However, as a sister Bia Aziz in the Black Feminists group also told us:
Two-thirds of women in UK prisons are in for non-violent offences and the “criminalisation of survival”: shoplifting, non-payment of fines, sex work, offences linked to drug addiction and so-called benefit fraud – unlike well-paid bankers who steal from the public, women living in poverty get prison....
Women of colour are the fastest growing sector in the prison population and are three times more likely to get a prison sentence than white women. Immigrant women who are alone in the UK are often deprived of what families provide and suffer the agonies of separation.
Which raises the question. For those of us who think with our hands and feet, what is it that we can do to help ourselves. I do not speak for everyone in the FRRG, but in case I raise any concerns about the flavour of this new blog, please note I am not a great theorist nor am I very well read and I will never pretend to be. But the more of the world I see around me, as I see how easily we are pushed around by the vagaries of economic policy and trade indexes (look how a recession has left many of our social initiatives having to fight with each other and go cap in hand begging for scraps from local councils), I start to wonder: what is it that we can do?
This is all the more true for us women of colour who are as ever affected disproportionately. What can we do for our sisters and our daughters? How can we strengthen ourselves?
If you hold classes perhaps in practical skills or self esteem - do you need volunteers? Regular donations? A spare room? I am naive, I don't know the world, but as far as I can see, it is time for us to use the ingenuity that we have allowed to be crushed by our culture of consumerist capitalism that has reduced and disabled us, we liberated women of the 21st century!
The event can be found here.
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