The mainstream media narrative is that migration is a problem, that there are ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ migrants. Meanwhile, the tragedy of the small boats continues.
Stroud District Green Party’s next monthly Cloud Café on Wednesday November 8 from 7.30pm to 9pm will explore the wider political, climate and economic context, acknowledging that the world as we know it was fashioned by migration.
Our expert speakers will discuss how capital, information, viruses and many people travel with ease. What should be the fair, positive and green role of migration in a world of national age imbalances, climate breakdown, acute inequality and war?
The Cloud Café welcomes everyone and is a free event. Click here to register. Can’t make it on the night? Register anyway and we’ll send you the recording.
The speakers:
Benali Hamdache, the Green Party’s spokesperson on refugees and migrants.
Benali is a Councillor and the Leader of the Opposition on Islington Council. He’s spent his working career in campaigning and the third sector. He has worked for migrants’ rights, international development and disability charities.
Benali joined the Green Party in 2012 and has held a variety of roles in the party. He has served as the Equalities spokesperson and wrote the party’s 2015 ethnic minority and LGBTIQA+ manifesto.
He won campaigns on tackling workplace discrimination and homophobic PSHE guidance, and was the Campaign Manager at the last London Mayoral elections, the most successful in our history.
Judith Large is a founder member of Stroud District Together With Refugees and a trustee for Sanctuary Breaks at Hill House, Amberley, a registered charity offering respite and renewal time for refugees and asylum seekers.
Judith is a Senior Fellow at the University of Kent’s Conflict Analysis Research Centre, where she advised on a Forced Migration project.
She has worked on crisis response and recovery in war zones and during post-conflict transition; settings involving mass population displacement and resettlement needs.
She worked at local level in support of refugee reception centres in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1990’s, moving later to policy and agency response such as assignments for the Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR).
Judith campaigned actively against the Nationality and Borders Bill, which overturned 70 years of UK adherence to the 1952 Refugee Convention and severely curtailed the rights of refugees. She sees this as critical on many fronts; the rejection of international treaties; a disregard for human rights law and conventions; the securitisation of citizenship; the creation of deliberate inequalities, and another step towards a Britain which functions as a gated, garrison state.
She has been actively involved with Napier Barracks for the past two years, supporting asylum seekers detained there and lobbying for Napier’s closure.