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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Met a lovely Scottish lady on the bus.
She was singing! Had a nice voice, & I said so.
We started chatting and she said, All this election stuff! I don’t like Sunak or Starmer.
I said, Me neither.
Then I did it. I bit the bullet:
‘And that Nigel Farage is a worry too…’
1/
Felt like the whole bus held its breath (I don’t like to be that annoying loud talker, but she had hearing issues so I was higher volume than usual!)
Then she broke my heart: ‘Oh, I think we need more like Nigel!’
YEEPS.
It turned out she didn’t know the real Farage at all
2/
She didn’t know:
-That he was rich
-That he was far right
-That he’d said he would work for Trump even if elected here.
And this was a woman who believed ‘everyone should be looked after’ and hated seeing people go hungry et
This day in 2017, Dina vanished off the face of the earth
Who is she?
Every woman who ever tried to flee abuse; everyone who ever wanted freedom.
She SO nearly made it;
but powerful men conspired against her.
Then people just…forgot.
But I can’t. 1/8
Saudi Arabian #DinaAli was being abused by family members.
She couldn’t take it anymore. For months, she planned her escape. She would fly to Australia, seek asylum, & start a new, free life.
Aged 24, she gathered her courage, got away from her family, & made it as far Manila 2/
But her family, who are well-connected, made some calls.
And shockingly,@MIAAGovPH staff TOOK HER PASSPORT FROM HER.
Desperate, afraid, she was still not prepared to give up.
Dina approached Canadian Meagan Kahn in Ninoy Aquino Airport’s transit lounge,& asked to use her phone 3/
Tommy Robinson portrays himself as a family man, yet dragged his daughter to a London footie match yesterday on her birthday- KNOWING he wasn’t allowed in the city under bail conditions.
He needlessly involved her in his version of events, AGAIN, purely for sympathy/ grift
1/5
Other parenting lowlights: in 2016 Robinson sued Cambridge police for ‘harassment’ claiming he was having an innocent family day out with ‘muh kids’, in a pub but drinking water 🙄
He claimed he was asked to leave by cops due to his views on Islam; & his daughter was so scared
2/
she ‘almost’ ran in the road and was ‘nearly’ hit by a bus.
The truth? Robinson was pissed up with a load of fash footie thugs after a game. The police didn’t even know who he was, just that his gang were rowdy, antisocial, looking for a fight.
Yesterday I spoke in #Telford AGAINST racism and FOR sexual abuse survivors.
Tommy Robinson says people who protest him don’t care about survivors, and have never experienced rape of child abuse.
I have experienced both. So why wasn’t I standing with him in #Telford?
A 🧵
Why did I make a 6 hour round trip to stand in the cold and have drunk fascists scream ‘paedo’ at me, as they tried to attack me & other counter-protestors?
It’s not pleasant to have that word thrown at you when you were abused from the ages of 4 to 12.
It brings it all back.
But if there’s one thing almost as disgusting and vile as paedophiles, it’s people who exploit the pain of raped children FOR MONEY and to pursue an Islamophobic agenda.
If you don’t believe that’s Saint Tommy Robinson, listen up!
After numerous failures to cut through in recent years, including the embarrassing failure of his MEP campaign (thanks, Antifascists), legal woes due to libellling innocent schoolkids, etc, Tommy’s income- donations from the fanboys he calls ‘mugs’- dipped.
He needed a win.
2/
He thought jumping on the grooming gang campaign would work. Everyone loves kids; everyone hates paedos, right?
(Well, maybe not the far right, given the nonces in their ranks; including Tommy’s friend Richard Price,who Tommy called a ‘hero’ AFTER he was put on the Register)
3/
Researchers at Warwick Uni are now URGENTLY seeking anyone who may’ve been unwittingly involved in 1969. Coventry women were brought chapatis every day, then taken to a ‘hospital’ (actually a nuclear research facility!) for tests
Please contact Taiwo.owatemi.mp@parliament.uk
2/
Ms Owatemi will be raising concerns when parliament reconvenes in September.
I’m also giving all the information I can to journalists who are investigating.
THANK YOU all so much- I’ve tried to get attention on this before but without your support, was whistling in the dark!
3/