GFTU BGCM 2019 Minutes

somewhere to go, where gang members or rivals or anyone does not wish to

harm them. 1,000 social coaches in each core city and, by the way, that can

happen in a year. It can happen in a year, not for the next cycle of

Government, depending on an election that is, on the basis of where we are at

this moment, highly uncertain, but is that a reason why you as a union

movement cannot take political activism and awareness, because in 1976 it

was watching the Soweto uprisings that inspired me. How could school

children take on the third biggest army in the world? Going to post-Apartheid

South African and, by the way, this has all the late President Mandela’s legacy

as well. He asked me to use sport and the arts to give his country a chance to

breathe. All I did was I bought Ubuntu, “By me, it is we”.

Those partnerships are already being developed. That is the East End of

London partnership. Civil and civic society, you have to work together or else it

does not work. 10% of the effort that delivered those games can fix our

communities, believe me, and we have the research and we have the project

management, because at the University of East London we have a Vision

2028. Every single member of staff and student will give two hours back. By

the way, that is all the social coach gives, two hours back in a community. In

our own university that is 1.4 million hours. If we put all those back from most

of the students who come from a 77% representation of a 10 mile radius of our

university, we can change the world.

That is you. Oshor talked about the PFA. I met Gordon Taylor 25 years ago.

Sometimes it takes time. There is so much for Sport for Development and

Peace and for all the other initiatives, but all I would ask is this question. Why

is it still so bad out there? Why is it not working? Why are lives being

disaffected and lost? There are a number of you who will look at those faces in

the crowd and those faces in the crowd are no longer with us. I never accepted

losing in competition, I was a very bad loser. A month ago I went back into

competition after 35 years. Why? (a) They said it could not be done and (b)

because it was Fight for the Streets. I had to do something that had not been

done before. I did not go into the veterans. I went back and fought athletes

who will be competing next year in Tokyo, because karate is an Olympic sport,

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