Solidarity Is A Verb – they are our neighbours

JVL’s Education and Anti Racist Alliance Working Groups recently held a seminar ‘Solidarity is a Verb’ looking at how active solidarity was built in Glasgow and to inspire us to consider how to build towards such solidarity in our own areas.

We are pleased to share Mohammad Asif’s introduction to the workshop. Himself an Afghani refugee, arriving in April 2000; he recalls arriving in Glasgow in the early hours of the morning and was rather quickly disillusioned: he had always understood that Britain was a country committed to equality and equal treatment but that was not his experience, nor that of other refugees in the YMCA hostel.  From then, together with colleagues, he has spent much of his time campaigning for and supporting refugees but firmly in the context of also standing alongside the long-term residents in those poorer areas in which they found themselves, linking, eg with Positive Action in Housing.

Consistent work over those 22 years included campaigning against raids to take asylum seekers into detention and face deportation. He acknowledged the actions of the “Glasgow Girls”(see eg here) and other actions in support of asylum seekers and against the actions of the Home Office.

Last May (2021) enough momentum had been built up that two asylum seekers were released from a Home Office van as a result of local people blocking the road.  This is a link is a report and a video of that specific action.  The story is inspiring for those of us who stand with and for refugees.

Mohamed describes what happened and the work that led to unity across the different communities, who refuse to “other” asylum seekers, instead chanting, “they are our neighbours”.  The struggles for refugee and asylum seeker rights, the struggles of working class communities in Britain and the need for peace cannot be separated.