OK to lie around here

I attended an excellent little event this evening outside News Ltd's Sydney headquarters. It was convened by GetUp! and it was a lie-in.
 










As some of the posters explained, it's OK to lie here. That's what News Ltd  have been doing for quite a while, after all. Especially on the subject of climate change, to the detriment of the country, and the whole planet in fact.

Schools out! Reinforcements at last for the class of '69!

Yesterday the schoolkids went on strike for action on climate change. The Sydney rally was one of hundreds of such events around the world.

I've covered many political protests at Town Hall, but this was the biggest yet. Even the normally antagonistic Australian newspaper estimated the crowd at 20,000.

And it was so good to see it. It's wonderful that at last, after all these decades, a generation of caring youthful activists is at last emerging to rival that of 50 years ago!

There was the predictable criticism from the usual quarters. Children should be at school, 'learning stuff'! Well, they learnt lots here, and in fact taught their elders a lot too. The words on their placards said it all.

There were a fair few parents and other oldies in the crowd too of course. Some of the seasoned ones had signs like "Class of '87", and "Class of '69". Come to think of it, I was in the class of '69. I might be able to think about retiring at last.




Keep it up kids!

Invasion Day: 'Worst date ever'

The best date ever to highlight the worst date to have as Australia's national day is of course 26 January, Australia's official national day.

It marks the day in 1788 that Captain Phillip and his First Fleet sailed into Sydney Harbour to start the British penal colony. They'd arrived at their intended destination, Botany Bay, a few days earlier, but found it to be without drinking water, so relocated.

To the indigenous population 26 January thus marks the start of the invasion and colonisation of their lands.

Over the years it's become the thing to mark the day with rallies and marches, and other symbolic events to draw attention to their continuing plight. It's got to the stage where the Invasion Day events in Australia's capital cities are almost overshadowing the mainstream celebratory events. A major theme this year has been the 'Change the Date' movement, highlighting all the other dates when Australians could all come together and celebrate their nation without offending a rather essential core group of them. Needless to say, the major political parties have yet to come to grips with this, and for now are happy to be on the losing side of history.







I attended the Sydney event, which started with a rally at 'The Block' at Redfern, and then became a march through city streets to Camperdown. It was a big deal.






As one of the speakers noted, there wasn't a conventional Australian flag to be seen in this crowd. I noticed too that when I strolled back through the city through the usual Australia Day crowds doing their more usual Australia Day strollings, a large proportion of them were carrying Aboriginal flags as well as the conventional ones.

"No ifs. No buts. No Medicare cuts......"

I really enjoy a good protest rally. Not only do I usually find I support the cause and happily add my presence to boost the numbers, but the colour and carnival atmosphere make it a good day out anyway! In fact, today's was so colourful that I'm going to relax my editing standards, and post far more pictures than usual. (I'm never that good at editing things out anyway.)

There were politicians from the Greens and the Labour Party. ("You might have heard of him, the leader of the opposition, Bill Shorten", was the introduction.) There were groups from several socialist left organisations, unions, including especially the Health Services Union I think. There were odd and not so odd individuals. There was even a researcher from Sydney University, handing out surveys to assist his research into democracy and protests! ("I love niche academic research", I told him.)
 
When I filled out my survey, I answered the question about how well democracy was working in Australia, with a 2 out of 10. My initial reaction was to go with a zero, but on reflection, we do get to have our protest rallies at least, and more important, we wouldn't go to them if we thought they achieved nothing at all.

There was an attempt by a very vocal group of asylum seeker supporters to hijack the event, by chanting "Let them stay, let them stay" very loudly at crucial moments, like when Opposition Leader Bill took to the stage. He was actually in a spirited and feisty mood, and refused to go off message. Handled it all rather well. One lady near me got very stroppy with one of the hijackers, and I thought they were about to deck each other.



Eventually the colourful assembly disassembled, and marched down to Belmore Park.

Sydney's biggest ever climate march

Estimates of precise numbers varied, as ever, with published figures ranging from 3000 to 60,000! I was there, and I'd put it somewhere in the middle. It was definitely big though, and it was colourful, and very uplifting.

There were groups from churches, political parties, local action groups, solar power aficionados, and health professionals. There was even a small pro-nuclear group, and two (brave?) chaps whose banners just read < coal / >.  (I've no idea what that means exactly, or whether they were pro or anti coal. Note to placard writers: don't get too cryptic!)

There was music, there were speeches from some very worthy personages, and there were giant and horribly realistic versions of Tony 'King Coal' Abbott and Malcolm 'Innovate' Turnbull to scare the children.

We eventually marched from the Domain rallying place down to the Opera House, where the giant polystyrene politicians could scare the tourists too.

We'd been asked to colour code ourselves by dress choice, and march in our coloured blocks. I chose white, which was the designated colour for medicos and scientists. Several of my fellow marchers carried giant cardboard mosquitoes, signifying presumably malaria and suchlike diseases we can look forward to in a warmer Australia.