point of fact: Adrienne Rich was a transphobe:
“…Janice Raymond cited Rich in the acknowledgments section of her 1979 book The Transsexual Empire, writing “Adrienne Rich has been a very special friend and critic. She has read the manuscript through all its stages and provided resources,…
I am very privileged. I have access to food & water, a home, an income. I don’t live in an area of conflict. I’m educated, white, relatively able bodied. My sexuality makes me the target of fantasy rather than hate campaigns. I’ve become what most would see as middle class. I can use my privilege…
Should we trust government e-petitions?
On the 3rd of October, the petition to contest the eviction of rioters stood at 1,111. The decision was made to take a step back; despite numerous requests on Twitter, fewer and fewer were signing up. It crawled along for two months, a signature or two every once in a while.
On the 12th of December, I noted that the petition had managed to pull in 50 signatories all by itself. Shortly after however, there were another 2. Excited, I shared the news on Twitter. @MrChrisEllis responded: ”I just got an email from http://direct.gov turns out my vote didn’t count cos I didn’t validate my email address.. Except I did because I remember. So it looks like a tech error and the site was under reporting your votes.. So I reckon they are sending out these emails 3 months later, I bet you’re about to get a lot more now.”
Preferring to believe that the site was under reporting, I sent out a few tweets asking people to sign up. Within half an hour, there were another 13 signatures. In two days, the petition had grown by 114. Admittedly, I used the scatter gun approach but that had always been the case. On average, for every 50 messages sent, only a handful would acknowledge them. @MrChrisEllis had another explanation: ”checked my inbox, the original was marked Read so I did open it, but link was different. So maybe double counting?”
@SuzanneHeneghan also reported: “@HillsboroughAnf Has everyone been sent an email re e-petitions from HM Gove asking for address validation? #justchecking”
If this is potentially true, does this apply to other petitions? For instance, the petition asking for rioters to “loose” their benefits? Is the government e-petition site truly representing the voice of the people or do we have a massive system failure? If this is the case, it undermines the voice that the British people have. And makes a mockery of our democracy.
1111 Not in our name
When people break the law, we accept they need to be punished. Quite often, we feel that sentencing does not reflect the crime. I previously worked as an advocate for women experiencing domestic abuse, my main role being to ensure that service users felt safe to report abuse to the authorities and they in turn dealt with abusers accordingly. I was frequently frustrated at courts for not recognising certain types of abuse or the impact of perpetrators on victims and consequently, the leniency in sentencing especially where drugs and alcohol were involved. I might not have liked it but due process is there for a reason; I wanted to protect my clients from further incidents of abuse, society aims to protect every individual in it by understanding contributing factors. There was a reduction in repeat incidents where perps were required to attend supervision as part of their probation, as well as intervention programmes designed to higlight unacceptable attitudes and behaviours. Few perpetrators are happy to go about their criminal behaviour when the world is watching.
However, the courts don’t always get it right. A client had been sexually assaulted by her husband. He had been physically and mentally abusive to her for some time. In the latest incident, their young child was also present.
Her treatment by the defence was appalling to say the least but it was the judges verdict and sentencing that broke my client’s spirit and left her feeling vulnerable. He said it was obvious that my client was telling the truth, that he couldn’t see her as the sort to lie comfortably. He returned a verdict of guilty. However, because the perpetrator was an employee of a well known establishment and a custodial sentence would affect his employment, he was given a suspended sentence and permitted to walk away that day. No probation or supervision order, no perp programme, no costs to my client, financial or otherwise.
A looter stole a crate of water amounting to £3.50. He was given a 6 month custodial sentence, the maximum for theft of goods to the value of £2000. He had previous good character, was studying at the time and apologised for his behaviour. In normal circumstances, he could have gotten a community order of unpaid work and/or a fine. Keeping him in prison for 6 months costs the taxpayer £25000. This is alarming to say the least.
And yet, there are those who believe this is not enough. As if being found guilty, convicted, stigmatised and incarcerated was not enough, there are those that want them homeless. Convinced that this could not be the case, that the thought was too abhorrent to even entertain, I set about to prove that Britain was not so reactionary and careless. I started a petition 8 weeks ago, it currently stands at 1,111 signatures. There was a flurry of enthusiatic retweeting at it’s inception, it steadily rose to about 300 by day 3 and then it trickled to a halt. I reached out to other tweeters for support, their friendly advice motivated me to carry on.
More recently, I came across another petition doing the rounds. It was just a few thousand off making it to the backbench. It was asking for cheaper petrol. 100,000 people feel passionate enough about petrol to make a stand.
I, and my fellow tweeters, have pondered the reasons as to why people ignore our petition. The rich and famous have no comment (apart from Jack Dee, Paloma Faith and Terry Christian). Activists with high follower counts tend not to acknowledge either. (Being ignored is preferable to being flagged as spam or recieving gleeful messages of abuse). I’ve tried to understand those that message me their far right beliefs. They know I’m not going to change my mind, they know I know they’re not going to change their minds.. It’s all a pointless exercise.
So, why aren’t people signing? Firstly, because they genuinely want homelessness and collective punishment as part of the fabric of our society. Secondly, they do not want to associate with something that conflicts with their affiliations, government funded perhaps. And lastly, because they genuinely don’t believe it’s going to happen or even if it does, it won’t affect them. People do not understand that we could be setting a precedent.
If rioters deserve to lose their homes, then why not domestic abuse perpetrators? Having assisted a number of clients in attempting to obtain occupation orders following long histories of abuse, I can assure you, it is not easy to evict an abusive partner. But that’s understandable. Evicting rapists, murderers, paedophiles is unthinkable because they will be on our streets. Why should rioters be treated any differently?
First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.
Whilst we understand that those breaking the law need to be punished and justice needs to be served to those victimised by the riots, evicting people from council housing is restricted to those receiving state benefits, already on the lowest incomes. Looters/rioters who own their own homes will be punished through the justice system and they will keep their homes. This is unjust and undemocratic. We cannot be so specific as to who keeps their home and who does not. Are murderers and rapists more deserving of their council houses? We have a judicial system in place to deal with people who break the law, social housing is not a privilege that can be given and taken away, it is a right.
Furthermore, once a family has been evicted, where do they then turn for shelter? Having worked with people who have had to prove their homelessness status, I can attest that even victims of violence have a difficult enough time accessing social housing. How would people in receipt of state benefit find enough money to rent privately? Private landlords will also want references from previous tenancies. Nobody will want to provide housing to those evicted on grounds of anti-social behaviour relating to the riots. It is unethical to evict entire families based on the actions of one person, collective punishment does not take into account the human rights of family members and whilst some may argue that there are procedures in place to ensure the evictions won’t be breaking one convention or another, in light of the disproportionate sentencing of rioters, there is not a lot of confidence in these regulations being adhered to.
In the foreseeable future, if these evictions are not contested, we will have people sleeping rough on the streets. This is not a problem that will happen to somebody else, in somebody else’s town or somebody else’s street, the looters/rioters are from all over the UK, from all of our neighbourhoods.
Homelessness has it’s associated problems; drugs/alcohol, violence, theft. Who will we blame when the homeless are having to steal in order to eat?
Please sign this petition if you believe homelessness is not the answer.
We need more discussion on recovering costs, financial and emotional, from perpetrators through our justice system. Currently, state benefit claimants paying back a budgeting or crisis loan do so at about £7 p/w. This is entirely manageable and practical and will not leave the claimant completely destitute. Along with this idea, we need to explore community service and probation. With cuts to the public sector, the easy answer here would be to evict people that our government really does not care for, however in the long term, we as a society will be the ones left to pick up the pieces.
With so many changes taking place, it is easy to get distracted by a worthier cause. We may lose our treasured NHS and with yet another social group affected by the policies of this government, it is difficult to keep on protecting individual rights. We must not let them think that we have forgotten about those people the government forgot about a long time ago. Post Riot Evictions - Not In My Name.
Please sign this petition if you want to help stop the knee jerk eviction of families post riot.
