RRJ / Remember & Resist Announcement

We are really pleased and honoured to have been awarded funding for ‘Long Term Structural Change’ from the Resourcing Racial Justice (RRJ) fund. We’d like to extend our sincere thanks to the RRJ team for choosing us and for all their work.

With this funding, we are initiating a new project ‘Remember and Resist’ led by members of daikon* and the Remember the Essex 39 campaign. This project is dedicated to expanding our work exploring and resisting the impact of borders and state violence on East and Southeast Asian communities in the UK.

The broad aims of this project are:

To develop an abolitionist practice and vocabulary for East and Southeast Asian diaspora organising in the UK through thinking, writing and organising within our communities

To unearth histories and lived experiences of migration, border controls, and the carceral metropole amongst East and Southeast Asian communities, rooting these in structures of global capitalism

To build stronger networks of support and solidarity within East and Southeast Asian community groups, particularly for those experiencing state violence and neglect

To develop analyses grounded in anti-racism, anti-capitalism and anti-imperialism, building connections and solidarity with other racialised and marginalised groups

This project was borne out of the Remember the Essex 39 campaign and is also a result of ongoing thinking about the meaning and value of organising politically as East and Southeast Asian diaspora. While the historic invisibilisation of East and Southeast Asian communities in the UK has led to a lack of traditional political representation, it has also served to protect many of us - particularly East Asians with citizenship - from hyper-surveillance and state violence. Within our communities, there often remains a reluctance to acknowledge the ways we interact with and uphold racist and capitalist structures, to the ultimate detriment of all - particularly those at the sharp end of state violence and exploitation, including working class / black and brown / queer and trans people / undocumented or irregular migrants.

With Sinophobia and different forms of anti-East and Southeast Asian racism on the rise, we seek to work against liberal approaches to injustice that isolate racism faced by our communities from broader global structures of anti-Black and anti-Muslim racism, capitalism, imperialism, and colonisation. We also reject all nationalisms and seek to move beyond struggles rooted in the idea of the nation-state as a vehicle for liberation. We believe that liberatory struggle requires solidarity across anti-racist, anti-capitalist and decolonial struggles.

To this end, we will be running a series of projects over the coming year. The first of these projects will look at abolitionist approaches to hate crime, and will involve workshops, resources and writing dedicated to building capacity for community-led responses to racist violence, and forming critical analyses of the ways in which the state weaponises anti-racism for its own ends.

You can follow us on instagram @remember.resist and Twitter @remember_resist. Website in progress. Any questions can also be directed to remember.resist@gmail.com!