers and ritualistas from various parties, protests and love-ins from all over the way. All with one goal in common - we were there celebrating Love.

It seems to me that Love is the most powerful of all the emotions. It can really make your day, or ruin your year. It can bring extreme joy and dizzing delight - but unreturned love can also bring suicidal death and hell. Surely the most powerful of all emotions! As Eros has a great way with Love, that Eros is the real ruler of the universe as we know it. Eros is also a trickster, so I as a rebel clown I can really relate to his vibe. Today Eros, you are the god of all.

Venus, the main organiser of Reclaim Love promises to post some photos of the event on her site soon. They'll be posted on this gallery page.

Indymedia coverage: [ photos | video 1 | video 2 ]