Madeline Collin, a 24-year-old activist with Gaucher disease, worries that patients like her will suffer deeply if Britain leaves the European Union (EU), as scheduled, at the end of this month. Collin is an expert on the subject. For her University of Bathdissertation, she analyzed Brexit’s long-term impact on the 3.5 million people in England,…
via Brexit Could Have Real Effects for UK Rare Disease Patients, Experts Warn — Ehlers-Danlos News
Brexit No deal risks medical supplies, a direct threat to millions whose lives, like mine, navigate chronic illnesses like asthma, heart-disease, diabetes … Is human well-being to be denied at the expense of our security and our health? How will families survive? At length, how can our economies thrive this hazard to our nations’ existence? Let’s dispense with political pretence; Brexit. No deal. Are we to be undone by misplaced pride? For such high costs there are no alibis. Crohns, fibromyalgia, anxiety, myalgic encephalomyelitis, depression amongst crises that arise. Brexit? No deal! From cancer to endometriosis dementia to ehlers-danlos syndromes, like so many, I battle some of these and all affect our whole society; United Kingdom needs her medicines. Brexit No deal threatens the core of civilization; our dignities, our life-expectancies, our capabilities. My conclusion; Brexit? No! Deal. Antonia Sara Zenkevitch
i laugh at falling;
so i laugh often,
my spirit strong,
my body broken,
my breathing,
my movement
dependant on medicines,
that may not make it through
with a bad Brexit or a no deal,
i have specific needs for food,
i fear their obstruction on route
as blockades slow the turning of the wheel,
and prices rise with extra duties,
the threat to the chronically ill, the elderly
and those labeled disabled is all too real,
i have lived with disabilities
for nearly four decades,
but extra barriers disabled me
in unspeakable ways,
there are millions reliant on meds, like me,
those with asthma or diabetes,
melanoma, DVT,
depression and anxiety –
the conditions are plenty
and so must be the treatments
for all of us
from a health service
free for ALL at the point of delivery;
The NHS.
Antonia Sara Zenkevitch
This one’s for citizens who came on ‘Windrush’;
The generations that generated renewal
During and after the war, first dying in service,
Then more came to help rebuild, refuel,
Re-spark, here at the birth of the NHS,
Facing xenophobes, teddy boys, racists,
Yet ‘they’ are not ‘them’ but part of us,
Bought from across the Commonwealth,
And now, how can we expect their exodus?
It seems like ethnic cleansing by stealth,
Where history is bleached out; whitewashed
Until a nation perverts and destroys itself,
Every single Britain is a child of multiple migrations;
Our ancestors came in need, greed, fight or trade
Through millennia of voluntary or enforced relocations;
By discovery, captivity, by each road built, each stone laid,
Windrushers are the same, they came by invitation
Not by blade, treated as if the latest to invade,
Despite being part of our heartbeat, post devastation
In a shell-shocked, rationed kingdom, so we began again,
How soon civil rights, so hard won, seem stolen away;
As memories fade, bigotry plays on a loop, ingrained
But not innate, division is not fate but a kind of decay;
A deep rot that sets in when instability reigns,
We less aware of our internal struggles than the USA,
Of the grit it must have taken for Windrushers to stay,
Make this the land of their children’s, children’s, children,
When racism was not recognised as the crime it is today
And race riots began in Birmingham, Kensington, Brixton,
Many black citizens couldn’t vote or have their say
Until the British Nationality Act of 1981,
Yet black and ethnic minorities continued on, unfazed,
Discrimination was further written into institutions
Over decades bias lost battles, but was never erased,
Prejudice a virus, sometimes contained, rarely gone,
Now, in a separatist world, white-supremacist crusades
Are launched by government; an act of extremism,
A fictional homegrown enemy, House of Commons made;
Ministers like missiles misfiring, misdirected missions
Against longstanding citizens, a bill that spits on graves
Of war heroes, workers, scholars, in bloody amputations
Treating pioneers and entrepreneurs like discarded slaves,
These inhabitants who have enriched all known occupations,
These families, this part of our communally nourished culture;
Part of the whole, of ourselves, amid dire Brexit negotiations
These tax-payers now among those described as ‘the other’,
Look Britain, see how many are subject to alienation
Let’s ask ourselves this, do we want a fascist future;
A future of white-centric, little Island isolation?
Commonwealth nations once gathered to deter
A powerful regime of murderous oppression,
Beside world-wide allies, enduring together,
Then, with past foes, we birthed new protections
For peace and human dignities for many, forever,
Now, while many gains are squandered by negation
We open doors wide to every antique phobia;
To radical cultural and racial discriminations,
Alongside nationalistic anti-European patter,
And blinkered, blanket anti-immigration,
Irrational rhetoric, as fat cats get fatter,
Fed by rising injustices and violations,
Hidden by resulting clamour and chatter
Racists take advantage of mass confusion,
We forget yet again that black lives matter,
Backing people into traps of self-justification
As they are forced once more to strive
For all covered by the human rights declaration;
Home, country, community all potentially denied,
Policies of exclusion contrive new manifestations,
As if for some it is a crime to simply be alive,
We needed Windrush to swell a ravaged population,
Against the odds, they and their descendants thrived,
Yet they’re deprived of protections of patriation
As if being punished because they survived.
Antonia Sara Zenkevitch
The 48% 