Decolonising care and criminal justice

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Healthcare and criminal justice: these are systems we are told keep us safe, from the unpredictable wills of our own bodies and from those who want to cause us harm. Yet both manifest systemic discriminatory practices in a society where not all voices or bodies are treated equally. In this electrifying meeting of minds, community organiser, academic and co-author of Abolition Revolution Aviah Sarah Day is joined by doctor, activist, and author of Divided: Racism, Medicine and Why We Need to Decolonise Healthcare Dr Annabel Sowemimo. Together, they will discuss the pervasive legacy of empire, the biases at the heart of modern health care and policing practices, what a decolonial reimagining of our infrastructure could look like, and why it would benefit us all.

Dr Annabel Sowemimo was born and grew up in London, is in her early thirties and is a registrar in sexual health currently working in Leicester. She also runs the charity the Reproductive Justice Initiative which aims to educate and empower specifically BPOC in sexual health matters of all kinds. She’s also working on a PhD at KCL and teaches at KCL, UCL and the London School of Tropical Medicine as well as speaking on all of these matters in the media. The book began as a column on decolonising healthcare for gal-dem. She’s appeared on BBC Two Newsnight, BBC World Service, BBC Radio London, BBC 1Xtra, The Guilty Feminist and many more and contributed to the Guardian, Independent, i paper, Black Ballad, gal-dem and elsewhere.

Aviah Sarah Day is a Black community organiser with Sisters Uncut and Hackney Cop Watch. The rest of her time is spent lecturing in Criminology at Birkbeck, University of London, organising in her trade union branch, and reflecting on how to build workers’ power through anarcho-syndicalism.