Many members of the Comfort Zone Community are affected by Sanctions, week after week we help folk with food, clothing emergency fuel payments and more, what we do is a drop in the ocean. We seek to respond as often as we can, and what we do is appreciated, but sometimes we are reminded of the utter desperation that being sanctioned, being hungry and being cold brings on...
How many of us honestly go to bed hungry, cold and desperate?
How many of us know that the next meal, the next place of warmth, the next welcome will be days away?
I suspect that the answer is not many who are reading this, because you have the luxury of access to the internet! But if you didn't, or if you are reading this from a library or on a friends phone you might, and if you are you will recognise what it feels like to have your hand tied by a system that seems to be out to get you!
Today one of our community is in prison, another is awaiting sentencing; why because one stole £12.00 of food to eat, and the other stole a jacket...
Now I don't know whether the jacket was to be worn or sold on the street, but either way it was about survival; this is the effect of sanctions, people are hungry, people don't know where the money to pay their next energy bill will come from...
This is life in 21st Century Britain...
...and frankly I think it is unjust and inhumane....
...stealing is not right, but perhaps what is being stolen is more than food or clothes, but human dignity!
Image: Journey (mine)
