📚Join us tonight for 'Publishing Dissent'
In conversation with Yogesh Maitreya and Koonal Duggal tonight as we close off the year.
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Hi folks,
How has the end of the year been treating you? We’re feeling reflective as it comes to a close and asked our team ‘What roots do you see The Rights Collective planting next year?’ and the answers were beautiful, highlight the diversity of our members hopes and dreams.
We said we hope our mycorrhizal-type roots can grow in different directions and messily yet still in close connection, mutuality and non-extratively. We said we want our roots to be strong, bold, and able to weather any challenges, whatever it may be. 2023 is our year of the tree, we want to be anchored in our ecosystem, like the lungs of the soil. We also said we hoped TRC will plant the roots of collective dissent next year by recreating the master’s tools to be the tools of change-makers past, present and future.
We will be taking some time off to recoup and recharge over the coming weeks and we hope you will do the same. Before you do, feel free to join us tonight for the first in our series ‘Unpacking the Roots of Brahminical Violence’.
Love,
The Rights Collective 💗
Unpacking the Roots of Brahminical Violence - Publishing Dissent: Stories, History and Rights with Yogesh Maitreya
In collaboration with Literature Must Fall, we are excited to host the first in a series of events unpacking the roots of Brahmanical violence. While recent events have once again highlighted the serious danger of Hindutva, it is crucial to examine the structures upon which these ideologies rest if there is to be any hope of dismantling them.
As much as it is important that stories are written down, they also need to be published. Publication (production for dissemination) of stories is an essential act for increasing our understanding of us as a society. This open discussion will see Yogesh Maitreya; poet, writer and Panther's Paw Publication, in conversation with Koonal Duggal; Research Fellow in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh.
Join us TONIGHT at 6:30pm. Free tickets can be purchased below.
📖 Transformative Justice Reading Circle - If We Don’t Fight, We Lose
Our second circle examined South Asian/Muslim struggles against policing, harassment, and state violence, led by activist and youth worker Saqib Deshmukh and poet Yolanda Lear. We looked at the Justice4Paps campaign — a campaign for justice for Habib ‘Paps’ Ullah who died during a stop and search by Police Officers in 2007, and discussed the colonial roots of modern policing. Access a summary of the session, resources and reflection questions here.
📚 Things we’re engaging with right now…
“Policing is a response to the organised, collective power of the working class”- In their new book, Aviah Sarah Day and Shanice Octavia McBean explore the roots of policing, specific to the UK, as an attempt to quash direct action, protest, and workers strike.
Ash Sarkar for Novara Media writes on the myth of ‘Hinduphobia’ following the news in Leicester. Whilst Hindus are absolutely subject to racist violence, discrimination and sectarian massacres in Bangladesh and Pakistan, we must reject this notion of ‘Hinduphobia’ as it does not exist. Read the full piece here.
50 years ago, under the regime of Idi Amin, Uganda expelled South Asians and they were forced to flee. Approximately, 40,000 people came to the UK. This is their story. Ankur Desai traces the generation of East African Asians for BBC Asian Network.
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