No Men in Women's Prisons demonstration 29 March in London

[IwantToRetire]

So I am in fact going to start with my usual gripe. Firstly this is only on twiX, one of the least used social media platforms, and the info is only available as a graphic which means even if you are on twiX by have some sort of visual impairment you wont be able to read it anyway.

Is being on twiX just about virtue signalling to others.

And no it wasn't the power of twiX that meant I found out about it, but because someone shared it on facebook.

See attached graphic for info

Maybe someone could type up the text?!

PROTEST OUTSIDE THE MINISTRY OF JUSTICE

NO MEN IN WOMENS PRISONS

Join us outside the MOJ in London
1pm on Saturday 29 March
to protest about our governments continued placement
of men in women's prisons

Male supporters welcome

Ministry of Justice, 102 Petty France, London, SQ1H 9AJ

1pm 29/3/25

Join us?
Who is organising this? The poster doesn't say

Apologies. got so caught up with how difficult this was to deal with I left out the link.

It looks like a new groups that joined twiX in February.

See https://x.com/NoMinWPrisons

I am not on twiX but maybe somebody who is can ask.

Part of me is more than willing to believe they are a fantastic group, but it is a bit hard to know what to think.

There maybe exchanges on twiX that give more understanding of their politics etc..

Thanks. I'm on X so I'll have a look

From my limited access can see that KPSS is used a lot so wonder if it is an off shoot of the original KPSS.

So I am sure many others would like to support even if only on line.

I know that as there isn't like a feminist central where things to be shared could be added, but realise that with less than a days notice not many will be able to attend.

Or maybe FWR is feminist central.

With notice i would have tried to go, although unlikely I would be able. Doubtless if there is a poor turnout it will be used to show only a few bigots think there is an issue....

I'll be there in spirit only I'm afraid, this is definitely one of the outrages that 'triggers' the most foul language from me.
Good luck with the protest to all those who can attend. 👏👍

I heard about it through word of mouth. I think quite a lot of women are going.

Where do you think they should be sharing stuff, @IwantToRetire?

It went extremely well & there were about 60 of us.

We are just a bunch of grassroots activists. No alliance to any group. We got together through communication via women’s what’s app groups. The message was shared, women joined us. We are not funded, affiliated or ‘organised’. A banner was passed from woman to woman, travelling via car, train and bus between women’s prisons, until we’d covered them all, - over a three month period, There is a wonderful video of this. On the 25th January we did a synchronised protest at women’s prisons across the UK. Then we street terfed, we attended city centres and handed out leaflets to the public. Today we met outside of the Ministry of Justice, we got some press coverage, and hopefully they’ll be more tomorrow, as there was many freelancers there. We had speeches from Sarah Phillimore, Bernadette O’Malley and Joan Smith. It was wonderful.We did this with our own resources and our own time. We thad a wonderful day with wonderful women.

Is it on again tomorrow 30th March?

No, we are just hoping there will be more coverage of today. There will be reactions to come though.

*actions, not reactions - sorry, I need glasses probably, but I’m resisting.

Well done, sounds excellent!

It really was, the group organically formed, we didn’t ask about each others politics, no men in women’s prisons was our only concern. The absurdity of the policy, as it stands was enough for us all to put significant personal effort into it. If you are not aware of the policy, I encourage you to read it. Although an improvement on what was previously there, they can still put men in women’s prisons, and they still do - there are so many loopholes.

I am just talking about sheer numbers. To opt for only twiX which is basically a few thousand rather than facebook which is in the zillions.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/

That's all.

But appreciate that word of mouth is often more effective. Nearly a match to the old fashioned telephone tree

As is having the title of a thread on FWR on MN which is why I added it!

Search engines love MN thread titles.

Thanks to you all for your efforts, I hope you can keep up the pressure, I noticed on MSN that the Telegraph have a piece about it and most of the comments were in support of your actions. 👏👍😁

As already said above, it was a grassroots collaboration of women from around the country that started last summer.
Calls went out via WhatsApp to feminist groups asking women if they were interested in continuing the 'boots on the ground" approach to the prison issue.
Women who replied joined together to organise a national one day protest outside every female prison in England and Scotland in October.
Tommy Robinson chose the same date for his second protest in London so we decided to postpone until January.
In that time we took a banner to every prison in the female estate and put videos out to promote our efforts.
We then went out in small groups over 2 months to do St terfing talking to communities.
The protest at the MOJ Yesterday was the end of this two months of activism.
All of these actions were sent out in feminist groups across the country, it was not a secret.
Although one large group had sent out a communication last summer to all its members telling them that they were not allowed to wear their merch or identify themselves as part of their group. This dissuaded a number of women from joining the action.
We got quite a lot of negative feedback from members of the organisation and it was quite disheartening to all of us working really hard on the project. Funnily enough they have shared a tweet about it now.
This isn't the end, plans are afoot for future grassroots organising for St terfing and other larger protests.
If you are interested, there are WhatsApp groups for each prison in the female estate where local organisation happens.
We have pdf leaflets you can print off to hand out when you're St terfing and a postcard to send to your MP at the house of commons.
If you are on X follow the

@NoMinWPrisons.

Oh... and members of our group were told explicitly to stop posting our grass roots action on the large organisation.

Very well done, i was in london yesterday visiting dd but could not make it there in time. She would have loved to have come, she is much more feministy than she used to be

Fyi
The next prison protest is planned for 28th June at MOJ in Leeds.

Leaflets will be out soon.

I might be able to get to that - is there a mailing list? DM me (after checking me out!) if you prefer not to advertise it.

It is an open event advertised on SM.
Mostly women but male allies are welcome.

Thanks. I'm only on Facebook - is there anywhere particularly i should be looking as i can't find a relevant group (although could easily have missed one - there are a LOT!)?

We don't have a Facebook group for the campaign. We are all volunteers and do mostly use twitter.
I posted on here because women were upset that it was only on twitter and not on mums net.
I don't use this platform and have no idea what I'm doing on here lol.
My Facebook is private.