Report on last night's Belfast Anti Racist meeting

national | rights, freedoms and repression | news report Thursday September 18, 2003 14:15 by Davy Carlin - W/Belfast SWP carlindavid at hotmail dot com

A positive start

The Belfast Anti Racist meeting was held on Sept 17th {last night},

The Belfast anti racist meeting was held on Sept 17th {last night} at the Multi Cultural Resource Centre with in attendance seeing several political parties including, Steven Alexander {Alliance Party press officer} and Alex Maskey {Sinn Fein}. A number of leading law firms also attended including Solicitor Padraigin Drinan and other asylum Practitioners from her office and also a representative from Madden and Finucane Solicitors. Various ethnic minority support groups were in attendance including that of the Chinese Welfare association, the Belfast travellers support group, the Multi cultural Resources centre and the Black Youth Network.Other persons from support networks such as Extern, as well as, other ethnic minority persons, Globalise resistance and other young persons attending - with also seeing the BBC2 News night team in attendance.

A number of firm proposals came out of the meeting such as a working group made up of several of the above to set out a mapping - report process. The Chinese Welfare association said they could facilitate the next meeting at their rooms to be held on Thursday 9th Oct. It was also agreed to draw up a charter for all groups to sign up to and widely circulate within their organisations, communities, Trade -Student unions etc for eventual publication. A network is now being established via E-mail and phone of all those in attendance with others to be approached in the process of getting support for the charter. A website is also to be looked into with links to all the organisations. Other practical, active and visual proposals are also in the short time ahead to be worked on. For me I found it very positive and spoke to various organisations afterwards who felt similar. It was also brought up at the meeting that this could be a base for wider initiatives in coming times and much is to be worked on in the weeks ahead. I will inform persons at a later date of the meeting and other ongoing practicalities. Davy Carlin - Convener