Lesbian Immigration Support Group (£1500) (Northern England)
A group of lesbian and bisexual refugees and asylum seeking women and their lesbian and bisexual European supporters in Greater Manchester. They work to support each other, including visiting women in detention centres and to create awareness of who they are and why they have come to the UK. They challenge myths about LGBT people and about asylum seekers and refugees.
Bradford Survivor’s Alliance (£1500) (Northern England)
Bradford Survivor Alliance is a group of people that are victims of human trafficking and modern day slavery but have escaped from their traffickers. They are an independent organisation that is linked to a global network of survivor leaders, the Survivors Alliance. Bradford Survivor Alliance challenges anti-slavery and trafficking organisations who speak about them but don’t allow them to have a voice around the table. Thei main aim is to change policies and practice on how survivors are being treated in the UK.
Anti-Fracking Nanas (£1500) (Northern England)
The Anti-Fracking Nanas work tirelessly and at a great deal of personal, financial expense to oppose the fracking industry in Blackpool & Fyde through community engagement and grassroots activism.
African Rainbow Family, London and Birmingham (£3000)
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.
ERSCAG (Ealing Reclaim Social Care Action Group) (£1500) (Southern England)
ERSCAG campaigns for radical change to the social care system, focusing on the Borough of Ealing and nationally. Their campaign is led by disabled people and seniors who seek a social care system that gives recipients choice over how they retain control over their own lives, adequate support for family and informal carers, and proper training and remuneration to professional carers.
Queer AF Brighton (£1500) (Southern England)
Queer AF was formed in response to the rise of racism and transphobia in the community and beyond. Through a new system of group organising they educate, agitate and organise with the community to radically improve queer lives.
Climate Action Scotland (£1500) (Scotland)
Climate Action Scotland aim at ultimately shutting down Scotland’s oil and gas industry, forcing the Scottish government to ensure a just transition for workers in the fossil fuel industry, and to build bridges between workers, front-line communities in Scotland and around the world, and the climate movement.
Glasgow Autonomous Space (£1500) (Scotland)
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. 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.
Bristol Housing Action Movement (£1500) (Southern England)
Many of those in Bristol Housing Action Movement have been involved in squatting empty properties as a personal and political response to homelessness. They believe empty properties should be used for public benefit, not left to decay and blight their cities. The introduction of new legislation (LASPO 2011) has made squatting more difficult and helped to increase the numbers of homeless people. They believe it is vital to oppose the new restrictive law by organising protest occupations. They also wish to challenge the increasing use of court injunctions against homeless people and those occupying land or buildings.
Manchester Migrant Solidarity (£3000) (Northern England)
Manchester Migrant Solidarity is a collaboration between migrants and non-migrants on the basis of solidarity rather than charity. They are run solely by and for asylum seekers, refugees and migrants from different nationalities. Their activities include anti-deportation mobilisation, detention support, language support, campaigning for individual asylum cases, and organising workshops on asylum applications and campaigning strategies. They also collaborate with other groups on wider systemic issues, like challenging legislation, instigating policy changes, and campaigning to Shut Down Detention Centres.
Mental Health Resistance Network (£1500) (Southern England)
Mental Health Resistance Network formed to fight the withdrawal of social security entitlements to people in mental distress, however as capitalist ideology has been embedded into NHS treatments, they have a wider remit. Neoliberal ideas imposed on services blame mental distress on individual character shortcomings. They reject this ideology and seek real systemic change that recognises the social causes of mental distress. They operate from a social model and believe that capitalism and trauma cause mental distress.
Northern Police Monitoring Project (£1500) (Northern England)
The Northern Police Monitoring Project is an independent, grassroots, collective that aims to respond to the multiple injustices committed through policing and over-policing in the Greater Manchester area.
Recovery in the Bin (£1500) (UK Wide)
Recovery in the Bin is a group of Mental Health Survivors and their supporters who are fed up with the way colonised ‘recovery’ is being used to discipline and control those who are trying to find a place in the world, to live as they wish, trying to deal with the very real mental distress they encounter on a daily basis.
Action for Trans Health Edinburgh (£1000) (Scotland)
Action for Trans Health was set up in February 2014. Since then, they have grown to be the UK’s largest (and only) campaign for patient-worker control of trans healthcare; with established groups in Manchester and Leeds, as well as groups currently being set up in Liverpool and Brighton.
Kurdish Solidarity Cymru (£750) (Wales)
Kurdish Solidarity Cymru is a collective of people in south Wales that work alongside the Kurdish Assembly in Wales to campaign to end Turkey's war on the Kurds. They campaign against selling arms to Turkey, to Boycott Turkish Holidays, to free the Kurdish political leader Abdullah Ocalan and all political Prisoners in Turkey as well as of course for Peace in Kurdistan and the protection of the ecological, feminist social revolution in Rojava. They are a non-hierarchical group and oppose all forms of oppression - their campaign is led by Kurdish refugees.
BASE for Anarchy and Solidarity in Easton (£750) (South East)
Based on anarchist principles of opposing all forms of authority and organising collectively without leaders, BASE’s premises are the base for many activities and local groups: the regular, affordable vegan cafes; bike workshops; a DJ, sound system and party network; an allotment; many forms of art, radical info and publications; direct action and campaigns; and numerous events and meetings featuring local and international speakers and artists. BASE aims to provide a space for people to explore and practice what they believe in, free from interference from the state and capitalism.
1500 & Counting (£500) (UK Wide)
‘1500 & Counting’ is a film created because of the deafening silence surrounding the death of Sheku Bayoh in Scotland. Having already been working together for a number of years as filmmakers, the group behind ‘1500 & Counting’ decided to fuse together their skills as a director, a producer and a campaigner and set to work in documenting the story of his death. Whilst doing this, they joined forces with the United Families & Friends Campaign (UFFC) who have been working tirelessly for decades to demand justice for over 1800 deaths in custody in the UK since 1990 and over 3000 since records began in in the late 1960s/early 1970s following the death of David Oluwale in Leeds.
College Bank Support Group (£500) (North West)
College Bank is a high rise estate of seven blocks built in the sixties to an extremely high standard to encourage professionals to come into the town. All were Council properties for rent as this was prior to Right to Buy legislation. Since the eighties there have been tenants of all ages and needs who have made their homes in the blocks. Cyclical renewals, i.e new windows, lifts, heating systems, kitchens and bathrooms have improved the properties. Many tenants are long term with no desire to move, including circa 100 pensioners who would be evicted from their retirement homes. The position of College Bank Support Group is that social housing needs are more important than profits and, as is happening all over the country, are fighting to save people’s homes.
Fossetts for the People (£500) (South East)
Fossetts for the People is campaigning for good quality, genuinely affordable, sustainable council and keyworker homes to be built on the former NHS land at Fossett’s Farm for rent to the people most in need in the Borough of Southend. They currently have 1500 families on the Council waiting list in Southend and large numbers of homeless individuals. They are working with the New Economics Foundation to challenge plans to build luxury accommodation on public land sold off by the NHS for £7.8 Million.
Islington Homes for All (£500) (London)
Islington Homes for All is an unfunded, independent group of activists, many of whom have or had personal housing problems. They aim to make local people’s voices heard by campaigning to maximise the provision of homes for social rent in a borough with 14,000 on the council housing waiting list and many private tenants living in squalid and/or over-priced homes. They oppose the marked housing inequalities existing in Islington which lead to social cleansing. As well as calling for more homes for social rent, they campaign for such housing to be of good quality, sustainable, well-maintained and safe. They oppose the financialisation of housing associations and the auctioning off of social housing properties.
Ladies of Rage (£500) (Wales)
Ladies of Rage was founded as a mutual support network to challenge the patriarchal and misogynistic systems of oppression that face women in music, particularly in genres such as hip-hop, drum and bass and jungle where womxn are massively underrepresented. As a collective they champion each other, using grassroots organising and networking to get artists recognition and bookings; they hold regular jam sessions in a safe space; and hold child friendly jams so women with children can explore their creativity without worrying about childcare, which is so important as so many womxn are isolated with no support and struggle to find time for their own passions.
Ledbury Action Group (£500) (Southern England)
After being decanted from their council tower block due to fire and structural safety issues, a member set up the Ledbury Action Group, initially to hold their local authority landlord to account and ensure residents' needs were met in the time of that crisis. Over the past two years Ledbury Action Group has grown and they now campaign throughout London and the UK on issues of housing inequality, social housing stigma and the wanton demolition of council estates in favour of 'regeneration' for the wealthy. Their website 'campaign blog' highlights issues taking place locally and nationally, and they also utilise social media, particularly Twitter (@LedburyAction) to call out and expose wrongdoing in the social housing sector.
Protest Justice Network (£500) (Northern England)
Protest Justice is an independent grassroots campaign, which supports campaigners in addressing mistreatment experienced at protests through a thorough and effective complaints process. They assess trends and patterns of behaviour being experienced on the ‘front line’ of protest across the UK and seek to highlight and bring scrutiny to these injustices. They realised the desperate need to change the attitude of protesters about making complaints regarding the treatment they have either witnessed, or personally experienced. When complaints are submitted to Protest Justice, assessment and analysis of mistreatment on the front line can bring essential scrutiny to individuals, organisations and companies.
Rent Strike (£500) (UK Wide)
Rent Strike are working to end the exploitation of the working class through rent extraction, as well as trying to encourage visions of new ways of living collectively and democratically. Their main basis of work is trying to create more informed, militant tenants who are ready to involve themselves in tenant organising in their communities, through existing student networks. This includes building rent strikes and other forms of collective action in and off campuses. Recent rent strikes organised by local campaigns in their network have been participated in by upwards of 1000 student tenants. Their network is firmly anti-capitalist, and believe that an end to the current system of exploitative housing they are living in can only be achieved through militant, collective action from below, both in and outside of the workplace.
4WardEverUK (£500)
4WardEver UK is a community collective providing news and information sharing services for their readers and members. Their purpose is to provide a one-stop-resource for case profiles, news and event details, useful resources, statistics, appeals, and more in relation to deaths and abuses whilst in custody; including the death penalty, other injustices and human rights abuses in the UK and internationally.
Movement of Asylum Seekers in Ireland (£500)
MASI is an independent platform for asylum seekers to join together in unity and purpose. The collective seeks justice, freedom and dignity for all asylum seekers. They demand the end of direct provision, the right to work and education, and opposes deportation.
Kushti Bok (£500) (Southern England)
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.
Autonomous Centre of Edinburgh (£500) (Scotland)
The Autonomous Centre of Edinburgh (ACE) provides since 1994 a unique collectively run political space in Edinburgh. Based around principles of libertarian-communism, antifascism and anarchism ACE since its inception has supported and initiated myriads of projects based on grassroots organizing, non-authoritarian education and direct action. The ACE collective is a membership group.
History of Women’s Liberation (HOWL) (£500) (UK Wide)
HOWL are a group of grassroots feminist activists, many being founders of the Women’s Liberation Movement in the UK, who have been campaigning from the late 1960s on issues as diverse as Greenham Common, Reclaim the Night, lesbian and reproductive rights, and many others. Their aim is to foster intergenerational work between feminists with a view to identifying avenues for radical change in society, by sharing fully the form and content of their earlier campaigning, making the connection with activism now