October 2023 update

We were successful at entering the building!! Hurrah !We successfully completed the Woking Street Collection, raising in total £176.  A lot lower than previous years but still we did raise awareness and it is for a great cause (clearly).

We were somewhat successful at hosting the online US Speaker session with Lise Rossi and a couple of the Guildford group did manage to attend (thanks Marilyn for passing on the details).  However, we didn’t manage to get to the end of it as internet connectivity failed part way through and as my work has clamped down on personal use of work devices, I wasn’t able to reconnect using my 5G connectivity.  Monica also wasn’t able to re-connect.  Lynda has taken an action to see if internet connectivity can be improved, but if not, I may have to revert to joining “formal” online Speaker sessions from home where connectivity is significantly better.

The update we did get has a lot of actions we can take. We did hear about Guantanamo which will have been open for 20 years next January  Obama did promise to close it and reduced the detainees from 250 to 41 and now Biden intends to close it but there are still 30 still detailed with 16 approved for release.  Actions include: writing  to Biden and supporting a cross party group led by Peter Bottomley to raise awareness – there is a session on the 23 October with a special reporter from the UN speaking).

We are now planning for Write for Rights – both the December Stall in Woking (planned for Saturday, 2 December on Commercial Way) and also our own group meeting where we write cards to individuals and share some festive fayre.  Monica has kindly agreed to organise the material, etc.

At the next November session, on 6^th November, we plan to sign more letters and confirm arrangements for Write 4 Rights.

There is an Amnesty National Conference (online and in person in London HQ) which isn’t the AGM but a forum to support Amnesty UK being held all day on 4 November - https://www.amnesty.org.uk/national-conference.