This event stemmed from a community of organisations based in Manchester, made up of Windrush Defenders Legal C.I.C, the West Indian Sports and Social Club, Louise DaCocodia Education Trust and Arawak Walton Housing Association. Channels Research Group were pleased to be asked to design and facilitate the forum which wouldn't have sounded right without the mix from Megadread of Megatone Sound System playing throughout the morning.
The invited speakers expanded the frame of the "Windrush Scandal" exposing the limits in the current design of justice, with the Director of the WIndrush Taskforce himself admitting the compensation scheme cannot deliver justice. From the personal testimonies of those affected by the Windrush Scandal, we were able to see the multiple ways institutional racism affects areas of individual and community life. We would therefore like to again thank our panelists invited to speak across the five themes of Community Cohesion, Criminal Justice, Education, Health and Work.
Recommendations (current-edit)
The report recommendations drawn from this Burning Work Digtal Forum:
Community Cohesion
Create new legislation for a permanent African Caribbean community cohesion fund for organisations to apply for funding projects which seek to address and abolish racial disparities. Design the fund to deliver social, cultural, and economic projects in the UK and the Caribbean that engages victims and their wider communities to tell stories and inspire social re-engagement and economic reconstruction that repairs the serious harm
reported in the Windrush Lessons Learned Review.
Design independent forums to workshop the process of constructing, communicating and implementing policy decisions to ensure new measures don't cause disproportionate harm along lines of class, race, gender and disability.
Develop a network of lawyers to provide pro bono legal assistance to challenge unsatisfactory compensation decisions and the impact on African Caribbeans from the hostile environment
across the five themes of Community Cohesion, Criminal Justice, Education, Health, and Work.
Build digital community infrastructure to inform and connect organisations, recruit volunteers and coordinate the aims of strategic partners working to abolish racial disparities across the five themes of Community Cohesion, Criminal Justice, Education, Health, and Work.
Criminal Justice
Create and amplify independent, democratic and community led structures to examine and abolish the reproduction of racial disparities in the criminal justice system.
Workshop and develop Charles Crichlow's T-A-S-E-R (Transparency, Accountability, Scrutiny, Education, Reparation) criminal justice reform model with communities.
Increase funding for community organisations working against the school-to-prison-pipeline in order to prevent the requirement for police and probation interventions.
Education
Gather insights from organisations aiming to decolonise the curriculum
to widen Black historical perspectives in education and abolish the institutional structures which reproduce racial disparities in outcomes.
Formulate statutory legislation to increase funding for community initiatives addressing the needs of Black families in supporting pupils.
Develop and fund digital Supplementary Schools to raise educational attainment.
Health
Design an independent inquiry to investigate the racial disparities in the Covid 19 fatality rate.
Work in collaboration with community health network groups which platform testimony as a means to identify and organise around structural health inequalities.
Examine institutional practices and curate research on new legal duties that would abolish racial disparities in health.
Work
Critically examine public policy infrastructures designed to reduce ethnic labour market disadvantages such as the Ethnic Minority Employment Task Force.
Fund the design and implementation of projects that offer training, internships and employment opportunities to the African Caribbean community.
Design forums which examine institutional practices and procedures abolishing racial discrimination within work places.