If you haven’t booked your ticket please do at the email address below.

If your press, or would like to write/ document the campaign success and the awards please do get in contact on info@sowestand.com ASAP and we can discuss. 

======

The Olive Morris Memorial Awards have been organised by the Remembering Olive Collective (ROC) to celebrate the legacy of black woman activist Olive Morris. The Awards were created as an opportunity to celebrate the spirit of Olive Morris as it lives on in the work of a new generation of young women activists.

The Olive Morris Memorial Awards Friday 2 December 2011, 7.00 – 9.30 pm

Karibu Education Centre, 7 Gresham Road, Brixton, London SW9 7PH

Tickets £3 Inclusive of food

The Olive Morris Memorial Awards have been organised by the Remembering Olive Collective (ROC) to celebrate the legacy of black woman activist Olive Morris. The Awards were created as an opportunity to celebrate the spirit of Olive Morris as it lives on in the work of a new generation of young women activists.

Women aged between 16 and 27 years of age, of African or Asian descent and involved in grassroots political work of any nature were nominated for the awards by their friends, colleagues or mentors. Of the nominees chosen to receive an award ROC will be honouring the work of:

Brenda May Goodchild an artist creating powerful art for the current campaigns against the criminalisation of squatting in England and Wales. Brenda has designed many SWS related movement building designs.

Ria Hylton involved in the Movement for Justice campaign against the deportation of Edson Comas

Mirella working with So We Stand, a UK-wide popular education collective focusing on struggles for environmental and social justice particularly on ‘We Are Mighty – a community book and empowerment programme’ and ‘Women, our environments and justice’.

Nim Ralph a founding member of So We Stand, working with communities across the UK to highlight the social and racial injustice of environmental issues. Also works with MOSAIC, an anti-racist group in Brighton. Nim has been a central voice in strategising all the community defence campaigns from London to Aberdeen!

Rukayah Sarumi, who has organised lectures on black feminism and the history of the women’s movement in Britain and is now active in Streatham Labour Party

Each nominee will receive a cheque for £300 in recognition of their political activism.

A further award of £100 to will be presented to 18 years old Iman Hussein for her work in the Guides Movement challenging its lack of diversity and with Roots a self-education Black History collective of 6th form college pupils.

The Remembering Olive Collective was formed in 2008 to honour the life of Olive Morris, an inspirational community activist of 1970s Britain, who died at the young age of 27 leaving behind a significant legacy of activism. Olive was a member of the British Black Panthers, as well as a founding member of the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent (OWAAD) and the Brixton Black Women’s Group. The breadth of her political work spanned from her pioneer role in the local squatter campaigns in South London; to organising with Black women and the student movement in London and Manchester, and supporting liberation struggles throughout the world.

Formerly site of the Abeng Centre, the Karibu Centre is a fitting venue for the awards as the first national OWAAD Conference organised by Olive and others was held there in 1978.

“”Don’t just criticize. Organise!” is one of the slogans I associate with my memory of Olive.” said Liz Obi a member of the Collective. “So often I hear people of my generation bemoaning the lack of leadership and organization among young black people. It is therefore incredibly inspiring to know that there are young black women, who like Olive, are organising and are politically active. I am glad that ROC will be celebrating their achievements and can showcase to the community the breadth of activism that exists.” 

ROC is a good example of what can be achieved when a group of people come together to organise around an issue. With the help of a Heritage Lottery Fund grant, ROC was able to collect and archive papers, photographs and documents and a series of oral history recordings to form the Olive Morris Collection, which was deposited at Lambeth Archives in October 2009. The Collection has quickly become one of the most accessed items at Lambeth Archives and many young academics are using the collection as a resource for their work, with Olive’s story being included in books and references in many BA, MA and PhD dissertations. Other achievements of ROC’s work include a dedication to Olive on a plaque on the Black Achievers Wall in Liverpool’s International Slavery Museum (October 2011) and her inclusion in the Oxford National Dictionary of Biography. Olive was also featured on the Brixton Pound.

Notes:

The awards event will take place at 7 – 9.30 on Friday 2 December 2011 at The Karibu Education Centre, 7 Gresham Road, London, SW9 7PH

Tickets £3 Inclusive of food

There will be a live DJ set by Carlos Martinez (Agent of Change)

Spaces are limited so booking is essential

PLEASE RSVP to: olivemorrishq@gmail.com

http://rememberolivemorris.wor​dpress.com/

Summer 2011
Olive Morris Memorial Award

The Remembering Olive Collective (ROC) is delighted to invite nominations for the Olive Morris Memorial Award. In the spirit of Olive’s life and work, 3 awards of £500 each will be given to young women engaged in radical grassroots political activity.

Olive Morris was an inspirational community activist in 1970s Britain, who died at the young age of 27 leaving behind a significant legacy, that the Remembering Olive Collective seeks to honor. Olive was a member of the British Black Panthers, as well as a founding member of the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent (OWAAD) and the Brixton Black Women’s Group. The breadth of her political work went from her pioneer role in the local squatter campaigns in South London, through to organising with Black women and the student movement in London and Manchester, to supporting liberation movements in the Third World.

Criteria

Nominees must be engaged in radical grassroots political work of any nature. For example, as organisers, advocates, activists, lobbyists or being themselves victims of repression for their political activities. Charitable work is not eligible, unless it is part of a wider and demonstrable radical politics agenda. Nominees must be women who are between 16 and 27 years of age and of African or Asian descent. This is meant in a broad geo-political sense that may include, for example, Palestinian women. All women who fall under the above category shall be considered regardless of their nationality and immigration status.

Nomination process

Anyone can nominate a woman for the award, provided they complete all the information requested in the nomination form. Downlaod Nomination Form

All forms to be returned by email to olivemorrishq@gmail.com by 21 September 2011.

Award ceremony

There will be a public award ceremony held at a London venue towards the end of October 2011, with details to be confirmed closer to the date.

The Remembering Olive Collective is a group of women of diverse ages and backgrounds that was active from 2008-2010, dedicated to preserving and reactivating the memory of Olive Morris and the political movements she was part of. The Olive Morris Memorial Award is ROC’s final public appearance, bringing to a close an intense period of work, whose main outcome was the creation of the Olive Morris Collection at Lambeth Archives.

The Olive Morris Collection is housed at Lambeth Archives and any queries regarding research materials about Olive Morris or any of the groups she was involved with should be directed to them.

Lambeth Archives, Minet Library, 52 Knatchbull Road, London SE5 9QY
Phone: +44 (0)20 7926 6076

You can also check ROC’s blog library for further references.

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=101645783263959&ref=ts

http://thebradford12.wordpress.com/

Self Defence is No Offence!

30th Anniversary of the Bradford 12

23^rd July, Khalili Theatre, SOAS, London WC1H 0XG

REGISTRATION: 10.30 am

SESSION 1    Legacies and lessons of the Bradford 12 11.00am-1.00pm

Chair :Shanaaz Ali member of United Black Youth League (UBYL)in 1981

Dave Harrison veteran anti-racist campaigner, supported Bradford 12

Amrit Wilson writer, campaigner for Bradford 12 (South Asia Solidarity Group)

Ruth Bundey Solicitor for the Bradford 12

Tariq Mehmood , Saeed Hussain , Sabar Hussain and others from the Bradford 12 and UBYL

Gareth Peirce Solicitor for the Bradford 12

LUNCH 1.00pm-2.00pm

SESSION 2    Resisting the British State 2.00pm-3.45pm

Mary Pearson (Troops Out Movement)

Minkah Adofo (United Friends and Family Campaign)

Frances Webber (Barrister for the Bradford 12)

Hamja Ahsan (Talha Ahsan campaign)

Deniz Arbet (Kurdish Community Centre)

Dan Glass (Plane Stupid and So We Stand)

Open Mike Session and Q and A

TEA/COFFEE BREAK

SESSION 3 Imperialism then and now 4.00pm – 5.30pm

Chair: Naeem Malik (Birmingham Guantanamo Campaign and Palestine Solidarity Campaign)

Samarendra Das writer, filmmaker and activist from Orissa, India (South Asia Solidarity Group)

Jawad Sabah (Iraqi Democrats Against the Occupation)

Leila Khaled – Palestine Freedom and Liberation Front (PFLP) and Palestine National Council (PNC)- Speaking on Skype
SOCIAL 6pm to late.

A Day of Speakers, Discussion and Celebration

In July 1981, 12 young Asian men were arrested in dawn raids across Bradford and charged with conspiracy to make explosives and to cause explosions. Almost a year later, following a trial which exposed the scale and intensity of everyday racist violence and the extent of police racism faced by their communities, they were all acquitted. 1981 had already witnessed uprisings of working class African-Caribbean, Asian youth, joined at times by white youth, angry about poverty, unemployment, racist attacks and police harassment. These had spread from St. Paul’s in Bristol to Brixton, Southall, Toxteth in Liverpool and other areas. On the other side, racist skinhead thugs linked to the National Front (predecessor of today’s BNP and EDL) had invaded Black (mainly African-Caribbean and Asian) communities attacking people on the streets and in their homes and targeting community buildings. On July 11th the news that vanloads of skinheads were planning to invade Manningham, Bradford’s main Asian area spread through the community. Only a week before coachloads of skinheads had attacked Southall’s Asian community and it was community self-defence, not the police, that had protected Southall. In Bradford, the recently-formed United Black Youth League (UBYL) responded by organising a protest through Manningham. And with an attack imminent they had also filled milk-bottles with petrol, in preparation, they later explained, for creating a “wall of fire” to prevent the thugs from entering Manningham. They hid them in bushes in case they were needed.

Fortunately the skinhead plan was called off and the ‘petrol bombs’ were never used. But they were discovered and the police swung into action. A Special Branch list was used to identify members and sympathisers of the UBYL. In response to the arrests, campaigns to defend the Bradford 12 sprang up organised by Black communities and their anti-racist allies across the country. The trial starkly revealed the police’s attitude with one officer after another denying the reality of racist violence which the defendants described. Despite attempts to rig the jury by failing to include anyone from Bradford’s Asian community, the Bradford 12 were found not guilty on the basis of the right to self-defence. Now, in the face of escalating racism, particularly targeting Muslim communities, it is time to reclaim the spirit of the Bradford 12 and remember our slogan:

Self-defence is no offence!

The Bradford 12 case was fought in an era in which migrants to the Britain from Asia, Africa and the Caribbean and their descendants born here came together in Black organisations: their names, whether Asian, African or African Caribbean, did not preclude unity among themselves and with progressive white British people. It was a unity that resonated through the central slogan of the Bradford 12, Self-Defence is No Offence.

The Bradford 12 campaign, legal as well as political, epitomised the uncompromising principle of the right to resist racism and came out of an understanding that what was experienced in this country was an extension of colonialism’s racism and its plunder, exploitation and the occupation of our countries.

Now, 30 years later, extreme right groups with a variety of names are still given police protection to rampage through communities. But the working class communities like the one which the Bradford 12 had defended are in a far worse position. In the last 30 years they have faced increasing unemployment and poverty under the neoliberal policies of successive Conservative and Labour governments. Now, they are confronted by a new onslaught in the Con Dem sledgehammer of benefit cuts and public service closures – for which the previous Labour government laid the foundations.

State racism is alive and well. Racist immigration laws, housing policies, education, employment and the criminal justice system affect not only long-established Black communities in this country but many other groups. They include new migrants from Latin America, Asia and Africa and people fleeing the imperialist wars being fought by Britain and its allies in the name of human rights. Seeking asylum and safety in this country – known for its ‘democratic values’ – these refugees find themselves denied the means of survival – evicted as it were from the category of human.

Racism has also been recast. Islamophobia- nurtured by the last Labour government to meet the global needs of imperialism and facilitate the new scramble for Africa, Asia and the Middle East, has been added to the earlier arsenal of racist ideas – justifying unprecedented racist violence and repression.

On a day-to-day level, this means that Muslim communities in Britain now live in fear of the ever-increasing armies of spies being paid by projects such as Prevent. And terror raids by the police mean people often cross the road from those who have been raided, while some community centres and cafes refuse to allow campaigners meeting rooms to discuss the cases of those arrested under terror laws.

Muslims and Muslim ‘lookalikes’ are now gunned down in Britain in the interests of ‘security’. This old racism with new claws continues on, now hidden, now open, now in attacks on people’s homes and workplaces, now on the streets, and always in the establishment. Just as Margaret Thatcher whipped up racism and justified repression with her notorious ‘swamping’ speech in the era of the Bradford 12 , David Cameron in his recent speech at the European Security Conference declared not only the death of state multiculturalism but unbuttoned the gloves, threatening to launch a ‘muscular liberalism’ against those opposing British colonial wars.

We are supported by Artists Project Earth – www.apeuk.org

We are supported by Terre Humaine – www.terrehumaine.org

For pioneering environmental justice research, policy and campaigns please see www.capacity.org.uk

Friday the 13th and no spooks or serial killers, but a horror of a different kind and you are the heroes.

In face of a community eroded, a division between them and us, systematic stigmitisation and destabilisation of ties that bind, is an apolitcal united front possible? This Friday the 13th we invite anyone who seeks an alternative to join us to face these demons to dig deep into the dusty forgotten toolkit to recover the power… of our hands and feet to see what we can begin to do together.

5-7pm
Conversation with Cathy McCormack: What can be done?
Free Film Screening

Activist Campaigner Cathy McCormack was forced to try and keep her three children alive on welfare away back in 1982 when Britain was changed from an industrial to a money market economy; she managed to inspire both rich and poor who supported her to go on a journey all over the world in search of the truth.

Now Cathy has come home, and would love to share and engage in real conversations with people who are really interested in asking the same questions and exploring possible solutions.

She shares her powerful film “At the Sharp End of the Knife” (52mins) about her visit to the townships of South Africa to meet fellow activists building the ‘New’ South Africa. She may be dodging the bullets, but finds energy and inspiration in the people she meets as she makes intriguing parallels with their lives, and her own back in Glasgow’s infamous Easterhouse housing project.

2-4pm
The screening is preceeded by a unique writer group that meets at 2pm, they share their co-operative practice that has developed over the past 18 months through self governance. Though they originally began in Hillhead Library, the negotiation of use in Public spaces may mean the group will have to migrate soon. Come discover your voice, be inspired perhaps to start your own group to share experiences. Cathy, author of Wee Yellow butterfly, shares her activist writing experience with the group as well.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Yellow-Butterfly-McCormack-Marian-Pallister/dp/1906134294

Entry is Free, All Welcome.
The venue can get drafty so please wrap warm and hope to see you there.

We are working towards a Day of Environmental Justice Education. On one day, communities around the UK will run popular education events to learn about how to tackle local environmental injustices and make plans for action. These days will be an opportunity to develop local networks and also networks of solidarity between groups fighting for environmental justice. If you live in a community which is struggling against environmental injustice and would like to get involved, or if you would like to get involved in organising this project, showing solidarity and fighting climate change from a point of view of environmental justice, get in touch!