Dear Supporters, 

I hope you are well at this difficult time.  

There have been no updates for a while as all of Ealing Libraries have been closed since the national lockdown was imposed 24th March until further notice with the exception of Ealing central (in Ealing Broadway shopping centre). The home library service will continue on a non-contact model.  It was reported by Anahita Hossein-Pour (My London News ) that Councillor leader, Julian Bell, was questioned by trade union representatives in a joint committee meeting last month, who highlighted various safety concerns they had for staff and library users. In spite of the fact that library services are currently included in step three of the Government’s reopening plans of “no earlier than July 4”, they still remain closed for the time being. Ealing Community Voluntary Services has provided a database of information to support Ealing’s communities and voluntary groups during the pandemic, accessible via this link: https://www.ealingcvs.org.uk/covid-19/

I’ve been keeping myself busy on several fronts; one focus has been spearheading the BAME-Not In Our Name campaign, also via Change.Org. to help bring about public change so the acronyms B.A.M.E and B.M.E will be abandoned from all kinds of written, verbal, formal, informal, everyday discourse and language in the UK.  So far, I gained 106 signatures.  Thank you if you are one of them.  Please click on this link http://chng.it/SnFMgBBF to read my campaign in poetic terms and watch first-hand the video recording of 'BAME - Not In Our Name'. If you concur then please do sign my petition. It would be fabulous and impactful if this campaign could also attract thousands of signatures, which matters very much to me and thousands around the country; and resonates in terms of the Black Lives Matter campaign.

Give thanks.

Akuba (Grace Quansah)