9 – 23 July 2024

In this week’s Calendar of Racism and Resistance, the disturbances in Harehills, east Leeds, which started after children from a Roma family were forcibly taken by social services, loom large. We chart the fight-back of the community, particularly the Roma and BME young people, to the multiple harms experienced, including the spread of far-right and racist disinformation online.

The proliferation of far-right disinformation on social media is a key driver of violence on the ground, as shown by anti-asylum protests in Coolock, Dublin, where a site earmarked for people seeking asylum has been set on fire three times. IRR director Liz Fekete will be discussing how far-right disinformation fuels racism at the Féile an Phobail in Belfast in August, alongside Shane O’Curry from the Irish Network Against Racism (INAR) and US-based community safety practitioner Hilary Moore. Book your tickets here.

In this difficult context, in which notions around scarcity are manipulated to stoke hatred and fuel division, it’s crucial to recognise the links between struggles in order to combat nativism and build a wider culture of solidarity. Writing for IRR News, Sophia Siddiqui highlights the interconnections between migrant and disability justice, by analysing how attacks on disability welfare follows a similar trajectory to the attack on asylum welfare in the 1990s, with the spread of stigmatising rhetoric and dehumanising policies. Read the piece here.