BUILDING A MOVEMENT OF MOTHERS vs

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE & THE CHILD REMOVALS INDUSTRY

A series on women’s rights, challenges, perspectives, hopes and empowerment

Join Zoom Meeting Sunday 10 September 11am UK time

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87531489204?pwd=WlVsYUhzeldnaklrSjN0ejdvR3FXdz09

‘UP FROM UNDER – REACHING THE MOUNTAIN TOP – AND CLAIMING THE SKIES!’

Children need and have a right to the protection of their mother or other primary carer. To break that bond is not only to inflict lifelong trauma but to make children vulnerable to every form of abuse in institutional ‘care’. Yet a child removal industry has been created – in every G20 country mothers are struggling to care for children (often on top of waged work and other caring responsibilities) in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis. In some, like the UK, other European countries and the US, millions are spent on privatised foster care, forced adoption and residential homes for children, all profiting from breaking the mother and child bond.

Lisa Longstaff, Tracey Norton, and Sara Callaway are campaigning with mothers from around the world to stop the family courts in the UK, US and elsewhere taking children from their mothers, especially single mothers, low income, immigrant, of colour or with a disability, are domestic violence survivors and/or care leavers. The family court process which forcibly removes children is sexist, racist and class ridden.  

We cannot forget the long history of children of Indigenous communities being forcibly removed – in Australia, Canada, the US, for example – as well as the children of single mothers – in Britain and Ireland, for example. What is happening today is a continuation of this sexist, racist horror and must be stopped. Children everywhere need their mothers’ care and protection!

Brilliant & Bold! brings together women ‘ordinary’ and ‘extraordinary’, as indeed we all are! Brilliant & Bold – Bold & Brilliant creates a global opportunity to exchange ideas, hearing from ‘ordinary’ and ‘extraordinary’ women in discussion and debate, questioning and reflection,  answers and extending our horizons. The state of the nation and the globe and our place in the world – wherever you are;  knowing the personal is political, the political is personal, that the local influences the global and the global the local. Everywhere women confront challenges and rise to meet them;  everywhere women know that it is our voices that must be heard, our action  influences the world.

Sharing with women, women’s experiences, hopes, knowledge and beliefs – where we are right now, from where we have come, and where we are off to and on to next, reflecting that each of us lives an ordinary life –  a daily existence with the mundane requirements of living. Yet the ordinary is mingled for each of us with the extraordinary – chances, sometimes greater, sometimes lesser, sometimes immediate, sometimes future – to discover talents unknown or dreamed of, expending positive energy and exploring possibilities, recalling history with pride in obstacles surmounted, opportunities grasped, travels to this time and place, memories abounding. Brilliant & Bold – Bold & Brilliant – brings together women panellists, each with her own perspective and working collectively on … Building a Movement of Mothers vs Domestic Violence & the Child Removals Industry …

Sunday 10 September 2023 – via Zoom – 11am UK time … 12noon Pisa, Italy & Athens, Greece … 8pm Melbourne /Sydney /Canberra, Australia … 6am Tampa, Florida … 4am Denver, Colorado

BUILDING A MOVEMENT OF MOTHERS vs

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE & THE CHILD REMOVALS INDUSTRY

Jocelynne Scutt is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Brilliant & Bold!

Time: Sep 10, 2023 11:00 AM London

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87531489204?pwd=WlVsYUhzeldnaklrSjN0ejdvR3FXdz09

Meeting ID: 875 3148 9204

Passcode: 669096

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SPEAKERS

LISA LONGSTAFF

Lisa Longstaff co-ordinates Women Against Rape, a multiracial grassroots women’s organisation launched in 1976 and a member of the Support Not Separation Coalition. WAR campaigns for justice, compensation and asylum for survivors of rape and domestic violence, including sexual crimes against children. Its 15-year campaign got rape in marriage recognised as a crime (1991). With other groups it brought to court the first successful private prosecution for rape in England (1995) after the authorities refused to prosecute a serial rapist who had attacked two sex worker – the man was convicted and given an 11-year sentence.

TRACEY NORTON

Tracey Norton co-ordinates the Disabled Mothers’ Rights Campaign organised by Winvisible and a key part of Support Not Separation.  She is a mother with an invisible disability whose severely disabled child was removed from her care, not because she had harmed him but to stop the hard fought medical and educational funds she had won to keep him in her care. He returned home as soon as he turned 18. Tracey shares her long experience of fighting for her child with the collective self-help meeting of mothers fighting to protect their children from social services and the family court. She jointly co-ordinates SNS pickets of the family court (and twitter storm), now in their seventh year, held the first Wednesday of every month. She co-authored the Disabled Mothers Rights Charter, launched in July 2023. 

SARA CALLAWAY

Sara Callaway is a campaigner in the anti-racist, women’s and immigrants’ rights movement for 35 years. Member of Women of Colour in the Global Women’s Strike (WoC/GWS) which campaigns for a Care Income for mothers and others, of every gender, doing the work of caring for people and the environment, and organising for justice. Women of Colour is part of Global Women vs Deportations and of Support Not Separation. WoC/GWS, jointly with Women Against Rape, has exposed police sexism, racism and other criminality, and opposed recent legislation which increased police powers against protestors.