#KillTheBill
The Police Will Not Save Us, تحریر // Tehreer 2021 cohort & recommendations from the team.
Hi folks, we hope you are all keeping well and taking care as we continue to navigate the onslaught of many systems of oppression. It’s been a while since we checked in so we wanted to say hi and share some of our work and resources you may find helpful.
It’s been a tough couple of weeks in the U.K. All of us here have been reeling from the sudden, and tragic loss of Sarah Everard, who was killed by a serving Metropolitan Police Officer. We know these state apparatuses will not protest us, particularly marginalised people who continue to be systematically discriminated against. We recently published an article written by one of our تحریر // Tehreer participants; Hajera Begum who distills the main points about the expansion of police powers. Read on for the link to the full article.
Watch this space for our much awaited ‘Brown Bodies’ zine too - we can’t wait for you all to see it! We want to express our gratitude and extend a thank you to all the people who submitted, we loved reading all the beautiful essays, personal stories, and seeing your artwork.
As always, in solidarity.
The Rights Collective
We’re so honoured to introduce our wonderful Tehreer Cohort 2021! We are excited to launch this project and have the opportunity to work with individuals from a range of backgrounds and locations that span from North America to U.K. to the subcontinent! Meet the participants; Fabliha Anbar, Hajera Begum, Abarna Selvajara, Niharika Pore, Sivakami Prasanna, and Sorubiha Kamalanathan!
The Rights Collective Podcast 📣 NEW EPISODE ALERT!
This week, Inaya spoke with Pritt Music, a rising R&B star from South London, who uses her Tamil heritage to influence her art both lyrically and musically. Pritt and Inaya speak candidly about navigating identity within the diaspora, how this has manifested in Pritt’s experience in the music industry - including the limitations of representation politics - and the importance of intergenerational dialogue & understanding.
If you missed episode 6, you can listen here. We sat down with Meera Ghani, a community builder who works in the environmental justice space.
Checking Our Privilege
We noticed our posts on the Brown Women [Un]Learn Reading Circle always get more engagement than our other posts, and we wanted to take a moment to bring attention to our positionality as a diaspora collective working in the anti-caste movement and acknowledge the ways we exercise our privilege within this context.
We want to emphasise again is that this work is NOT new, we are not inventing or even leading it. We are simply trying to unlearn the ways in which we ourselves have benefited from, perpetuated and enacted casteism in our lives. In doing that work, we are being led by and learning from caste-oppressed individuals and communities who have done the difficult work of thinking through, analysing and sharing their lived experiences through books, articles, videos and more.
We have put together a short list of Dalit-led organisations / accounts doing important anti-caste work, from whom we are constantly learning. See image below to check these out. This is a non-exhaustive list and we know there are many more organisations doing important work. If you know of any other accounts doing work in this space then please let us know.
You can read our the summary of the second meet up of the reading circle here.
The Police Will Not Save Us
It is important to remember the police are often the direct perpetrators of harm and directly uphold systems that do the same, it is also important to remember that myth that the police keep us safe only harms us.
Hajera adeptly outlines the functions of the police, the dangers of the current legislation being passed, and encourages us to work for and imagine a better future without policing.
The History of South Asian Women in the U.K.
Having entered Britain without prior experience in the workplace, dealing with institutionalised racism and unprepared for the hostile environment that awaited them, South Asian women faced many challenges.
Check our our article about the history of South Asian women in the U.K. for Women’s History Month.
Recommendations from the team
Syma Tariq in collaboration with Sri-Lankan based interdisciplinary platform Colomboscope 2021: Language is Migrant has launched an exciting series of radio episodes exploring language in the subcontinent. From the Urdu speaking communities in Bangladesh to U.K. Desi dancefoor DJ’s, she combines sonic sounds with poetic melodies to take listeners through a journey.
Abolitionist Futures are hosting a series of online events this week on #KillTheBill; Priti Patel’s policing bill with speakers including Dr. Sita Balani and Asad Rehman (War on Want).
We’ve added a number of new resources and articles on our Brown Women [Un]Learn Resource Hub to expand our collective knowledge. Check it out now!