Disabled People Against Cuts and Extinction Rebellion are today unveiling their Virtual Reality Kill the Bill protest, as part of the National Day of Action to resist the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts (PCSC) bill which is currently going through Parliament.
Participants in today’s trial will be able to attend today’s central London protest remotely in a digital space designed to look exactly like the real world site. They will be able to view artwork and imagery provided by today’s organisers on billboards around the site.
They will be able to speak to representatives from some of the groups who are staffing virtual stalls within the site.
Those attending will be able to take selfies and post to social media.
Attendees in the real world site can click on a link to the game website Mozilla Hubs and join their counterparts in VR to chat and chant together.
Those onsite in the real world can also join using a VR headset provided by XR.
This will allow disabled people and others who can’t physically attend to do more than just physically watch livestreams – now they can participate and share in an experience which is as close to the real thing as has been attempted so far.
The Kill the Bill Coalition statement says that those living at the sharpest edge of state violence will be made unsafe if this bill becomes law.
This overwhelmingly includes disabled people. For decades disabled people have experienced State violence first-hand through long-stay hospitals and institutions such as Assessment and Treatment Units. Most recently, policies and legislation enacted by successive governments under the guise of austerity caused the UK government to be found guilty by the United Nations of grave and systematic violations of disabled people’s rights due to the sheer depth and scale of their adverse impacts.
Currently, a government prioritising a public finance landgrab over the health of its citizens has seen hundreds of thousands of people dead – a significant majority of them being disabled people.
The limited rights and freedoms disabled people have today were only achieved by disabled people coming together historically to take part in collective forms of protest and civil disobedience. In these ways we held a mirror up to society and challenged it to do better and forced changes that improved the lives of disabled people.
Such actions will be criminalised under the PCSC bill.
The bill targets other communities such as migrants, sex workers and the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities. DPAC reaffirms our solidarity with those communities and our commitment to campaign alongside them to kill this bill “with all the means at our disposal”.
To allow this bill to pass without resistance is to condemn all of us to a bleak future, and for many disabled people, no future at all.
As we move into a post-COVID world, it’s more important than ever that we create the kind of society where disabled people and other oppressed communities are drivers for cultural and systemic change. That can only be achieved by a society that is willing to include the voices from those communities – especially when they dissent. That is how inclusive societies are defined.
Technology and our emergence into the digital age bring opportunities for disabled people and other previously marginalised communities to be part of shaping social change in ways not possible before.
We must grab these opportunities.
Today, through our Virtual Reality protest we explore and ask questions about what might be possible.
Andy Greene.
