cosmicocean

MY HOME IS ON THE LIST/LIKELY TO BE TARGETED, WHAT CAN I DO?

* it may bring you peace of mind to have a go-bag ready, just in case. A go-bag is a bag with everything in it that you need to get out a volatile situation quickly. Any bag that can be secured (buttoned or zipped) will do. In your go-bag, you should include;

- identifying documents; passport/driver’s license/asylum card/ILR certificate/British Residency permit card

- Wallet and/or banking books

- A spare charger & cable and/or a power bank

- any shelf-stable medication (tablets, inhalers etc.) if you are on medication that needs to be refrigerated, leave it in the fridge until you have to leave

- Sanitary items; toothbrush, toothpaste, sanitary pads & tampons, deodorant. If you have very young children with you, you may also want to take your nappy bag.

* If you have to leave, a go-bag is a convenient way to ensure you have everything of importance with you.

* If you are being supported by an asylum seekers or refugee charity, or are a member of a gurdwara/temple, mosque, synagogue or church, reach out to your religious leaders. They may be able to provide direct support, or put you in contact with organisations or other congregants who can help. If you are friendly with your neighbours, it may be worth contacting them too.

* IN THE EVENT THAT “PROTESTORS” DO COME TO YOUR HOUSE, CALL 999 IMMEDIATELY, AND FOLLOW ANY INSTRUCTIONS THEY GIVE YOU. MOVE AWAY FROM ANY WINDOWS. DO NOT OPEN YOUR DOOR UNLESS INSTRUCTED TO DO SO BY EMERGENCY SERVICES.

I’M AN INTERNATIONAL STUDENT/CARE WORKER/NHS WORKER, WHAT SHOULD I DO?

* Contact your student welfare office/NHS Trust/agency for advice, support and referral to organisations that may be able to provide assistance

* if you live in or commute through an area that is likely to be targeted, contact your lecturers and your faculty to find out whether remote study is possible; if you work in care or as part of the NHS, find out if it is possible to change shifts.

* If it would provide peace of mind, prepare a go-bag as listed above

* Reach out to your the uni society or student’s organisation for international students or students of specific ethnic origin; they may be able to provide you with direction to resources and peer support. If your university has a Marxist or Socialist society, reach out to them for mutual aid with a travel buddy etc., for getting to and from your place of study/work

* If you are a member of a gurdwara/temple, mosque, synagogue or church, reach out to your religious leaders. They may be able to provide direct support, or put you in contact with organisations or other congregants who can help.

* If you are friendly with your neighbours, it may be worth contacting them too for assistance with travel to & from work.

* Report any racism or racialised violence you are subjected to. NHS staff have a right to refuse to treat patients who harass, abuse, threaten or insult them; if a patient is racist to you, where possible, ask another member of staff to take over their care.

PERSONAL SAFETY:

* do not leave your home unless strictly necessary. If it is necessary to leave, don’t do it alone.

* use NextDoor, WhatsApp, social media and word of mouth to avoid commuting through “protestor” road blocks, areas of active conflict etc.,

* When travelling, use Share My Location or Life360, and keep at least two people aware of your expected time of arrival at your destination with instructions to contact the police if you do not let them know you’ve made it safely

* do not directly confront any individuals involved, or allow them to bait you into becoming confrontational

* only record if it is safe. Do not record individuals directly/from up close

* Do not directly intervene. If you see violence occurring, contact emergency services and if safe to do so, record what’s happening.

ALLYSHIP & HOW TO HELP:

* if you have neighbours, friends, coworkers or acquaintances form targeted communities, reach out to them. Ask them what you can do to help them feel safe.

* If you live in an area likely to be targeted, reach out to any vulnerable people you know. If safe and possible, offer to let them shelter with you in the event they need to leave home

* If you see any incitement to violence online screenshot it; it may prove useful in the event of individual “protesters” being prosecuted

* If you see any specific areas being discussed as targets, alert anyone you know at risk in the area

* Reach out to local refugee & asylum seekers’ organisations, to organisations supporting foreign national care & healthcare workers, and to churches, mosques, gurdwaras; they may be looking for short term assistance in helping to provide for vulnerable members of their community

CHARITABLE ORGANISATIONS FOR ASSISTANCE & TO SUPPORT:

* NASC Ireland; refugee & asylum seeker charity

* Doras.org; migrant, stateless persons, refugee and asylum seeker rights advocates

* Jesuit Refugee Service; religious refugee & asylum seekers charity

* Irish Refugee Council; supporting stateless displaced persons & refugees in NI & ROI

* International Student’s House (IE & UK WIDE): provides hardship funding and help to international students

* PathFinder (UK WIDE); supports international students

* Care International (GLOBAL); global carer’s charity

* Choose Love (IE & UK WIDE); charitable organisation supporting refugees and asylum seekers

* Praxis UK (UK WIDE); supporting refugees & asylum seekers

* The Runnymede Trust (IE & UK WIDE); antiracism education charity

* Migrant’s Rights Network (IE & UK WIDE); advocacy and support for migrants and refugees

* ShareTheMeal (GLOBAL); providing meals for refugees and those fleeing conflict globally

* Amnesty (IRELAND, UK & WORLDWIDE); human rights NGO

Rest in peace to the incredible Anthony Stewart Head (20th February 1954 - 1st June 2026)

There are 760,000 Australians on the National Disability Insurance Scheme, the system that - if they feel like it and your personalised plan says you get to have it - provides funding for everything from personal hygiene care to support workers to therapies to assistive technology. It's already very hard for disabled people to get on the NDIS, regardless of your disability. It's near impossible to access most support and equipment without being on the NDIS. And the government has announced that they want that number to drop to 600,000 in four years. 160,000 of us cut off the Scheme - and countless more denied access. This will cause deaths. People will die and people will suffer because there is no safety net. The NDIS is the only option for most of us. Even private health insurance doesn't cover most of these things. Nobody will swoop in to save us.

The bill wants to give the (non disabled!) NDIS minister basically unlimited power to cut our funding. They're already planning what they'd do with that power. What rights they'll strip from us. What dignity and freedom they'll remove to make their budget look better.

The bill wants to force people to try every treatment out there before they're allowed to be on the NDIS. Including if the treatment is literally impossible to access. There’s a lot of us living in regional areas or out bush who can't just pop to the capital cities for specialists. This will especially hurt disabled First Nations people in regional and remote communities, who already experience limited access to healthcare. Oh, and it includes chemical restraint, too. The government has directly refused to exclude chemical restraint from the required process, calling it "trialling medication".

If you're australian and worried, the ABC did a good breakdown of the proposed changes.

I know australia stuff doesn't really pop up on the radar on this site, but I want everyone to know what's going on. What we're fighting for here. Your australian disabled friends might be NDIS participants fearing for their life, rights, and freedom. They might not be a participant and afraid these changes mean they never will have access. We deserve better. The government built a system with no backup plan, and now they want hundreds of thousands of disabled people to pay the price for their bad planning.

- Nobody needs to apologise for venting in the notes or reblogs. We're scared and upset and deserve to be heard.

What to do:

- australians: don't give up! There's still people fighting this, it's not law yet. And even if it passes we can fight them on it. Most disabled peoples' organisations are fighting this, so organisations like People With Disability Australia and area specific groups. Membership to most of them is free if you're disabled. PWDA sends out a list of the news about us each week to keep us informed.

🔗Disabled People Against Cuts are leading a charge. There's always a way to make politicians pay attention even if we have to park our arses on their front step. Share support and resources where you can and keep an eye on the others in your community if you're able to. Talk to local support clinics about Coles and Woolworths vouchers for those facing a lot of uncertainty. And get your flu shot if you're able. Nobody needs the next protest to give everyone the flu.

- non-australians: keep watching. You might also benefit from seeing what DPAC are doing and if they ever call for international support. Supporting the disabled australians you know and refusing to be kept in the dark about what’s being done to marginalised people internationally is good preparation for lots of ways to help, it means you're ready to go if something you can help with appears and don't lose time educating yourself. Many of the situations with the NDIS have deliberately had short time frames to act, to try and stop us from having a voice.

context from the notes:

- When I said health insurance doesn't cover disability supports, I don't mean "it's very expensive so people can't access it". I mean the services often won't take on anyone who doesn't have an NDIS plan. Even then, it's common for services to prefer people who are "plan managed" or "agency managed", meaning someone else handles our invoices, because they feel "self managed" people might not pay them fast enough.

- People have been getting "check in" phone calls from the agency. It’s secretly plan reviews for them to reduce people's funding. If they call you and you don’t have your support people with you, they are lying when they say you don't need them. Tell them to organise a time to call later so you can have your support people. This kind of warning is the only reason I knew to contact my support coordinator when I got this phone call. Others I have seen didn't know and got their plan cut. And it takes years to try and change a plan or appeal it through the tribunal.

- Someone in the notes has identified herself as a support coordinator and offered to help with questions for people concerned about their plan via DMs (thank you @andromedusia). This is very kind of her and I also hope mentioning this here doesn't cause you any trouble, very sorry if it does.

- Also, not thrilled to find out they might be phasing out support coordinators. Lots of us are dependent on them - a support coordinator is someone who helps us understand out plan and connect with supports, and often helps with advocacy too. They’ll save money on us purely because we won't know where to go or what the plans mean. They use a lot of confusing terms in the plans. I'd be screwed without my support coordinator.

- Oh they also want to use a standardised assessment tool to tell how disabled we are, after a decade of having to pay out of pocket for specialists who know us to provide reports. This is actually worse because the tool doesn’t have to be done by a qualified professional and doesn’t work on people with a lot of different disabilities. The government is very good at somehow turning "bad" into "worse".

- Yeah. 760,000 australians is actually not that many. There's 27 million people living here. 85% of disabled australians aren't on the NDIS. Now, a lot of disabled people don't necessarily need the kind of support the NDIS provides, but you know who I don't trust to make that decision? The government who doesn't want to pay for it.

- None of this fixes the existing problems with access for First Nations people or people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. I'm pretty sure a standardised assessment tool will actually only make that way worse. No room for professionals to work with cultural sensitivity and humility to understand the impact of someone's disability, or the varying ways First Nations communities may construct and talk about disability that don't necessarily align with the settler government's convenient definition. Just checkboxes.

- This isn't even our "conservative" government party in power. This is the centre/centre-left party, Labor. The 'Liberal party' (note: not liberal) would likely do worse. But I don't think there's much to be grateful for when this will kill people. And probably won't stop later conservative cuts anyway. Because we cost too much.

THE TENTH DOCTOR and DONNA NOBLE in PARTNERS IN CRIME

Doesn't time fly when you don't have all the answers?