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A wry satisfaction to be enjoyed in reading histories of events of your youth is that it uncovers your prejudices at that time. It reassures you that you have grown wiser but also makes you wonder whether your present attitudes will need revisiting. Save Our Sons, Carolyn Collins’ detailed and even-handed study of women’s campaign against conscription during the Vietnam War, offered such pleasures.
On the day of the millionth case and half million deaths I drink coffee in a warm, morning living room, walk a small dog at our national Arboretum, eat lunch of seafood and avocado at a local outdoor café, buy two likely looking books on Amazon, tune into a Zoom poetry reading and listen to podcasts from America. I realise it’s the end of the world, as we know it.
Behind the slick advertising and high-tech veneer of on demand apps and services lies a bleak, hazardous and often dangerous reality: tens of thousands of people are working at the fringe of the labour market as delivery riders and personal chauffeurs. When you remove all the tech, the sizzle and pop, it’s little more than modern day iteration of old-school precarious piece work arrangements.
There are a number of current issues within our present Australian political system, issues we need to remedy brought to light with strong media attention. But in contrast, how much media attention is being paid to this ongoing scandal of First Nations peoples who, while representing just 3.3 per cent of the population, now represent an extraordinary 30 per cent of the nation’s prison population?
Before travelling to Iraq Pope Francis was criticised. The criticism bears reflection. It leads us to ask what weight we place on courage, a quality much discussed in antiquity.
I fear that as the process plays out, it will be seen by a divided nation to symbolise and embody the polarised politics of the previous years and of the incapacity of the organs of government to comprehend or address the causes of the anger and despair that foment division. It will hinder, not free, the new president.
What will it take, I wonder, to change these people’s minds? In an era as politically divisive as the one Americans (and Australians, for that matter) are living through, nothing is likely to convince detractors that COVID is an omnipresent threat — except perhaps the only thing with tangible currency in this whole blasted catastrophe: the visceral consequences of the pandemic itself.
This week is the fortieth anniversary of the death of Ita Ford and Maura Clarke in El Salvador. An event distant in place and time, but worth remembering and honouring in its distance. And also worth reflecting on for its significance for our own time.
Recent weeks have seen the deaths of former NSW Liberal Premier and federal Finance minister, John Fahey, and former Labor federal minister, Senator Susan Ryan. They were both exemplary public figures who not only made a major contribution to Australian public life but did so in a way that drew praise from all sides of politics.
While the world is largely focused on COVID-19, a recent report from Global Witness revealed that murders of land and environmental defenders, defined as people who take a stand for land and environment in a peaceful manner, reached a high in 2019.
The past couple of weeks have seen the racism former Collingwood great Heritier Lumumba endured while at the club hitting the headlines. This is not the first time Lumumba’s allegations have been in the news, but on seeing Collingwood ‘taking a knee‘ in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement at their game against Richmond, he saw an opportunity to broach an hypocrisy which had long gone unaddressed.
2020 has been the year of the mask. The masks worn during the smoke of bushfires, during the threat of COVID-19, and during the Black Lives Matter protests. Masks are a powerful and complex symbol.
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