In memory of Jo Cox

Jo Cox has been killed.

She was a mother, a campaigner, an MP, an advocate for the voiceless and those in poverty, and a passionate fighter for people and principles. She was close to many on the Avaaz team, and my friend.

I can't imagine, in these tears, how to honour her, but then yes I can. It's through love. Jo was passionately campaigning for Britain to stay in Europe. Not just because it is smart, or advantageous. But because she spent her life caring for Syrians, and Africans. She was a beautiful light of love for all people, for humanity. The man who took her life, stabbing her and shooting her over and over, screamed "Britain First". Somehow it's not surprising, in an awful way, that her life would be taken by that kind of hate, that kind of selfishness. Because it was to fighting that darkness that she devoted her time on this earth.

Our instinct is to come together at times like this, share our love for each other. I think Jo would want that. But she would also want us to fight, to pick up the banner that the brutal murderer made fall from her hands, and carry it forward. In a Britain that risks growing nastier, smaller, less honest, and more selfish, to pick up the banner for love, for Great Britain, for the country that is great enough to love immigrants, and love all people. This is what Jo would have wanted, and why I say we fight, with love, for the world Jo fought for -- the world we all want.

Let's share our love with each other, and pledge, for Jo and all of us, to carry her banner of love forward:

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/jo_cox_3/?bEzwlgb&v=77946&cl=10213837243&_checksum=50d99cad12ccc009e4b6e37d8d2c649bd154c7e9fa0f53cf4e2528f4b56632e5

With love,
Ricken, with Jo's friends Alice, Emma, Luis, Fadi, and Alex, and the whole Avaaz team

P.S. For those in and around London, we're meeting at Parliament Square with candles, flowers or just ourselves to honour Jo, and fight the hate and violence with our love. Messages from here will be shared at the vigil.