Politics and Hope – We can still choose a different path (BSL Interpreted)

This event will have a BSL interpreter 

The politics of culture wars are febrile and unstable. For queer people, this war has been waged for generations and yet the community always seems to find a sliver of light – of hope – on the horizon. And in promising something new, something better, that hope continues to encourage and engender faith in the future. 

Led by writer and journalist Sharan Dhaliwal (Burning My Roti), panellists Leah Cowan (Why would feminists trust the police), Amelia Abraham (We Can Do Better Than This) and Owen Jones (The Establishment. And how they get away with it) will imagine big solutions –  abolitionist futures, a real feminist revolution and an end to patriarchy – and small activisms that could (will!) transform hope into reality.

–

Leah Cowan is a writer and editor. She is the former Politics Editor at gal-dem, an online magazine and media platform run by women and non-binary people of colour. Leah also works at Project 17, an advice centre for migrant families who have No Recourse to Public Funds and are facing homelessness and destitution. Her first book, Border Nation: A Story of Migration was published in 2021, and her most recent book Why Would Feminists Trust the Police? was published in June 2024. She/they

Owen Jones is known for his work as a political commentator, broadcaster, author, campaigner, and columnist. He has written three books, including No.1 Bestseller The Establishment and This Land: The Story of A Movement in 2020. He is also a British newspaper columnist, commentator, journalist, author, and political activist. He writes a column for The Guardian and contributes to the New Statesman, Tribune, and The National. He was previously a columnist for The Independent.

Amelia Abraham (she/they) is a journalist and author from London. She writes regularly for The Guardian, The Observer, Dazed and other titles on queer arts, culture and politics. Her books include Queer Intentions: A (Personal) Journey Through LGBTQ+ Culture and We Can Do Better Than This: 35 Voices on the Future of LGBTQ+ Rights. She is currently working on her first novel, about the ghost of a lesbian nun, and her first edited art criticism book, on visualising queer nightlife. 

Sharan Dhaliwal ( founded the UK’s leading South Asian culture magazine Burnt Roti, and Middlesex Pride, an annual free family friendly event centering and celebrating the unheard LGBTQIA+ community in the largely immigrant Middlesex area. She is a freelance commissioning editor for Metro UK and has had bylines in i-D, HuffPost, the Guardian and was on the list of global influential women for the BBC 100 Women 2019. She has also been on the Diva Power List 2022 & 2023, Attitude 101 2023 and nominated for Broadcast, Journalist or Host at the British LGBT Awards in 2023. Her debut non-fiction, Burning My Roti, about how her Asian identity and queerness came up against capitalism and white supremacy, came out in March 2022 by Hardie Grant. Pronouns she/her