It's been a little while since I blogged again, hasn't it? I've been meaning to blog about The Sleep-Out for a while, but things happened and I ended up not getting around to it until two days it was over.
So. Two nights ago I slept on College Green in Bristol. Not in a tent or anything, just me, fully dressed, in a sleeping bag covered in a bin liner, with the remains of my supper of custard creams and bottled water tucked in at the bottom next to my toes. And it wasn't just me, there was a whole host of other people there. The intention for this was to play at being homeless in opposition to the horrendously unfair Bedroom Tax, which I have talked about on previous blogs. It was a good experience actually. I met some cool people, increased my own understanding of the bedroom tax, talked to some guys who had actually been made homeless because of it, and most importantly of all, gained more signatures for our petition.
Our petition needs to get 3,500 signatures by the end of September. It's only Bristol-based, but is part of an overarching campaign that is going nationwide. The aim of our petition is to persuade the council and Mayor Ferguson to support a No Evictions policy, and to refuse to implement the Bedroom Tax. The link is here, so if you have a Bristol postcode, please sign it if you have not done so already:
http://epetitions.bristol.gov.uk/epetition_core/community/petition/2322
Some people have said to me that it doesn't affect them. They don't understand that the Bedroom Tax is part of a movement of austerity that will affect everyone at some point. Cuts are being made to everything that is there to help people, and this is part of that. There is no intention to it either; it won't solve the financial crisis because it actually costs the taxpayer £6,000 to evict someone. All this does is target those who are less fortunate.
There is one more thing I want to talk about, and that is the soldier who I have talked about in the past under the name Bradley Manning, but will henceforth be referred to on this blog as Chelsea Manning. You may or may not have heard that she is now identifying as a woman, and will be starting hormone treatment as soon as possible. Anyway, she was sentenced to 35 years. Not good.
However, I do feel that from this point, the Free Chelsea campaign can only go up. It might not be for a while, but I feel confident that if there are enough like-minded people (and there are) Chelsea will be freed and one day, will be honoured as the hero that she is. I have in the past referred to her as a modern-day Mandela, with one exception: South Africans often think of Mandela not just as being a great hero, but also as a personal friend or a member of their own family. With Chelsea, we go a step further. Her supporters are literally her. We all feel her pain, and we will all do what we can to achieve her freedom. Please sign this petition (you need to make an account on the White House website first):
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/restore-united-states’-human-rights-record-and-grant-clemency-pvt-bradley-manning/L7zHZv4r (for the record, Chelsea has requested that her former name of Bradley continue to be used on petitions, which is why this petition still refers to Bradley Manning.)
I will leave you with a rather humbling letter by someone called Aura Bogado about how she feels that she failed Chelsea Manning. I think all of us have felt like this at some point, but it is always possible to make up for it, I feel:
http://www.thenation.com/blog/175877/open-letter-how-i-failed-chelsea-manning#
Take care, everyone. Peace out x
Our petition needs to get 3,500 signatures by the end of September. It's only Bristol-based, but is part of an overarching campaign that is going nationwide. The aim of our petition is to persuade the council and Mayor Ferguson to support a No Evictions policy, and to refuse to implement the Bedroom Tax. The link is here, so if you have a Bristol postcode, please sign it if you have not done so already:
http://epetitions.bristol.gov.uk/epetition_core/community/petition/2322
Some people have said to me that it doesn't affect them. They don't understand that the Bedroom Tax is part of a movement of austerity that will affect everyone at some point. Cuts are being made to everything that is there to help people, and this is part of that. There is no intention to it either; it won't solve the financial crisis because it actually costs the taxpayer £6,000 to evict someone. All this does is target those who are less fortunate.
There is one more thing I want to talk about, and that is the soldier who I have talked about in the past under the name Bradley Manning, but will henceforth be referred to on this blog as Chelsea Manning. You may or may not have heard that she is now identifying as a woman, and will be starting hormone treatment as soon as possible. Anyway, she was sentenced to 35 years. Not good.
However, I do feel that from this point, the Free Chelsea campaign can only go up. It might not be for a while, but I feel confident that if there are enough like-minded people (and there are) Chelsea will be freed and one day, will be honoured as the hero that she is. I have in the past referred to her as a modern-day Mandela, with one exception: South Africans often think of Mandela not just as being a great hero, but also as a personal friend or a member of their own family. With Chelsea, we go a step further. Her supporters are literally her. We all feel her pain, and we will all do what we can to achieve her freedom. Please sign this petition (you need to make an account on the White House website first):
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/restore-united-states’-human-rights-record-and-grant-clemency-pvt-bradley-manning/L7zHZv4r (for the record, Chelsea has requested that her former name of Bradley continue to be used on petitions, which is why this petition still refers to Bradley Manning.)
I will leave you with a rather humbling letter by someone called Aura Bogado about how she feels that she failed Chelsea Manning. I think all of us have felt like this at some point, but it is always possible to make up for it, I feel:
http://www.thenation.com/blog/175877/open-letter-how-i-failed-chelsea-manning#
Take care, everyone. Peace out x
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