Black Lives STILL Matter: Hafid’s take on the last few months and the BLM Movement

I was 2 months into my new role at Camden Giving when lockdown was announced in March and we decided to set up our Covid-19 Emergency Fund. This raised more than £150,000 in just over a week, which none of us could have ever imagined, and it has now almost reached £500,000 in donations. 100% of this has gone to or is going to charities and not for profit organisations in Camden.

I was asked to phone all of our grantees to find out how they were doing, what they were up to and to see how we could support them. This was really nice on a personal level at a difficult time because of how flexible we were able to be and hearing people’s reactions to me just giving them a call and checking up on them made it that tiny bit sweeter.

What inspired me the most was how creative everyone was being, doing things in a way which they’d never had to do before and probably didn’t even ever plan on doing. My favourite example of this is North London Cares who managed to set up their social club for elderly people that they usually did in person online. I’ve lived with my grandmother my whole life and I’ve really struggled to even get her to play a YouTube video on our TV!

What really stood out to me though, especially as it is something that I could have never anticipated, is that one of the projects that we funded through our emergency fund, a photography project by the Sir Hubert Van Herkomer Arts Foundation for young people titled “Living in a pandemic”, would result in these historic images, taken at a Black Lives Matter protest, in the middle of a Global Pandemic.

It’s really sad that even with coronavirus, racism is still the biggest pandemic mankind has ever faced. The young person behind the pictures chose to put Black Lives before their own health, just to highlight the point that Black people deserve to get treated the same as everyone else. I attended a few of these protests myself and it was really encouraging to see that young people showed up in incredible numbers, showing up on behalf of people not able to go, making their voices heard loud and peacefully.

I was really struggling to find the words to articulate myself correctly until I watched a video by BT Sports between Rio Ferdinand and Trent-Alexander Arnold in which they were discussing racism in football. Trent said something that really stood out to me and probably summed up how we all feel: “I think racism as a whole is not only the person that it’s directed at, just because I haven’t been directly racially abused, doesn’t mean I haven’t felt racially abused. In my childhood, when my friends told me that they’ve been racially abused, I feel the pain that they feel. It’s a community feeling, if you say it to one person you say it to everyone.”

Although I am and consider myself Black, it genuinely hurts me to say that I have benefited from my skin colour not being Black. Not being followed when I enter a shop. Not being subject to racial profiling by the police as often as some of my peers are. Not having people hold onto their phones and belongings tightly or crossing over to the other side of the road when they see me. These are just some of the injustices Black people face on a daily basis. Do you truly understand how insane it is that although we are all part of the same world, based on the colour of our skin, we live in completely separate worlds?

That is why my favourite thing about Camden Giving is having community panellists making all our funding decisions. To date, we have recruited 65 Camden residents, 35 of which was during lockdown alone and done virtually.

As well as enabling me to learn from fellow Camden residents with different experiences to mine, it ensures that our decision making is done by a diverse group of Camden residents who probably previously would have never had the opportunity to play such a big part in their community and decide where funding goes.

It also gives us the opportunity to have our ears to the ground, people with lived experiences of the inequalities faced by residents in Camden are making sure that funding is going to the right people and the right places. Our emergency fund panel committed to getting funding to organisations whose primary focus was BAME communities, having seen the significant effect Covid-19 was having on them however this alone is not enough to tackle the injustices that they face.

It’s been really amazing seeing how much people have come together all over the world to voice these concerns. We’ve already seen so many changes, some things I didn’t even realise there was an issue and needed changes which genuinely worries me such as statues and street names. I’ve particularly liked businesses and organisations coming out holding their hands up and admitting to what they’ve been doing wrong and how they are working towards fixing it. I really hope that all these changes aren’t just temporary changes and is something we keep on our minds constantly as this is the only way we’ll ever be able to make the much-needed change.

One thing that this period has taught me is that we are so much stronger together as one, when we come together to tackle an issue, nothing can stop us. The inequality that exists in Camden is genuinely so unfair considering the amount of wealth in the area and this has only been highlighted more in the current climate.

I’m not even saying this as a Camden Giving staff member but as a Camden resident, I believe that Camden Giving is placed in such a unique position in being able to unite businesses and residents to tackle these inequalities. Not only are we able to get funding from businesses but with the belief that everyone has something to give, whether it is time or money, being able to co-ordinate volunteers from these businesses who are then able to use their skills to help smaller organisations really does go a long way. To date, we have placed 140+ volunteers from businesses to help charities from Camden.

I must say that I am genuinely excited for the future of Camden Giving and I am even more hopeful that the togetherness we have seen throughout this pandemic will continue even when it’s all over. It would be a real shame if everyone just went back to normal as the inequalities that existed before Covid-19 were further highlighted throughout the pandemic and I believe people are more aware of these issues now.

I will end this all in saying that I am definitely no expert in racial matters and I do not even think I have any solutions to bring about major change. What I do know though is that change starts from within. We all have a duty individually to make sure that we are constantly educating ourselves and seeing how we can make lives equal (not better, just equal) for Black Lives. Just because you haven’t personally experienced it, doesn’t mean it’s not real. Racism is very real and unfortunately, in 2020, still exists in most parts of our society.