Thread by @Race_Class

‘We starved, but we shared.’

📖 Free Bank Holiday Reading!

As these principles become more crucial during the pandemic, we publish an Editors selection of R&C articles on the black tradition of mutual aid, self-help and solidarity.

Free to download⬇️
irr.org.uk/news/we-starve…

In post-war Britain, racialised and working-class communities organised to meet vital needs that were either neglected by a racist state, or engendered by it, whilst also pushing for a more radical ‘normal’.

This history has been overlooked, with numerous unsung heroes...

The collection begins with a tribute to ‘Brother’ Herman Edwards who set up Harambee in 1969, providing holistic care for young people inc. prison visiting, educational programmes and bail accommodation encouraging them to gain practical tools to help themselves and each other.

‘No one expected a racist government to provide; no one wanted a racist social worker or teacher or race professional to intervene’

The article details Herman’s vision of self-help, meaning self-reliance and self-sufficiency, outside of the state: journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.117…

Remembering Jimmy Rogers, an unsung hero who used basketball to engage disaffected black children in Liverpool 8 and Brixton, at a time when black young people living in inner-cities were pathologised as ‘criminal’, particularly after the 'riots' in 1981.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11…

'They started with nothing – from just educating people to be conscious and to do what needed to be done.’

An interview with Martha Osamor on the work of United Black Women’s Action Group (UBWAG) who campaigned against the exclusion of black children from schools and…

1/2

...in opposition to the categorisation of young people as ‘educationally sub-normal’, as well as against the SUS laws, which were used to prosecute young black boys before a crime was committed. 2/2

The interview also documents the impact of violent policing - worth remembering when the state encourages people to report neighbours to the police for breaches of social distancing. Calling the police on young or vulnerable people is likely to cause harm

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11…

'Racial harassment, housing and community action’ by Unmesh Desai for @NMPEastLondon looks at cases of racial harassment of Asian people in their own homes by neighbours in Newham. Pressure through grassroots organising was key in evicting racist tenants

journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.117…

'With the campaign, people started to care for others, solidarity become key.’

An article on Latin American cleaners' activism at University of London.

It reminds us that mutual aid does not stop at running errands for our neighbours... 1/2

...but also that standing in solidarity with issues of precarity, borders and poverty wages must also be central and part of a deeper process of social transformation that does not end when the pandemic is over. 2/2

journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.117…

And finally, an interview with A. Sivanandan, which contextualises the fragmentation of this tradition of self-help due to the state’s multiculturalism policies and the breakdown of black unity.

Sivanandan discloses his own principles of responsibility to one another, instilled in him from growing up in an arid village in Ceylon.

‘We starved, but we shared’.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.117…

Happy reading! All of these articles are free to access for the next 30 days.

irr.org.uk/news/we-starve…