Maggie, the Gypsy Queen - preserving Gypsy culture

Depending on whom you ask, Maggie Smith-Bendell is a grandmother from hell or a tireless campaigner for Gypsy rights. For the past decade, this feisty, self-taught 68-yer-old Romany grandmother has been helping Gypsy families securing private land - sometimes by stealth - and advising legislators on planning issues.

Now, “the grandmother of land grab” has written a beautiful memoir to “try to explain to house-dwellers who we are and how we live.” She also wants to record a way of life that has more or less vanished. “I didn't want my father's memory and the era of the wagon and horses and our ancient ways to die out,” says Maggie, who was born on the edge of a pea field near Bridgwater in Somerset in 1941.

I've found her book fascinating because it vividly describes the transition from the early decades of the twentieth century, when Gypsies were still able to live according to their own rhythms and follow seasonal work, through to the period when agriculture changed and councils began to clamp down on Gypsies who stopped on the roadside or common land, and finally to the present situation where Gypsies try to buy their own land on which to live outside the restrictions of council-run sites.

“So much of our way of life is over,” she told me when I went to interview her in Somerset a few weeks ago. “I miss being on the move, the rhythm of our horses' feet and the comfort of our wagon, or running alongside it with our little Jack Russell rabbiters. Summer or winter, we would wake up on a morning and fall out of the wagon to sit beside a good, hot fire. That fire was the centre of our lives.

“That's part of my hope for the families I get planning for. On a private site, we can return to our traditions, for to have an outside fire to cook upon and sit around is forbidden on authorised council sites as a hazard. If you sing and dance on a council site, you're likely to get your marching order for making noise; if you bring a horse back to the site you're causing a nuisance to others.”

I wrote a piece on Maggie for the Guardian (published last Saturday). Read it here.

Our Forgotten Years: A Gypsy Woman's Life on the Road by Maggie Smith-Bendell is published by University of Hertfordshire Press, £8.99. To order a copy for £8.99 with free UK p&p, go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0330 333 6846

Know someone over 60 who is changing the world?

I’ve just received this request and it sounds interesting and it's great to see older people being celebrated, so I am passing it around:

Know someone tapping their experience to improve the lives of others? Nominate yourself or someone you know for the 2010 Purpose Prize. Nominations are open until March 5, 2010.

The Purpose Prize provides ten awards of up to $100,000 to social innovators in encore careers, 60 years and older, who are solving some of our most pressing social issues – from health care to the environment, poverty to education.

The Purpose Prize is accepting nominations, including self-nominations until March 5th.

See who has won the Prize:

Judith Broder, a psychiatrist who combined her experience and passion to recruit mental health professionals to provide free, confidential counseling to veterans, active-duty military personnel and their families through The Soldiers Project.
Don Coyhis, a former computer executive who built a nationwide substance abuse recovery program based on Native American beliefs and traditions.
Connie Siskowski, a former nurse who founded the Youth Caregiving Project to support a hidden population of pre-teens who shoulder adult-sized responsibilities caring for chronically ill relatives.

Please nominate, get inspired by watching a brief video, and help us spread the word by posting information about The Purpose Prize on list serves, blogs, or by emailing your friends and colleagues.







Haiti Earthquake

What is it with Haiti? Things were starting to get a bit better there: the country was slowly recovering from devastating floods in 2004 and 2009, gang violence was subsiding and there was more political stability – a few foreign investors were even coming back, and now this! The worst earthquake in 200 years struck the country yesterday, devastating the capital city, killing thousands and threatening over 3 million people in this desperately poor country.

I went to Haiti a few times, the last one in 2007 to report with photographer Caroline Irby on a group of poor, uneducated, HIV-positive mothers who care for and support some 250 HIV positive families in the slums of Port-au-Prince. (Our article was published in the Telegraph Magazine in June 2007). These mothers suffered every possible hardship, but remained feisty, fighting and surviving – just like their country.

Such a devastating earthquake would be a disaster anywhere, but in Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas and one with no infrastructure, it is a tragedy. Bill Clinton, the UN special envoy for Haiti, said the quake was "one of the great humanitarian emergencies in the history of the Americas".

While in Haiti, Caroline and I worked with Plan, an international children’s organization, which has been in Haiti since 1973, and were very impressed with their work and approach.

Plan Haiti Director Rezene Tesfamariam said the devastation in the capital Port-au-Prince was on an “unimaginable” scale. “I’ve seen villages destroyed by floods but this is something else. I’ve worked for Plan for 27 years and have seen all kinds of tragedies. I’ve seen refugees fighting for their lives and floods destroy communities, but I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Plan is working closely with government, emergency services and other organizations to respond to the immediate to the immediate needs of children in the region and assess the situation. To make a donation to Plan's emergency work in the country, call their freephone 0800 1300230 or make an online donation.

Iran – Release Mourning Mothers!

Amnesty International has urged the Iranian authorities to release a group of women who were beaten and arrested during a peaceful vigil in Tehran at the weekend.

The 33 women, members of a group known as the 'Mourning Mothers', were seized during their weekly Saturday meeting in Laleh Park, Tehran, according to media reports. All 33 women are now being held in Tehran’s Vozara Detention Centre. Several of the women were beaten and 10 were taken to hospital. Nine of the women are believed to suffer from illnesses, increasing concern for their well-being.

The 'Mourning Mothers' are women whose children have been killed, disappeared or detained in post-election violence in Iran since last June, and their supporters. The group meets in silence for an hour each Saturday near the place and time of the killing of protester Neda Agha-Soltan, whose death was shown in footage circulated around the world in July.

Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Deputy Director of Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa Programme, said:

"Women who are grieving for children killed by security personnel should be able to count on support from the state to uncover the truth about what happened and to ensure redress for them, not face arbitrary detention and beatings.

"These women should be released immediately and unconditionally and an investigation launched into their treatment."

Copenhagen – the pressure is working

To follow up on my previous post: yesterday, the media was calling the crucial Copenhagen climate summit dead on arrival.

But 24 hours later, after millions of petition signatures, hundreds of thousands of phone calls, and a massive outcry across the planet, a deal could be back on.

Leaders are frantically doing in hours what they've failed to do for years, but the talks could still collapse. Building up on the massive success on its global petition campaign, Avaaz is now circulating this message:

“We know our pressure is working, let's use these crucial final hours to ramp it up, and get a real deal, not a dressed-up weak agreement. Sign the staggering 13 million person petition if you haven't yet, and forward this email to everyone:

The petition has become the centre of the global revolt against failure in Copenhagen. The names of petition signers are being read out by young people who have taken over spaces in the Copenhagen summit and in governments round the world, including the US State Department and the Canadian Prime Minister's office.

Amazingly, leaders themselves are appealing to the public for action. UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown made an impassioned appeal to 3000 Avaaz members on a global conference call on Wednesday, calling for an historic 48 hour internet based campaign from citizens around the world, calling our impact crucial.

History is being made in Copenhagen, but so far, it's not being made by leaders, but by us, millions of people round the world who are directly engaging, hour by hour, like never before, in the fight to save our planet. The pressure is working, let's ramp it up.

Please, sign the petition."

Save Copenhagen - last-ditch effort to save the summit

With just three days to go, the crucial Copenhagen summit to stop global warming is failing; only massive public pressure can save it. The international civic organization Avaaz has launched a global petition to put pressure on world leaders and urge everyone to sign it. It may be the largest in history.

Millions watched the Avaaz vigil inside the summit on TV yesterday, where Archbishop Desmond Tutu told hundreds of delegates and assembled children:

“We marched in Berlin, and the wall fell.

"We marched for South Africa, and apartheid fell.

"We marched at Copenhagen -- and we WILL get a Real Deal.”

Copenhagen is seeking the biggest mandate in history to stop the greatest threat humanity has ever faced. History will be made in the next few days.

Tomorrow, the world's leaders arrive for an unprecedented 60 hours of direct negotiations. Experts agree that without a tidal wave of public pressure for a deal, the summit will not stop catastrophic global warming of 2 degrees.

Sign the giant petition below. It already has a staggering 10 million supporters. Every single name is actually being read out at the summit -- please sign this petition now.

Arts and Human Rights in Iran/for Iran

Tomorrow, Monday December 7, students will hold major demonstrations in Iran to support the Iranian civil rights movement and protest the severe repression, widespread arrests and imprisonment of hundreds of civil society activists across the country.

And on December 12, international arts events organized under the banner of ArtsUnited4Iran will try to draw the world’s attention onto human rights abuses in the country.

On the occasion of the six-month anniversary of the disputed elections and the sixty-first anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, artists and activists will join together to highlight the ongoing protests in Iran and honour the Iranian people’s peaceful struggle for their human and civil rights. They will call on the Iranian government to respect the freedom of assembly, expression and press, to free all prisoners of conscience, to end rape and torture in prisons, and to hold those responsible for committing human rights crimes accountable, the ArtsUnited4Iran organizers say.

The arts and culture events will include lectures, concerts, gallery showings, readings, round tables, film screenings in over 20 locations worldwide.

Iran experts and activists speaking out in support of the civil rights movement in Iran include Hamid Dabashi, Columbia University Professor and CNN commentator; Hadi Ghaemi, Director of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran; Firuzeh Mahmoudi, United4Iran’s International Coordinator; Omid Memarian, Iran expert at Human Rights Watch; and Reza Moini, Iran expert for Reporters without Borders (RSF).

United4Iran is a non-political global network of individuals and human rights activists building a mass movement in solidarity with the people of Iran. United4Iran is opposed to blanket economic sanctions and military action against Iran, which they believe, will have detrimental effects on the situation of human rights and harm the Iranian people.

The ArtsUnited4Iran sponsors include Reporters without Borders, Human Rights Watch, the Nobel Women’s Initiative, the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, ARTICLE 19, and Front Line.

For more details on December 12 events visit united4iran