Anarchism

Two episodes in so far:

Episode #193 - The main export of the western world is trash. - Anarchism Pt. 2 (Bookchin, Social Ecology)

Episode #192 - Should we overthrow the government tomorrow? - Anarchism Pt. 1 (Chomsky, Malatesta)

more episodes to come.

If you have not heard this show so far, it has been running for something like 10 years, is very well presented and well worth a listen.

Some of you (especially in the UK) might have read a piece in Freedom News about using the French Reseau Mutu (Mutu Network) as a model for the possibility of a connected series of sites for radical information and mutual aid in different areas. Imagine it: instead of Facebook groups or Twitter profiles (eurgh) or disparate, disconnected "silos" of info or walled gardens, a one-stop space for anti-capitalist, anti-fascist news and shared updates about local actions, events, protests, meetings, campaigns, resources, and more. Each region having its own online "community."

I've arrived at the conclusion that the Fediverse, even specifically Lemmy and especially Beehaw, offer an example of the template that this could be built on. If anyone's interested in the idea, let me know.

Apologies for that "media activist manifesto" being so very long, but it took a lot of research to argue that this is a good opportunity for anarchist media/info!

Listen

Countless tributes have been paid by friends, fellow campaigners and colleagues following the death of Alan Benson, an “astounding campaigner and ambassador” who played a major role in the fight for an accessible transport system.

As well as being co-chair of Transport for All, he was a long-serving deputy chair of London TravelWatch, a founder member of the Campaign for Level Boarding, and co-chaired the Department for Transport’s inclusive transport stakeholder group.

Transport for All (TfA) said it was “heartbroken” by his death on Sunday and described him as “an astounding campaigner and ambassador for the disabled community”.

Benson (pictured) was awarded an MBE for services to public transport for disabled people last year.

He described at the time how his activism began when – as a powerchair-user – he was left stranded on a train platform in the run-up to the London 2012 Paralympics.

He had secured a degree in computing and economics, and a masters in management innovation and change, and used those skills mostly in jobs in further and higher education before moving to London in 2011.

He told TfA last year: “I moved to London and started regularly commuting around 2012, when the plans for the Paralympics were in full swing, and there was this huge push from the government to present London as an accessible capital.

“And then, while there was all this publicity about the legacy of the Paralympics, how accessible our transport was, what an example London was going to be, I was left stranded on a train platform.”

After attending a couple of parliamentary meetings on accessible transport and contributing to a Channel 4 investigation, he was introduced to TfA and became a board member.

He then played a key role in a series of TfA campaigns, including the battles to make Crossrail accessible; to ensure reliable, accessible patient transport; and to improve access to rail stations.

He told TfA in 2022: “The campaigns I remember are the ones that make the greatest amount of change, even if they’re not obvious, even if most people won’t see them.

“So, for example, there is now a new standard of lift signage across the London Underground: it makes a lot more sense, is less technical, more human, more accessible. And a lot of people won’t have noticed this change.

“But for many disabled people, this makes a huge difference to their ability to navigate stations and move through the world freely.

“I’m also really proud of the training we did with senior staff at the Underground.

“Often the most important work we do is changing attitudes, changing industry standards, because this is what results in lasting, widespread change.”

He stressed the importance of collaboration and co-production and the support of other campaigners, organisations, charities, transport operators and allies.

Last year, he was given the freedom of the borough of Richmond, where he lived, and the council’s leader, Gareth Roberts, spoke this week of his “remarkable contribution to the lives of disabled and older people, particularly in London” and his “immeasurable legacy”.

The user-led charity Ruils, which is based in south-west London, paid tribute to the “major role” he played – which included nearly seven years as a board member – and said it would miss his “drive, determination and wry humour”.

His influence and popularity were reflected this week in the many online messages of condolence from fellow disabled activists and industry professionals.

Among the messages left on an online tribute page, many spoke of his kindness, generosity and sense of humour, as well as his “massive contribution to improving transport accessibility”.

One said: “Heartbroken. Alan was the most fearless of campaigners – his legacy will live on and we can but try our best to carry on with his work the best we can – he has changed the life of so many.”

Another described him as “one of the kindest, wisest and best people you could ever meet”.

Among the messages from industry figures, Andy Lord, London’s transport commissioner, said the news of his death was “absolutely devastating and heart-breaking”.

Peter Wilkinson, managing director of passenger services at the Department for Transport, said: “Alan was a star and a truly committed and passionate champion of passengers. He will leave a giant hole behind him.”

London TravelWatch – London’s statutory transport watchdog – said it was “devastated” by his death and that he was “held in deep affection by everyone here”.

Tony Jennings, a fellow co-founder of the Campaign for Level Boarding, said Benson was “a friend and a pragmatic disability rights campaigner, who worked tirelessly in collaboration with the transport industry to help improve accessibility and remove the barriers.

“He was a supportive advocate for disabled people and generous with his time, leaving a legacy for other campaigners and activists to continue the fight for equal access.”

He said they shared a “passion for cricket and cake”, with Benson a loyal supporter of Surrey, who would frequently post on Twitter about his frequent trips to the Oval.

He said: “He will be greatly missed by family, friends and the disabled community.

“Strength to Yvonne, his soulmate and constant support at this terribly sad time.”

Another accessible transport campaigner, Doug Paulley, described Benson as “a true diplomat, committed campaigner and gentleman” and said his death was “a giant loss”.

He said: “I got to know him through the First Bus case, where he was a stalwart supporter, and have conspired with him ever since, along with his lovely partner Yvonne.

“But he also had become a firm friend, with his cheeky and impish sense of humour yet kindly advising and reeling me in where required.

“I mourn his loss for me, for disabled and other groups he supported, but particularly for his friends and his lovely partner.”

Listen

Disabled activists and allies came together in parliament this week to call for an end to the degrading treatment, dehumanisation and even torture that young disabled people are subjected to in institutional care settings.

Members of the End Torture of Disabled People campaign described how a series of media exposés and inquiries have revealed abuse of disabled children and young people in care homes, residential special schools and mental health institutions.

Ellen Clifford, a member of the national steering group of Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) and author of The War on Disabled People, said that behind these scandals was “a culture that violates people’s rights and allows degrading treatment”.

Among the scandals she highlighted were those at children’s homes in Doncaster run by Hesley Group, which is owned by a private equity firm; those at homes run by Calcot Services for Children; mental health units run by The Huntercombe Group; and failures by Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust.

She said that these examples of torture and abuse “are not anomalies” but are “part of a wider system, where physical restraint and seclusion rooms are used as common practice”.

She said disabled children and young people are placed in settings many miles from home, where they are traumatised, and then punished when they respond to that trauma.

“Thus, their distress escalates, their trauma is entrenched, and they’re told that services within the community cannot cope with them, so they become trapped within abusive institutions.”

The campaign aims to eliminate the use of these segregated settings, and end the torture, violence and abuse of young disabled people across such services.

It is led by the The Alliance for Inclusive Education, and backed by DPAC, Reclaiming Our Futures Alliance (ROFA) and other disabled people’s organisations including WinVisible, Sisters of Frida and Deaf Ethnic Women’s Association (DEWA).

Simone Aspis, who set up Inclusion London’s Free Our People Now project, which is led by people with learning difficulties and autistic people, described how one autistic young person ended up in an inpatient psychiatric unit after failing to cope with the “personal torture” of trying to fit in with her school’s inaccessible learning environment.

She said a “pipeline” led from disabled children being provided with no support in mainstream schools, to pupil referral units, to special schools, to residential schools, to mental health services and finally to psychiatric inpatient care.

She said: “At the moment, disabled young people and children, the only time they only have any rights is when they’re detained under the Mental Health Act.”

Aspis said the voices of people with learning difficulties and autistic people had been missing from the debate.

She said there was a need to end all forms of segregated institutions, and that the regulators, the Care Quality Commission and Ofsted, as well as the Crown Prosecution Service, “really must get tough” with the “torture and inhumane and degrading treatment” that was taking place in segregated institutions.

Michelle Daley, ALLFIE’s director, said it was vital to remember the “legacies of the past”, such as the eugenics movement and the institutionalisation of disabled people.

She said: “We’re still using words like special education, special needs, as if it’s a favour rather than a right.

“We’re still not talking about justice… in terms of our emancipation and liberation as disabled folks.

“We want real justice and real rights, we want to talk about the desegregation of these disabled people, and we can’t continue to have the legacy of eugenics which is keeping us held back, and basically killing too many disabled people.”

Mark Harrison, a member of ROFA’s steering group and author of a new book on working with young disabled people*, blamed successive governments for failing to implement key parts of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), including articles 19 (on independent living) and 24 (on inclusive education).

He said the last Labour government decided to listen to “the lobbying voices of the segregationists and the professionals”, with the damage caused by that decision “enhanced and multiplied many times by successive Conservative governments”.

He said this had “made segregated education a cornerstone of their educational policies with the resulting disastrous situation we find ourselves in today”, with the “reinstitutionalisation of disabled children and young people in residential institutions”.

The campaign has heard how one autistic teenager – who is being supported by DPAC – has been “tormented” and left terrified by her treatment within a series of privately-run psychiatric intensive care units.

During an eight-month period, Lucy Hughes, who is just 14, was repeatedly pinned down by six support staff who had little experience or training, before she was injected with drugs, stripped of her clothes and placed in seclusion.

Her parents also saw hospital staff dragging 12-year-old children around by their collar or their clothes, “shouting and swearing at autistic children as they cried on the floor”.

The members of ALLFIE’s campaign group say they are “increasingly outraged” by the exposure of disabled young people to “neglect, violence, torture, rape and death” in institutions.

They want to hold to account those commissioning these services, professionals and staff, and end the use of institutional and segregated settings, replacing them with a national independent living service and an inclusive education service.

But they also want to ensure that the voices of the young disabled people affected by the abuse are no longer missing from the debate.

Lucy Wing, a member of ALLFIE’s Our Voice project, which aims to amplify disabled young people’s voices, told the meeting: “Despite decades of disabled people sharing their experiences of segregation in education and organisations campaigning for change, special schools and residential institutions are still the norm for disabled children and young people.”

She said that those responsible for the abuse, assaults, negligence and torture needed to be held accountable.

She said: “We need an explanation to why the countless reports weren’t followed up on.

“We need the reason why these schools were considered good despite evidence of abuse.

“We need national recognition that this is the reality, but it does not have to be.”

John McDonnell, the Labour MP and former shadow chancellor who sponsored the event, said disabled people had become “economic units to be profited from”, both by providers of residential care but also by the pharmaceutical industry.

He said there was a need for “a new civil rights movement” that focused on desegregation and exposed the abuse and the failure of existing provision and regulation, exposing both the results of privatisation but also failures within the public sector.

He called for new legislation on civil rights for disabled people around desegregation.

He said: “If you look at all those civil rights movements in the past, they’ve largely been based upon the exposure of a segregated society.

“And I don’t think in our community at the moment there’s a full and thorough understanding of how much segregation has gone on with regard to people with disabilities.”

He added: “Don’t underestimate direct action. That’s what we’ve done in the past. Because sometimes it’s needed to shake the place up a bit about what we’re doing.”

Navin Kikabhai, ALLFIE’s chair, said it was a “travesty”, after more than 25 years in the education sector, that he found himself increasingly supporting disabled young people who had been “locked away in residential settings”.

And he said it was “embarrassing” to see other countries “far exceeding” the UK in meeting their responsibilities under the UNCRPD, including article 15, which covers freedom from torture.

Claire Glasman, from WinVisible, said mothers who were part of the Disabled Mothers’ Rights Campaign had had their children taken away and placed in abusive institutions.

She said: “Today, more children are in care than ever. Councils take children from low-income single mothers, disabled mothers, from care leavers, and women who report domestic violence.

“Children of colour and/or disabled children are disproportionately targeted.”

And Maresa Mackeith, ALLFIE’s youth parliamentary officer, said: “Children and young people continue to experience being dehumanized by so-called trusted people.

“We are calling for segregated provision such as these institutions to be phased out and for all disabled children and young people to be included in their communities as a right with the support they need.”

*Labels are for Jars not People: Emancipatory Approaches to Working with Young Disabled People, by Mark Harrison

Picture: (From left to right) Simone Aspis, Michelle Daley and Lucy Wing

A note from the editor:

Please consider making a voluntary financial contribution to support the work of DNS and allow it to continue producing independent, carefully-researched news stories that focus on the lives and rights of disabled people and their user-led organisations.

Please do not contribute if you cannot afford to do so, and please note that DNS is not a charity. It is run and owned by disabled journalist John Pring and has been from its launch in April 2009.

Thank you for anything you can do to support the work of DNS…

Donate

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Disabled people who are still shielding from Covid have far less trust in the government than the general public and are far more likely to believe it handled the pandemic very badly, a survey has found.

The survey also found that immunocompromised people are far more likely to be experiencing poor mental health.

But those still shielding from the virus reported much higher levels of political participation.

The survey aimed to investigate how continuing vulnerability to COVID-19 affected people’s political engagement and mental health.

Forsaken but Engaged, a report on the survey findings, found that those immunocompromised people who participated in the survey “experienced higher levels of worry due to COVID-19, poorer mental health, lower perceptions of representation, lower trust in government, and poorer satisfaction in democracy and in terms of how the government has handled the pandemic”.

Four years on from the identification of the virus, more than 1.2 million immunocompromised people are still believed to be at high risk because their conditions and medications make the Covid vaccines ineffective.

Many are either still shielding or living restricted lives, trapped in “enforced isolation”.

The survey results were compared with a survey of the wider public.

Compared to the general population, immunocompromised people reported much higher levels of concern about the long-lasting negative impact of the pandemic on society (91 per cent were worried, compared with 60 per cent of the general public).

Nearly one in four (24 per cent) of those who are immunocompromised reported poor mental health, compared to nine per cent of the general public.

When asked to rate their level of trust in the government (on a scale from 0 to 10, where zero means “do not trust at all”), the average for immunocompromised people was just 1.19, two points lower than the general public (3.18).

And seven in 10 immunocompromised people said the government had handled the pandemic very badly, compared to three in 10 of the general public.

But their experiences of prolonged shielding appear to have increased their levels of political engagement.

Compared to the general public, in the past 12 months, 71 per cent of immunocompromised people said they had contacted a politician or government official, against just 18 per cent of the general public.

And 88 per cent said they had signed a petition (against 40 per cent of the general public), while nearly three-fifths (58 per cent) said they had posted or shared something about politics online (against 17 per cent of the general public).

Among its recommendations, the report calls for action to support and protect people who are still shielding, and those who may need to shield from a virus in the future.

It also calls on the Department of Health and Social Care, and the wider government, to recognise the psychological needs of those who have been shielding.

And it says the government should ensure those who are immunocompromised have adjustments put in place to allow them to vote in-person safely.

The Forsaken but Engaged inquiry was a collaborative project between the universities of Liverpool and Bath; the all-party parliamentary group on vulnerable groups to pandemics; Forgotten Lives UK – which campaigns on behalf of the 1.2 million people who are still at high risk from Covid because of a compromised immune system – and the national expert group for immunocompromised patients.

Mark Oakley, co-leader of Forgotten Lives UK, said: “This report highlights the stark contrast between the immunocompromised, who are still shielding, and the general population.

“They are now heading into their fourth Christmas shielding and this report shows how they are being ignored.

“The scale of increasing mental health issues caused by the isolation and the problems it is building for the future is shocking and this needs to be addressed urgently to protect their mental and physical health.

“It is no wonder that the report shows the level of dissatisfaction of government handling of the pandemic is double that of the general population.

“Those in this position have shown a stronger desire to vote, take part in political activities, and are four times more likely to try to contact their MP.

“It underlines that those affected by this need to be engaged with properly on all levels by politicians and facilitated to be able to do so safely.”

Dr Luca Bernardi, a senior lecturer in politics at the University of Liverpool, and one of the report’s authors*, said: “Our findings reveal that Covid is not a thing of the past for immunocompromised people, who feel left behind and unrepresented by the political system and whose trust in government is way lower in comparison with the general public.”

*The other author was Dr Jo Daniels, senior lecturer and clinical psychologist at the University of Bath

_A note from the editor:

Please consider making a voluntary financial contribution to support the work of DNS and allow it to continue producing independent, carefully-researched news stories that focus on the lives and rights of disabled people and their user-led organisations.

Please do not contribute if you cannot afford to do so, and please note that DNS is not a charity. It is run and owned by disabled journalist John Pring and has been from its launch in April 2009.

Thank you for anything you can do to support the work of DNS…_

Donate

Listen

Disabled refugees and allies have protested outside the Home Office at the “inhuman” treatment that disabled people seeking asylum receive from private sector companies paid to provide their accommodation.

The protest called for an end to the “obscene profits” made by the companies, and for the contracts to be handed to local authorities, so the services can be run on a non-profit basis.

Disabled allies who helped organise the protest warned that one of the companies – the outsourcing giant Serco – will soon be carrying out disability benefit assessments in the south-west of England on behalf of the Department for Work and Pensions.

Aida (pictured), a member of the Manchester-based human rights organisation RAPAR, told the protest that her Serco housing is “miserable” and plagued by rats and insects.

She said: “[Serco] are being paid a lot of money and get to ride around in their fancy cars, while we are being treated terribly.”

She said the way she had been treated by the Home Office since arriving in the UK had caused her impairment, and she added: “The way Serco treats us lacks so much respect. It’s inhuman.”

One Serco staff member barged into a female friend’s room without knocking when she had just come out of the shower, she said.

Another protester, Mariatu, who also lives in Serco housing, said: “Asylum-seekers have no dignity, they have no choice because we are not [seen as] human.

“They treat us like we are inhuman, especially when you are disabled.”

Sami, who has lived in Home Office accommodation provided and managed by another Home Office contractor, Clearsprings Ready Homes, spoke of how residents have to plead for toilet paper and toothbrushes, and how staff sometimes do not arrive to help when an emergency button is pressed.

He said disabled people living in Clearsprings properties stay silent about their treatment because they are “afraid” that speaking out will harm their asylum cases.

DNS has previously reported how more than 50 disabled people seeking asylum have been living in “cramped, unsafe conditions, without adequate food or care” in Clearsprings accommodation in Essex.

Nanou Thassinda, a volunteer at Migrants Organise, said: “Clearsprings has been profiting from our misery, providing unsafe, undignified and inadequate accommodation for people seeking asylum.

“These places aren’t a home or a hotel. These places are detention hotels and an open-door prison.

“It’s time for the government to return the contract to the local authorities to provide asylum accommodation on a non-profit basis.”

The protesters attempted to deliver a letter about the “cramped, unsafe conditions” at the accommodation provided by Clearsprings in Essex, but Home Office staff refused to accept it.

The letter says that disabled people are experiencing “horrific and unnecessary suffering”, and it pleads with the Home Office “to intervene to provide decent conditions”.

It points out that Clearsprings made £62.5 million profit on its Home Office contracts last year, an increase on the £28 million it made the previous year.

Friday’s protest was organised by disabled people’s and migrant justice organisations including the Disability and Migration Network.

Rebecca Yeo, from Disabled People Against Cuts, an activist and academic on disability and migration, and one of the organisers, told the protest: “The restrictions put on people in the asylum system are actively designed to prevent people from meeting physical and emotional needs.

“The asylum system is deliberately disabling.

“Some people arrive in the UK as disabled people, other people become disabled as a result of the deprivation in the asylum system.”

Bethany Bale, from Disability Rights UK, said the protest had highlighted the “horrific” standards of accommodation and the “disregard for life” and “abhorrent disrespect” faced by disabled people seeking asylum who were staying in Serco and Clearsprings accommodation.

She said this treatment was “completely immoral and unacceptable”.

Rensa Gaunt, from Inclusion London, compared the provision of asylum accommodation to the benefits assessment system.

She told the protest: “It’s the same system that keeps all of us down. We need to keep it out of the hands of private companies.

“Your fight is our fight.”

She told DNS later that both systems were profit-making schemes, and that handing Serco the benefits assessment contract was a “huge safeguarding risk”, because of its track record in delivering Home Office contracts.

Svetlana Kotova, director of campaigns and justice at Inclusion London, had said earlier: “Disabled asylum-seekers must be treated with dignity. This not only includes a safe and accessible place to live, but also appropriate care and support, so people can do basic everyday things.

“We are calling on the Home Office to respect the basic human rights of disabled asylum-seekers.”

A Serco spokesperson said the company did not accept accusations that it was providing inadequate housing and support to disabled people seeking asylum; or that the accommodation was miserable and run down; or that its accommodation was overcrowded, with people treated in an inhuman way.

He said: “Serco provides accommodation for asylum seekers on behalf of the Home Office in two of the six regions of the UK and all the accommodation we provide is regularly inspected and complies with the terms of our contract with the Home Office and with all appropriate housing standards.

“Our teams are committed to supporting the asylum seekers accommodated by Serco with compassion, dignity and respect. Their safety and wellbeing is always our top priority.”

He said he could not comment on the claims that some accommodation was overrun with insects and rats, that people had acquired impairments because of the conditions they experience in the UK, or that a Serco staff member had entered a woman’s room without knocking, because DNS was unable to provide further details.

But he added: “Our housing officers are highly professional individuals.

“An appointment will always be made, and our processes and procedures do not permit entry to a resident’s room without knocking.”

Clearsprings declined to comment on the protest and referred DNS to the Home Office.

The Home Office said that asylum accommodation providers are contractually obliged to ensure that accommodation is accessible and complies with the Human Rights Act and the Equality Act, while asylum-seekers who have problems with their accommodation can contact the charity Migrant Help.

It does not accept hand-delivered letters.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “We are committed to ensuring the safety and wellbeing of those in receipt of asylum support and have extra provisions in place for people with disabilities.

“Asylum accommodation providers are contractually obliged to ensure accommodation is accessible for disabled people and where concerns are raised, we work with providers to ensure they are addressed.”

The dub poet and author of collections including Talking Turkeys has died of a brain tumour

Benjamin Zephaniah, the British poet whose work often addressed political injustice, has died aged 65.

Zephaniah died in the early hours of Thursday morning after being diagnosed with a brain tumour eight weeks ago, a post on his Instagram page stated.

“Benjamin’s wife was by his side throughout and was with him when he passed,” the post read. “We shared him with the world and we know many will be shocked and saddened by this news. Benjamin was a true pioneer and innovator, he gave the world so much. Through an amazing career including a huge body of poems, literature, music, television and radio, Benjamin leaves us with a joyful and fantastic legacy”.

Zephaniah was born April 1958 in Handsworth, Birmingham, which he thought of as a “cold suburb of Kingston, Jamaica”. He began performing poetry locally in his early teenage years, before leaving school aged 14.

In 1979, he moved to London, and his first collection, Pen Rhythm, was published. He began performing at demonstrations, youth gatherings and outside police stations. “I was a big protester, not just against racism but also apartheid. We are a multicultural society but the institutions have to catch up with us,” he said in 2019.

His poetry often directly responded to historical and current events. His second poetry collection, The Dread Affair, was published in 1985 and featured a number of poems attacking the British legal system. In 1990, he published Rasta Time in Palestine, containing poetry and travelogue based on a visit to the Palestinian occupied territories. In 1999, he wrote What Stephen Lawrence Has Taught Us as part of the campaign to find the murderers of the 18-year-old south-east Londoner.

His work was heavily influenced by Jamaican music and poetry, and he was often classified as a dub poet. He also released a number of albums, and was the first person to record with the Wailers after the death of Bob Marley in a tribute to Nelson Mandela. Mandela heard the tribute while in prison, and later asked to meet Zephaniah. When a concert honouring Mandela was held at the Royal Albert Hall in 1996, Mandela asked Zephaniah to host it.

In the 1990s, his publications became more frequent; he released several collections including Talking Turkeys, Inna Liverpool and School’s Out: Poems Not for School. He also concentrated his performing outside Europe.

In 2003, Zephaniah rejected his OBE. “Me? I thought, OBE me? Up yours, I thought,” he wrote in the Guardian. “I get angry when I hear that word ‘empire’; it reminds me of slavery, it reminds of thousands of years of brutality, it reminds me of how my foremothers were raped and my forefathers brutalised.”

He wrote several novels including Refugee Boy, about political asylum, and Face, about a boy who suffers facial injuries after an accident. His autobiography, The Life and Rhymes of Benjamin Zephaniah, was published to coincide with his 60th birthday.

Listen

A leading disabled activist has issued a call in a new book for the disabled people’s movement to rediscover its appetite for fighting oppression and transforming society.

In Disability Praxis*, Bob Williams-Findlay argues that the disabled people’s movement has gradually drifted away from focusing on how disabled people are “disabled by society” and instead now emphasises the removal of disabling barriers.

But the campaign for civil and human rights should have been seen as “a means to an end”, he writes, because the focus on barrier removal meant the movement lost sight of “the bigger picture” and the need for a critical evaluation of capitalist society.

He criticises how influential parts of the movement, such as the British Council of Disabled People (BCODP) – he is a former BCODP chair – the UK Disabled People’s Council and the National Centre for Independent Living, gradually re-invented it as a rights-based movement in the post-1997 New Labour years.

In so doing, they “moved away from exploring how disabled people are materially excluded from and marginalised within capitalist societies”.

Global capitalism, he says, is “the bedrock of disablement” and should have been the focus through fighting for “transformative change”.

“Whilst it is understandable for disabled people to want to end their social exclusion and be rid of discriminatory practice,” he writes, “one must question the politics behind the belief that the entitlement to rights would automatically confer ‘social acceptance’, or lead to an end to social oppression.”

A key element of the book is his argument that there are four “cornerstones” of disability politics in Britain: the fundamental truth that disability is a “social” issue; the self-organisation of disabled people through the disabled people’s movement; de-institutionalisation and the tensions and contradictions around promoting independent living; and disability culture and identity.

In the second half of the book, he begins to discuss how disabled people can do more than just engage in “firefighting” against austerity and can instead “build a strategy for furthering disabled people’s emancipation”.

Williams-Findlay says that disabled activists should combine campaigning for rights with the fight for social change and transforming wider society.

Over the last decade, he says, there have been repeated calls for action to breathe “new life into the Movement”, and that has been partially successful with the launch of the Reclaiming Our Futures Alliance (ROFA), although he says ROFA remains “small and marginal”.

He expresses his frustration at the “complete lack of resources and political will” for disabled people to self-organise, despite the emergence of organisations such as Disabled People Against Cuts in 2010 and disabled people in Britain finding themselves in “one of the most oppressive” situations in living memory, facing brutal cuts to services and benefits and the fear that many of them would be forced back into institutions.

Campaigning against austerity, he writes, is “little more than a form of firefighting” when what is needed is “collective political leadership” that will propel disabled people forward in their “struggle for social and political emancipation”.

He also suggests that the insights offered by UPIAS (The Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation), Vic Finkelstein and Mike Oliver – all closely associated with the development of the social model and the idea that disability is about disabled people’s oppression and is caused by the way society is organised – should not be “simply assigned to the past” but should still be “reflected upon in the present”.

Williams-Findlay concludes that the prospect of developing a new “disability praxis”** in Britain appears to be “bleak”, particularly as a decade of trying to resist a “punitive” state has left many disabled activists in survival mode.

But he says that developing any such praxis must be done through co-production, and that it must acknowledge the intersectional nature of oppression, remembering that the movement has a history of marginalising intersectional issues.

*Disability Praxis: The Body as a Site of Struggle, by Bob Williams-Findlay, published by Pluto Press

**Praxis refers to the process of putting a theory into practice, or, in Williams-Findlay’s words, critically appraising and then “taking action” to address disabled people’s social oppression and “disturbing, disrupting and ultimately destroying” capitalist society’s dominant position

***John Pring’s book, The Department, will be published by Pluto Press next year

Picture: Bob Williams-Findlay protesting outside the Conservative party conference in Manchester in 2015

A note from the editor:

Please consider making a voluntary financial contribution to support the work of DNS and allow it to continue producing independent, carefully-researched news stories that focus on the lives and rights of disabled people and their user-led organisations.

Please do not contribute if you cannot afford to do so, and please note that DNS is not a charity. It is run and owned by disabled journalist John Pring and has been from its launch in April 2009.

Thank you for anything you can do to support the work of DNS…

Donate

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/9471383

“That’s how you end up with a 4th quarter profit of $529 million, available to common shareholders,” Weston Jr. emphasized. “People don’t like dying.”

Steal food. It's the moral thing to do.

(Yes, I know this is satire, but it is, like all great satire, cutting so perilously close to reality it's frightening.)

The Free Software Foundation fights for freedom in computing. Among other the 4 software freedoms all free software adheres to:

• The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).
• The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
• The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others (freedom 2).
• The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

The FSF fights for what i personally would consider anarchist principles as they fight proprietary software that abuses the user and denies them freedom on their own computer.

They also recommend these Operation Systems that recommend user's freedoms:

https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html

This gives you full control over your computer instead of putting you at the mercy of companies or governments. Very important I would assume for a lot of anarchists.

One of the premier addresses on the internet for Anarchist books and literature as well as writing

Audible Anarchist is a project started and operated by a group of volunteers that seek to bring important anarchist texts to the audio format.

If you or anyone you know wants to contribute in any way drop us a line at [email protected] , help is always welcome.

Errico Malatesta (4 December 1853 - 22 July 1932) was an Italian anarchist propagandist and revolutionary socialist

Most of her writings were allegedly destroyed in the fire said to have caused her death.