While much of “life as we know it” put on hold on, unfortunately there are some things which have not stopped – including arms fairs. On the 9th-11th March the Security and Policing event, will take place online. 

The annual Security & Policing event is where arms, border, policing and surveillance companies gather to exhibit equipment and technologies. In 2020 there were over 300 exhibitors, and delegations were invited from 64 countries including many with police forces that have been accused of torture.

In 2020, delegations invited included Algeria, Bahrain, Brunei, Egypt, India, Israel, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and UAE. The online version of the event will be even more accessible, and even harder to know who is taking part. You can read more about the event on the CAAT website here: https://caat.org.uk/challenges/arms-fairs/security-policing/

This year the three themes of the Security and policing conference are Rebuild, Recovery, Resilience. Of course these will be framed in a highly militarised way, focusing on technological and violent responses to perceived security “threats”, rather than responding to the systemic problems that perpetuate violence and insecurity for many.

Quaker Roots is planning a creative online response during the event, please read on for more details!

Our plans…

We would like supporters of Quaker Roots to write short poems or writings, or visual images which connect in to one of the three themes – Resilience, Rebuild, Recovery – exploring these in a way that focuses on peace, justice and meeting our community’s real needs. We will then share these on social media during the event.

We would like the responses to be hopeful, or to connect in wider social justice issues.

Please send us any short poems, or visual responses to hello@quaker-roots.org.uk by Friday 5th March.

You can also join us for a zoom call, where we will explore the three themes and then create our responses together. This will take place on: Monday 22nd March From 8pm-9.15pm

Please send all of your responses to us by Friday 5th March, so that we can put them together into a format we can share on social media the following week.

During the event

Please reshare any content we are putting out on our social media accounts, and feel free to share your own poems or responses on social media over the 9th-11th March. We will be back in touch closer to the time to confirm which hashtags to use or other accounts to tag.

We hope you will join us resisting this event.