Inside the Big Issue: After the riots

At Big Issue, for decades, we have offered opportunity for those left behind, or marginalised. We understand the plight of those who are seen as ‘others’ or less or not fully accepted. We proudly offer them a chance to make their own futures.

Our colleagues number immigrants, people of multiple ethnicities, people of differing classes and religious beliefs. Our spouses and partners and wider family and friends increase the diverse palette that makes up what makes us. And that is just a snapshot of one organisation among hundreds of thousands.

We have a number of Roma colleagues who sell the magazine. It provides them with income, it allows them to earn, to help their kids grow and to become a wider part of the fabric of their communities and of the nation.

They frequently face abuse and this has increased recently because they are easy targets. We stand with them, supporting them and letting them know we will look out for them.

So for this issue of the magazine, in the aftermath of far-right riots across the country, we stand with marginalised people and those from ethnic minority and immigrant backgrounds and call for communities to come together for positive next steps.

We start with the facts and the realities of being an immigrant and seeking asylum in the UK. We platform the voices of our Roma vendors who are often subject to abuse. We head to the communities that are working together to rebuild after the riots. And we suggest ways you can show your support for asylum seekers and refugees to counteract the hate.

Read all of this, and more, in this week’s magazine.

What else is in this week’s Big Issue?

Troy Deeney’s letter to his younger self

For Troy Deeney football was an escape, but he never considered that he could make it as a professional. It ended up changing his life.

“Football was my only escape. It always has been. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t have a football at my feet. No matter where I am, if a ball comes out I just forget myself. Nothing else matters. It’s my only pure joy if I’m being totally honest,” he says.

“But when I was 16 I never thought football could be something I’d make a living from. I didn’t know anyone that was a footballer.”

He talks about growing up in an abusive household, grief and the big transition his family have gone through financially.

I’m a single mum of three. The two-child benefit cap reminds me of how society judges me

Campaigning against the two-child benefit cap reminds Ruth Talbot, the founder of Single Parent Rights, how society “really sees her” as a single mum to three young boys.

The policy – which prevents almost all parents on a low-income claiming the child element of universal credit or child tax credits for their third or subsequent child – impacts 1.6 million children.

“Implicit in every discussion around this hideous policy is a belief that my beautiful baby boy shouldn’t exist, because at its very core this policy was designed to prevent women like me having more babies,” Talbot writes.

Dylan Mulvaney: ‘I’ve never called myself an activist’

For Dylan Mulvaney, it was a no-brainer to premiere her new one-woman show FAGHAG at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe.

“I might be seen as very polarising in the United States, but coming here, I feel a little bit lighter,” says the LA-based musical theatre star with 9.5 million TikTok followers. “And I want to make sure this piece is as strong as it can be before I take it out to audiences who maybe aren’t as open minded.”

Twenty-seven-year-old Mulvaney has become a lightning rod for online transphobia. She grew up in a devoutly Catholic household in San Diego, and she came out as a trans woman in 2022.

She interviewed Joe Biden later that year which made her a target for trolls, and she attracted even more transphobic vitriol when she partnered with Bud Light for a seemingly harmless advertising deal.

Mulvaney tells journalist Nick Levine: “I’ve never called myself an activist and I’ve never wanted to run for office or anything like that.”

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