Fownhope’s Heart of Oak Society traces its roots to the age of friendly societies, when communities provided their own safety net. Its anniversary celebrations reveal a tradition still very much alive, says MARK SEDDON
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Disabled campaigners take pride in our tradition of resistance
On the International Day of Disabled People, ELLEN CLIFFORD looks back on the activism of Disabled People Against Cuts and assesses the prospects for the future of radical anti-austerity politics
EMOTIVE: Nathan Lee Davies is an independent living campaigner in Wrexham. His collages express the intense frustrations of inadequate social care support and depict the loneliness and isolation of disabled people in a right-wing Conservative world
ANGUS REID explains the significance of Cuba’s egalitarian in letter and spirit Family Code and the pertinent lessons it holds for democracies anywhere in the world
Special report by PEOPLE’S WORLD
NICK WRIGHT considers how the isolation of Israel and a new film on the controversial Italian communist leader are creating new reference points for Italy’s left
CARLOS MARTINEZ says Cuba’s achievements in the face of a criminal blockade are startling, but the island’s future if the United States succeeds in crushing it looks bleak
AMNON BROWNFIELD STEIN reports that far-right MPs who mobbed the event organised by Hadash may have helped raise awareness of the brutality of the Israeli right
AT THE end of one of the hardest years in living memory, disabled campaigners are determined to make celebrations for this year’s International Day of Disabled People extra special.
After a decade of austerity and welfare reform measures deliberately designed to hit disabled people hardest, along came Covid-19 and official responses to the pandemic that explicitly rated disabled people’s lives as worth less than those of non-disabled people.
The year 2020 was also the anniversary of two important disability-related milestones: the first was the passage of the Disability Discrimination Act in 1995; the other was the founding of Disabled People Against Cuts.
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DAI O’BRIEN, one of the festival’s DeafZone co-ordinators explains