Flame and Flower’s Emma Calcutt AKA Cammy Leon speaks to SAR about her foray into the world of scents in creating her latest candle, Smells Like Justice, from which she is donating %100 of the profits to the antiracist organisation.

We are living in chaotic, unsettling times. The pandemic and the muddled, contradictory imperfect response to it leaves people frightened, confused, and often impoverished.

A paradigm shift is defined as an important change that happens when the usual way of thinking about, or doing something, is replaced by a new and different way.

Anti-racism work is a long game, if it is to work, it must be a life long commitment. You can’t suddenly expect centuries of systemic beliefs, entrenched in the history, the education system, and the laws of a society to change overnight.

The President of the United States of America is no longer an openly racist man, and that’s important, even here in sleepy Stroud.

“All lives matter!” has been the rallying cry of those opposed to the BLM protests. And yet, now, it seems all lives do not matter. Certainly not the life of young Abdulfatah Hamdallah who drowned last week.

After the Black Lives Matter movement shone a light on the division and systemic racism that still exists, it is time to look at the legacy slavery left behind in Stroud.

Stroud has risen, from a demonstration of hundreds outside the Subscription Rooms, into Stroud Against Racism (SAR) group; a thriving local community organisation seeking to understand and tackle racism in all its multi-faceted forms.

In Bathurst Park, Di Martin, who has spent 31 years as a Cinderford East town and district councilor, stood up on the 20th of June and read the canonic poem, Still I Rise by Maya Angelou.

The Black Lives Matter movement spread has across the globe, but there are still many standing in the way of progress by denying that racism exists.