We Demand Change: Corbyn summit has no disabled people

Another year, and another conference organised by the same people who have been organising conferences for nearly as long as I’ve been alive has been announced. And in the time-honoured tradition of the ‘socialist’ left of British politics, it’s ignored the majority of minoritised communities – including chronically ill, disabled, and homeless people. But apparently, though, ‘we demand change’ – albeit it’s ‘we’ in the loosest possible sense of the word.

We Demand Change

We Demand Change is a Peace and Justice Project-hosted ‘summit’ that is supported by Stop the War Coalition, Stand Up to Racism, StrikeMap, and other groups and trade unions. The Peace and Justice Project is buried in the small print as the organisation that owns the website. Therefore, we can conclude that it has been one of the main instigators of this.

It says on the site:

We call on all trade unionists, campaigners and activists to join us on 29th March in Central London to begin to construct – through debate and discussion – a network of activists across campaigns and unions to turn the tide on despair.

A network that can deliver solidarity to those who are taking action to protect their living standards and with those who are building the movements to free Palestine, end the drive to a war economy, stop the far right and prevent the further deterioration of our planet.

This is something we can all get behind, I’m sure. So who is speaking on 29 March? The We Demand Change line up as of 16 February is:

Daniel Kebede – NEU General Secretary.
Grace Blakeley – Journalist
Yanis Varoufakis – Economist & politician
Weyman Bennett – Stand up to Racism
Lindsey German – Stop the War Coalition
James Meadway – Economist
Jeremy Corbyn – Islington North MP
Andrew Feinstein – Anti-apartheid Campaigner
Owen Jones – Columnist
Sarah Wooley – BFAWU General Secretary
Sean Vernell – UCU NEC
Steve North – UNISON President
Jess Edwards – NEU NEC
Leanne Mohammed – British-Palestinian Activist
Zack Polanski – Deputy Leader, Green Party
Omar Barghouti, co-founder of the BDS Movement

OK. Does anyone see the problem with this line up?

Over a week since the group launched, I have some questions:

Where is the disabled person on the speaker’s line up?
Where is the Black woman?
Where is the Asian woman?
Where is the trans person?
Where is the homeless person?
Where is the non-working person?
Where is the social housing campaigner?

Yes, you’re right. They’re not featured at the summit.

Excluding minoritised people again

As has been so often the case, We Demand Change appears to be focusing on the right-wing narrative of ‘working people’. The group’s statement makes a fleeting mention of people reliant on social security:

His [Starmer’s] government has backed genocide in Gaza, underfunds our schools and hospitals, cut benefits, pensions and winter fuel allowances and has refused to implement manifesto commitments to save the planet.

And that’s it. Otherwise, it’s the usual exclusionary tropes:

Working people did not vote for more of the same. They expect real change so that our lives are not one continuous struggle to make ends meet.

Sorry – was it only working people that voted on 4 July last year? Of course not.

As always, chronically ill, disabled, homeless, and non-working people are ignored – despite the fact they have the right to vote.

Now, we’re sure We Demand Change will roll out an excuse for this. The group will probably add a disabled speaker in the next few weeks. Or claim they hadn’t forgotten – but were waiting to announce more speakers.

But that’s not the point.

Propping up the right wing – and the system

When you centre working people as the priority (and let’s be real, based on the weighting of the line up, white people) and leave chronically ill, disabled, homeless, and non-working people – as well as minoritised women – as an after thought, you expose yourselves for the political games you are actually playing.

This idea of ‘working people’ as being central to politics and democracy is a right-wing narrative that firstly Labour, and now We Demand Change, are playing into as a way of appealing to right-wing voters. Anyone who doesn’t work is either old, a benefit-scrounger, or an ‘illegal’ – and therefore spending working people’s money.

Moreover, as the Canary’s Nicola Jeffery previously wrote of how the Labour Party has treated disabled people:

Were we literally just a trend to these people?

That has felt the case for many years, and not just in Labour. The socialist left in the UK pulls disabled, homeless, and other minoritised people out of the hat when they’re useful to them, and then puts them back when they’re not.

Regardless, whatever the reason for We Demand Change’s exclusion of the most minoritised people in society from its event, it’s the same bullshit we’ve had for decades.

Certain people’s voices – either the middle class ones or those who have had a platform for years – are the ones we’re allowed to hear. Yet it these same voices that have failed to bring about change for the rest of us in the first place.

And that’s not going to end well.

Letting in Reform by the front door

Paula Peters is a prominent disability rights activist. She told me of the We Demand Change summit:

It’s of vital importance that We Demand Change organisers reach out to all grassroots roots activists and groups who have been and continue to be at the sharp end of ongoing austerity and the sharp end of resistance to austerity. That an inclusive accessible movement is built where all groups are heard, welcomed, and listened to, and ideas shared and built upon so that we can all bring the change we need. It needs to break down class divides and political division.

We really to hear from grass-roots housing activists who are organising on their housing estates to stop them being demolished from property developers; from grass roots activists who are building mutual aid support in their communities to support neighbours who are struggling in poverty, with housing issues and a climate crisis.

We need to hear from disabled people fighting against social care cuts, fighting for a national independent living service, highlighting the appalling impact of benefit cuts and sanctions, and the tragic human cost of benefit deaths and the tragic impact and human cost of the coronavirus pandemic.

Everyone has a voice and so many amazing activists are doing amazing campaigning work in our communities that we need to hear and learn from and build solidarity links between groups.

A movement must bring everyone together build campaigns together and resist the neoliberal government together. If we do not do this; we are in serious danger of having a Reform government in 2029.

We demand you do better, We Demand Change

It’s almost as if for some of the speakers on We Demand Change’s line up, it’s a career for them – whereas, for the rest of us, it’s a fight for survival.

Correction.

It’s not ‘almost as if’. For many of the speakers, politics and activism is a career; one that they’ve done very well out of – arguably at the expense of the rest of us.

If it wasn’t a career for them, then the We Demand Change line up would be featuring the minoritised groups I previously mentioned. And when you don’t start from the bottom – centering those who the system has minoritised the most, and who’s lives are most at risk – then whatever you do will not only fail but also just continue to prop up the system, anyway.

Overall, the whole thing looks like a re-run of the past 15 years – and I can’t help but think ‘here we go again’.

I’m waiting for you to prove me wrong, We Demand Change. I sincerely am.

Featured image via the Canary