The Problem Is The Law: A Movement of Movements for Decriminalisation
Join us at Proposition Studios in Bethnal Green, London for a one-day community event of workshops, debates, discussions. The event will be bringing together activists and campaigners working to decriminalise sex work, drugs, abortion, trans life and access to healthcare.
Together, we want to develop strategies that are explicitly feminist and anti-racist and that focus on tackling the violence, exploitation and harm that happens through the criminalising of our bodies, our work and our lives in working class communities across the country.
Far-right movements, racist pogroms and authoritarian government policies are gaining significant momentum. It’s more critical and urgent than ever to organise and find commonality across our movements.
- The Supreme Court ruling on the legal definition of sex in the Equality Act is a direct attack on trans people’s ability to survive and access public space.
- Scotland's drug-induced death rate is the highest in Europe.
- Recent changes to abortions laws in England and Wales will remove the threat of criminalisation from abortion-seekers themselves, but not from those providing abortion or assisting with access.
- New laws introduce ‘Respect Orders’ – a rebranded version of Anti-Social Behaviour Orders that give the police and local authorities more powers to criminalise poverty and survival techniques such as begging.
No one way works - a diversity of strategies and tactics means we need powerful community campaigns, coordinated advocacy efforts, mutual aid and peer-run services, we need legal infrastructure to be able to operate in the grey zones of the law and we need direct action.
We have a lot to learn from our different histories, movements and lived experiences. By weaving our struggles together we can build power and our collective knowledge. We are united in our belief that the problem is the law and that we have the power to change it so everyone has access to the labour rights, public services, healthcare, resources and the justice and dignity they deserve.
