In the previous post, Jacob Berkson was looking at routes some people take in desperation to get to Britain. What’s it like for them once they’re here? Challenging, says charity Migrants Organise. For twenty years, MO has been working to make its motto “Power in organising. Dignity in justice” a reality, breaking cycles of loneliness, destitution and hostile environment, celebrating the resilience, inventiveness and courage of migrant and refugee women leaders, training organisers to build common ground, promoting the migrant vote, standing in solidarity with people facing NHS charges, urging MPs to pledge that their surgeries should be safe places for all constituents.
Now Migrants Organise, along with other organisations, has launched the Fair Immigration Reform Movement, and a FIRM Charter to sum up its demands: for dignity, for justice, for welcome, and for action. A demand for welcome makes sense in the context of the government’s ‘Hostile Environment’. In the words of the charter, the raft of policies and practices going by that name
“have created divisions and deeply damaged the fabric of our society. Once we bring the hostilities to an end, we will have to work to repair the damage it has inflicted on communities around the country. A serious change is needed in the Government’s approach to meaningful inclusion, anti-racism and equality in order to foster a culture of welcoming migrants, and to repair the extensive damage inflicted by its policies.”
MO’s chief executive Zrinka Bralo brought the charter to Cambridge last September for a pre-launch presentation to Cambridge Welcome . She generously shared her time earlier this year, discussing aspects of the charter with CW members by Zoom. Now the charter is launched, and members of Cambridge Welcome, and of Global Justice Cambridge, and all people who would like to see a more equal and open Britain, are urged to add their names to the hundreds who have already signed
