300 people braved the Melbourne cold and drizzle on Friday 4th March, standing in solidarity with exploited workers in the Northern Territory, demanding Aboriginal rights. We chanted for equal pay and jobs with justice. We called for an end to the 'work for rations' system of many Aboriginal people living under the racist NT Intervention. Friday's protest was at its most lively when we took to the march along Swanston Street. We reclaimed the corner of Bourke and Swanston, the symbolic heart of Melbourne, and heard from Jenna Tipuamantumirri from the Tiwi Islands. Jenna explained the devestating impact that welfare quarantining has had on herself and her family. Highlighting the racism of the BasicsCard system, Jenna made the case that the government's assimilationist policies were motivated by the desire to push Aboriginal people off their land.
The march then continued up Swanston Street to Federation Square. For a moment, we claimed the stage of Fed Square chanting 'Always was, always will, Aboriginal land'. Jacob Grech as a representative of the Victorian Trades Hall Council accepted the thousands of signatures that we have received on our petition demanding justice for CDEP 'Aboriginal work-for-the-dole'
http://maicollective.blogspot.com/2011/03/we-sent-them-message.html
Comments
Melbourne anti-intervention 4.3.2011 time for self empowerment
Long live the Black indigenous Australian peoples..there were 400 to 500 nations prior to capitalist invasion 240 years ago of the British Empire. The place was covered in wildlife, thousand year old trees, fresh air, clean water and the freedom to roam and live as one desired. In Tasmania, they have decimated the environment and these living trees do not survive and neither do the Indigenous peoples of Tasmania. Imagine the amount of bloodshed that went on there that we were not even aware of. The government and the forces that be have kept this information from us for 240 years. Start empowering yourself with your own communities so that they slowly have no real power.
There was what we call satisfaction which equates with genuine happiness. People were organised in tribes or groups and there was no such thing as working for some guy who lives in England or France. Life was for the moment not some weird 'retirement' idea. There were matriarchal nations here as well. We can still organise our own communities and own it like the community in Daylesford own their wind energy farms. Finally, the mentality ought change from one of ownership of land that is based on the concept of money to one that is based on living with nature in a harmonious way and without others owning our means of production, distribution and exchange. We have a way to go and perhaps there will be no living human being by the time that happens although I have some hope.
Long live the ancestral spirits and the Dreamtime....