Walking through the city centre and heading towards one of the parks, it took a moment to realise that the many police officers we saw riding bikes and motorcycles were going to the same place we were. This dawning of realisation was the beginning of the frisson of adrenalin that begins coursing through your system as you head towards the rallying point of a civic protest against the actions of your nation state. Though permits and permissions had all been organised by the rally organisers, rallies and civic protest always carry a slight edge to them as multiple individuals become part of a cohesive collective expressing a singular intent. With the amount of families present at the rally and with the admirable manner in which the organisers controlled the event, the rally was never going to be anything other than peaceful but a large gathering of concerned civilians and citizens in any city centre is always a worry for authorities and a reminder to us of the visual and symbolic power of protest.
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| Symbols of Protest. Photo credit: HammieRiffs |
As we peeled off the main road and headed towards the park, weekend shoppers and protesters began to distinguish themselves. Those going to the rally walked more purposefully as we got nearer to our rally point and with definitive intent, stepped over the low curb of the boundary that marked the park and in an instant we became politically active and identifiable.
Mercifully the organisers had set up the stage near the shade of the trees so we were able to shelter from the biting early summer Australian sun. The opening of the rally was ushered in by First Nations people affirming their solidarity with the oppression of the Palestinian people and the importance of what land is for the expression of culture for both themselves and for the Palestinians. As the dancers began the welcome ceremony to their ancestors and didgeridoos played, the wind eerily began to pick up again and shake the leaves of nearby trees with a surprising intensity. As this occurred the speaker announced that the wind was representative of their ancestors coming to give protection and blessing to the gathering. A shiver went down my spine. This oddly enough has not been the first time I have experienced this. A very similar phenomenon happened at a previous ceremony I witnessed.
The rest of the rally was taken up by speeches and artistic pieces performed by various local artists along with announcements for fundraisers. Sitting nearby on the grass was a family group with a happy, charismatic little baby boy who was seemingly fascinated by two young women sitting ahead of me who looked like his mother but were not wearing hijabs. He was amazed by their faces and hair and seeking to impress them, on multiple occasions, with a wobbling determination, he used his chubby little hands and arms to haul himself up unsteadily onto his feet using his stroller for leverage. Upon doing so, he would turn pointedly to the two young women and smile broadly and proudly at them.
They responded to his big, gummy grins with smiles of their own. He was being so cute and with a sudden rush in my heart I unexpectedly felt the horror of what was happening in Gaza. So many babies and small children such as himself had been rendered homeless, had lost their entire families, were going thirsty, were being bombed and being starved out in Gaza and my government, my own government were using our ports, our military weapons and our satellite facilities to aid and abet these crimes against humanity. It was a moment of humanisation. The atrocities being committed in Gaza was not just something I was witnessing on the television but was now suddenly and emotionally being embodied and represented by a very sweet and innocent child sitting on the grass in the speckled shade in front of me. Though not wanting to cry, I nonetheless put my head down and swiped at the tears that fell.
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| Time to March. Photo credit: HammieRiffs |
Wearing no overt symbols of protest or comradeship such as keffiyehs nor carrying any protest signage, it was easy for B and I to meld back into the rapidly dwindling crowd of city day trippers after the protest finished for the day. We joined the great exodus of people emptying out of the city as the vast majority of us boarded the trains and buses that would ferry us back to suburbia. As we left those who are largely forgotten and marginalised, the homeless, the mentally ill and the addicted, moved in the emptying spaces of the city. The negative space that is societal abandonment and indifference to their plight is regrettably the place where they largely exist. It is an isolating and unkind space that we can largely ignore by fleeing to our homes in the suburbs. Observing the homeless and the marginalised occupy public space more dominantly once the hustle and bustle of commerce recedes, it's hard not to surmise that the bar we sometimes set for ourselves as a society can be quite low.
Sitting in front of my dinner that night I felt both energised and desultory. It felt like we hadn’t accomplished anything but we had also accomplished something. Our protest action today didn’t change or alter a single thing in Gaza but by being a warm body to count at the rally still meant something I feel. It largely means support, to show Gazans suffering unspeakable horrors that are in part being facilitated by our own governments and tax dollars, that we know they are suffering, we are bearing witness to what is being done to them and for what it matters, that they are not facing this entirely alone. It’s also a sharp reminder to our political leadership that we protest what they do. In a democracy, all of this matters. It’s what helps to keep our system not just liberally inclined but somewhat democratic as well.
The realpolitik of this world along with the maintenance of the current system and its accompanying ideological framework will most likely mean that might not right will determine when this conflict and the suffering endured by Gazans will end. By that stage I would think that the civilian death toll in Gaza will be quite unimaginable and it will be a mark forever against the West and rightly so. The West has undone so much of the good that it thinks itself to stand for by allowing Israel to collectively punish Palestinians for the crimes of Hamas. The Emperor has no clothes and the protest continues.
