IT WAS a gathering of thousands, as it always is. Last Saturday, people from many countries, cultures and religions, walked together through the streets of North Kensington in sunshine and silence, to mark the eighth anniversary of the June 14 2017 fire that consumed Grenfell Tower and took 72 lives.

We walked slowly, wearing green, because Grenfell means “green field,” conjuring something pastoral, bucolic, a name for a place that turned out to be anything but.

Community members are carrying large, heart-shaped signs bearing the words “hope,” “integrity,” and “justice,” some of them written in the languages of the people who died in the tower. They are words full of irony that express everything the community has had torn away from it in the fire’s aftermath.

Because today there are still no criminal charges. There have been no punishments and the companies found culpable remain in business. If any prosecutions are to come, these will not happen until late 2026, according to the Metropolitan Police and the Crown Prosecution Service.

The fire that began in a faulty fridge-freezer could have and should have been easily contained. But it was a fire “lit by greed and institutional failure,” said Karim Mussilhy, vice-chairman of the survivors’ group, Grenfell United, and who lost his uncle in the blaze.

As the flames licked up the building, fed by flammable cladding and window insulation and the corner-cutting and profiteering that put them there, trapped residents called frantically for help. Those who escaped with their lives have lived with the grief and trauma ever since.

On our walk this time there are Palestinian flags flying, too. Some people have knotted keffiyehs through their green scarves, because all of this is connected. Burning people alive in their homes and high-rises is a crime we see every day now in the harrowing footage from Gaza. It comes from the same root as Grenfell, from a callous disdain by the powerful for human beings they consider expendable in their endless pursuit of profit and personal and political gain.

As we walk on, a flock of birds flies above us, sweeping low, back and forth across the crowd, a symbol in some cultures of a connection between earthly beings and those who have passed into the spiritual realm and a gesture of compassion and solidarity.

Along the way, we pass two lines of firefighters who were there at Grenfell on that fateful day. There are handshakes and hugs and tears and the silently mouthed words, “thank you” because still, even 30 minutes into the walk, we are silent.

Fingers of blame were pointed early on at the response and decision-making of the fire brigades who arrived first on the scene. But they were still trying desperately to save people hours into the inferno, the heroes, not the villains.

As independent MP for Islington North, Jeremy Corbyn, said when the final government report on the Grenfell tragedy was released on September  4 2024: “The Grenfell Report gives us official confirmation: 72 people needlessly died because of corporate deceit, deregulation, privatisation, ignorance and contempt for working-class communities.”

The walk continues. People wear T-shirts with the names and photos of their lost loved ones. Some wear shirts with all 72 names and the title “72 Doves Love Grenfell Tower In The Sky.”

And then we turn a corner and we see it. Grenfell Tower, clad now in its white shroud emblazoned with a giant green heart and the words “Always In Our Hearts.” The silence deepens.

But soon the tower will come down. Next June 14 when we walk again, the tower will be gone.

“The only decision this government has made is to tear down this tower and make what happened disappear,” said Mussilhy. What will be left, he said, is “a clear skyline and a forgotten scandal. Taking the tower down does not take away the truth.”

“If the engineering reports we are seeing are accurate, it will have to come down,” said Emma Dent Coad, who became the Labour member of Parliament for Kensington just days before the Grenfell fire, a position she held for two years.

Leaving it standing wouldn’t be safe, Dent Coad said, but she understands and sympathises with the fears and concerns of some members of the community who would like the tower to remain just a little longer if not forever. Once demolished, a memorial agreed on by survivors will be created in its place. “This is just the beginning of the story,” she said.

The silent walk is over. We are standing in a group with Corbyn, who has never missed a walk since they began. A crowd gathers to thank him. Then a young man appears, a small camera in hand. “Every year when I come, you’re the only politician who shows up,” he proclaims, then asks for a quick interview.

“What is your message to the families that have suffered in the Grenfell Tower, as well as a message to those who have suffered from the injustices, from corporate greed?” he asks the former Labour leader.

“My solidarity with you, the solidarity of thousands of us is with you,” Corbyn told him. “Corporate greed isn’t going to go away without the unity of a working-class movement to make sure it’s driven away, to make sure we have a society run on the principles of humanity, inclusion, respect and the belief that everybody can make a contribution.”

“You are always welcome with open arms,” the young man responded, to a chorus of agreement from the crowd now gathered. Then, connecting the issues just as the silent walkers had, he added: “And I’ll also say that as a Palestinian from Gaza you are welcome with open arms for the countless times that you’ve chosen to defend people, not based on the pigment of their skin but for what is right or what is wrong. I mean it. Thank you. Thank you.”

Linda Pentz Gunter is a writer based in Takoma Park, Maryland. She is currently covering events in London.