Press Release: Welfare Campaigners to Hold Xmas Party Outside Atos HQ

From Benefit Claimants Fight Back:

Friday 16th December – 2pm
Triton Square, London NW1

Disabled people, benefit claimants and supporters will be holding a Real Victorian Party and Picnic in Triton Square, home of disability assessment company Atos, this Friday 16th December from 2pm.

The event is part of a month of action targetting Atos and the government over the brutal benefit cuts and Work Capability Assessment regime currently in place for sick and disabled claimants. As well as speeches in which people will speak of their experiences at the hands of Atos, a minutes silence will be held for all of those who have died as a consequence of Atos assessments.

Several claimants have tragically committed suicide due to the stress of the assessment process whilst thousands of others are now caught up in lengthy and distressing appeals. Some people judged fit for work have died of their illness whilst awaiting an appeal against Atos' decisions. People with terminal illnesses, severe mental health conditions and debilitating conditions have all been judged fit for work by Atos' scant assessment regime which ignores the opinions of GPs and specialist consultants in favour of a brief computer based interview.

It was announced last week that even patients undergoing chemotherapy will be expected to attend assessments at which they may be judged 'fit for work' by Atos. This could lead to cancer patients being referred to mandatory work activity, 30 hours a week unpaid work, just to keep the meagre levels of benefit available on Job Seekers Allowance.

Events will also be taking place outside Atos offices in Glasgow and Edinburgh on the same day, whilst a rolling mass phone complaint to Atos is also being held in the run up to Christmas.

For full details of all events please visit: http://benefitclaimantsfightback.wordpress.com

ENDS


This event is part of a month of festive action against Atos and the benefits cuts which has also seen a protest against Atos' position as IT Partner for the Paralypic Games outside the Paralympic Goalball Test Event, a demonstration called by Boycott Workfare outside a lecture at the LSE given by Iain Duncan Smith and a Downing Street protest about soaring unemployment held by the Right To Work Campaign.

To join the Rolling Festive Phone In to Atos contact +44 (0)20 7830 4444 or +44 (0)800 783 3040 (Freephone) and make a complaint about the companies treatment of sick and disabled people. For more details visit: http://benefitclaimantsfightback.wordpress.com/2011/12/08/a-rolling-festive-phone-in-to-atos-healthcare/

Around 40% of appeals against Atos' decisions are successful, rising to 70% when people have representation. A recent investigation found that the benefits appeal system is already on the brink of collapse. Recent figures suggest that Atos have only carried out 56,000 assessments against a target of 11,000 assessments a week from April 2011: http://www.ersa.org.uk/hub/details/571

This form of disability assessment is shortly to be extended to around 3 million claimants on Disability Living Allowance.

Disabled people occupy the UK / Occupy LSX access info

It's that time of the week when I remind you about joining occupations on Sunday.

I'm afraid that living in London I've only been able to scout out access info for Occupy LSX. Perhaps if you visit one of the other occupations you could post access details in the comments below?

If you're worried about getting cold and needing to get inside and warm up: The occupation is simply surrounded by cafés. There's all your big chains (Starbucks, Costa, Pret, Paul, etc) within sight of the tents. Tents are actually erected outside Starbucks, Paul and Tea, you can get from the occupation into these outlets within 10 paces.

Accessible toilets: There's an accessible toilet in Tea (I noticed it through the window as I was pushing past, I didn't go inside and scope out the interior of the cubicle). There's also an accessible toilet in One New Change (which is apparently open 24 hours). I wouldn't be surprised if other cafés also contained accessible toilets but they were the only 2 I found. The Costa across the street has a toilet, but not an accessible one; it's in the basement with no lift. Might be useful to know for anyone that can do stairs but is likely to need the toilet urgently. There are Portaloos on site but I didn't see an accessible one. According to the Changing Places website, the nearest Changing Places toilet is at the Tate Modern 0.45miles away.

I also understand the people who want to camp at the occupation for a night can ask in the Welcome Tent and be allocated an available tent. I can't see why someone with fatigue issues couldn't get allocated a tent for one hour if needed.

Hope to see you on Sunday.

Disabled people occupy the UK

It's a simple fact that a lot of disabled people can't camp out at the various occupations around the UK. Fatigue, sensitivity to cold, the access issues presented by camping or just having too many hospital appointments to go to make occupying impossible.

Disabled New Yorkers have started going down to Occupy Wall Street on Sunday afternoons at midday for a few hours. https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=126877490750232 - a few hours on a Sunday is a very different proposition to camping full time.

Many non-disabled activists simply don't know or care how shafted disabled people are by issues like the welfare reform bill. Last week Where's the Benefit asked OccupyLSX for some solidarity and for them to support the Hardest Hit protests; they didn't.

So taking inspiration from New Yorkers I think we should join our local occupations for a couple of hours every Sunday afternoon. We need to go down to the occupations and tell them about the issues affecting us. We need to make sure the occupiers understand what we're facing and to get them to support us. Tell the crowd about the welfare reform bill and how you'll be affected. Tell them about how cuts to Access to Work mean that when your current equipment breaks (because wheelchairs, etc, don't last forever) that you might have to give up work. Tell them about how cuts to care packages will limit your independence. Hand out flyers for Where's the Benefit, DPAC, Broken of Britain, Black Triangle, CarerWatch or any of the other grassroots groups you feel do well at disseminating info about our issues.

Disabled people are around 18% of the population. The occupations claim to represent the 99% that didn't break the economy, but unless we participate the occupations are only really representing 81%.

The occupations in London have been the most newsworthy, but there are others around the country:

Norwich: http://www.occupynorwich.co.uk/

Nottingham: https://twitter.com/#!/OccupyNotts

London: http://occupylsx.org/

Bristol: http://occupybristoluk.org/

Birmingham: http://www.occupybirmingham.co.uk/

Sheffield: https://occupysheffield.org/

Glasgow: http://www.occupyglasgow.org/

Belfast: http://occupybelfast.blogspot.com/

Cardiff: (in planning stages) https://www.facebook.com/occupycardiff

Edinburgh: http://occupyedinburgh.org/

Manchester: http://www.occupymanchester.org/

Newcastle: http://occupynewcastle.org/

Like New Yorkers we will aim to participate for as long as the occupations are ongoing. And like New York we'll meet at midday on Sundays EXCEPT this weekend when we'll be following on from the DPAC conference in London by going down to the London occupation on Saturday 29th at 4:30pm instead of Sunday. Standard Sunday excursions will commence the following week.

Facebook event. The Twitter hashtag will be #DPoccupyUK

Take action against companies profiting from workfare! Oct 19th

Via Boycott Workfare:

1pm, Wed 19th October 2011 outside the annual Welfare to Work
Conference at the Business Design Centre, Upper Street, Islington, N1
0HQ

This year’s Welfare to Work Conference will bring together
politicians and private companies making millions from the welfare to
work industry. The agenda reads like a who’s who of welfare abolition.

We’re not fooled by “Welfare to Work”: It means people forced to do
unpaid work for multi-million pound companies such as Asda and
Poundland. People risk losing the meagre £67 a week Jobseeker’s
Allowance if they do not work for such companies without pay.

Conference speakers will include James Purnell, who introduced the
idea of workfare under Labour, and the Tory peer Lord Freud, multi
millionaire ex-banker and self styled ‘welfare expert’. This is a
convention for those promoting the idea of an unpaid workforce, whilst
making millions from it.

Join us as we make sure the conference doesn’t go as smoothly as planned!

http://www.boycottworkfare.org/

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=257927247582905&ref=ts

17 Cities to Take Action Against Atos and Government's Welfare Policy Tomorrow

Press Release from Benefit Claimants Fight Back

Towns and cities around the UK will see protests tomorrow (30th September) against Atos, the IT Company responsible for carrying out the con-dem government's Work Capability Assessment. As part of a National Day of Action Against Atos, organised by disability, claimant and anti-cuts activists, people will be gathering outside Atos' offices in Edinburgh, Leeds, Manchester, Nottingham, Brighton, Chatham, Cheshire, Birmingham, Glasgow, Hasting, Norwich, Oxford, Bristol, Chester, Plymouth, Sheffield and York.

In London a demonstration is being held outside the BMJ Careers Fair where Atos will be exhibiting in an attempt to recruit doctors to work on their Disability Assessment teams. Thousands of people have been denied or stripped of vital benefit because of decisions made based on Atos' assessment procedure which involves a short interview and a computer based test. Many people have had conditions worsened, either by being forced into the workplace, having much needed money withdrawn or the stress of the assessment process, which has been described as relentless. Sadly some have taken their own lives after hearing of Atos and the DWP's decisions to remove their benefits. Even people with cancer and other terminal illnesses have been deemed 'fit for work'. The government has pledged that this form of testing will be extended to all disability and health related benefits.

This week over one hundred groups and individuals signed a letter to the BMJ and the RCN urging them to stop allowing Atos to recruit at their events and in their publications: http://benefitclaimantsfightback.wordpress.com/open-letter-on-atos-healthcare-to-the-bmj-and-rcn/

An online protest will see companies and organisations which do business with Atos contacted and informed of this company's 'callous and cruel' treatment of disabled and sick people.

Supporters of Disabled People Against Cuts have said that "As long as ATOS continues to treat disabled claimants little better than animals they will continue to protest against them and seek means to discredit them."



ENDS

WtB Podcast - 1. Protest Against Atos Origin

Lisa's note: WtB has a podcast! I'm so very excited. I have to say a huge, huge, huge thanks to Goldfish for all her hard work this week making this audio file into a podcast by doing all the research as to how one actually sets up a podcast. She typed up the transcript that's beneath the jump too. I also have to say thanks to the people that spoke to me on Monday. We'd have no audio file if it weren't for them.

You can find our podcast in iTunes here. The feedburner feed is here.

Picnic and Party Against Atos - part 2: Reminder

A reminder that Benefit Claimants Fight Back's next protest against Atos is tomorrow:

As part of the National Week of Action Against Atos Origin, beginning on Monday 9th May, a second Party and Picnic against Atos will take place on the 9th May from 2pm at their Head Office in Triton square, near Euston.

Bring music, drums, banners, placards, food to share and brighten up the faceless corporate wasteland that is home to poverty pimps Atos Origin Ltd.

Musicians, poets, orators, ranters, shouters, all benefit claimants and supporters welcome. Please help spread the word, invite your friends and let's make this the biggest stand against poverty pimps Atos Origin so far.

Triton Square is on the North side of Euston Road, a minute or so from Warren Street tube and less than five minutes from Euston/Euston Square or Great Portland Street tube stations.

The Facebook event page is here. For more details of other events happening around the country during Claimants Fight Back's week of action against Atos have a look here.

I went to the last protest in Triton Square. It's actually a great and accessible place for a protest. There’s shelter if it rains or is too sunny, there’s things to sit on and there’s a couple of cafés a few yards away for acquiring refreshments and using their loos.

Guardian journalist John Domokos will be there. He is very keen to attend and record a Work Capability Assessment test and a tribunal so would like to meet people who have one pending. He's also interested in speaking to people who've been through them already.

Hope to see you tomorrow!

Picnic and Party Against Atos - part 2

Benefit Claimants Fight Back have announced the details for their next protest against Atos:

As part of the National Week of Action Against Atos Origin, beginning on Monday 9th May, a second Party and Picnic against Atos will take place on the 9th May from 2pm at their Head Office in Triton square, near Euston.

Bring music, drums, banners, placards, food to share and brighten up the faceless corporate wasteland that is home to poverty pimps Atos Origin Ltd.

Musicians, poets, orators, ranters, shouters, all benefit claimants and supporters welcome. Please help spread the word, invite your friends and let's make this the biggest stand against poverty pimps Atos Origin so far.

Triton Square is on the North side of Euston Road, a minute or so from Warren Street tube and less than five minutes from Euston/Euston Square or Great Portland Street tube stations.

The Facebook event page is here. For more details of other events happening around the country Claimants Fight Back have details here.

I went to the last protest in Triton Square. It's actually a great and accessible place for a protest. There’s shelter if it rains or is too sunny, there’s things to sit on and there’s a couple of cafés a few yards away for acquiring refreshments and using their loos.

Hope to see you there.

Ignorance

On Thursday afternoon I attended a protest outside my local Jobcentre as part of the National Day of Protest against Benefit Cuts.
The local paper came along and took a photograph of us, and gave a write up the following day.

These are 2 of the comments from the article:

I'm by no means an expert in MS, but if this woman can stand around waving a placard or march around Poole Quay, why can't she find a job doing something less physical in an office or something?
seems to me she's illustrating the point of the benefit cuts perfectly well!

If they are all on Incap Benefit, when was the last time they used a JOBCENTRE for the purpose it was created( to find a job). They may have a disability, but they should not be work shy. MS does not mean you can't work, it means you have restrictions which you have to overcome.

I was appalled, but not surprised, by the level of ignorance these two people display.
If they don't know anything about it, how can they feel they can judge? Are they happy for people to judge them? I suspect not.

This is just a snapshot of what anyone with a disability has to deal with. It's what has led many of us to feel afraid and paranoid all the time. Every time I set foot outside the door I wonder if someone is judging me, watching and waiting to call the DWP.
Because they don't feel what I feel. I they can't feel my legs shake underneath me. They can't feel the screaming pain that shoots through my head if I strain too much. They don't feel the extreme tiredness that comes after doing something.
They see one thing - a perfectly normal person.

This is what it's like to have an invisible disease. Constant judgement and fear and a feeling of having to justify yourself all the time.

Because of course attending a protest for 2 hours is the same as going to work.
Because of course having MS is the same for everyone.
And of course all restrictions can be overcome.

So to these two people - and everyone else who feels and thinks like them - I say this:
If you know of a company who will employ me for a few hours a week, who doesn't mind when I come in or how long I come in for, who doesn't mind how many things I drop, or mistakes I make, please let me know. I'd love to meet them.

Cross posted at Rage against the Coalition

How I spent March 26th

Based on the TUC's access info I'd planned to meet a bunch of other WtBers in Savoy Street for 11am. This was supposed to be the gathering point for disabled people to have a "safe space" at the front of the march. I have brittle bones and I was with 2 people whose joints dislocate easily so the notion of a "safe" space where we wouldn't get smacked around was pretty important for us to protest, you know, safely.

Apparently no-one hit the TUC with a clue stick. The gathering point in Savoy Street wasn't actually at the front of the march. That would've been much too sensible. They had us gather in Savoy Street and then walk through the crowd to get to the front of the march:

The pink cross on the map shows where we gathered and the turquoise line shows how far we had to walk through a sea of people to get to that "safety". Moving through large crowds as a wheelchair user is not easy at the best of times. You're at arse height to everyone else and people don't tend to look down when they move around so they walk into you, trip over you and generally leave you feeling pretty bruised. Add banners, flags and other things that feel like weapons when people hit you with them and it's even worse.

So that the TUC had us gather some distance away and then walk through the crowd where we got a bit battered was a serious common sense fail. Between the lack of logic and getting smacked around I started off the march really quite pissed off.

This was us gathering in Savoy Street looking cheerful prior to our adventure through the crowd:

This was my view of people's backs as we were making our way through the crowd:

And it's worth noting that I took this photo at a point while walking through the crowd when I had enough room around me to actually do so! I spent a lot of the time using my arms to protect my face from people's backpacks and such.

Eventually we did make it to the "special" spot:

Jack as taken by his wife Emsy

Thankfully once we'd made it through the crowd and the march set off there were no more such access fail dramas. As a result I began to really enjoy myself. The following 3 photos were taken by Emsy during the march:

>

We made it into Hyde Park at about 1pm (after what seemed like quite a long human traffic jam at Hyde Park Corner). Most of us quickly nipped to the loo and then headed off to Soho Square for the UK Uncut comedy at 2. I didn't want to stick around in Hyde Park for the rally mainly because Mr "I'm in favour of cutting disability benefits" Miliband was speaking. I feared my anger at him would cause me to regress a few evolutionary steps and start flinging faeces.

I've always been disabled, but until about 5 years ago I was perfectly "healthy"; I was free from illness. For many people there's a massive overlap between "illness" and "impairment", but there's also some differences too. So I've always had a rubbish skeleton but before I acquired a plethora of illnesses unrelated to my mobility impairment I used to do that working-for-a-living thing.

I used to be a stand-up comic. Yes, I'm aware of the irony of a wheelchair-using stand-up.

On Friday evening while I was in the supermarket shopping for more T-shirts to iron the WtB logo onto a thought occurred to me: "It's comedy against the cuts. I'm doing all this stuff about the cuts to disability benefits and I have a background in comedy; I should be speaking." So I emailed the organisers and asked if I could do a short set. The reply I got back was "the line up's pretty full, but we'll try and fit you in." But in the end (and with a little help from the lovely Johann) I ended up on the bill.

This photo by Chris Coltrane who compered the gig shows what the crowd looked like from where the acts were (and makes me happy that I ironed the WtB logo onto the back of my T-shirt):

That's Josie Long performing. She opened the show. The crowd had gotten much, much, bigger by the time I went on. This CiF piece estimates there were nearly 1000 people watching the show. I wouldn't have thought there were quite that many, but there were certainly a couple of hundred.

Against all the odds I had a brilliant gig. Look, people were smiling and laughing!

Photo by Noa Bodner

If you look you can even see Mark Thomas laughing along in that pic. I'm actually quite proud of that as he is, basically, the industry standard to which all political comedy gets compared.

I say "against all the odds" because by rights I really should have died on my arse. It's 3 and a half years since I last gigged due to becoming too ill to carry on with the comedy thang. Usually if you take a break from comedy for 3 and a half weeks you come back to find your timing's a little off and your rhythm's a bit out. And I wasn't doing tried and tested material, I was doing stuff that I'd written 12 hours earlier because I only had the idea to ask to go on about 18 hours before I ended up on "stage". I shouldn't have been "in shape" enough to deal with a heckler and turn around a joke that was a bit of a dud. OK, the heckler was very nice and friendly but it's still an interruption to your rhythm and you need to regain control and come out on top with a laugh.

Somehow it was all OK. Sure, it wasn't my best gig ever but given everything going against me it went so much better than I could ever possibly have dreamed of.

In the past I used to mix up jokes about disability issues and other stuff because if I'd only talked about disability I'd never have been able to hold the attention of a non-disabled audience. But given that Saturday was such a political gig and the reason I'd asked to speak was to talk about benefits I did a set solely about cuts to disability benefits. The only reaction I was really expecting was some polite applause when I finished from people thinking "aw, wasn't that nice the disabled woman telling us about benefits." I wasn't expecting such a warm response and to come off stage to have all my friends hug me at once. It was like being mauled by an octopus, but in a nice way.

I've always thought that comedy had a wonderful capacity for education, another reason I really wanted to speak. So I was chuffed to bits when I got home to read this in The Guardian's Live Blog about the day:

I just spoke to two teenagers aged 17 and 19 who have come from the comedy show in Soho Square, and they said that what they heard there made them think more than anything they have ever learnt at school. It's their first demonstration and when I asked why they came they said they realised that the demonstration is about more than just the UK.

They can understand the connection between the shops and the banks that people are targetting and the global situation that is effecting everyone. They've heard Mark Thomas and a disabled comedian and Johann Hari speak. For these teenagers the protest is absolutely opening their minds to a much wider picture.

Noa, who snapped that pic of me in action, said:

you rocked it woman, it was FUNNY and also very disturbing to learn a few of the stories you shared. many thanks and please keep healthy and get back on stage where you belong!

I'm absolutely thrilled that I opened some people's eyes to what's going on for disabled people in the UK. There's a couple of extracts from my set in the Laugh Out London podcast.

I left Soho Square on such an adrenaline high. I'd taken a huge gamble in asking to do a set but it absolutely paid off. I would have skipped home if I could, you know, skip.

Then came the sadness. I love doing stand up so much. It's such an amazing feeling when you've got hundreds of people laughing at jokes you wrote, and Saturday was a reminder of just how thrilling it is. It's so painful that I'm not well enough to perform any more. I have good days and bad, Saturday was obviously a good day. But the sheer frequency of the bad days means that I can't book gigs more than 14 hours in advance because I can never guarantee that I'll be well enough to show up. It doesn't matter if you have a legitimate reason for not showing up to a gig, if you let a promoter down they're not going to book you again and will very possibly bad-mouth you to other promoters. I have this thing that I love doing, and Saturday reminded me that I'm actually reasonably good at it, but my health prevents me from pursuing it. And the government and tabloids really think I'd rather be stuck at home claiming benefits than out following my dreams?

The other element of sadness on Saturday night came from watching BBC News attributing the Black Bloc protesters smashing things up to UK Uncut. UK Uncut are a group of peaceful protesters who'd given me this wonderfully enjoyable afternoon of comedy in a park. And here these lovely people were being falsely accused of violence and vandalism. It was deeply disappointing.

Despite the day starting with access fail and ending in sadness I don't think I'll ever forget that chunk of a few hours in the middle where I had the best time I've had in years.

Cross-posted on my personal blog.

Kettled in Cyberspace

I can’t be in London to protest on Saturday; I’ve talked about why that is in another post, discussing how disability prevents me and many thousands more like me from getting out there in public and putting a human face of the mass of disabled people deliberately demonized as feckless and fraudulent benefit scroungers by the unholy alliance of political parties and right-wing media. If we can’t make our message heard in public, can’t get it picked up by the few media organizations who are independent enough, ethical enough, to tell our story, then the most effective means of spreading our message are denied to us.

But that doesn’t mean every option is denied to us. Cyberspace is increasingly a venue for protest, just look at the stories coming out of the Middle East, just look at the desperate repression of virtual forms of protest by the dictatorial governments in both the Middle East and China, and cyberspace is an environment that many of us can access no matter our disability, no matter the restrictions it places on us. A simple trip into town today to collect a repeat prescription meant hours curled up on the couch, sleeping off the physical impact of the trip, and means that I’m now writing this a little after midnight, far later than intended, a time of day when making a physical protest in person would be pointless, but in cyberspace the time of day means nothing, my message will be read by you whenever you get around to it and the physical limitations of my disability are taken out of the equation.

So I won’t be protesting in London tomorrow, but that doesn’t mean I won’t be protesting, I’ll continue to post both here at Where’s the Benefit and in my own blog and I’ll spend the weekend polishing my submission to the Parliamentary Works and Pensions Committee’s investigation into the realities of ESA and the WCA and the real impact they’re having on disabled people. I’ll copy that protest to my MP, no matter she’s a Conservative, because if I don’t tell her what the reality is then her party certainly won’t. I may not be able to stand in the crowd on Saturday, but that doesn’t mean my voice cannot be heard, it doesn’t mean your voice cannot be heard. Write to your local papers, write to your MP, write to other MPs, blog about what is happening to you, what the cuts really mean, tell your friends on Facebook, tweet your truth to the masses. Cyberspace is an environment in which we can transcend the physical limitations of our disabilities to protest like any other person, the choice to take advantage of that medium and let our individual truths be known lies with each of us.

The Great Unheard

I won’t be marching at the March for the Alternative on Saturday, I won’t even be sitting at the static protest. My disability means that even if I got there and turned straight around I’d be feeling the effects for days, maybe even weeks or months. And in that I’m far from alone. As disabled people we have restrictions on our ability to protest that mean it is far more difficult for us to get out there and tell our stories, to put a human face on the people hit by the cuts and demonised by the press and the government PR apparat.

Previous marches have seen problems for disabled people, most visibly the brave boys in blue from the Met hurling Jody McIntyre from his wheelchair not once but twice, but even more passive policing can be threatening to disabled people. The Met is in love with the idea of kettling as a responsible form of crowd control (no matter its criticism by everyone up to and including their own Commissioner), but whereas able-bodied protesters may be able to physically withstand an indiscriminate decision to hold them in the street for hours, whether they have done anything against the law or not, many disabled people would have their health threatened, even endangered, by being held in the open. Then there’s the stewarding of disabled protesters by both police and march organisers to consider, a friend’s description of the Birmingham march sends shudders down my spine making me grateful I wasn’t there. Not because of any trouble, or overt police action against protesters, but simple cluelessness about how to make sure that disabled people are able to protest without being endangered by those charged with protecting them. Simple basics like how long the march was, where it was going appear not to have been communicated to people, and decisions were made on the fly to reroute protesters that could have endangered disabled people if the disabled people themselves hadn’t actively taken charge of ensuring everyone, whether mobility impaired, sensory impaired or whatever was able to safely extricate themselves from the situation police and stewards had created.

Sadly this cluelessness appears to have permeated planning for the March For the Alternative. There’s something badly wrong when individual disabled people are being asked to determine how many of us might turn up and inconvenience the police by being disabled in public, because the Met are clueless and have dumped that responsibility onto the TUC, who are equally clueless as to the answer, but at least know some real disabled people. Anyone else can spontaneously decide to turn up at the march and exercise their right to protest, but if we’re disabled then apparently we were supposed to fill in a form at least a week prior to the march (giving name, address and vehicle reg) in order to ensure we can be given a permit to be let through into our own private kettle. If that’s not a clear sign of our inequality then I don’t know what is. Even a day before the march it is possible to find disabled people who’ve only just been told that the coach bringing protesters from their local disabled people’s organisation won’t be allowed into Central London, that they’ll just be dumped out on the station concourse at Stratford and expected to negotiate the (barely accessible) Tube to central London on their own.

So, however many hundreds of thousands of people turn up at the protest tomorrow, remember that somewhere between one in four and one in five of the population are disabled, that those of us who are most disabled, most desperately in need of support from the government and society, have been selectively targeted for the cuts, deliberately demonised to the general public to justify them and that, no matter how many of us would want to be there, for tens of thousands of us it is simply physically impossible. We are the people hit hardest, yet least able to take our message to the public. We are the great unheard, the silent victims in the government’s war on those who don’t fit its mantra of work or be damned to you.

(And as if to emphasise my message, I’m writing this hours later than intended because my body’s reaction to a half hour trip into town to pick up a repeat prescription was to demand that I curl up and sleep for six hours).

No Alternative

So Ed Milliband has announced he wants us to tell him what we want. He says he’ll be speaking at the March for the Alternative on Saturday, yet would have made cuts if he had been in power.

It’s quite simple, Mr. Milliband, we want an alternative strategy. If cuts must be made, we don’t want them to be targeted at those least able to bear them. And that is where the Labour Party is failing us. It was a Labour government that introduced ESA and ATOS screening, it was the Labour government that stood hand in hand with the Heil, the Scum and the Vexpress in demonising those of us on IB and ESA as fraudulent scroungers and under your leadership it is the Labour Party in opposition that is still supporting those policies.

There’s no point in you speaking tomorrow, Mr. Milliband, the march is about an alternative strategy, and as far as disabled people are concerned, you and your predecessors have reduced the Labour Party to just another pale clone of the Liberals and the Tories. And isn’t that just a damned shame!

Tomorrow!

Here in WtB Towers (OK, my living room) we're getting all excited about tomorrow's march. My flat has turned into a T-shirt factory.

Should you wish to join us on the march we'll be meeting at the main disabled people's meeting point in Savoy Street at 11am. For details on that meeting point and other access arrangements see the TUC's page with access info.

Should you wish to wear your very own WtB T-shirt - the hottest fashion accessory for protesting - you can download our T-shirt logo as designed by our own incurable hippie from here. All you need to do is get your hands on some iron-on transfers and a plain T-shirt. It's A4 sized, you need to cut along the black line to separate the "back" logo from the "front" logo. (N.B. Depending on what transfers you get you might need to reverse the image before printing.)

Here's what the T-shirt looks like:

Front

Back

If you would like to hand out some WtB flyers they're also available to download. The black and white version is here while a full colour version is available here.

Really hope to meet oodles of you tomorrow. Don't forget that if you're physically unable to make it, you can make your voice heard online via DPAC's virtual protest.

The TUC, March for the Alternative and Language Discourses which Promote Exclusion.

Two blog posts were brought to my attention yesterday that really merit a post each, but I don't currently have the capacity to do that, so they will have to share a space.

Firstly, an open letter to Brendan Barber, the General Secretary of the TUC, from Disabled People Against Cuts.

This letter is appealing to the TUC to work with them to make the March for the Alternative on the 26th March, more accessible to disabled people. They point out that

At the latest count it was found that disabled people were facing fourteen separate attacks against our lives and living standards as a result of the Coalition government’s policies. What we are witnessing is our human rights, supposedly guaranteed under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Disabled People, being violated by regressive and draconian cuts to benefit and care funding.

and ask that disabled people are as " fully included in this march and rally as our non-disabled peers would take for granted".

Disabled People Against Cuts have clearly explained the numerous barriers to disabled people's participation in this event, and have as yet failed to get a response from the TUC about their suggestions of ways to improve access.

Given how horrifically the cuts ahead are going to affect disabled people's lives, it seems that we should be at the forefront of planning such protests, not ignored and sidelined.

The second is a post from My Political Ramblings about Welfare Claimants and the Discourse of Threat, and articulates really well the process of scapegoating, rhetoric and stigmatisation involved in making the cuts to disability benefits acceptable to the public. This is a really insightful and useful post, and is well worth reading.

**Edited to add, as I posted this, Lisa posted simultaneously that the TUC have now released access information. Please check her post for the most up to date information.**

(Cross posted at incurable hippie blog).

National Protest Against Benefit Cuts - Party and Picnic in Triton Square

Please note that I/WtB do not endorse any of the sentiments expressed in these photographs. I'm merely reporting images I saw at the protest.

Here's a selection of placards I snapped during yesterday's protest:

















It was actually a really nice spot for a protest: There were places to sit, somewhere to shelter if it had rained (which thankfully it didn't) and a Starbucks and a Pret A Manger only a few yards away. I think Starbucks did a roaring trade in selling hot drinks to cold cripples. Lots of people brought communal food and cake and it was all very lovely. We even had support from trade unions and UCL occupiers, which was refreshing after the lack of solidarity we saw last time. I think in part we have to thank Laurie Penny's call for support for that.

I've read lots of rumours that we were Kettled Crips (pardon the pun, couldn't resist). I have no idea what happened after the protest moved to Marylebone, but we weren't kettled in Triton Sq. I was rather confused reading all these tweets claiming we were detained considering I'd just nipped out to get a cuppa and come back. Whilst inside Starbucks I saw several other protesters who, like me, had just nipped out of the protest area to get a hot drink.

Yes, there were fences around us to keep a footpath free of protesters for people needing to walk past. But we weren't "detained" at any point. If we wanted to leave police let us out of the eastern end of the protest area. Admittedly they weren't letting us out of the western end, which was outside Atos's door, but the fact that they were letting us out of the eastern end means that we were not detained.

As I arrived I did hear one police officer say to the two standing near him "look out, here comes a wheelchair." (As if I was rolling menacingly towards them...) I don't think he meant for me to hear that, I don't think he realised the acoustics of the corridor between 2 buildings which carried his voice. Once I was close enough for them to intentionally speak to me they were perfectly polite and friendly. I think at one point there were just as many police as protesters present and they were never threatening and were perfectly friendly to everyone I saw engage with them. The only time my safety was in jeopardy yesterday was when I was pushing back to my car after the protest and one of my front wheels caught on a sticky uppy paving slab and I nearly landed on my face. So thanks for that, Camden Council.

National Protest Against Benefit Cuts 24/1/11

Benefit Claimants Fight Back have organised a number of protests around the country for this coming Monday, January 24th.

This post lists all the various protests around the country.

If you're not sure why you should come; please re-read the post I wrote after a protest in December.

National Day of Protest Against Welfare & Housing Benefit Cuts

Yesterday I went down to Whitehall to protest opposite Downing Street as part of the National Day of Protest Against Welfare & Housing Benefit Cuts. I was a little bit late so the protest was in full swing by the time I got there. So as soon as I arrived my heart broke; there were only about 30 people protesting. I realise that disabled people are seen as largely unimportant by society so I wasn't going to see the 30,000 that come out to protect education, but to see so few was devastating.











When the 12:30pm Downing Street protest wound down a few of us went to grab a pub lunch before heading to Trafalgar Square for the 3pm protest there.

Once in Trafalgar Square DPAC had planned to perform an alternative nativity play under the tree. Trouble was, Mary hadn't turned up. There was much bustle while they tried to find a new Mary (I declined the invitation).

Eventually a Mary volunteered and everyone moved themselves under the tree.



















The Heritage Warden getting pushy.



The discussion after the Heritage Warden said he was going to call the police. The police came and said that we were fine there as long as we were quiet.



I missed the first couple of seconds of this speech which places the monologue in 2015.

It was at that point that I left. The rain had soaked through my gloves so my hands were getting cold (over the years I've broken almost all my fingers and when my hands get really cold all those old fracture sites feel fresh). The rain had also soaked through the knees of my trousers (being a wheelie my knees are at an angle to catch every drop of rain that falls) and my boots were moist and heading towards soaked through (and just like my fingers I've broken a hell of a lot of bones in my feet and they don't appreciate the cold either).

My overwhelming experience of the day was disappointment: Disappointment that so few people care enough about our social housing and welfare state. The way I see it, for currently privileged people campaigning to save social housing and benefits is like taking out an insurance policy. You hope you won't need it, but it's there as a safety net in case something goes wrong in your life plan. On Twitter recently there's been much talk among students, trade unions, UK Uncut types and general leftie tweeters about "#solidarity" and I know of many disabled people who've shown support for others facing cuts: Where was the solidarity for us?

A lot of disabled people are not in a strong position to protest against the cuts. Some of us are housebound or bedridden. Some of us have crappy immune systems and this is a really bad time of year for viruses flying round, or are just permanently too ill to go out for a whole day. Some of don't have suitable mobility aids or access to transport that would allow us to get to a demo. Others of us have bodies that couldn't withstand the cold and rain on a day like yesterday. I know my bones and joints would've been happier if I'd stayed home yesterday but I felt that I couldn't sit in my council flat hoping someone would protest on my behalf because if I did I might not have a council flat left in a few years!

Then there are the disabled people who were scared into not coming yesterday. Because we live in a culture where many disabled people are constantly afraid of leaving the house in case they get spotted walking/socialising/shopping and accused of benefit fraud (thanks to campaigns like The Sun's) people are too scared to protest. And apparently if you can protest you must be faking your impairment.

Then there were the people too scared to come after witnessing violent scenes at recent student protest, particularly what happened to Jody McIntyre. A lot of disabled people injure more easily than Joe Average (I myself have got brittle bones) so it doesn't take too vivid an imagination to picture yourself more likely to get hurt than most protesters. And if the non-disabled Alfie Meadows can be left needing brain surgery...

It's quite depressing that the government is not only disproportionately targeting the cuts at disabled people, but they're also scaring us into not using what little voice we have. If the government have got us too scared to protest by making sure everyone thinks we're scroungers and the police have terrified us into not hitting the streets then they can continue with the attacks on us by saying "well, no-one objected."

The next protest is on January 24th 2011 and if you can, I'd strongly urge that you come. Even you non-disableds, whether it's out of solidarity or as an insurance policy for your future.

Protesting at the Tory Party Conference

A (hopefully!) large group of disabled people will be protesting against the proposed benefits cuts outside the Tory Party conference tomorrow, Sunday 3rd October 2010. For details of where, times, etc, please see Disabled People Protest.

If, like me, you're unable to go due to a lack of money and/or a lack of spoons then the United Front against benefits cuts has organised a "virtual protest".

To take part they're asking everyone, for just one day on 3rd October, to replace their user pictures on sites like Facebook and Twitter with this image:



The organiser of the event describes the reason for the image as:

Cuts hurt when its you thats bleeding

Those participating in the physical protest in Birmingham will be using fake blood also to convey the message that benefits cuts kill

The online protest is an accessible way for most of us to show that we are opposed to the cuts. On Monday you can change your avatar back to the image you usually use to represent yourself online. Please spread the message far and wide. Hopefully between us we'll be able to get some public figures to change their icon with us in solidarity to get the message out that these benefits cuts are not acceptable to us.