While campaigning at Parliament Square, Ben and I only ate the contents of a Red Cross Food parcel which a refused Asylum Seeker might get if they are lucky to have a charity offering them nearby.
Here is a day including Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner of our Red Cross Food Parcel diet!
A Day Of Red Cross Food from Asylum Stories on Vimeo.
During the 2nd week at Parliament Square, Ben and I met with quite a few MP’s and a couple of Lords! All agreed that it was not good to make people destitute, but I learned that the problem is the politics around the issue.
It seems that the Government and MP’s are afraid of what the Tabloids (The Sun, Mail Express, Mirror, etc.) will say if they declare their intentions to house and provide financially for refused asylum seekers.They seem to be aiming for the lowest common denominator instead of leading morally and ethically.
I knew that it is a complicated issue and learned more about the complexities. But I couldn’t understand why we can’t just agree that these destitute refused asylum seekers have human rights and we are wrong to deny them those rights, let alone other ways of supporting them. Some MP’s talked of an Amnesty for those 183,000 (estimated by the Independant Asylum Commision) destitute refused asylum seekers but admitted not having any easy answers to those who will be refused after the Amnesty.
Anyway, here are the MP’s and Lords we met:
Alistair Burt MP
Conservative, North East Bedfordshire
Nia Griffith MP
Labour, Llanelli
Tony Lloyd MP
Labour, Manchester Central
Beverly Hughes MP
Labour, Stretford & Urmston
John Leech MP
Liberal Democrat, Manchester, Withington
Lord Avebury
Liberal Democrat Peer
Lord Roberts of Llandudno
Liberal Democrat Peer
John Cruddas MP
Labour, Dagenham
Neil Gerrard MP
Labour, Walthamstow
Evan Harris MP’s aides
Throughout or 2 weeks at Parliament Square, Ben and I collected signatures for the Still Human Still Here campaign on our placards. We asked people to stamp the words “Still Human Still Here”, in recognition of the bureaucracy of the asylum system, then sign their names next to the stamp. We collected 126 signatures!
The campaing calls on the Government to:
Here are some pictures of us handing in the petition:
We’ve just reached 100 members on our Facebook group. We’ve been uploading pictures and videos to Facebook earlier than putting them on this blog, so join our group to see them earlier!
Ben and I thought we’d like to share the noises of Parliament Square at night with you, our beloved supporters.
The first night we were here, our sleep was very disturbed. I kept wondering whether a car would veer off the road and run into the tents and kill us. That has never happened, fortunately. After a couple of nights, we got used to the constant noise of the traffic plus Big Ben ringing out every 15 minutes! Only revving motorbikes, car horns and sirens wake us up now.
We have been going to bed at 10pm most evenings, sometimes at 9pm because we are so tired, probably from all the talking and planning and also from being outside all day. We wake up at 7.45am in time to get dressed to pray at 8am each morning, but even though we get over 9 hours sleep, I want to go back to sleep when I wake up! It never seems enough.
Anyway, enjoy this video of night-time at Parliament Square:
Night At Parliament Square from Asylum Stories on Vimeo.
It’s even better in High Definition!
You’re enthusiastically invited to our Parliament Protest Picnic on Saturday 11th at 1pm at Parliament Square - of course!
We’d love to gather a whole bunch of friends, family and supporters for a picnic and photo opportunity. Ben and I will strictly be on our Red Cross Food Parcel food but please bring along whatever you’d like to eat and a picnic rug. We’ll also take some photo’s of you holding some of our banners and wearing our StillHumanStillHere T-shirts, if that’s alright?!
If you haven’t been to visit us yet, here’s your opportunity to find out more about the plight of refused asylum seekers in Britain.
Please bring some of your friends too, the more the merrier! See you Saturday!
Ben and I have been living off a Red Cross Food Parcel each for the last week. We have accepted the Endurance Challenge, set by The Boaz Trust, for the 2 weeks that we are living at Parliament Square.
The Food Parcels are not issued by the Government, in fact, a refused, destitute asylum seeker will be lucky if there is a charity nearby offering Food Parcels. For those fortunate enough to have a charity offering food parcels, it is often the only source of food they will get.
Having lived on a food parcel for the last week, it is clear that it is enough to survive. You certainly don’t get your 5-a-day, it’s more like your 5-a-week! It has been put together to try and balance the nutrients the body needs, yet it is not enough. I have felt a low level of hunger throughout the week.
We have a gas stove with us in our tent, but a destitute asylum seeker with no home obviously has no kitchen and no stove. So some items like the pasta and rice can’t be used. Some refused asylum seekers sofa-surf between friends or nice people. In these cases, they will have access to a kitchen, but not everybody is so lucky.
Ben and I have found our meals boring, due to the lack of choice we have over what we have available. We have also thought that some of the food might be very strange to asylum seekers from different countries, like baked-beans or spaghetti hoops!
I’m nowhere near as enthusiastic about our diet going into our second week, I’m tired of feeling hungry.
Ben has just returned from buying our Red Cross Food Parcel for week 2. Here is a video we took last week explaining why we are only eating the contents of a Red Cross Food Parcel, and what it contains:
Food Parcel Shopping from Asylum Stories on Vimeo.
Here are some pictures of some of our supporters, and passers-by, with our banners and wearing our StillHumanStillHere T-Shirts:
An unexpected result of sleeping out in a tent on Parliament Square is that I miss Music.
I realised yesterday while humming that I hadn’t listened to Music for days. It suprised me that I actually listen to music so much that I would miss it! We all enjoy music of some sort, music has a unique power to change and lift your soul - to make you feel happier, or sadder, to help you relax, to process life, to simply enjoy.
But for the destitute with no home to listen to the Music they don’t own through the Sound System they don’t have, the lack of music must be an unconsidered loss, until it dawns on them, like me, that they haven’t heard Music for a long time.
