From the importance of not seeing ourselves as criminal to questioning who determines what and who is criminalized, we know that change is possible because we’re already doing that work.
The Curated Conversation "Freeing Ourselves: Challenging Criminalization & Stigmas" was held with RESURJ and Accountability International to explore strategies to challenge criminalization, resist stigmas and build collective freedoms for all.
We compile here a series of resources for you to continue engaging in this work.
READ
- AWID’s report "Building solidarity between feminist movements and women resisting the war on drugs" (English, also available in Russian and Spanish)
- Why drug policy is a feminist issue, analysis by AWID (English, also available in French and Spanish)
- Young people calling for folks to to stop “protecting” them & instead listen (English)
- International Drug Policy Consortium article on the need to decolonize drug policies (English)
- Eastern Europe and Central Asia regional, women-led, community based research on HIV criminalization (Russian)
- Article from the International AIDS coalition: Drogues : les femmes usagères face à la stigmatisation (French)
WATCH
Resurj with feminists networks and organizations in Latin-America launched the campaign “Injusta Justicia” (Spanish)
LISTEN
Crackdown podcast (English) - Episode 8: The Cost of Cereal
- Men are dying at a higher rate than women during the opioid crisis, which means women sometimes get left out of the conversation. In this episode, Crackdown goes to SisterSpace, North America’s first women-only safe consumption
Freeing Ourselves playlist
- Get inspired by a selection of songs by AWID staff and partners about Freedom and Resistance
QUOTE
SHOUTOUT
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Simama campaign, by Accountability International |
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CAISO is committed to ensuring wholeness, justice and inclusion for Trinidad and Tobago’s LGBTQI |
SPEAKERS' BIOS
Angelique V. Nixon
Angelique is a Bahamas-born, Trinidad-based writer, artist, scholar, activist, and community worker. Active in Caribbean movements for social and environmental justice, Angelique is committed to intersectional queer feminist praxis, decolonial politics and Black liberation. She is a director of the feminist LGBTI organisation CAISO: Sex & Gender Justice, and leads a human rights, activity-based project called “Sexual Culture of Justice” working to end gender based violence and LGBTI discrimination in Trinidad and Tobago by transforming harmful gender and sexual norms. CAISO: Sex and Gender Diversity has worked for over a decade as a consistent voice and face for LGBTQI issues shifting the needle measurably in how Trinidad and Tobago imagines, understands and talks about sex/gender diversity. We have successfully built alliances among LGBTQI groups, with other T&T NGOs and movements and internationally. CAISO’s collaborations have developed interventions and capacity to deliver justice and build resilience.
Phillipa Tucker
Phillipa is a freelance researcher and part-time Programmes Director at Accountability International. In 2015, Accountability International began the Challenging Criminalisation Globally Project as a way to catalyse cross-movement involvement in rethinking and re-strategising around how a larger variety of stakeholders can challenge criminalisation collectively, with a particular focus on communities and civil society from the global South. This project aims to accelerate the work being done on criminalisation, and ultimately to eliminate the human rights abuses of marginalised people.
Philasande Mahlakata
Philasande is a farmer and chairperson of an essential oil producing cooperative in the Eastern Cape region in South Africa, a community activist and project coordinator for uMziMvubu Farmers Support Network, an organization advocating for the legalization of cannabis farming for commercial purposes and the inclusion of subsistence farmers within the fast growing global cannabis industry.
Svitlana (Sveta) Moroz
Sveta is an HIV-positive human rights activist from Ukraine. Sveta leads the Eurasian Women’s Network on AIDS (EWNA) that conducted women-led community based research "HIV criminalization Scan in EECA" and then launched the regional campaign "HIV is not a crime!" in the EECA region.
Mirta (Michi) Moragas
Michi is a feminist activist and human rights defender from Paraguay. She belongs to Resurj, a global alliance of south feminists working to realize sexual & reproductive justice. Resurj with feminists networks and organizations in Latin-America launched the campaign “Injusta Justicia”.
Tamara-Jade Kaz
Tamara-Jade is a facilitator, illustrator and visual notetaker whose work centres social action. Based in London (UK), she has a background working in gendered violence prevention from Black feminist perspective. She is passionate about facilitating and capturing conversations that reflect on group culture, structural power and how we get free. Tamara-Jade sees her visual notetaking practice as an opportunity to tell the stories that may otherwise be erased in an accessible and engaging way.