How did #Matchfest22 go (&did the fash turn up as promised)?
Here’s a look at the amazing day we had at @BowArts on Saturday.
First to join me round the table (we don’t do stages- or PowerPoints): @carolinebressey & @SuffragetteKate, on women fighting racism through history
Caroline discovered incredible new information about this woman, Catherine Impey, who set up an anti racist journal, with her mum & sister, *in 1888!* Same year the Matchwomen went on strike.
Catherine lived in Street, Somerset.
Visiting 1870s America, Catherine was horrified by the racism.
She met with Black activists including legends like Frederick Douglass & Ida B Wells.
This is our riposte to the old excuse ‘well everyone was racist THEN’!
Buy Caroline’s extraordinary book: waterstones.com/book/empire-ra…
.@SuffragetteKate illuminated the anti fascism & anti racism of Sylvia ‘more than a suffragette!’ Pankhurst.
Sylvia went to prison to protect her sources when editing paper Workers’ Dreadnought: including the brilliant Claude McKay, who wrote exposes of racism in London
HIGHLY recommend @SuffragetteKate ‘s book on Sylvia in the US- contains brand new material, & gripping anecdotes - eg Pankhurst being invited to a gala dinner by white American matrons, then furiously tearing into them over racism! plutobooks.com/9780745333229/…
Artist, author, activist & dad @Danwhite1972 spoke movingly about the (often Tory-made) struggles faced by the parents of disabled kids.
His unstoppable daughter Emily (16) worked with him on this fabulous comic book with disabled superheroes: get it here departmentofability.com
The next speaker is a superhero too.
Cait lived through years of appalling gang-abuse from the age of 14 after innocently answering an ad for modelling work.
She was failed by police & council, & almost snared by Tommy Robinson’s team,with lies & promises of help
The money raised for victims seemed to disappear; & when she challenged the racist misuse of her story (she was abused by men of all races), was told ‘kill yourself’
Her life’s still hard (we only scratched the surface) but she wants to save other girls. Hero.
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The @C4Dispatches programme on the Royal rip off is required viewing for us all.
But WHY wheel out Baroness Margaret Hodge as a talking head?
Where is HER moral authority here?🧵
The Stemcor heiress has been accused of hypocrisy over her own multimillion financial dealings 1/
And have we just forgotten her DISGRACEFUL behaviour as Islington Council leader over the child abuse scandal?
Hodge ‘was aware of previous, horrendous child sex abuse in the care homes for which she was responsible, & did nothing about it.’
Worse? She SMEARED A VICTIM.
2/
In an open letter to the BBC after it investigated horrifying abuse (forced child prostitution, torture, even alleged murders), Hodge libelled one of its victims as ‘seriously disturbed’
Demetrious Panton is a lawyer who was abused in a children’s home by two staff members 3/
DEEP DIVE: there’s MUCH MORE to say about Mandy Blumenthal & Mark Lewis, apparently the couple who heckled @reginalddhunter
Innocent audience or practiced agent provocateurs?
Let’s take a look.
In 2017, Mandy & her UKIP brother Alan turned up to a Palestine Support meeting 1/
in the West Midlands.
The speaker was Haneen Zoabi, Palestinian & member of the Israeli Knesset (parliament)
According to several reports, Mandy & Alan barracked Zoabi, filmed her without permission, called her a racist, refused to stay seated and kept approaching her 2/
They reportedly called Zoabi a liar, & terrorist supporter.
One account suggests Zoabi was called a ‘racist bitch’
Things got worse when the meeting organiser took Mandy’s phone to stop her filming. A physical altercation ensued.
Once he became a member of Tommy Robinson’s team, the chaos continued.
Thomas began to portray himself as a ‘good Christian husband & father’ (for those US Christian dollars) yet a video emerged of him masturbating, that he’d sent to a woman he was cheating on his wife with🤢
2/
Tommy Robinson began to get money from
the Middle East Forum, an American anti-Islam, pro-Israel group.
Thomas quickly grew ‘close’ to Lisa Barbounis, who worked for MEF.
According to court papers ‘Barbounis & Thomas would stay together in the same hotel room 3/