11 MARCH

Preventing PREVENT Day of Action  

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SOAS

 

9am

What is PREVENT? (Preventing PREVENT)

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11am 

Prevent - the student experience (Students not Suspects)

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12pm

Prevent: A 21st Century Paradigm of Colourblind Racism (Tarek Younis)

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1pm

The Violence of Prevent: A Collective Reading of Stories and Testimonials (Preventing PREVENT)

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2pm 

How to Abolish Prevent at SOAS: Organising Meeting

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Social Movements, Protest and Democracy @ Gazebo on the Green ​

 

2pm

Environmental Protest - from the local to the global.  (Rich Axelby)

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3pm

Collaborative activism - from Bristol Airport to Ethiopia (Emma Crewe)

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BIRKBECK

4pm
Coronavirus and Sinophobia (Tam Hau-Yu, SOAS)

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In this teach-out, we aim to unpack the history of how coronavirus has been racialised, moving through to the current day. We will talk about material impacts on our working class communities, many of whom are concentrated in or are networked into the catering sector. We will move onto speaking on anti-racist and feminist self-care and active allyship, as ways to survive and beat this nexus of racisms, sexisms, anti-immigration sentiments and neocolonial dynamics.

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4:30pm

Legal Immigration Briefing on EU/EEA and Tier 2 issues (Emma Cohen and Carla Mirallas, Bindmans LLP)

- EU/EEA nationals post-Brexit - the EU settlement scheme (EUSS)

- Tier 2 (General) including indefinite leave to remain (ILR)

- Potential impact of strike action on Tier 2 migrants and in relation to EUSS, ILR and nationality applications

 

5pm

Stranger on the Line: Communications, Surveillance and the State in Britain (Dr Bernand Keenan, Law, Birkbeck)

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In 1871, telegraphers operating the newly-nationalised Post Office telegram service planned co-ordinated strike action, seeking improved wages and working conditions from the state. The electrical telegraph permitted a new kind of organisation across time and space. Workers in Liverpool and Bristol agitated for the action, using their own equipment to co-ordinate strike action in different offices around Britain. But the management of the Post Office caught wind, and by tapping the lines at intermediate points were able to identify the leaders of the action. They were fired as soon as the strike began, while the Army immediately stepped in, providing experienced telegraphers to take over the network as the strike began, ensuring the flow of communication was maintained. The story provides a certain diagram of linkages between labour, security, communication and state surveillance that can be identified in different formations today. This lecture will trace the history of this diagram and invite discussion of the contemporary digital surveillance environment.

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5:30pm

McStrike and the politics of fast food unionisation (Alex Colas, Politics, Birkbeck)

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The McStrike of October 2018 witnessed a creative alliance of new and old unions like the IWGB and the Bakers Union, in an effort to organise highly precarious, under-paid and super-exploited workforce in the fast food sector. Despite the strong solidarity expressed across the different organisations involved, contrasting forms of mobilisation, tactics and strategy emerged in the course of the campaign raising interesting questions about the unionisation of the so-called gig economy. This talk focuses particularly on the food-to-go sector and considers how this growing market in platform capitalism shapes workplace organisation, union internationalism and the right to the city.