How can infrastructure be criminal? How does a mine, a gas field, a suburban neighbourhood or a dam become a perpetrator of violence and insecurity? Surviving Society Presents: Material Crimes answers these questions. Each episode investigates a different piece of infrastructure, tracing its global, colonial connections across time and space. The series shows us how the physical sites of everyday life are linked to networks of private and public actors who profit from violence inflicted on spaces and communities on the margins. The series also shines a spotlight on the people-powered movements exposing and challenging the many crimes of infrastructure.
Season Two is out now. New episodes air every Tuesday until 15 October!
︎︎︎ About the Project
︎︎︎ A Guide to Making an Episode
For Season One click here
Season Two is out now. New episodes air every Tuesday until 15 October!
︎︎︎ About the Project
︎︎︎ A Guide to Making an Episode
For Season One click here
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Death by Welfare
On Tothill Street, in the heart of London’s Whitehall, sits Caxton House, home to the Department for Work and Pensions. The DWP administers the UK’s welfare system, a key infrastructure of everyday life. For many, the DWP determines if they have enough money to eat, stay warm, power medical equipment - to live. For many, it has also become synonymous with suicide. In collaboration with activists and scholars Stella Dadzie, Imogen Day, John Pring, and Rick Burgess, in this episode, China Mills (from Healing Justice London) describes the grinding bureaucratic crimes committed as the DWP sought to force disabled people into work. This painful story is also one of power. We’ll hear how disabled people and people of colour have fought tirelessly to expose the true scale of this crime - and get justice.
Useful Links
*Caring for ourselves and each other when the state tells us that we don’t matter is a radical act. We hope you find these resources useful.*
Deaths by Welfare Project podcast (including BSL interpretation and captions):
www.healingjusticeldn.org
Disability News Service:
www.disabilitynewsservice.com
DPAC (Disabled People Against Cuts):
www.dpac.uk.net
Welfare State violence: a feature, not a bug with Stella Dadzie, Tumu Johnson, Derica Shields & China Mills:
Youtube
Grief toolkit (by Camille Barton)
www.global-diversity.org/grief-toolkit
Deaths by Welfare Project podcast (including BSL interpretation and captions):
www.healingjusticeldn.org
Disability News Service:
www.disabilitynewsservice.com
DPAC (Disabled People Against Cuts):
www.dpac.uk.net
Welfare State violence: a feature, not a bug with Stella Dadzie, Tumu Johnson, Derica Shields & China Mills:
Youtube
Grief toolkit (by Camille Barton)
www.global-diversity.org/grief-toolkit
Further Reading
Ellen Clifford. The War on Disabled People: Capitalism, Welfare and the Making of a Human Catastrophe (London: Bloomsbury, 2022).
Deaths by Welfare Project timeline of evidence
www.deathsbywelfare.org
China Mills and John Pring. “Weaponising Time in the War on Welfare: Slow Violence and Deaths of Disabled People within the UK's Social Security System,” Critical Social Policy 44:1 (2024), pp. 129-149.
John Pring. The Department
How a Violent Government Bureaucracy Killed Hundreds and Hid the Evidence. (London: Pluto Press, 2024: https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745349909/the-department/)
Deaths by Welfare Project timeline of evidence
www.deathsbywelfare.org
China Mills and John Pring. “Weaponising Time in the War on Welfare: Slow Violence and Deaths of Disabled People within the UK's Social Security System,” Critical Social Policy 44:1 (2024), pp. 129-149.
John Pring. The Department
How a Violent Government Bureaucracy Killed Hundreds and Hid the Evidence. (London: Pluto Press, 2024: https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745349909/the-department/)
China Mills is Head of Research at Healing Justice Ldn and leads the Deaths by Welfare project, investigating deaths of disabled people linked to welfare reform and welfare state violence.
Healing Justice Ldn works for and with communities surviving state and systemic oppression, building towards futures rooted in dignity, safety and belonging. Their work is rooted in disability justice, aiming to build cross-disability and cross-movement solidarity, and create life-affirming systems with disabled people at their heart.
Healing Justice Ldn works for and with communities surviving state and systemic oppression, building towards futures rooted in dignity, safety and belonging. Their work is rooted in disability justice, aiming to build cross-disability and cross-movement solidarity, and create life-affirming systems with disabled people at their heart.
