Our Events
Christopher Kapessa inquest
The long awaited inquest into the killing of young Black Welsh boy Christopher Kapessa aged 13, who was found in the River Cyon on July 1, 2019 commenced on Monday January 8th, 2024 and concluded on Friday January 19, 2024. Coroner David Regan ruled on Monday January 22, 2024 that Christopher was deliberately pushed into the river in what he referred to as a “dangeraous prank”. Regan stated that evidence from Jayden Pugh, who said he slipped and fell into Christopher, was "untrue".
Christopher's mother said the injustice she believed her family had endured "haunted" her.
The family's solicitor, Daniel Cooper, said Christopher's death had caused "unimaginable trauma" for his family, distress and anxiety for the community in and around Wales, and had raised "issues of significant public interest".
"The coroner's findings were clear and unambiguous, Christopher was deliberately and intentionally pushed in the back from behind," he said..
Mainstream media coverage at the start of the inquest has been extensive. Please view some of the stories on the following links:
Christopher Kapessa: Drowned boy's family 'racially abused' - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-67911288
https://www.theguardian.cohttps://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/17/social-media-built-narrative-that-christopher-kapessas-death-was-racist-killing-say-policem/uk-news/2024/jan/17/social-media-built-narrative-that-christopher-kapessas-death-was-racist-killing-say-police
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-67983569
Here is the full submitted witness statement of Christopher’s mother Alina Joseph to the inquest:
https://publuu.com/flip-book/359885/821914jlt.ghr@gmail.com
Following the judgement of the Coroner on Monday January 22, 2024, press coverage can be viewed here:
Book Launch : What is Antiracism? And Why it Means Anticapitalism by Arun Kundnani
Book Launch : What is Antiracism? And Why it Means Anticapitalism by Arun Kundnani
Himmah and the Monitoring Group are proud to launch this important new book by Arun Kundanani. This scintillating intellectual and political history provides a new understanding of racism, and a better way to fight it.
Liberals have been arguing for nearly a century that racism is fundamentally an individual problem of extremist beliefs. Responding to Nazism, thinkers like gay rights pioneer Magnus Hirschfeld and anthropologist Ruth Benedict called for teaching people, especially poor people, to be less prejudiced. Here lies the origin of today's liberal antiracism, from diversity training to Hollywood activism. Meanwhile, a more radical antiracism flowered in the Third World. Anticolonial revolutionaries traced racism to the broad economic and political structures of modernity. Thinkers like C.L.R. James, Claudia Jones, and Frantz Fanon showed how racism was connected to colonialism and capitalism, a perspective adopted even by Martin Luther King. Today, liberal antiracism has proven powerless against structural oppression. As Arun Kundnani demonstrates, white liberals can heroically confront their own whiteness all they want, yet these structures remain.This deeply researched and swift-moving narrative history tells the story of the two antiracisms and their fates. As neoliberalism reordered the world in the last decades of the twentieth century, the case became clear: fighting racism means striking at its capitalist roots.
About Arun Kundnani
Arun has been active in antiracist movements in Britain and the United States for three decades. He is a former editor of the journal Race & Class and was a scholar-in-residence at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library. The Guardian has described him as “one of Britain’s best political writers.” He lives in central New York state.
Reclamation: Socially engaged art and antiracism in the Midlands by Jagdish Patel
Opening Night: 23rd June 6-8pm
Then Saturday 24th June til Saturday 15th July 6-8pm
Reclamation, an exhibition by artist and researcher Jagdish Patel which celebrates the interconnections between socially engaged art and anti-racism through photography, archival artefacts, paintings and video.
Reclamation explores the history of collaborative art practices, radical decolonial ideas and community engagement, particularly in the Midlands, through a timeline. By examining the connections between the community art movement and anti-racist campaigners the
exhibition highlights the significant role that art has played and continues to play in society, particularly in addressing citizenship, racism, equality and social justice.
This exhibition seeks to inspire reflection, dialogue and action. By bringing together diverse artistic mediums these stories highlight values of rights, recognition, rupture and resistance which are essential in socially engaged art.
Southall History walk
Southall is one of the key landmarks of anti racist struggles that shaped modern Britain. It is the birthplace of pioneering anti racist workers struggles; youth movements; women and civil rights groups as well as a unique rich mix of cultural heritage, including Bhangra and reggae musicians and South Asian cuisine.
The History Walk charts a unique journey through the main artery of the town stopping at key landscapes recreating some of the iconic moments. Why did early immigrants settle in Southall and how did they build their communities? How does its history affect the present political and social landscape?
Dates and Times: Saturday 29 April 2023 and Saturday 19 May 2023.
Please meet at 10.30am at The Dominion Centre112 The Green, Southall UB2 4BQ. The tour will set off at 10.45am and last about 2 hours, ending with a 30 minute documentary and Q&A at the Town Hall, High St, Southall UB1 3HA
You must book to join the tour: Please enter your details by clicking on the link below. Once we receive your booking, we will contact you to confirm your booking. Please dress casually mindful of weather conditions on the day. This is a free event.
You are welcome to have lunch in Southall that houses numerous good quality vegetarian and non-vegetarian café and restaurants including Afghani, Indian (north and south), Pakistani, Sri Lankan and Somali.
Thank you for your interest in this unique tour. We look forward to welcoming you. For further information contact:
The Monitoring Group: office@tmg-uk.org M: 07816 301706
Southall Community Alliance: 07958 499222
Remembering Stephen Lawrence - The legacy and way forward
Thirty years ago this month, Black teenager Stephen Lawrence was murdered by racist thugs in South East London. It became an international cause célèbre after Nelson Mandela was introduced to Stephen's parents by Anti-Racist Alliance founder Marc Wadsworth. The government set up the Macpherson public inquiry into the killing that found police to be riddled with institutional racism and it proposed unprecedented reform of the Met. Have lessons been learned, and what's the way forward?
Hear from and debate with two community campaigners, Marc Wadsworth and Suresh Grover, who helped Stephen's parents set up and run their justice campaign, and leading family and police justice champions, Janet Alder, of the United Families and Friends Campaign, Emmanuelle Andrews, Liberty's policy and campaigns manager and the prominent scholar and community activist Professor Gus John.
Moderator: Deborah Hobson, a leading Unite the Union activist.
*Please note that the Zoom link for this event will be sent by email on registration.
Ricky Reel: Time for Justice
Speakers include
Sukhdev Reel
Bell Rebeiro Addy MP
Dawn Butler MP
Jeremy Corbyn MP
Baroness Shami Chakrabarti
Preet Gill MP
Suresh Grover
Lord John Hendy
David Lammy MP
John McDonnell MP
Virendra Sharma MP and others
The death of young Asian student, Lakhvinder ‘Ricky’ Reel in 1997 Kingston, Surrey was a cruel and traumatic tragedy for his family. He was racially abused and attacked and as the evidence suggested ran for his life before ending up in the River Thames. There was also dismay and anger at how the police responded to the incident. Ricky’s family expected the case to be investigated thoroughly and without bias but they experienced a litany of police failures and stereotyping based on the colour of their skin. With the help of their supporters, they carried out their own searches, organised witness appeals and gathered CCTV footage. Despite police efforts to gain a verdict of ‘accidental death’ at the Coroner’s court, the jury delivered an ‘open’ verdict. The police even spied on the family using undercover officers to track their movements.
Sadly, no person has been held to account for Ricky’s death or police failures. Now over 100,000 people have signed a change.org petition demanding a reinvestigation into his death. The family campaign will also be launching ‘Ricky Reel Day’ at this event as a means of keeping Ricky, and others still fighting for justice, in our thoughts. Join us to support the family’s quest for justice.
To avoid disappointment, please register your attendance as soon as possible as spaces are limited.
Organised by the Justice for Ricky Reel and supported by The Monitoring Group
@justice4reel
Instagram: justice4reel
Twitter @MonitoringGroup
Facebook @raceandjustice
The Rise of Anti-Chinese Racism: Building resistance over fear
We are witnessing an alarming rise of anti-Chinese racism globally fuelled by the racist narrative around the COVID-19 pandemic. Last year, in May 2020, The United Nations General Secretary, Antonio Guterres warned that “the pandemic continues to unleash a tsunami of hate and xenophobia, scapegoating and ” and urged governments to “act now to strengthen the immunity of our societies against the virus of hate.”
Confronting Racism in the UK: A Return to Collective Principles
This meeting brings together long-time anti-racist campaigners, from legal experts to organisers, including those who fought to establish institutional racism in law with the MacPherson case, to those challenging the silencing imposed by Prevent and the IHRA. Restoring fundamental anti-racist principles, this public meeting will discuss a common and universal approach to defeating division, and to strengthening and rallying the movement against rising racism.
STATE RACISM, COLLUSION & RESISTANCE
The aims of the 2-day conference are twofold: firstly to identify and discuss the motivating factors of the pervasive nature of racism, injustice and austerity and their impact on working class communities. Secondly, we aim to bring different campaigns and communities together so that we can begin to collectively address the challenges ahead.
Our Lives Our Future : The Government’s War on Gangs & Why It Affects our Young people
Violence and death should have no place in a society that delivers opportunities, respect and justice to its youth and communities. What has led to the spike in violent crimes? The Government is now responding with more heavy-handed policing but without acknowledging its own failures. The media has raised alarms over the number of deaths in London exceeding those in New York as if some number is acceptable
PARLIAMENT ROUNDTABLE ON RACISM & HATE CRIME
22nd April, this year, marks the 25th anniversary of the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993. The parliamentary forum will chart a remarkable journey over this period – from the senseless and brutal murder to the BREXT state – to tackle racism in the UK.
Re-Imagining Brexit Britain: Reflections on the past, present and future
Thursday 14th December 6.30pm – 8.30pm
Location: The Unity Centre, St Leonard’s Road, Rotherham, S65 1PD
The vote to leave the European Union in June 2016 touched upon some of big themes about the future of the Britain as a nation state. Issues such as the backlash to globalization, inequality, the growing divide between cities and rural areas, identity, and blaming of migrants in the UK led to a rise in reported racism and hate crimes nationally. The impact locally in South Yorkshire has been an on going increase in racist crime, an area already haunted by the history of far right marches. In the three months after the Referendum vote we faced a huge increase in race and religious hate crime – something which hasn’t abated.
The Monitoring Group (TMG) wants to build networks across the country, grassroots network of people and groups who are able to support victims, challenge authorities, and counteract the negative racist narrative which blames Black, Asian, migrant, refugees and other people for a set of deep seated economic and social problems in Britain. This grassroots perspective aims to build ‘Communities of Solidarity’ who can through discussions, active campaigns and programs to build leadership begin to challenge the language and debates around Brexit ahead of 2019.
Come, listen, learn and help build ‘Communities of Solidarity’.
Speakers include : Suresh Grover (TMG), Azzizum Akhtar (REMA-hate crime reporting centre- Rotherham landscape), Stuart Crosthwaite (SYMAAG Dignity not detention), Penny Wangari Jones (Racial Justice Network/Migrants Organise), Gulnaz Hussain (Firvale community Hub/ROMA network), Abrar Javid (Rotherham 12-(building solidarity/ resistance), Safina Khatoon ((Hate crime coordinator)
The event is free, but you will need to book from this link https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/re-imagining-brexit-britain-reflections-on-the-past-present-and-future-tickets-40757142711
Art, Activism, Race and Social Justice
This talk is part of the events surrounding the current exhibition at the Nottingham Contemporary called ‘The Place is Here’. Alongside the exhibition we have made 2 banners which charts this journey for race equality from 1900-1979.