Christmas message, kindly, Gerry | Indymedia Australia

Submitted by Gerry Georgatos on Tue, 25/12/2012 - 9:40am

To all my friends, and to everyone I have been fortunate enough to have crossed paths in this last year, and to everyone in general, best wishes for Christmas, for the New Year - for each and every day.

For myself 2012 has been an interesting year, one of myriad bright good outcomes however always mixed with lingering frustrations and disappointments. This is life as we know it.

I've learned that the work of a journalist can be a rewarding and uplifting experience - that it can bring on much good. I've only undertaken the challenge of journalism for the last 18 months - thanks to the National Indigenous Times and to the Rural Press (Fairfax), and to the news media which accepts my freelance.

I've learned that a journalist can work with through-care, sustaining coverage, and make the news rather than just report the news - we can keep up the news till there are changes to the benefit of those who have been denied them.

The National Indigenous Times has both punched above its weight and risen to the occasion as a political vehicle; this has warmed me with great hopes.

We have also not run stories where we have played a behind the scenes role to ensure hope, remedy and reconciliation - this is what is right, what is good. A headline should not replace a positive outcome.

We can all make a difference in one way or another and rub off on the next person - example is our only mortal legacy.

Some of our stories and investigative reporting, the sustaining of coverage brought on the common good and positive outcomes for some of the Kimberley homeless folk, for the Pilbara's Yindjibarndi and Wirlu-murra peoples, for the NT's Elcho Island peoples and for Yuendumu peoples, and for many others. Some stories we ran gave hope to those who thought they would remain voiceless, and if nothing else provided them with long overdue healing. It is our duty to stand alongside one another if we believe in the pursuit of civil society.

Similarly with regional newspapers I write for - with the Rural Press - we are able to reach deep into community and ensure their stories are reported so strongly that the nation will hence choose to hear them, as others pick up the story we were prepared to first run for them.

With the Human Rights Alliance, many of us volunteered to fight causes and for individual people who otherwise would have been stranded in a vacuum of inhumanity. Those who are rarely recognised are the volunteers to social justice and human rights groups, like Perth's RRAN (Refugee Rights Action Network) and Sydney's Chilout (Children out of Detention) who will stand by human beings whom our various management systems and governments neglect. When volunteers are recognised each May within National Volunteer Week, those who never get a mention are the heart and soul volunteers of such social justice groups as the HRA, RRAN and Chilout, who ensure the voices of the oppressed and troubled are heard.

For the last five years we have raised tens of thousands in funds for children's wheelchairs to far off countries - thousands sent however many thousands more go without as the world still pursues to settle its troubled soul.

On December 4, kind warmth came my way as a parliamentary friend in NSW, Shaoquett Moselmane, helped raise $30,000 in one evening from a function of predominately Sydney's Arabic community - for shipments of wheelchairs to children in Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon and Pakistan. I left that evening function having been touched by people who felt the milk of human kindness. Thousands of children will benefit however thousands more go without. We will continue to do what we do, there is no other way if we wish to continue to pursue civil society.

Earlier this year, after an exhausting two year campaign, we managed to coordinate enough sustained pressure and behind the scenes political play, involving the Australian Human Rights Commission, the Attorney-General's Office, and Indonesian Consul-Generals and their Ambassador, and others, in securing the release of Indonesian children from Australian adult prisons.

We were also able to pressure for the relocation of families and children from horrific conditions in some of the most notorious detention centres in our nation to more suitable accommodation. State of mind and lives depended on this support.

Hope is our greatest hope - and one of my great joys was to see some of those many folk I have visited in our prisons find themselves supported into various education and into university studies. If we leave people stranded in the prison experience we risk their ongoing suffering and their very lives. Five times more people die within the first year post-release when compared with the annual average of prison deaths. We have to be there for one another - to empower the other. And one must believe in redemption and in forgiveness otherwise civil society is without hope.

It's difficult not to be accused of moralising and hard sometimes to not be cast as judgmental and when one disseminates as heavily as I do criticisms come with the territory, and I accept them, fair enough, however my way is that it is better that much is said rather than less and that we push for what is right, what is good, what is the common good, and that we speak openly about this.

I've seen some wonderful people give incredibly to others in this year of 2012 - the HRA crew to one cause after another, Jessica Perini and Chilout, RRAN with its stalwarts of Peter Wilkie, Peter Dresiger, Marcus Roberts, Victoria Martin-Iverson, Phil Chilton, Sarah Ross, Sally Woodliff, the list is long of RRAN heroes, my parliamentary friend Shaoquett Moselmane and his passionate team which includes his good friend Louay Moustapha, the Arabic community of Sydney, Broome's Feed The Little Children (Clint and Deb Durham), the incredible Wheelchairs for Kids foundation with its 112 volunteer retirees led by the tireless Brother Ollie, and The National Indigenous Times with its bent on giving voice to the voiceless and led admirably by its founder John Rowesthorne and its editor Stephen Hagan, who himself has fought some incredible and personally taxing campaigns, the Bridgetown Mens Shed (Grumpy Old Men), Diana Ryan, Colin Penter and Greens WA stalwart Alison Xamon, Anna Pha, Tom Pearson, Debbie Kilroy, Edwina Lloyd, Eko Waluya, the relentless Simon Peterffy and his crew, Jess Beckerling, the incredible citizen media group Indymedia Australia which includes Davey Heller, Sydney's relentless social justice campaigner Ray Jackson, Cheri Yavu-Kama-Harathunian and my friends at the Indigenous Wellbeing Centre and my incredible friend Riyadh Al-Hakimi who returned to Iraq to help his people.

I'd also like to remember campaigners recently lost to us in Gavin Mooney and Del Weston, they kept on the social justice bandwagon right to the end.

Our friend Plato once said, “Be kind, everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”

Once again best wishes and let us keep up what matters in 2013, and step it up where we can.

Kindly, Gerry

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWs-os2HKo0

http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/news/9862724/help-comes-on-wheels-f...

If you wish to donate to Wheelchairs for Kids go to:
http://www.wheelchairsforkids.org/home.php
They have donated 24,500 children's wheelchairs to 61 countries in the last 13 years.

http://plainrice.com.au/wheelchairs-for-disabled-kids-in-lebanon-and-iraq/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOGXgqgpH24

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/breaking-news/wa-minister-terry-red...

http://www.theage.com.au/national/jailing-of-boys-an-abuse-of-rights-201...

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/100-indonesian-boys-in-aus...

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/release-of-all-kids-in-jai...

http://www.nit.com.au/news/2167-exclusive-mining-deal-bombshell.html

http://www.nit.com.au/news/2220-native-title-threatened-by-miners-war-of...

http://www.nit.com.au/news/2299-hit-the-road-twiggy.html

http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2012/s3637169.htm

http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2 012/s3643280.htm

https://www.indymedia.org.au/2012/12/11/the-national-indigenous-times-%E...