I was on holiday when Grenfell Tower caught fire. My mum FaceTimed me that night. My sister was nine months pregnant and I thought she was going to tell me that she was going into labour. I answered and she was saying, ‘Reis, there’s a fire, call your friends.’ That’s all she kept saying. And then there was a loud sound and all I could see was the sky and my niece screaming like a peacock. Three people from my niece’s school died.

I went to 17 funerals in total. For my friend’s family, I went to five funerals in one day. He wasn’t even in the tower at the time; he went in to save his family and then never came out. His mum, his dad, his sister, his brother and him – all gone. There were real heroes in that building, like his sister, who was 15 years old and his little brother, who was eight. They found their remains with the sister cradling her little brother.

It’s been more than a year since the fire and we’ve had a media circus down here since the first day, but are we any closer to justice? I think we are further away now. It’s time to be honest and say the media have not helped our cause. The narrative they are putting out has not helped us at all; in fact, it’s isolated the area, it’s distanced us. People from outside the area are thinking, ‘Oh, there’s some poor people that live around rich people that dislike the rich people’, which is not the case. They’re saying everyone to the left of us in Kensington is the reason for our poorness, but that’s not the reason. The reason is the system.

There were so many beautiful people, strong people, and people that achieved amazing things to come out of that block. But all you will ever hear about is the poor people dying in the block ‘cause they were poor. That is not the case. Rent there is about £700 a month, so it’s like ‘Who’s poor here?’ And no one died ‘cause they were poor. They died ‘cause of the system – nothing to do with poorness.