This week Oliver Freiberg meets crisis journalist, activist and campaigner Samantha Asumadu where they talk about activism, what inspired her, and her recent nomination to the long list of the prestigious Paul Foot Award, for investigative journalism.
The View magazine is the only platform by and for women in the justice system. Every week we look at the flaws in the current system and solutions that will make it better and fairer, through art, creativity, acknowledging trauma, legal reform, reporting and oversight.
The View examines the intersection of women let down by the agencies, the charities, the NGOs and the support systems meant to protect us, but which fail us. Over 57% of women in prison have been victims of violence, Women who have been subjected to physical and mental abuse who end up trapped in the justice system. . Why is society letting so many women down?
We tell their stories and platform their art and words to bring a more human understanding to the issues that affect so many women. The Rebel Justice podcast brings you people at the forefront of the changes in our society today, people on the frontline of domestic abuse and justice services, women with conviction and lived experiences, the reporters, the campaigners, the advocates.
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This week Oliver Freiberg meets crisis journalist, activist and campaigner Samantha Asumadu where they talk about activism, what inspired her, and her recent nomination to the long list of the prestigious Paul Foot Award, for investigative journalism.
The View magazine is the only platform by and for women in the justice system. Every week we look at the flaws in the current system and solutions that will make it better and fairer, through art, creativity, acknowledging trauma, legal reform, reporting and oversight.
The View examines the intersection of women let down by the agencies, the charities, the NGOs and the support systems meant to protect us, but which fail us. Over 57% of women in prison have been victims of violence, Women who have been subjected to physical and mental abuse who end up trapped in the justice system. . Why is society letting so many women down?
We tell their stories and platform their art and words to bring a more human understanding to the issues that affect so many women. The Rebel Justice podcast brings you people at the forefront of the changes in our society today, people on the frontline of domestic abuse and justice services, women with conviction and lived experiences, the reporters, the campaigners, the advocates.
For more unmissable content from The View sign up here
Welcome to the View Magazine's Rebel Justice podcast. The View Magazine is the only platform in the UK, by and four women in the justice system. Every week we look at the flaws in the current system and solutions that will make it better and fairer Through art, creativity, acknowledging trauma, legal reform, reporting, and oversight. The view examines the intersection of women, let down by the agencies, the charities, the NGOs, and the support systems meant to protect them, but which fail. Over 57% of women in prison have been victims of violence, Women who have been subjected to physical and mental abuse, who end up trapped in the justice system. Why society letting so many women down? We tell their stories and platform their art and words to bring a more human understanding to the issues that affect so many women. The Rebel Justed Podcast brings you people at the forefront of the changes in our society today. People on the frontline of domestic abuse and justice services, women with conviction and lived experiences, the reporters, the campaigners, the advocates. My name is Oliver Freeberg, and today I'd like to welcome crisis journalist, activist and campaigner, Samantha Amadu, where we'll talk about activism. What inspired her and her recent nomination to the short list of the prestigious pull foot award on her article. Prisoners may have been refused Parole due to Fake Crimes on file, published by Open Democracy.
Speaker 2:Hi, good to be here. Thanks for inviting me.
Speaker 1:Samantha, when did you start your Korean journalism and what drew you into it?
Speaker 2:Uh, well, slightly different. It depends on what you mean by journalism. I suppose. I've done a lot of comment writing over the years, but if it, what I see as journalism is actually reporting, uh, reporting news, thus facts. So I guess my first foray into doing that was about 2010 when I lived in, um, East Africa, specifically Uganda. And I started doing news reporting and news features, um, and breaking news for different broadcasters, international ones mostly. So cnn, France, 24, AF P And before that I had actually made a documentary for Al Jazeera English, which is what sort of propelled me into news cuz I guess, uh, people realized that I could do, I could film and I could put a story together, thus they thought I could do news.
Speaker 1:Could you give a brief overview of what is media diversified?
Speaker 2:Uh, yes. So media diversified is something that I founded, um, in 2013, how it came about. I'd been living in East Africa and I'd sort of, I'd done my documentary in 2009. That was the Super Ladies, about three Ugandan women rally drivers who sort of, you know, have their own careers, uh, hairdresser, head teacher and a housewife. But they also used to get into the rally car on weekends and drive against when, uh, men and often beat them. So, um, I'd done that film and I start, didn't news, as I've mentioned before, mostly breaking news, I'd say. And then, um, at the same time I was doing that, I was actually filming for what I hoped to be my second, uh, feature documentary, which was called Born Again in the United States of Uganda. And I sort of, um, had filmed that I'd been following some pastors. And it turned out I was in this sort of Mel storm about the, uh, anti-gay bill. I hadn't intended to be covering that, but the pastor that I was following, hoping to look more into sort of Pentecostalism in, uh, in, in Uganda. Uh, and, you know, with the context of Africa, it was sort of raging around the world then. But he just turned out to be at the forefront of the Antigay movement. Sadly, actually. Uh, so what happened? I'd done that, I'd done the trailer. I came back to London to try and get funding to film to finish my second film. I hadn't got commission. The super LEDs was commissioned after I'd, Well, it took me a year to get the commission from when I did a little trailer. Uh, but born again was something slightly more complicated. It needed a bigger budget. I needed to travel here, there and everywhere, America and Nigeria, et cetera. So I needed to get sort of bigger funding and, um, I spectacular spectacularly failed in finding that in, uh, in, in London. I mean, it's difficult for, for any filmmaker to, to, to get finance of the scale you need. It's one area where you do need a lot of money, where, compared to the writing I do now, I can just write anywhere. But film needs money and I wasn't able to do that. And I sort of got a little bit depressed by it and so on. I sort of, uh, I sort of went a bit quiet and started just sort of, you know, Twitter had been, it was quite new at that time or at least new to me. And I sort of used to stay up on Twitter on a sort of undercover account, talking to anarchists and various people till 4:00 AM in the mornings. Obviously quite depressed. But it was an interesting political time for me. And also sort of when I came out of that phase a little bit, sort of a bit more willing to see daylight, I, uh, started going to anti-imperialist meetings. There was a sort of, sort of nascent scene that was going on around 2011. And um, I met some interesting, very interesting people at that time, some of whom have gone on to do interesting stuff as well. But, you know, I was reading the papers and so on and I thought about my nephews. I've got, I've got, oh gosh, I've got four nephews, no, five nephews, sorry, missed one. That's, uh, and I just thought about what they see in the papers and how, what, you know, what options are open to them considering the sort of lack of, lack of, uh, black and brown people that were in the papers writing in the papers or in the papers themselves, you know? And so, um, I guess one day I just started this hashtag called All White Front Pages. Cause I think I'd read something in the Voice newspaper experience, only black newspaper, which had done a sort of dissection of the numbers of, you know, the stories about black people or brown people in their newspapers. And you, I think over a weekend they counted, there was like maybe two stories, uh, which featured black people. One of them was about, well, black and brown people. One of them was about somebody who'd started a curry house. The other one was sort of Beyonce. I thought, you know, who are the role models? Who, who, who can my nephews look up to? So yeah, I started the hashtag or white front pages that sort of, it didn't go viral, but people got interested in it. The guardian got in contact with me to see if I'd like to write something about it, which I did. And then I thought, you know, let me start a website. It was all very organic, very unorganized, but, um, it's gone from 2013 to where we are now, uh, to, you know, quite a few team members over the years following online and offline for the events we've done and so on. And we try what, what it, the, the rationale for it is to sort of foreground voices of color. So people from, uh, marginalized communities, um, all around the world, which are quite global, talking about everything you might read in the paper, but more comment rather than sort of breaking news. You need, again, like film, you need money for breaking news. But yeah, we've had writers from Nigeria, from America, from Sweden all over the place and the UK of course. And some of those writers that we published and sort of nurtured over the years have gone on to have books published and often be commentators on TV and news. In that time. We built up Experts directory, which was focused on trying to get more experts of color from all different fields, uh,<laugh>, which could be farming or beauty or history onto the news. It's experts because what you find quite often in the mainstream media, especially TV news, that they, those producers kind of rely on the same people. So you see the same white faces, the stale male pale faces talking about various things which they have very little expertise in, but you know, they're garous and they're very confident. So we wanted to break into that, into that, um, that, that that sort of block of, of establishment block that sort of keeps out, uh, working class, especially black and brown voices. Um, but then again, recently, um, after some work I've did, I did some work on prisons specifically in determinate prison sentences for public protection, where I found that you get a lot of, uh, white working class, uh, men and women alongside black and brown working class people imprisoned on this, you know, this very in Hume, uh, center inhumane, sorry, uh, sentence. And I found that, you know, actually there's not that many people who advocate for white people from working class communities either. And, um, and I realized that class matters a lot. And so hence we've started, um, publishing white people from working class communities as well as other marginalized communities. Roma, uh, travelers, gypsies, um, and black men from all around the world. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And how did you find it bringing these new voices to your public, this transition of incorporating class? It
Speaker 2:Didn't make a big announcement. In fact, we just started doing it and I didn't tell anybody really well apart from the team. We discussed it, we were just doing it. And then, um, the BBC came along and did a little announcement from their press Twitter account saying that they're gonna have at least 25% working class people from now on, which I found quite interesting. Cause I wondered how do the elite people in the BBC know what a working class person is anyway. And in that time we did say, Well, we have been publishing white working people from white people from working class communities for a while. We didn't feel the need to make a big announcement. Um, and there was a bit of discussion around there, there was some people who'd followed us for ages who wanted, you know, are you, are you moving away from your, your goals? And and I said, No, Politically I'm exact the same. I'm staunch. I know what I'm doing and I think it's important to do it. So yeah, it's been okay, no more complaints since that, that day at least. But it might be in the future.
Speaker 1:What is the most important news story you have covered?
Speaker 2:That's an interesting one because, um, I'd say it goes back 12 years. I did a, uh, I worked, uh, as a report, a breaking news reporter on a story in Uganda. Basically around 2010 there was a massive landslide in Eastern Uganda. What had happened is<laugh> and in his essence, it's actually a climate, uh, climate change and climate justice story because in Eastern Uganda there's a lot of mountains and there'd been torrential rain for days. And there was this little village, I think around 300 people down in the valley. And then they're above, there's mountains for all other sides. And what had happened is, you know, they put their animals and so on up at this mountain where they could graze. And after time, you know, that erodes. And then the, the rain, the torrential rain eroded it more. And then after a time, you know, it, everything was pushed down and on top of this, uh, on top of these, these people. And so that was a day a lot of, a lot of people died. And we as journalists, myself and other journalists, freelancers and also staff journalists sort traveled up to this area. You know, it took about, once we got there, about four or five hours to get up to his s steep and, uh, dangerous little road. And as we're going up or the coffins are coming down, cause obviously we're a day late and when it had happened, and it was quite dangerous. But why I say it's important is because obviously yes, the Red Cross and, and Oxfam were there even, I think we traveled up with some Oxfam people and eventually Misse, the president did come to that area. But I think if there hadn't been a news, cuz what we did is, or at least the AP genesis, I think was the first to get sort of footage out of that story very quickly and onto the news. And I think when you, when you do that, when you make sure that people know that this tragedy is happening and keep your eyes on it as a, as a journalist with video specifically, it means that there's no excuse to not have life saving measures and money has to be spent to try and well first rescue people, which was hard. There wasn't that many people that were rescued. There was some, um, I found actually through my reporting, it's mostly women with their babies that managed to run away when they all, you know, when they, when they knew that it was the mountain was coming down. But, you know, there was a school that was trapped. And I don't think anybody survived from that. But what happens is if you have all that sort of congregation of journalists, it puts some focus on it. I mean, you're not gonna know that much about it in the uk CNN care about it. Other, you know, some, some places do care about little, uh, villages in Eastern Africa. And yeah, it means that that, that some life saving measures can be tried and also some money can be put in that area afterwards to regenerate because they feel that, you know, people are watching. So I'd say that was the most, most important story I've done.
Speaker 1:And what's your view on this racial division in the big media of, of what is relevant or not to cover and how it affects the general populations here in the UK of what is happening around the world? For example, when the war Ukraine started in that same week, there was vast media coverage of it, but there was no coverage whatsoever of the conflict happening in Palestine, Somalia, Yemen,
Speaker 2:Right? Yeah. Well, I wonder, um, uh, well, I mean, what you described is white supremacy, obviously, and, uh, that's why there's a differential in, in coverage of various conflicts or even various climate issues and so on. I mean, the first people who are affected by, uh, climate change are, uh, uh, you know, uh, countries in Africa or Middle East and so on before they, they come here, but yet you hear very little about it, uh, and how it affects them. But what I'd say about that different coverage, it does, I mean, for me, I read the news, so I know that there's stuff going on in, uh, in, um, in Yemen especially, I wrote about Yemen reasoning. I think that's one of the most neglected tragedies that's ongoing at the moment. You know, they're gonna run out of water anytime soon and who cares? So yes, I know about it, but I guess there's gonna be a lot of people who don't know, who aren't so engaged in, in, in news. And, um, and you can wonder does that matter? But actually I think it does, it sort of relates to what I said about, you know, having news cameras and journalists at the landslide, having some focus, some interest in these areas means that things might get better. Not that I think that West is ever gonna save, uh, any country in the Middle East or beyond, but you can look at your complicity because I don't think a lot of people in this country know how complicit Britain is in the war in Yemen. And that's ongoing for like 20 years. You know, they've had, uh, intelligence agents there for a long time training soldiers giving intelligence or human intelligence to the cia, which results in bombing. They try to back away when they realize that there is a lot of collateral damage going on. But, you know, publicly they backed away and they did that, you know, because of some statements made in parliament, especially by David Davis. But again, I don't think the general public even knew that much. But in the end, what it looks like is they were still doing that complicity that that engagement with all the, you know, the Yemeni for the president. He's, he's gone now, but, uh, the CIA, et cetera, they just stopped telling people. I think they're just, they're still doing it.
Speaker 1:What do you think about mainstream feminism and how it excludes and oppresses, minoritized women and other voices?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I always get nervous when people want me to talk about fem feminism because I really don't feel that I have read enough of the scholars in it, especially, well, the scholars from all around the world. But, but the black ones who, who I'm more interested in, I, I don't feel I've read enough. Uh, what I can tell you is from my experience, um, more so, uh, so I, yeah, let me tell you a little story. So, um, so as a, you mentioned in the intro, I'm campaigner, I call myself a crisis campaigner when I do them cuz I only take on campaigns when I think that they're be neglected and it's so horrific that somebody has to do something and I'm like, well, they doing an in, let me try. Uh, so, uh, myself and a friend, um, called Gal<inaudible>, uh, embark on a campaign, uh, called Predatory Peacekeepers in 2016, I believe. And the reason for that was, uh, a report came out about some horrific abuses committed by un peacekeepers, which we call predatory peacekeepers. In the end we did hashtag, um, in Central Africa Republic specifically. But I mean, if you wanna do more research, it's happened all over the world in Haiti and other places. And, you know, we embarked on this and it was, you know, traumatic to read any of the material when you are looking for the research. Cause you need all that to be able to campaign. So we embarked on this campaign to try and highlight the abuses and actually to put some pressure on the United Nations to do something about it, to find accountability and also, you know, to, to to, to help these women and boys and girls that were abused. Uh, specifically I think it was French and some Dutch peace speakers. Um, and we had some ideas of how we wanted them to be accountable. And you know, we have a list of this. We wrote in the Telegraph, we had a hashtag and so on. But we also tried to get some support online. You know, we had a petition, whatever you think of petitions, what happens with them. Why I occasionally didn't is to just draw more people in so they feel invested in what's happening to make more of a noise. Because one thing that all these establishments hate is having too much noise against them, uh, in a critical manner. Give them praise, they're fine. But you know, if you're being critical, it's a little of a different story. And so we had, you know, we did approach people who are seen as earth, well, I see them as feminist gatekeepers, white feminist gate gatekeepers in this country, which are generally also white for the mainstream papers, kind guardian times and telegraph and so on. And obviously I've come across a lot of these women, these feminists supposedly, um, over the years because the media diversified now. So when media diversified started, we were, you know, we were engaging with the press quite a lot, you know, because we wanted to diversify the media around 2015. I thought, no, actually that they are irredeemable, There's no point trying to diversify the media. So we were just about building our platform and we started something called the Trashes, which is something that was done yearly, where people, all the people that they called below the line, the ones that comment on articles in the garden, whatever they call them below the line, uh, all those people could finally talk back to the journalists. Cause these journalists, the colonists, I should say, not journalists, I think there's a differential between that can write about all these people say whatever they like, but don't have to, you know, don't have to engage with the people that they write about or the people that read their work. And so the trashes were attempt to give a voice to, uh, to people. So over a two week period, they could nominate the article that they felt perpetuated sort of racism or xenophobia or, uh, miso noir or transphobia laterally in the past 12 months. Put it under hashtag do a screenshot of the article and it'll be nominated. And you know, after a two week period, we'd collate all the suge, the nominations put poll up and they could vote. And you know, we'd have a ceremony where the worst three articles of the year would be, uh, you know, memorialized by us shredding them through a, a little shredder. And, you know, we'd have the worst paper of the year. And I think around that time, some of the press really turned against me to diversify and myself specifically cuz I was quite, uh, vocal about this stuff. And so when it came to actually getting support for abused African, uh, Central African Republic, uh, women, boys and children, they weren't so interested cuz they, you know, they have their personal beefs about finally having been accountable and being, you know, having people able to talk back to them with things like media via the platform, but also the trashes. And so there was a lot of like concerted effort, undermine new campaign and do all and say all sorts of horrible stuff online. And I thought, you know what? I can't you call yourself feminist, but what, how, if you are abusing the women that are trying to actually get some accountability for women abused by, um, uh, unaccountable, predatory peacekeepers, then I don't see you as a feminist. So I, uh, so I mean, the question you asked is how do, um, how it excludes and oppresses my non women and other voices. Um, I think that's an example. I mean, what, what I see it as white kids is, is, is yeah, it is exclusive, but also it's personality led and there's a problem because you shouldn't, regardless of what you think of another person, if there is such an urgent and horrific thing happening, which you with your platform can help stop or at least bring attention to, which will help stop it in the end. And we did actually, despite their best efforts, we did manage to get the un to do to, to start bringing in these resolutions and stuff despite those people. But you can't campaigning and absolutely it cannot be about personalities. It's got to be about the issues. So, um, I feel that white feminism felt itself under attack. I think they feel irrelevant. And it's not about age. I'm the same age as most of these women. And do you know what Tony Morrison was relevant to her age, you know, to when she died? No,<inaudible>, it's not about age, it's about mentality and that feeling of, I think what they found with black people talking a bit more about intersectional feminism and so on, is that white women don't feel as oppressed as they were, or they didn't feel that they're seen as as oppressed as as, as they have, uh, have been in literature and in, in, uh, uh, in the media. And I feel that they felt attacked by the fact that they had to sort of look at the, you know, their own oppressive, uh, behaviors, whether intentional or not. And that felt like an attack to them. And it's probably still now I try and disengage from that. It was a really, you know, awful sort of traumatizing thing. The whole ERs peacekeepers, uh, campaign.
Speaker 1:How can we fix this problem of media and reporting systems that fail to hold institutions or, and organizations accountable, uh, through other outlets Because obviously through media diversified, you've done a lot of this work, but how do you think more generally through other outlets, we can do this?
Speaker 2:Well, you've, you, you'd have to burn it down because it's not, it's not changing anytime soon. I mean, what there, there's a pipeline from sort of, uh, private school to Red Brick University, which I, by that I mean Oxford, Cambridge mostly, um, to your first, uh, reporting Jo, Well not report to Colons or whatever job in the media at 24 with very little life experience. Um, I, I think that, you know, I hate that thing where people say, Oh, I used to be better back in the old days and so on. But there is something to be said for people doing like work at a local paper. I think that is where you learn to be a, a, a good journalist. If there's anybody working in the press at the moment who is in any way, shape or form good at what they do, uh, meaning that they cover various stories, they look at class and race and so on. It's because they've gone to a local, uh, they've worked in a local newspaper in, in my opinion. Um, I say that especially because, you know, my, like I, I write for different people, but one of them is open democracy. And the editor there who still got me to do my last two articles, you know, spent eight years working at a local paper before going onto Huff Post and so on. And you can see that in the, in the, in the topics that he wants to cover, um, that he's interested in. Where, I mean, the fir that first article I, I I've written for The Telegraph before the go, et cetera. And they didn't, you know, they weren't interested in that story, which is an important story. Neither was Al Jazeera New York Times. There was a bit of back and throw, but they didn't want it. And you know, that article that one I took to open do is what has got me long listed for the pull foot, um, investigative awards. So that could have been the Telegraphs<laugh> if they'd, uh, taken it, but they
Speaker 1:Didn't. Samantha, you've been shortlisted for the Pull Foot award for your article. Prisoners may have been refused parole due to fake crimes on file, uh, which you published in Open Democracy. Um, how'd you feel about it?
Speaker 2:I'm on the moon. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's a strange one. Okay. So actually the day that I found out I was long listed, it wasn't that much of a surprise cuz they'd emailed me the week before just asking me is there any pending legal issues about the, the, the article, the specific one is about, um, fake crimes being put on file of prisoners, which stopped them getting parole. I said there wasn't any pending legal issues. In fact, you know, the last time after a very few contentious weeks talking with the Ministry of Justice, you know, once it'd been published, the uh, the senior press officers said, you know, Thanks Sam, good piece. Which I was surprised at. Cause we've been shouting at each other for a few weeks. But, um, so I wasn't surprised on the day, but I do feel like quite proud and I'm glad it's got some recognition, recognition of the fact that I put a lot of, uh, hard work into it. It took its toll cause it was really quite horrific, uh, story to work on because of the people that are involved, people in prison and their families all wanting somebody to save, save their, their, their loved ones, which is, it's quite burden to, to have just, but not that I'm saying I'm no savior at all. But also what was, you know, I'm not sure that very many black women get long listed or shortlisted or even win, um, investigative journalism, uh, uh, uh, awards. So I'm proud of that. But also what's the best thing about it is I hope, and I think I'm seeing it now, is that it's gonna be more attention on the campaigns that's been going on. So I've been, you know, that that how it was brought to my attention was by a woman called Shirley, Deb Bono, who's been campaigned against independent indeterminate prison, prison sentences for public protection for 12 years. Cuz her son had one. I mean, he's one of, you could say lucky, he got out after a certain time, but well after the time of his tariff, um, you know, and all of them stay in after their tariff has ended. But yeah, she's been campaigning on it and campaigning all for all different people. You know, she, she doesn't discriminate. She wants, it's an inhumane sentence. They're being tortured in there, so she wants them all out. And so I'm hoping it'll bring more attention to her and her, her team's, uh, campaign action, um, IPP in action, I think they're called. And then, um, and also to the prisoners because, you know, I've, since then I've had, you know, a call from a prisoner, it was arranged by his niece. People are still dying in there. People are self harming. If it brings more attention to what's happening, I am very happy to have been long listed again, even more so, uh, because since my reporting, there's been a little bit of more reporting, but people haven't, and, and there's also been a lot of announcements from the Ministry of Justice and Dominic Robs specifically going on tv, uh, radio and TV to say that they're never getting out. They're dangerous, which is nonsense. They will, most of them have like stolen mobile phones 17 years ago. You know, there's different crimes. I I don't care what crime they committed, they, they are not in there for that crime, uh, which they committed 17 years ago, which is often not violent in any way. They're in there because they have been mentally tortured and they're, you know, to the point of some of them having psychosis, the self-harming. And they're saying they're too dangerous to go into the, into the community because of the, uh, way they've been institutionalized and, and affected by that. But that's not the point. There should be resources for them when they're, uh, when they're out that they are able to integrate in society to get jobs and so on. But, you know, that costs money. The toys don't like to spend money, especially not on working class people. So some of the reporting, it just hasn't. Cause I think what happened, at least my second article is I exposed something that was really quite pernicious, which is quite, you know, where resignations should be happening, where prosecutions against the people who did actually knowingly put these, uh, again, cuz I don't believe it's just bad record keeping because there was such a pattern of it, um, across different prisoners. Yeah, I unfortunately the reporting that's come since hasn't, hasn't concentrated on that. I think that is what needs to, to happen for anything to, to change to see that there have been, uh, miscarriages of justice
Speaker 1:And relating to your article, uh, how do you see the future of the movement, uh, of decarceration and fighting for the rights of people who are or were in the prison system or the justice system in the UK and, you know, and how we're moving towards decarceration and finding actual solutions to the harm that has been done to different communities?
Speaker 2:Well, you say I'm part of it. I mean, what I've done is reported on it and then I've supported the campaigners because I am a campaigner myself, but I don't see myself as the forefront of it. And I don't see myself as an expert. There's a certain Amer area that I know of and I am for abolition. And it's disgraceful that so many women are put in prison for, in my opinion, no good reason. And, um, and only making things worse where, you know, in prison there's just, I mean, there could be resources, but they're not. But, so that word rehabilitation doesn't really mean much to, to, to, to me because, you know, there's no chance for it when they're, when they, when the courses are not there for them, when the support is not, when they're just, you know, when they're labeled with personality disorders and just drugs to keep them docile and so on. Um, so, so I don't know what the solutions are. I know that I will as and when I can, I'll keep reporting on what's happening and, and hopefully help in that way. Um, but I can't say that I, I have the solution. I don't really have the head space for the solution. Cause I'm also working on other, on, on on other, uh, miscarriages of justice in my opinion as well. So there's a lot in the UK we always look so, so often to America and elsewhere, but like there's some very hidden nasty things that go on goes on in the uk and a lot of it affects, or most of it maybe all of it affects working class people, which is a, an area which people just don't care about. People with power, people with a, with a platform don't very often care about working class people, whatever color they are. And white people from working class are often used as a CUDL or a, a wedge to, to try and, um, destroy solidarity amongst us. And we've got more in common than we don't. I consider myself working class. I was born up, grew up in a council state before that. Emergency housing, I've always been sort of precarious means with money, et cetera. But I was also lucky, I was born before 1983, meaning I have birthright citizenship. So, and also I was able to go to university without, um, having to pay the exorbitant fees that, that, uh, people do now. And so I do have privilege in that way. So that's what one of the reasons I was able to go to East Africa and start working and doing stuff because I didn't have the crush in debt that students get. Now, the only way anything moves forward in this country and in this world is through solidarity and through education. I think, I don't believe that many people know what abolition is about. They just say, Oh, you just wanna release all the prisoners out. I mean, that's not the point. I mean, you can kind of look to South Africa as some people know a bit more about like the truth and reconciliation, um, stuff they did after a patho. But, but I don't think people are educated enough yet for that to even be, you know, a glimmer in somebody's eye, um, abolition. But once that education is there, I think there's a chance of more solidarity. And you know, I've been wrestling with this question for a few weeks and I even had a dinner party on Friday where I, a question, how do you get middle class people to care about issues about things that don't affect them? You know, while they got, you know, I did a lot of campaigning around the national Anthem borders building. Yeah, they were viral and, and because people saw, they, they saw it potentially affecting them or their family or their, you know, uh, neighbors or colleagues. Whereas I also supported the, the IP Justice for IPPs was the campaign hashtag and name for the prisoners on indeterminate senses for public protection. Like we got a lot less support. And you know, I use kind of the same template to how we did nationality borders Bill and how I supported these, these campaigners. And I said, yeah, if we do that, it, you know, it's just no way. There's steps, there's, I've written a 14 step guide in that it should work, but we never got that critical mass of people. They weren't able to get over a certain amount on a petition. There wasn't as many people at protest, you know, national anthem boards. But we organized a protest in four days. We had thousands that, you know, we had weeks to do the one for justice for IPPs and there wasn't that many people. It's difficult. So how do you get, I mean maybe some of your listeners can tell me how do you get middle class people, specifically white people to care about working class black, black, brown and white people and the injustices that they face, which middle class don't believe they will face. And it's actually true that they don't, because, you know, most of these people who got these sentences when they were 17, 18, you know, at the same time a equivalent aged person in a different city with a well off mother and father in an area that isn't policed as much, did not get the same kind of sentence. Maybe they got a sentence, maybe they didn't get anything at all, but they certainly weren't in prison for 17 years. Or we would have an outra if it had happened to middle class people. So they don't see, yes people, every class, every person can empathize, but if they don't see how it could affect them, it, I don't believe they will get engaged. So I'd like to know, how do you get mean, cause people to, to to do that, to to campaign with you.
Speaker 1:Are there any specific groups, uh, you'd like to talk about that would interest the listeners that have been doing work that you think is important?
Speaker 2:So there is something that's been happening recently because obviously we've got national anthem boards built, but it's actually this week is the 10th anniversary more or less of the hostile environment which the Tori's brought in and the coalition, et cetera. And what you've seen recently in the last, I think we, well yeah, let at least go back to, um, Glasgow when there's been a lot of raids by immigration, border officials, et cetera. And um, and there's been resistance against that going back many years. And I even made the film about it in 2015, the sort of resistance against these immigration raids. Um, but there's been more sort of, um, literally bodily resistance recently. I think, uh, the first that I know of is in Glasgow when, um, some immigration officers are trying to take these two guys away and like half of Glasgow went onto so called Kenmore Street, surrounded the van and would not let them take their neighbors. And so, you know, um, and they stayed there for hours cause they weren't gonna let, and they didn't take them. And it recently actually happened in Dosin as well where, so, you know, they went to an area where I assume the border officials or immigration officers thought they'd get easy pickings, but they found that there was no easy pickings because the people in that area gathered together and wouldn't, you know, let them leave with their, with their neighbors again. And so there are groups like anti raids, um, uh, cop watch and so on. I definitely say like, you know, follow them on social media so you know, when they're, when, because what happens is that they'll do an alert. There's, you know, there's immigration ha raids happening in Brickston here or here there, but get down if you can, et cetera. You know, but before that, they give guys for what to do as someone who's facing a, a possible kidnapping by the immigration officer or people who are observing or around what they can do. And I think it's actually important to, to, to be aware of what's happening and if you can, and they are in that area to get down there, especially if you're white because you know you are, you are less likely to be taken away. So, you know, sometimes people who take away by accident, is it really accident? What it is, is white supremacy. That's why there's the, the teenager, the non-verbal teenager was putting in an immigration detention center recently to be taken to Nigeria when he is not even from there, you know, so, um, so yeah, at the moment I think those sort of anti-racial groups, there's anti-racial leaves is anti-racial, blah blah, blah. I think they're the most important, uh, uh, uh, site of resistance currently in the uk. There was a call out today, I think it was so as detention support, looking for a translator to help a detainee at the moment. You know, you just gotta keep your eye out and like, like for us, me the best, me specif, like I will signal boost it, I'll put it on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, you know, and make sure as many people as we can get the news to the, the, the knowledge to that we help in that way, even if we can't physically be there, if, if we're not in the right location. And
Speaker 1:Finally, Samantha, um, are there any next pieces of work you are doing that you know we should be aware of and that you'd like to share with us?
Speaker 2:Uh, yeah, well, Media Diversified is actually gonna get some structure this year. We've, I've been interviewing, um, potential board members the last few, few weeks, months I guess. And we'll make some announcements in June and we'll be doing more publishing, more books. So far we've published mostly eBooks, but we'll be going into print as well, put in a few more events. The Experts Directory is coming back as a speakers bureau and Experts directory, so be available for media plus other institutions and, and, and bodies who want them. I personally do workshops. It's, um, I do workshop for to help like Decolonize Media and uh, and campaigning is what I call it. And that's a 90 minute workshop. Just, uh, talking to people how they can use media to campaign as well and be effective and be ethical, which I think is potent and just about independent media. Um, my story of how I've done what I've done, not certainly not seen myself as a role model, but I have some experience and I'm very willing to to to, uh, to give that out as well. I think it's a shame to keep your knowledge to yourself, what's the point? Um, but also, yeah, I'm working on some journalism. Um, I guess nowadays I call myself an investigative journalist. Uh, I certainly didn't do that six months ago, in fact, mostly I wrote comment writing for a while, for a few years. But yeah, I'm right working on three things at the moment. I think for the biggest shoe and open democracy, looking at, uh, miscarriages of justice, I'd say that affect working class people. There's no, no, no surprise. And you know, some of it involves police, some of it councils and so on, but I, I really probably can't say it that much more than that. You would just have to wait for it to come out.<laugh>. Yeah. Uh, Samantha, uh, yeah, so I'm writing, um, I'm writing two books at the moment. Um, they're nearly there as well. So, um, one of them is a memoir, it's called, um, Between a Rock, a Hard Place and a Dystopia. And it sort of covers most of my life up until, up until now. It sort of starts with my, uh, my time as a breaking news journalist and then sort of expands out because in the, in the time since there, it's 12 years ago, I have been now diagnosed with ptsd. Um, and it, so it looks at mental health and, and and, and, uh, media diversify it and anarchism, I call myself an anarchist at heart and a socialist at PR in practice. Um, so yeah, that's the memoir. Um, at First Chats is called Wannabe because I realized that yes, I did do breaking journal, breaking news, journalism, but I was not cut out for it. You know, there's points during the landslide where I was crying, I wasn't able to do what I needed to do and it, cuz it was just horrific. And, you know, after a while I just thought, I don't wanna see any more dead black babies, uh, basically. So I, I haven't done breaking news since then, but I have done Invest The Jealous, which just has triggered my PTSD a bit, but, you know, that's for another day. Um, and then, but I'm also writing another book, uh, which is a clay essays, some of the things that I've written over years, but some new essays that sort of, um, me at the edges of, um, of, of, of the media, the UK media, having, as I said, being a working class, black socialist imperialist and so on. It's, it can be quite hard to get commissions. But I have managed at points to write for the mainstream media. And I think what I did, uh, enhance their standing, you know, writing about prey peacekeepers, I worked on the construction site for a while, literally to earn money. Not that you know, that from, uh, uh, some of the comments that were under the Telegraph article, but actually they were quite engaged with, with what I wrote. But yeah, I worked on the construction site for a while. So it's essays about, uh, Yemen, about book around things that I'm interested in, things that don't get very covered, uh, much coverage in, in by columnist especially. And it's called the book, it's called Radical Empathy, uh, the colonist class Egos and Accountability. And you know, it does feature some conversations I've had with like Owen Jones and Huga Rifkin and so on. People that see themselves a journalist where I don't, I see them as a colonist. I think the, uh, the, um, I think it's a shame that that gets mixed up and people think they're actual journalists or reporters when it's, when, when, and, and that can lead to things being neglected, really important issues not being neglected because there becomes a zeitgeist where they all write about the same things. So we can hear like, about trans issues. For you, you like, you think 99% of the, of the population was trans, the amount that's written about it, where, and that's, yeah, I mean it should be writing about it. I'd like to see trans writers writing about it myself. Um, though I think some of them, my trans friends are like, God, it's just so much and you, there's other issues in the world and then other things get neglected. Things that do affect us materially, like the fuel crisis and so on. And you know, I mean that's been written about a bit cause the Living Crisis, but so many issues that just don't get a looking because they're, they are, it's middle class private schooled Oxford and Cambridge graduates who are supposed to write about it and they just don't know about it. Cause they don't talk to working class people. They're not in their circles. So I kind of look at that in the book.
Speaker 1:Samantha, thanks for your time and for sharing your insight and experiences with us. We wish you every success and hope you win the P Foot award cuz you certainly deserve it. To the listener, hope you found this podcast informative and interesting and inspiring as I found it. And listen out for future podcasts with leading journalists and activists. Join us next week for a podcast with Margaret Mehan O'Brien, a leading Irish Reiki Mar teacher. Till next time.