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| (photo credits: mine) |
You wouldn’t know it by the media coverage, but last Saturday 22 a rally for climate change action took place in Sydney.
The protest was coordinated by unionists, School Strike 4 Climate Australia, Extinction Rebellion and First Nations representatives. Protesters gathered in the early afternoon, in the large open area between Sydney City Town Hall and St. Andrew’s Cathedral, to march later to Hyde Park.
Beyond saying the attendance may have ranged between the mid-4 to low 5 digits, it’s hard to estimate how many people were present.
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| (photo credits: mine) |
The organised labour movement was represented by the Maritime Union of Australia, NSW Teachers’ Federation, NSW Nurses and Midwives’ Association, Public Service Association, the Fire Brigade Employees’ Union, Australian Services Union, and United Workers’ Union. There were, however, individual unionists from the Communications, Electrical, and Plumbing Union of Australia (CEPU) and Electrical Trades Union of NSW (ETU).
The Australian Greens, Socialist Alternative, Socialist Alliance, and the Communist Party of Australia – all parties in the broadly defined Left – sent representatives, but the #ClimateActNow coalition, supporting centre-right independent MP Zalli Steggall’s Climate Change Bill also sent a large group.
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| (photo credits: mine) |
Other than unions and political organisations, the Chatswood Catholic Parish sent a delegation, under the banner of “Social Justice Around the Bay”.
Tertiary education students, under the banner of “Uni Students for Climate Justice”, were present, as were the vegans, who sent a very vocal group.
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As has become customary in those events, protesters were often older people, of varied ethnic background.
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| (photo credits: mine) |
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Among the speakers, Erima Dall (from MUA) and Jim Casey (from the firey’s union) deserved particular mention. Dall, in particular, is a campaigner for the right to strike (which, whether you believe it or not, is not recognised in Australia). Casey wrote this excellent piece for Jacobin.
Let me plug an announcement from the Climate Kids (as I call them affectionately), whose names I couldn’t catch:
A new Global Strike is scheduled for the next May 15 (for details). Donations can be sent to their GoFundMe page.
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Several things caught my attention in that rally. Here I’ll mention two.
The first one is that Sydney is the richest and most populous city in one of the world’s richest countries. And Sydney City proper, under Lord Mayor (one of those peculiarly Australian titles) Clover Moore (a progressive politician, by Australian standards anyway) is arguably the wealthiest municipal council in Sydney.
At least three people live under Town Hall’s stairway (the one where the vegans were seating -- see above).
This is the “home” of one of them (who, it seems, is also a fellow climate protester):
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| (photo credits: mine) |
It’s less than one hundred metres from the Queen Vic Building (which used to be the most expensive retail location in Australia) and at one of the exits of Town Hall Train Station.
It says something about inequality in Australia, doesn’t it?
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The second thing has to do with this picture:
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| (photo credits: mine) |
Not counting officers on push bikes or traffic cops’ vehicles and their crews closing street intersections once the rally took to the street, there were 10 NSW Police Force vehicles parked near Town Hall that day, two of them unmarked (a minibus and a van): six on Bathurst Street and four on Park Street, in front of the Citi Group Building (see first photo).
They were part of a fairly large police deployment. I counted some 30 officers, including those on George Street one sees in that picture (about half of them from the Riot unit), all of them armed with semi-automatic hand guns and wearing bullet proof vests (only the garden variety cops wearing their id badges); but there were others around the site. In addition, standing by there were six mounted police officers, plus a number of higher ranking officers.
Most seemed between partly amused and entirely bored, which is understandable, given the situation.
Someone in authority, however, must have considered that that protest was worth such mobilization.
That level of fearful concern contrasts sharply with the relaxed attitude of other people in positions of authority. Say, the Prime Minister, for example. Scotty from Marketing told us as a kid in the Shire he had lived through similar -- if not worse -- fires. Until January, his job as PM was to send thoughts and prayers. He even sneaked out of the country on a holiday.
He wasn’s the only one feeling relaxed about the fires. His ministers are famous for dismissing catastrophes like that as either something inner city raving lunatics imagine but never happens; or, on the contrary, that “this is Shtraya, mite” and things like that happen all the time (!?).
I mean, the worst thing that can happen during bushfires is that people burn to death. That’s nothing compared to the sheer terror and mayhem a bunch of arthritic old-timers -- like yours truly -- can unleash, yes?
Luckily, capitalist law and order were preserved: I couldn’t see any act of violence. Thank God, NSW Police is a lot better behaved than their Victorian (or Queenslander!) counterparts.
(That’s why Marx called this kind of democracy “bourgeois democracy”.)
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