Full circle, hearing from women the Stand With Us fund helped save.
But the work continues and Rosa needs your support
I am celebrating and incredibly proud of Reclaim These Streets tonight. Through an in depth report by Frankie McCamley we were able to hear from two women who directly benefitted from the £550,000 we raised the weekend of the Sarah Everard vigil and subsequently trusted Rosa to distribute.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-68574781
DONATE HERE: https://www.justgiving.com/campaign/standwithusfund
Rosa is a grant making foundation for women and a charity of seven women. Only 2.5% of charitable donations go to organisations specifically for women and girls. We are failing the most vulnerable and abused women and girls in society.
The last three years have been extraordinary, but campaigning and doing a ton of media work and quietly spending two years with Ludo Orlando (another founder of Reclaim These Streets) on the advisory board of Rosa’s Stand With Us fund meant setting up the eligibility requirements for the grants and then choosing the 25 organisations that received £25,000 from the £550,000 that we raised the weekend of the vigil. Where the money went…
Because of the breakneck speed of the whole experience, it was hard to stop and reflect on what happened. But tonight– tonight, I will celebrate the decisions that a group of women, who at the time had never even all met in person, made that week in March of 2021.
I have had an extraordinary three years with Reclaim These Streets and as an accidental activist, but tonight has really allowed me to step back and look at the entire experience differently. To see the tangible proof of women’s lives we helped save is incredible.
Who gets to give out £500,000 to the charities in society that need it the most? If you are not a philanthropist or independently wealthy, it just is not something that happens. And it happened because of the Met’s threats to prosecute and fine us. It also happened because the nine of us, who I joked were the Clapham Nine, collectively decided we were all going to get arrested and fined or none of us were.
After a High Court judge ruled that the police needed to set the parameters for the protest and we needed to follow them, Jess Leigh, our main claimant immediately entered negotiations with the Met. We had all just been in court and heard the judge say that the Met should never have forced us into court— and then the Met tried to make us pay their costs. Throughout the entire process they treated us like stupid little girls that needed to be silenced as we were causing a nuisance.
And the most offensive and condescending behaviour from the Met was from women. Every blow was delivered by a female, apparently so we couldn’t call out the sexist treatment.
Immediately after High Court, Jess went into another session with our legal team and the Met. She proposed a walking memorial, or two sets of moments of silence; it seemed like there was going to be a compromise that allowed the vigil to go ahead as planned until Jane Connors representing the Met entered the room. Connors who was aggressively condescending and threatening to us throughout our dealings with her, said absolutely not and that we would be arrested and prosecuted if we did not agree to cancel. Whilst threatening us and forcing us to cancel, she would also not agree that if we did cancel we would not be arrested. They would not offer that reassurance. While we were literally mid-negotiations the NPCC sent out a national press release that any protests would be deemed illegal gatherings and we would be arrested and prosecuted as would attendees. Cressida Dick recorded a video telling women to stay home and that gathering would be illegal. This was while their laywers were claiming that there was not a ban on protest. We were told we were able to protest as long as it was on our doorsteps with no more than one other person. Attendees would also be liable to be arrested, the only difference is that, we,as organisers, we would be fined £10,000 each and prosecuted under the serious crimes act.
For a moment of silence. For a woman murdered by one of them. Had they not tried to silence us and stop the vigil, we would have had the moment of silence and gone back to our lives and jobs. Everything that happened after they tried to force us to cancel is because of antagonistic behaviour from the Met and because they underestimated four women that had had enough.
Jess made it very clear to the Police that the vigil was going ahead with or without our participation. That by removing our stewards, health and safety precautions and PA system, they were increasing the dangers to the women that would be attending. As we all know, they did it anyway and then blamed us. Cressida Dick later called us “naive young women that meant well.”
Well this naive young woman helped cost you your job. She created a monster and gave my life purpose and focus.
But that Friday night before the vigil, Reclaim These Streets needed to decide what to do. Knowing that the police had disregarded what the judge had actually said, was it worth our going and getting arrested anyway? When we got on to the zoom call that night, I think it was 11 pm. We had been in High Court that day. It was incredibly confusing and emotional and there were nine of us, plus our barrister Pippa Woodrow.
Henna Shah, another claimant, and the best moderator I have experienced in my 25 year career set the rules for the meeting. We were all getting arrested, or none of us were. And everyone was going to have a timed turn to say why they were in Reclaim These Streets to begin with, whether they thought we should get arrested, and what their fears were. I believed we were going to reflect 12 Angry Men and were in for hours and hours of arguing. Instead, it was 9 brilliant and eloquent women discussing the truly astounding week it had been and the potential consequences good and bad of our decision. There was a lot of tears, but there was more empathy, support and common sense. Some of us were scared of losing parliamentary passes, some were scared of losing residency, and some of us were all for chaining ourselves to the bandstand and daring them to actually arrest us (that was my take when I entered the zoom). We knew we could raise the £90,000 in fines for the nine of us if we got arrested given that we had raised £37,000 is 48 minutes to take the Met to High Court the night before. But that money would go to the Met Police. We would be paying them for the pleasure of violating our human right to protest after one of their own killed Sarah.
Henna expertly kept us to the decision at hand and validated every person’s stance and feelings. We were exhausted, scared and furious; and she allowed the respect of all of those emotions but point us towards a collective decision that we could all stand behind. I have never witnessed anything like it, and doubt I ever will again. But if I was ever in a hostage situation, Henna is who I would want bringing world leaders to a decision.
We recognised that the political fight about the legality of the vigil pulled focus from the actual point of it. To stand up for ourselves, to mourn Sarah and all women that had experienced violence at the hands of men. The coverage was wall to wall and it was about our fight with the police, not that a sex offender police officer used his warrant card to kill Sarah.
Just from an optics perspective we could not believe that the police were fighting so hard to silence us, whilst not using the right of reply to actually have a conversation with any of us on camera. But if everyone was talking about the vigil they were not talking about the rapist that they armed. The rapist they promoted and the rapist that flourished as a Metropolitan Police Officer.
The trust he had broken. The fact that the very person she was meant to trust to protect and serve her used those same restrictions to abduct, rape and kill a young woman who was just walking home.
During that zoom, we went around the room, we were cognisant that we would be able to raise the money for the nine of us, but that there were 31 satellite vigils and those organisers may not be so lucky. Those women could potentially lose custody battles, lose their jobs and face convictions without the amount of press and attention that the nine of us would get. We knew the vigil was happening with or without us, and actually us showing up would have made it more about the nine of us being arrested than about the collective anger of women at Sarah’s murder.
The 31 women organising sattelite vigils were not in the room with us to have their voices heard, they weren’t in the zoom having a vote on the decision to go ahead. Not to mention the rage if we paid police £320,000 for silencing and threatening us. And that became our fundraising target. Once we had another option. Once we had a hook and an amount to aspire to; we all agreed to cancel our involvement with the vigil.
We still didn’t know if they would arrest us anyway.
We decided not to attend in person and to then fight the police for their intentional violation of our human right to protest. We would make them pay for intentionally miscommunicating what the judge actually said; but it would be a long fight, not an instant win. And we built the Just Giving page at 2 am.
We only ever fundraised because of the antagonistic and unlawful actions by the Metropolitan Police. So when we set up the site, we did not know where the money would go because we never intended there to be any money. But we promised that any money we raised would go to saving women and girls from male violence rather than lining police pockets.
We still didn’t know if we would be arrested as organisers. At 6:30 am, due to the threats of the police to prosecute us under the serious crimes act and fine us each £10,000 as organisers, I announced that we would be fundraising instead. The first announcement was to Jenny Kleeman live on Times Radio and then we did forty live interviews that day cancelling the vigil and fundraising instead.
By 11:02 am that morning we had raised £101,827 which was 31% of our target. Most of the donations were £20 and under. By 1 pm it was £171,644. We hit £201,329 by 2:20 pm. By the time the vigil started at 18:21 we had hit our target and raised the £320,053. A group of strangers that had decided to give women a space to grieve together and were forbidden by the police had raised over £300,000.
None of us could have imagined the violence with which the Met would then police the vigil. I am forever grateful to the women that showed up to protest anyway. For liability and the subsequent lawsuit against the Met, I did the online Feminist of London vigil and watched from home. I was waiting to go live on a BBC zoom at 7 pm when the Met stormed the bandstand. When we watched police trample the flowers the public had laid down for Sarah’s life. I was waiting to go live on television when I watched officers manhandle Patsy Stevenson (who I didn’t know at the time.)
To watch police violence against women that were there to protest a woman killed by a serving police officer rocked me to my core. And I was ashamed I was not there with Sisters Uncut in solidarity. I still believe in the reasons and decision that we made, but could not believe that I had a part to play in putting those women in physical danger at the hands of police. I could not imagine that they would dare manhandle those unarmed protesting women with the world’s cameras watching. And that I was in my living room.
The next day by 3:28 pm we had raised £500,028.
And last Friday, I with the rest of London got to hear directly from some of the women that your money went to. That you trusted us with your anger and money was hugely intense and scary.
We were being accused of stealing the money because we weren’t an established charity– we weren’t an established anything. We were a few women that had pooled our anger and skills to give women a safe space for a moment of silence. And then we were a few women that had sued the police. And then we were a few women entrusted with half a million dollars to help vulnerable women that had suffered at the hands of men.
And then our fairy Godmother of the story stepped in. Whilst doing emergency research and trying to figure out the most responsible and diligent way to donate the money and make sure it actually got to the women we wanted to benefit, we kept being told about Rosa for Women.
We donated the money 6 days later, but then the work on making sure the money went to the right place began. Ludo and I wanted to stay involved and our learning curve was steep, but the advisory board answered every question big and small. It was two years with an incredible group of women who understood fundraising and understood that money can be so tied up in restrictions once granted that it can’t actually be used in the ways that can keep a charity afloat and future proof it.
I hated how long some of the meetings were and how complicated it was to ensure that we were helping groups in every region and in the socio economic groups that needed it the most. But the hundred hours that we and the rest of the group spent deciding the criteria and then accepting applications and then deciding where the money would go were incredibly educational.
I am so grateful for the dedication and time of those women who have given their lives to make the world safer for the women they serve. They gave their time and expertise to Ludo and I and to Rosa. Rosa’s team did another hundred hours of due diligence on every application and there are lots of stories, but the one that stayed with me was there was a charity for Roma and Traveller women. And the grant application only asked for £8,000 and gave an itemised tally of where the money would go. They didn’t have an expert writing grant applications. They didn’t have the guidance of some of the other organisations on how you phrase your needs and wants and didn’t have the management support that other charities were clearly using on their applications. But Ludo and I asked if we were allowed to offer them the full £25,000 and some mentorship to help them know where to best apply the funds to help the most women.
And we awarded them the full £25,000. That happened because we asked the question and Rosa found them a CEO to help mentor the management of the charity. That’s not like the questions we are asked about the impact we have had on the police vetting. This is tangible.
You trusted us with your money. You believed that we would do everything in our power to use that money to save women’s lives. And not only did we do that; Rosa found private donors to cover the overhead costs that keeps the lights on at Rosa and does all of the due diligence about grant applications. That brought the advisory group together (we were all volunteers) but needed a great deal of time to create the fund, decide on who was eligible and then distribute it.
And the fund still exists. We need you to support it now. Not because a women was just murdered by a police officer, but because the women we are helping to save are not saved by society. They are not protected, they are not believed and they suffer at the hands of male violence. We need to not just fundraise in the aftermath of yet another brutal murder, but we need to support those among us that have been hurt the most.
I remain on the advisory board of the Stand With Us Fund. I remain a campaigner for women’s safety and police reform for Reclaim These Streets.
And I am so overwhelmingly proud of the Reclaim These Streets ‘Clapham Nine’ who made a hard decision that night in March of 2021 and saved lives because of it. What an honour to have been able to donate your money to Rosa. And what an honour to watch it have an impact.
In solidarity with Sarah and all women and girls whose lives have been affected by male violence. For Sabina. For Bibaa. For Nicole. For Zara Aleena. For Ashling. For all of them and all of us and for all those that need protecting. Women can not stop male violence against us and when we talk about justice for women, we are usually already dead. Men need to stop killing us. The work is no where near done, but tonight I am going to sleep well.