This Windrush Wednesday I’m not going to say very much, I’m going to leave it all to Professor Laura Serrant OBE and her Poem You Called and We Came.
Her words are incredibly powerful.
Whilst I’m talking about Windrush, ITV have a programme on tomorrow night at 9pm made by Pride of Britain celebrating the 75th Anniversary of Windrush, I don’t know if it’s any good I haven’t seen it, but if you don’t know much about Windrush and why I talk about it a lot then it might be worth having a look, I’ll give it a look and pray that they do justice to our amazing Windrush generation.
There are still a few tickets left for the Hope Gala Ball, as part of the ball we will be hosting an exhibition of the forgotten Windrush men and women who were a crucial part of World War II.
Just head to The Hope Gala Ball page if you’d like to know more about that’s happening on the day and to purchase tickets.
Valerie’s law is a proposal to tackle domestic abuse specifically among black communities, through a process of cultural competency training for the UK police force and it’s related bodies.
It’s named Valerie’s law after Valerie Forde who was murdered together with her 23 month old daughter Jahzara by her ex partner in 2014.
A few weeks before the murders took place Valerie had reported his threats to the police but they has been recorded as a threat to property rather than live. The police had come to the home after Valerie called 999 but left after allegedly knocking and hearing no answer. Entry to the home is said to have taken 40 minutes, during which time the murders took place.
What happened to Valerie and her daughter highlighted a severe knowledge gap when it comes to the black community and it’s domestic violence victims by the police force and related services such as hospitals.
The campaign aims to see specialist training introduced as standard practice for service providers, in order to help them better navigate domestic abuse within black communities, to better understand the cultural nuances and barriers, colloquialisms, languages and customs that make up the diverse black community.
The law still hasn’t been passed through parliament yet, but there is building pressure to make sure that it WILL happen eventually.
If you need help reporting or recovering from domestic abuse then please take a look at http://gemcic.co.uk, or drop me a message, help is out there.
My throwback Thursday this week was first shared during one of the lockdowns, I was going live every day and sharing motivation or a thought for the day, who do you think you are?
I’ve cut the video to remove the hellos and comments of support so you just get the message this time.
It was triggered by a message in messenger asking me who did I think I was.
Do you know who you are?
Often after abuse people have no clue who they are, they are lost, the person they were before the abusive relationship is gone and they need to find out who they are again, that’s where GEM comes in.
In order for GEM to keep helping ladies find who they are after abuse please join us at The Hope Gala Ball raising much needed funds, or consider gifting a ticket if you can’t be there, I’ll drop the link to GEM’s website below
This week for Windrush Wednesday I’m talking about Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill, DBE.
What can you say about Dame Jessica that hasn’t been said already?
Now retired she is best known for winning an Olympic gold medal and being a part of the Super Saturday evening of the London 2012 Olympics. At the time of winning her Olympic gold she was also world and European champion at that point as well.
She was introduced to sport by her mum who enjoyed high jump and her Jamaican dad who favoured sprinting. When she appeared on Desert Island Discs she revealed that her grandfather would offer her cash incentives as a reward for her initial successes in her early track competitions.
I was going to list her medals and awards but quite frankly I’d run out of characters to post.
One thing I learned that I didn’t know, but that makes me love her a little more is that she used to have a stand named after her at Bramall Lane, home of Sheffield United. In November 2014 she stated that she wanted her name removed from the stand if the club ever re-signed a former player who was a convicted rapist. After stating this she received horrific threats on social media that South Yorkshire police took very seriously. In 2015 the club renamed the stand after a sponsor!
I love everything that she’s achieved but speaking up like that and removing her name from a stand at the football ground of her club for that reason is just amazing!
As you know I have the Hope Gala Ball coming up soon, we are raising funds to enable GEM – Global Empowerment Movement to continue their work in supporting women survivors of abuse. If you’d like to join us at the ball we still have a few tickets available, just follow this link and get your tickets here.
This is still an ongoing case so there isn’t too much information about it in the public domain.
Police were called on the morning on February 18th to a property in Hamilton Park North, Lanarkshire, when they arrived they discovered the dead body of Darrell Buchanan, the police had been called after reports of a disturbance.
Her husband is on remand pending trial – he has appeared in court a couple of times but hasn’t lodged a plea yet.
This case is slightly different for me because there has been no reports that we are aware of at the moment of domestic violence, they appeared to be a happily married couple, the age difference she was 37 and he was 64 at the time of the murder, they lived in a nice part of town and seemed to be living a good life.
What shocks me about it is I hadn’t heard of it, it was shown to me – I’m wondering if it’s not made any news in England that I’ve seen because she’s a black woman? I’m wondering if it was a well of white woman we might have heard more?
I’ll certainly be keeping an eye on it when it goes to trial.
If you are interested in other Truth Tuesday posts, it’s still relatively knew, so far I have talked about Denise Keane-Simmons and Logan Mwangi.
