Celebrating and Reflecting on 2024

First and foremost, we want to say a massive thank you for continuing to support our work in addressing legacies of colonialism and imperialist violence throughout 2024. Your commitment to us and the movement has meant everything.

Last year was challenging – our communities endured escalating colonial violence and oppression, ongoing genocides and ecocides across the globe and a surge in far-right extremism culminating in the Summer 2024 riots across the UK, where people seeking asylum, refugees and racialised communities were targeted. We also faced the profound loss of many loved ones.

In the spirit of Sankofa, we recognise the power of remembering, learning and carrying forward the resilience of our communities. Looking back not only honours our struggles and victories, but strengthens our collective resistance.

In this blog, we embrace this spirit by sharing key moments of our work last year and reaffirming our commitment to our vision – of ending racial injustice and addressing legacies of colonialism.

Reflecting on 2024

We started the year with a big change – we welcomed Anu Priya as Interim CEO as our founder and CEO, Peninah Wangari-J went on parental leave. Their focus in the year was strengthening our internal infrastructure that in the short and long-term supports our commitment to centring the most marginalised.

We spent more time together exploring interdependencies in our work, clarifying processes and structures that support us to do our work well and be well in doing our work. We also continued our work to hold spaces that are caring and nurturing for our communities alongside our work to speak truth to power, challenging the systemic and systematic oppressions our communities face.

Highlights

We held several events and spaces this year; some of our highlights are:

Peace Lotus Day

‘Histories, Communities and Cultures of Resistance’: We were honoured to welcome back Elder and Professor Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o alongside Esther Xosei, Peninah Wangari-J, and Ndungi Githuku. Esther shared the importance of Peace Lotus Day, and there was a panel discussion reflecting on the importance of standing in solidarity with global movements against oppression, and the lessons of resilience found within these struggles. If you weren’t able to join us on this day, there’s a recording of the conversation available here.

Documentary Launch: As part of honouring Peace Lotus Day, we also were proud to launch a documentary highlighting 2023 Decolonial International Symposium. The documentary summarises all the amazing activities we held during the symposium and you can find it here.

‘Gift-sharing and Facilitation’: Wharf Radical Lending library hosted Stop the Scan, Yorkshire Resists and Voices that Shake for a day of Unity and Activism. During this gathering, Stop the Scan (STS) also hosted a workshop exploring the connection between surveillance technology and the disruption of war-driven mining and conflict minerals in Global Majority countries like the Congo. If you’d like to learn more about the history of Peace Lotus Day, you can find some resources here.

Community Safety Forum

In September, we co-hosted a community forum in collaboration with Harehills Action Team and StopWatch UK where we looked at the power that exists within our communities and how to harness this to create safer communities. Throughout the day “Community Safety: Reimagined” cultivated a space recognising the power of the everyday not only through the assertion of alternative narratives by grassroots media, like East Side Story but also through an exercise where we began to map where our safer world, starting with our communities, could be created. This event was particularly meaningful for our team, as it reinforced our commitment to nurturing spaces of care.

A big thank you to all those who contributed to all the wonderful insights throughout the day and to all of our amazing speakers: Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan, Cristina Maria Garcia; Goodness Woodhead; and Rizwaan Sabir, Edwina Thomas and Janine Griffiths.

If you’d like to learn more about the forum and alternatives to calling the police, you can find some of our most recent blog posts here.

Wrapping Up the Year: Gather Up 2024

We closed the year with our annual Gather Up Celebration. Our Gather Up always features an AGM and a celebration, reflecting on what has been, listening to our communities and sharing offerings throughout the day. Gather Up is also a special opportunity to connect with our wider network as well as members of our local communities. This year, to further this we incorporated a community exhibition centered on the theme of Black Joy, Resistance, and Repair, spotlighting Black artists from across the UK and particularly West Yorkshire. The exhibition featured pieces of work that celebrate aspects of the Black identity that have been devalued by Western ideologies and as well as pieces that pay tribute to the leaders and activists whose work continues to inspire us such as Marcia Brown’s ‘WE STAND ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS – THE BRISTOL BUS BOYCOTT LEGACY’.

The day also featured a moving session led by Mama D of Community Centered Knowledge. In their sessions we explored what it means to navigate our interwoven ‘underground railroads’ that support us to always reconnect, remember, resist and repair. This was in addition to our usual schedule such as our AGM which was led by some of our our trustees; Farha, Alex and Yvonne. A storytelling workshop led by Taiwo from Africaniwa, a pop-up book stall courtesy of Wharf Chamber’s Radical Lending Library and a live recording of our new and upcoming podcast.

We were thrilled to sit down with Loraine Masiya Mponela, an award-winning author and activist, for a live conversation primarily focused on what was witnessed and experienced by asylum seekers during the riots last August. This was in addition to conversations on navigating the hostile environment, the emotional and psychological toll of seeking asylum in the UK, and a reading from her poetry book. This heartwarming discussion was just a taste of what’s to come in RJN’s first podcast season, “Communities of Resistance.” This upcoming series will share stories, strategies, and the inner resilience of communities resisting imperialism, colonial violence, and oppression in all its forms. Continue to watch this space!

Looking Ahead to 2025

We bid farewell to Anu Priya and are delighted to welcome back Peninah Wangari-J.This year, we’re deepening our commitment to repairing harm caused by the hostile environment, including launching a monthly conversation space focused on community safety and healing, held by Antonia Lee from RJN, Harehills Action Team and StopWatch UK.

Since the beginning of the year we have already held the first session; RISE! REPAIR! REBUILD! which is a conversation space for community, safety, and healing. Each monthly session will be centred on the communities we hope and dream to live within and the steps we can take to transform our living conditions. There is limited capacity for this event so be sure to sign up as soon as possible when available.

We are also looking forward to launching our first ever podcast where we are committed to amplifying the voices of those most marginalised and learning from the strategies of those who are doing the work and who have come before us.

To everyone who has walked this journey with us – whether by attending events, sharing space, or supporting in other ways – we are deeply grateful. Your commitment is what makes this work possible. Here’s to another year of collective resistance and community care.

With warmth and solidarity,

The RJN Team

Celebrating and Reflecting on 2024