🌞 Join us for a Potluck Picnic!
We’re going on a collective break in July, but would love to meet our community as lockdown eases in London!
Hi folks, we hope you’re doing well and going easy on yourself this summer! As lockdown eases in London, we’re excited to finally meet our community for a potluck picnic this summer. Read below for details and how to sign up. We hope to see many of you there!
We’re also sharing a round-up of updates on our work including our workshop on unpacking anti-blackness in South Asian communities with WOC Azadi Collective, some great blogs written by our Tehreer // تحریر participants, and the final meetup in our anti-caste reading circle.
As you know, we take self and community care seriously so our team will be off on a collective break for the month of July. During this time and in August, we will be focussing on our new strategy, ready for September so watch this space for how you can input on that. Please feel free to keep in touch via our social media, and we'll see you all soon!
In solidarity,
The Rights Collective
Join us for a Potluck Picnic!
It's been a tough year and we wanted to hold space to meet our online community IRL! For all our South Asians and others in the community with us in the U.K. - if you've attended our workshops, collaborated with us, submitted to our zine, or are just curious to connect with other South Asian diasporas, we'd love to see you!
💫 Come hang out with us - there'll be food, music, good conversation, games, and more! We’ll be meeting at Regents Park on Saturday 25th of July at 1 pm.
Sign up to secure a spot at bit.ly/TRCPotluck, and see you soon!
📚Anti-Caste Reading Circle: Caste & Entertainment
Our last session of the anti-caste reading circle looked at caste and entertainment, led by Jyotsna Siddharth. We discussed Indian cinema and the portrayal of caste on screen, including in works such as Geeli Pucchi from Netflix’s Ajeeb Daastaans. We’ve included all resources and reflection questions on our website.
As cohort one of our reading circle comes to a close, we wanted to thank our attendees for being part of this space, for their commitment to the course, and contributions over the past six months. We’ve thoroughly enjoyed the process and learned so much, and hope that you all found the journey useful and nourishing in your own way too. We’ll continue to share further readings and resources in this newsletter and keep an eye out for our next reading circle on transformative justice, abolition, and community accountability, starting in September!
Thanks, as always, to our facilitators Jyotsna Siddharth and Varun Khanna for their labour and effort in putting together these sessions. We hope you find these summaries helpful and please let us know how you get on!
Tehreer // تحریر co-learning session with Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan
Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan led the Tehreer // تحریر participants in a workshop that imagined a near future through poetry. There was an evening of discussions of what it means to write creatively, consider who our creative and poetic writing is for, writing prompts to explore ourselves, and writing through a different channel. Participants left feeling inspired, uplifted, and buzzing with ideas! ✨
Unpacking Anti-Blackness in South Asian Communities: Part 2
Collective members Inaya and Disha with the WOC Azadi Collective held part two of our anti-blackness workshop looking at how caste, class, and race intersect in the UK. We discussed personal accounts of growing up in England, colourism in our families, and how we embody and uphold notions of white supremacy culture.
Articles and Blogs
May marked a difficult anniversary for Tamils worldwide; the Tamil Genocide in Sri-Lanka saw brutal killings and enforced disappearances of the Tamil community. Tehreer // تحریر participant Abarna Selvarajah in Canada reflects on her community organising, the role of memory in mourning, abolition, and the importance of self-care work.
“Many of the available terms are Western in origin, and they get bent out of shape when forced into South Asian contexts. Like, the idea of ‘coming out’ and being ‘out’” - 🌈 Payal Dhar speaks to LGBTQ+ Indians on family expectations, societal pressures, and self-censorship.
In a capitalist 9-5 structure that places emphasis on ‘grind culture’ and the ‘next big thing’, resting is liberation. Read more here.
In an exclusively penned article for Vogue, Amika George explains why she accepted the MBE. Prishita Maheshwari-Aplin writes for gal-dem on why ‘accepting an award from the literal head of the empire reeks of disingenuity’ from those who are self-proclaimed ‘anti-imperialists’. Read now.
We’ve updated our resource hub and have added a section on Palestine that contains podcasts, videos, and articles to aid existing knowledge and advocate for national liberation.