Due to a combination of school holsitis and my internet connection currently being Teh Sux0r, I have essentially missed all the news about NAIDOC week.
Today there are rallies/marches in Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra, Perth and Wellington, NZ in support of Aboriginal justice, marking the end of NAIDOC week. Details are here on this NZ site, where I first became aware of the rallies. The Sydney rally has already begun at The Block, Redfern, and I can’t find details of the march route.
Rallies in Brisbane and Canberra begin at 11am. The rally in Perth begins at 1pm.
I went to the Redfern action. The people marched to the Sydney Town Hall and then there were speakers in the quadrangle next to the steps near St Andrews. The turn-out was okay, not huge. A group protesting the acquittal of QLD policeman M. Hurley was there, which is reasonably on message. As for the socialist alliance/free cuba brigade, why don’t they just support Aboriginal people on the day and leave the rest of their baggage at home? What an embarrassment.
None in Darwin AFAIK. Hmmm.
i.mathews: because they’re exploiting local grievances to hasten the revolution. Or something.
I am also disturbed by the socialist groups involvement in all this. I fear that the real issues of Aboriginal Australia will get buried in the bandwagon rhetoric and at the same time alienating many non-revolutionary supporters of Aboriginal Australia.
It must however be acknowledged that the socialist groups have been invited and welcomed into this movement by Aboriginal leaders and activists. In Brisbane the central figurehead of the Brisbane Aboriginal community is Sam Watson, who is also the Socialist alliance’s senate candidate.
I see this as a desperate option of last resort. Aboriginal Australia has been so bitterly dissapointed by political parties, churches, unions and all other social institutions of mainstream Australia, who seem content to sit back and feel sorry for what is happening to Aboriginal Australia but have no real supportive connection of any way to the Aboriginal leaders and activists who are trying to make a difference. At least the socialists are prepared to spend time, money and sweat campaigning alongside Aboriginal people.
But just because the socialists are morally righteous does not necessarily make this a good thing. Given that Sam Watson is perhaps the highest profile Murri in Queensland, certainly Brisbane, when he ran for socialist alliance in the last senate election he got .04% of the primary vote (from memory)which is well down on what I believe would be a natural support base in mainstream voters, a support base that is being neglected because of the ideological hegemonies developing around the new land rights movement.