Why can't we live together.

Heard this after a very long time. The words got to me, especially in light of recent events in my personal life and in the streets of London in the name of false gods. Who said the personal  shouldn't be political? But it  so very is.

My life is   utterly weird. One day this week, I spent half the afternoon in Nancy Astor's old house being debriefed  (not literally) by the former head of procurement for the Ministry of Defense. Fascinating  irritating but brilliant man. One so steeped in establishment dogma yet able to think outside of the tick box.  This was followed by a talk by the COO of MOPAC. Helen Bailey is  what action man would  like if he was a woman, all sharp suits and agile, refracting  mind, I have a lot of respect for what Boris is achieving and her personal commitment. I liked her even more because she couldn't answer my question about whether police training around rape victims and in general was gender sensitive, so she said she would take it away and find out. But to say stop and search is still a legitimate tool in the prevention of crime is a bit dinosaur.

I feel  sorry for the G4S folk I see on the criminal justice circuit, the  Billy no mates,  desperately trying to make alliances because they are going to need bid candy for the large scale public sector contracts coming up such as the decimation sorry, privatization of probation . This won't help. Neither will a law suit against G4S, around violating and distributing confidential e mails and unpaid bills to third sector providers about which  I can't say much  at present, but will be public very soon.

We heard a few months ago about how G4S had been given the contract to run the SARC  (sexual assault referral centres) centres in the midlands. Again, women suffer because men want to profit  from our pain and this is another way the patriarchy sticks two fingers and engorged cock at everything that has been gained in training, a gendered lens and the expansion of understanding around women, trauma and violence. WHY have this bunch of thugs been given the contract? It's not alright to write fantastic bids and then not deliver services to the most fragile women in  society. It;s fraud, if it was me, I would be writing to you from HMP Holloway. Well I wouldn't but you know what I mean.

Look, do me a favor  if you hate me, like me, fan me, want to kill me, if I have ever entertained or horrified you, please consider signing this. I am getting quite ranty and community action in my old age. Baroness Damage of Whitechapel? I fear not. But it feels so freeing to operate from a place where money, power and fear are not the drivers.

Angel

Spend all your time waiting for that second chance, for the break that will make it ok, but there's always some reason to feel not good enough and it's hard at the end of the day...

Open letter to Vicky Pryce

Dear Vicky Pryce

I was asked to go on SKY news' Adam Boulton's lunchtime show to speak about how life might be for you, post release. I daren't assume and I avoid these media opportunities generally, but your case horrified and fascinated me. Thanks to modern technology and Skype we couldn't quite get it together but here are some things I wanted to say to you. that I wish someone had told me, so I knew how hard it was going to be.

First of all I know you are friends with my dismal aunty who claims to have brought down the lecherous venomous Stewart Hall. A shame she couldn't have done  something about the sexual abuse going on in her own family, right under her nose but I suppose she feels vindicated now. Beware of journalists, haggard old  brown ones bearing gifts and smelling of damp and opium, they are like poison.   Aunty Yazzmonster says you were driven mad by love. I think it was cold hearted revenge and old trauma, rearing their ugly Hydra heads.  Whatever it is , and who am I to judge, you have the chance to look at it and face it down. This is a chance not many women get, in a lifetime Vicky.

You'll never shake the tag of being an ex offender, a prisoner  a liar. You'll always be Huhne ex, like a boarding school moniker, Cameron minor, it's another way society strips women of our own identity, we are the chattels of the various men in the transitions of our lives.

As a woman, we are punished more  and more severely than men who commit identical crimes. When a man comes out, he can shake off  the  prison dust from his soles, bin the baggy clothes and get on with his life. Look at debonair Jonathan Aitken who had delusions of going back to parliament and is now the gentleman offender, elder statesman. Then there's Lord Ahmed who has handed in his  membership of the Labour party due to more allegations of  antisemitism  but they've wanted shot of him since his prison stint for texting and driving and killing.

You'll always have the stigma, prison never leaves you and for some people who have experienced trauma and come through a journey of self discovery, they find redemption in  campaigning for justice and showing up the glaring flaws in the system. We should be collectively ashamed of ourselves.  Six years after  the Corston Report, after endless campaigning by the Prison Reform Trust and the Howard League and others  there has been no significant change in the way women are treated in the criminal justice system. You'll be pleased to know Helen Grant MP is a justice minister tasked with  a review of the female estate and there is meant to be an announcement this summer. Don't hold your breath.

 I am working on an alternative custodial solution for women in the UK, which has an intensive therapeutic  intervention based on Judith Herman';s trauma recovery model and some of the brightest brains and most powerful people in the UK have  supported this and are on board. The University  of Nottingham is working on the metrics for working out the impact (social and financial) and this kind of work has never been done with female prisoners before, if you are interested in helping with crunching the justice reinvestment the economic side of this, prisonoimics, please get in touch with Chris Durkin who is leading on this.

You have the chance to  rebiography your life, through your writing  your creativity and your nerve. Grab it. Two short pieces of advice
1. Don't look back. You have done your time , you have paid the price  your future can be beautiful and you can make of it what you want.
2. Avoid becoming anyone's pet prisoner or project, the prison reform campaigners have an agenda which I believe is sinister;  if women's prisons are closed, they run out of self perpetuating jobs in overpaid executive positions, like the cartoon character that runs and runs and runs to the end of the cliff until there's no more cliff and he looks down and ... there's nothing but air. And he falls.

The time for action is now, it's not a time for more reports or more rhetoric  As a woman whose life was  seriously screwed up through sexual abuse, violence and self hatred, I  found my way back  because of the love of an  entire community, I wish you only love and peace in your heart.

If I can ever do anything at all, please get in touch.
In womanity

Farah x

Carers or Captors? A report to the Home Affairs Select Committee on women asylum seekers and housing

Email to Stephen Small managing director,  G4S (UK) Care and Justice Services Ltd and Mrs Loraine Buckles,  wife of CEO Nick Buckles.

Via e mail

Dear Mr Small

I am inviting you to the launch of Kazuri's report on housing and asylum and particularly G4S contract with the UKBA. This will be held in parliament. I invite you in the interests of fairness because you are directly responsible for the UKBA /COMPASS contract and because G4S should be able to explain their position with regards to how they treat vulnerable asylum seeking women, in frankly appalling housing conditions.  We do hope that either you will attend or you will send a representative.  This is a save the date, a formal invitation will go out next week.

The home office is considering  sending a representative. We expect members of the Home Affairs  Committee to attend as they are hearing evidence that day.  I'm afraid you can't have sight of the report until the event. Once it is with the committee it is no longer ours to disseminate.

Mrs Buckles I do hope you will attend. Sometimes women have to stand up and stop it when our husbands, brothers, sons or lovers are perpetrating abuse, violence and trauma on other more vulnerable women. This is what G4S is doing, in its Compass housing contract and I'd like you to see it for yourself. There will be women present whose experiences are  cited as case studies. They  will give powerful testimony  about the abuse G4S has perpetrated on them and their families including harassment,  sexual abuse and neglect.

Kind regards

Farah Damji
__________________________

Final draft invitation 02052013

Jeremy Corbyn MP

invites you to a parliamentary event to mark the publication of Kazuri’s report to the Home Affairs Select Committee inquiry on asylum

 

“Captors or Carers?”

By Flo Krause, Nanki Chawla and Farah Damji 

Chaired by Imran Khan, human rights solicitor

With

Jeremy Corbyn MP

Sarah Teather MP

Julian Huppert MP

Geoffrey Robinson MP

 

Tuesday, 4th June 2013
House of Commons, between 1700 hrs and 1900 

 

The Panel discussion will centre on the conflicted role of housing providers in the private sector, for vulnerable women seeking asylum under the COMPASS contract, their pastoral care and the need for a gendered approach.  This report calls for a shift in policy and transparency in the tender process, procurement, design and delivery of all public services contracted out to the private sector from Government departments or their agencies.

 

 

A love letter

Today I got a letter that affirmed how much I need you. This from someone who is one of my human rights heroes, who has changed the law and fought inequality for over 30 years. Madam. I salute you.

"You are a fixer of broken systems, a free radical,  a freewheeling loose cannon whose  defiance of the status quo is like an open palm slap in the face of respectable society, to those who would allow injustice to proceed,  unchallenged. You swallow pain and you give it words.You bring attention to where there is darkness and hold up the mirror of suffering to those who would make others suffer."

I've been campaigning for 5 years, with  many others,  for alternative custodial solutions for women so that women in the criminal justice system are treated with fairness,  from a gendered framework which takes into account all the million faces of being a woman: mother sister lover friend wife. When you hurt a vulnerable woman with your damaging policy and your well versed academic arguments, with your cocktail party conversation about the need for change, there are some of us actually  doing it.  Your empty words hurt us. We will bleed rage on you for every woman who suffers for a moment longer while you analyse policy and cut further funding.

We are the voice of the asylum seeker, together we are shelter for homeless women,  relief  for  women who have gone through prison and trauma. We are all responsible. If I make "us" look in the mirror, it's  to find the oneness that binds us . Our  (this is a collective proposal with the support of large and important third sector orgs, a woman's prison and an enlightened resettlement team) concept for an  alternative to custody for women has been supported by 2  Welsh Assembly Members,  also women. Being able to bring this project to your attention and to other women who believe in justice,  transparency and equality for women will make this vision come true.  The cost of one woman in HMP Holloway is £56 000 a year. The ten year cost to society including courts,  crime,  police,  crisis interventions,  neets, and homelessness is £10m  for the next 10 years.

Concept design by Green Tea Architects

 But as a mature developed society can we afford the decimation of our communities when over 90% of women are locked up for non violent offences?  If these women had access to training,  skills and trauma counselling which is what we are proposing,  they would offend less and the chances of resettlement would increase. These women need your support. I need your help to break the dogma and the silos of well intentioned leagues of movements and trusts who just TALK.

Can you mentor a woman leaving prison? 

Can you write funding applications? 

Can you provide a work placement in property or construction for an ex offender?

 Get in touch via my office 020 7377 5791

Today, I have space in my heart . I love all of you.  Even the ones I hate sometimes.

 In womanity

 Farah x

Sometimes destroyed.

“The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed.”  —  Ernest Hemingway, author and journalist, Nobel laureate (1899-1961)

Letting in the light.

More dharma less drama.

Prayers at Notre Dame. Some dreams refuse to grow old.