Abortion Access Campaign West, Ireland, £3000.
AACW grew from the nucleus of activists who fought to have the 8th amendment removed, and ultimately defeated the rump of the old guard in May 2018. However they recognised that victory was not sufficient to ensure appropriate, accessible service delivery. They wish to normalise all reproductive rights and services in Ireland, with a focus on the most disadvantaged and oppressed women – including those from the Traveler community, asylum seekers and refugees, those living in rural poverty and isolation and those relying on benefits and low wages. The Irish health system is tiered and access to services requires payment at the point of contact, plus travel to sites of service delivery.
Activist Transport Collective, Sheffield, £500.
The Activist Transport Collective (ATC) works with and is composed of members of a wide range of campaign and action groups. They facilitate self-organised, affordable mass transport for radical community groups.
African Rainbow Family, UK Wide, £750.
African Rainbow Family is run horizontally by LGBTIQ people seeking aslyum and refugees with lived experiences of persecution based on their sexuality, gender identities, religion, race, ethnicity, disability and have experienced the most horrendous violence in their countries of origin. They campaign against social injustice and challenge any UK immigration mistreatment of LGBT asylum seekers’ application process, as well as influencing government policies, campaigning on individual member’s asylum cases, offering practical support, organising rallies and other activities.
Beyond Bars, £500.
Beyond Bars are queer and trans prison abolitionists who send books and other educational materials to LGBTQAI+ people who are incarcerated in prisons, young offenders, and detention centres, as a way of providing practical support to those inside. They also support abolitionist work - particularly against prison expansion - and seek to promote abolitionist politics within the queer and trans communities.
Black Triangle Campaign, £500.
Black Triangle Campaign is run by and for disabled people and campaigns against government welfare reform, work capability assessments, compulsory workfare, privatisation of the welfare state and all disability cuts. They organise and take part in demonstrations and petitions as well working with doctors to put forward motions to the British Medical Association and pursuing legal avenues to challenge welfare reform and protect disabled people. They fight the myths about welfare claimants being malingerers.
Brighton & Hove Black Women's Group, £500.
Brighton & Hove Black Women's Group work to ensure Black women’s needs are heard and met. We also work on issues for Black men as Black women are still oppressed if Black men are oppressed. We believe that those who feel it know it. No one would accept a men’s organisation leading on women’s projects or heterosexuals leading on LGBT work but white privilege allows this racist practice. We are developing networks with other Black people to take back control of developing projects to meet our needs. (*‘Black’ includes people of African, Bangladeshi, Caribbean, Chinese, Indian, Middle Eastern and Pakistani origins.)
Disabled People Against Cuts Glasgow, £1500.
The Glasgow section of the national Disabled People Against Cuts campaign. Founded and led by disabled people to raise awareness of the impact of government cuts on disabled people, and to challenge government policy on disability which is eroding the human rights of disabled people in the UK.
DPAC Norfolk, £750.
DPAC Norfolk will use this grant to establish a UK wide network of individuals and organisations dedicated to scrapping UC. This will be a national social movement which will unite in action all those who want to campaign to stop and scrap UC based on experiences of DPAC nationally and DPAC Norfolk locally.
Ffena - Black Women Living with HIV, £500.
Ffena is a collective of Black women living with HIV, headquartered in London but with representation in 12 UK locations. Our community based project work is led by ourselves, users of services, and we work to challenge the determinants of health: social conditions, food/fuel poverty, immigration issues, poor housing, benefit issues, marginalisation, lifestyle, diet and exercise. We work through empowerment - By building social capital, empowerment, knowledge and the ability to challenge established oppressive systems. Black women are the group that is most heavily impacted by HIV but our voices are historically least heard. Our group came about through strong Black women challenging a Euro-centric paternalistic medical profession making decisions on us without consultation. Our watchwords are: ‘No decisions about us Without us’.
Focus E15, London, £1500.
Focus E15 Campaign was started by young mothers in a supported hostel (Focus E15 hostel in Stratford, London E15) who said No! to being sent out of London for housing and joined forces with individuals and groups to form a campaign to challenge Newham Labour council about this policy of social cleansing. We do this work because housing is a human right and we cannot sit idly by and witness the appalling way people are being treated. We realise that while addressing local issues, we come up against the bigger picture, of a capitalist society in times of austerity. We realise that we need ultimately to change the system and to do that we need a mass movement. We want to be part of raising our collective consciousness.
Foil Vedanta, UK Wide £3000.
An independent grassroots solidarity organization focused primarily on the FTSE 250 British-Indian mining giant Vedanta Resources PLC. Foil Vedanta targets the company in London where it is registered, as well as linking with people’s movements where Vedanta is destroying lives and devastating the land in India, Sri Lanka, Ireland, Zambia, Liberia, South Africa and elsewhere.
Friends of Detainees, UK Wide, £3000.
Friends of Detainees work hard to end the use of immigration detention in the UK. They believe that asylum seekers, refugees and immigrants coming to the UK for safety should not be detained for administrative convenience which in turn causes them mental torture and many more problems.
Fuel Poverty Action, UK Wide, £1500.
Fuel Poverty Action’s (FPA) work focuses on the intersection of social justice and climate change. Fuel poverty emerged from free-market capitalism, which has enabled an energy oligopoly of suppliers to behave like a cartel, inching up prices in concert year-on-year. People on low incomes pay most. The Big Six and fossil fuel companies (subsidized £5.9 billion a year and given a huge 32% tax-break in 2013 by the Con-Dems) have shown that power is too important to be controlled by private interests. We need locally sourced publicly run renewable energy companies that are accountable to us. FPA helped set up Switched on London (a community energy for London campaign) and campaign for fairer prices from existing suppliers.
Genesis Residents, £500.
Genesis Residents are trying to build an independent tenant/shared owner/leaseholder organisation to fight for access to housing. We build through meetings in which residents can raise issues, mobilising against Notting Hill Genesis (NHG).
We have been successful in obtaining a stop on the sale of social rent homes of NHG and forcing NHG to disclose Fire Risk Assessments (FRA) - NHG had previously refused to allow tenants to see the FRA on their blocks. Our political demand is for the right to housing, meaning that everyone is entitled to housing which meets their needs.
Glasgow Autonomous Space, Glasgow, Scotland, £750.
GAS is a non-hierarchical collective that creates and holds space for groups to direct their own movements. They have secured a 5-year lease in a large industrial unit with the intention to build a multi-purpose space. People from different backgrounds come together to complete the physical work, learn new skills and develop a real sense of belonging. GAS intends to have an info-shop, a cooking space, a wood-workshop, and a safe exercising space for self-defence. GAS aims to be accessible, child-friendly, warm, and multilingual. They believe that people with lived-experience of oppression should lead their work. They ensure that groups work together to make consensus decisions about what the space is used for.
Housing Association Residents Action, £500.
Housing Association Residents Action (HARA) is an independent organisation for all residents of housing associations – tenants, shared owners and leaseholders. The management of Housing Associations across the UK are making very poor decisions and becoming more and more commercial. We are organising to defend current residents against evictions, rent increases, unfair service charges, and unmaintained homes. We campaign to keep affordable social housing in the social housing sector, rather than being sold off to private buyers. We also fight for the retention of the core principle of the housing association movement – that everyone has a right to decent housing.
Joint Enterprise:Not Guilty by Association, £500.
Joint Enterprise is a legal abuse of power. Research has concluded it to be an area of law that is racist and discriminatory towards the working class. They have already had a breakthrough at the Supreme Court but feel there is still a significant amount of work to do in terms of helping those convicted before the Supreme Court acknowledged the law had been misinterpreted for over 30 years. And to continue to chip away at the CPS’s unfair use of JE.
Kingsley Burrell Campaign, £3000.
Eight years ago, what is now known as Justice for Kingsley Burrell campaign began to organize. It started out as raising awareness of deaths in police custody, whose mission was to highlight police brutality and to secure justice pertaining to the four West Midlands officers involved in Kingsley’s death. Our intention from the very beginning was to connect Black people from all over the UK who have shared experiences, lobby Members of Parliament and raise our concerns collectively for justice to be served.In the years since. We’ve actively campaigned and committed to direct action to build local and national publicity in order to draw attention to injustices surrounding this case. We’ve accomplished a lot of publicity in eight years, though we have a long way to go securing justice.
Kushti Bok, Dorset, £500.
Kushti Bok campaigns against prejudice towards the GTR community in Dorset. Kushti Bok has challenged local media, with some success gained, leading to more balanced reporting regarding GTR. This is an ongoing problem and the press (in print and online) needs to be constantly monitored.
Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group, London, £500.
Group set up three years ago for unemployed workers to self-organise around issues affecting benefit claimants. They educate people on a range of rights, through talking with people, leaflets and public workshops.
Leeds Unity Centre, £500.
We operate a safe and friendly, volunteer-run, support Centre for asylum seekers, refugees and undocumented migrants. We provide practical and emotional support and solidarity to refugees, asylum seekers and other migrants in West Yorkshire.
LGBT Unity, Scotland, £500.
LGBT Unity work to end detention, deportation, destitution, lack of access to resources and the discriminatory and racist practises of the UK immigration system. The Home Office and their racist, sexist, homophobic immigration controls serve to alienate people and keep us fighting in a state of isolation. Their group is the only place in Scotland where the space is held solely for LGBTQ asylum seekers and allies to come together in safety and care to share experiences, support, strategies and ideas for the future.
Manchester Disabled People Against Cuts. £3000.
Manchester DPAC are disabled people self defined under the Social Model of Disability thus encompassing service users and neurodivergent people. We protest, occupy, do direct action and engage in radical independent advocacy (statutory advocates we have found to be often useless) so when a disabled person has to deal with state agencies they are not alone and have a witness who can also intervene with knowledge of the law, advice, and the rights of disabled people.
Misson Springs, £1500.
Misson Springs are an anti-fracking camp in North Nottinghamshire. By supporting a constant presence at the site gates, we are demonstrating to fracking companies that they have not been accepted by the local community or have any degree of social licence to operate.
Montreal Square Residents Association, £1500.
On the 29th of January 2018 our landlord Cambridge Housing Society announced they had plans to demolish our homes and community to build shared ownership flats which would increase the revenue for this site by robbing them of our gardens, driveways and green open space. This land has been land for social housing since 1928 and that is the way they want it to stay. Some residents have lived here for over 40 years and felt this was wrong. They called for a residents meeting and the vast majority turned up and agreed they would try and fight this to save their community. They have the backing of our local MP but the vulture capitalists running the housing association that their homes belong to refuse to listen to them.
Positively UK, Boston, £1400.
Positively UK are EU nationals living in Boston, a port town on the east coast of England where latent hostility toward old and new migrant arrivals has burst into the open since the Brexit vote, where 76% of local people voted to leave the EU. They came together to counter EDL and Britain First marches, and increasing racist and xenophobic attacks. They aim to resist discrimination by peaceful means, like rallies, demos and solidarity with people in Boston who stand against the latest attacks on the migrant community. Their activities include, organising marches; highlighting government non-compliance with impact assessments on immigration policy; conducting direct action against council offices; and working to bridge the divide in Boston, which they hope will be replicated in other UK cities.
Pride in Sheffield, Yorkshire. £500
Pride in Sheffield are creating a community orientated event, to raise awareness and build solidarity, specifically around breaches of human rights in Britain and worldwide (including those in Chechnya and the detention of queer migrants in the UK. They stand against homophobia and transphobia, and against the capitalist system which allows prejudice to flourish.
Quiet Riot, Manchester, £1500
Quiet Riot is a disabled people led group. They do not use speech for communication, but they have a great deal to say. They are all special school survivors and require physical support and emotional support when pointing and typing. Some disabled people use the term neuro diverse. They have been meeting and campaigning as a group for the Right to Communication in general and their right to use Facilitated Communication (FC) in particular.
Shoal Collective, £500.
Underpinning Shoal’s work is the desire to foster grassroots resistance to capitalism, colonialism and white supremacy. This project focuses on food and land justice in the UK. Racial inequalities in these areas are related to economic and social inequalities. This Shoal project, to be carried out in 2019, will produce a number of journalistic articles. They will focus on different areas including profiling UK projects led by people of colour (POC). The project will challenge stereotypes of POC in relation to food production and be a celebration of POC who are demonstrating different ways of living.
South Asian Sisters Speak £500.
A community of British South Asian women who connect through common experiences and interests, to foster a safe environment to share and support one another in navigating the highs and lows of sometimes conflicting and confusing cultural expectations and experiences. The Black Feminist Movement has grown phenomenally and they wish to build a similar movement amongst South Asians. This is particularly important as one of the largest ethnic groups in the UK. The aim is to break down the structures that deter South Asian women from discussing uncomfortable realities, in turn transforming our own communities.
Unity Sisters, Glasgow, £1000.
Unity Sisters is a group of women going through the asylum system. They get together to create safe spaces for women to share their stories and experiences about the immigration system, and other issues such as domestic abuse, health inequalities, forced destitution, access to education, housing, and access to childcare. These issues form part of a xenophobic, racist and sexist system of oppression, which the group aims to help dismantle through their work. With regular meetings, film screenings, and outings, the group provides spaces for emotional support, as well as practical solidarity.
Unis Resist Border Controls, UK Wide £1500.
Unis Resist Border Controls are a migrant-led movement working to oppose the encroachment of the militarised border and the hostile environment policy into UK universities. We work from universities because that is where we are, but we are opposed to setting university students and staff apart as somehow worthier than other migrants; rather, we believe in freedom of movement for all students, workers, immigrants, travellers, and refugees, and we want to build solidarity among these groups. We believe that migrants should be not only welcomed but also heard, and we are committed to publicising the words of precarious migrants rather than those who might speak for us.
Weald Action Group, £1500
Weald Action Group aim to strategise, skill-share and train, gather experts to form skilled working groups, raising awareness of acidisation (fracking’s little sister!), present and meet on focused topics relevant to the Weald and encourage inter-group networking.