This question has made me reflect very much on my situation and choices as a woman. These four values are what I would consider the definition of a strong and safe community. This sounds so simple, so idealistic, yet really are these not the principles that all people deserve to live with ?
I learnt these values in my childhood, from education, independent reading and the values of my family. The freedom I had in formative years gave me a real sense of How to develop critical thinking of my situation. Living in poverty, the ‘respectable’ working poverty. My Nana employed by the Aerospace industry, where she worked producing the secret documents that one expects to be written in such a place. Trustworthy, hardworking and independent despite her raising three children. ( The eldest my biological mother )
Yet these values, the Freedoms that my great grandfather fought with the RAF for seem somehow to be less important. Let’s be realistic and honest. My grandparents were the war generation. WW11. This war where secretly millions of Jewish men women and children were identified across Europe and murdered. That is not racism, that is far beyond, yet that is how it started. Yet the Jewish numbers in the world present less that two percent of the population.
Fear in adulthood has been a constant part of my life. Not in childhood, where family and schooling provided safe spaces. Yet in adulthood, I truly discovered the nature of the environment that I was born into. That is a male patriarchal society, where honesty, freedom and safety were characteristics that were not particularly valued. The ideology of male superiority and hanging effigy’s of dead Jewish males on the wall of every worship space in the country, were indications of the reality. Not pictures or images of the Jewish man after he was resurrected to life… no the dead lifeless body of a Jewish man nailed to a cross to die by an old empire.
There were other males from other races and backgrounds in biblical times, but only one selected, the same as WW11. I grew up with this imagery and ideology and maybe given that my family members had lived in Israel and America, I was always frightened that perhaps that deathly image would be me? Or my family? … The world communities that were represented in my educational work environments, often reassure me that the country was a place of safe refuge, that there was nothing to fear.
Yet as time went by what I have seen is that the values I hold were indeed dangerous to me. That until 2016 I had been detained over five times, called and identified as mad, psychotic and dangerous. Why ? Because I spoke up about gender and familial and violence. I told the truth about attacks that I experienced and did so as the person was a risk to not just me but the community as he was and still is serving as a police officer in Hampshire, England. I lived in fear, even during my later remarriage, I still faced the targeting from having spoken up against the man. This is not a race issue, it is a gender issue. Women face this treatment and their children are also likewise targeted regardless of their race.
Do I regret speaking up telling the truth ? Sometimes… but generally no. Being part of a community is collective and the safety of communities can only be sustained if people are able to tell the truth and for the safety of all communities, people who offend against the most vulnerable in governance positions are not allowed to continue in post. I was denied my physical freedoms and lied about to protect that person. When this was unsuccessful I gave evidence in a civil case. His assosciates who had tried to kill me to prevent the evidence being heard were unsuccessful and as I approach the second and last court case in the matter, I realise that during the left wing rule of the country of birth all of those values that I learnt were systematically removed.
The use of contractors funded by the diocese in the area, sought to subvert the court process and most worryingly did so in order to protect child sex offenders, not within the community, but the Church of England. Unlike the Roman Catholic Church that apologised and made changes to protect children, the Church of England sought to try and not just cover the offending but burn the evidence so to speak! Since the targets of these minority of males offending was children and women from the most vulnerable of backgrounds or trafficked to the country, or the charity work that they funded in Gaza, Africa and other states across the world. The idea that all males are a risk to women and children is incorrect. However if there is not honest discourse about the risks, then communities cannot be safe. If offenders are allowed to work in governance where they have access to decision making, or direct access to potential victims, then something has gone very wrong.
This is what happened in my and other cases and those values are now more important than ever !