"Ultimately, it is the very same racism that has been used as justification for the invasion and oppression of Indigenous people that is now used as a template for Islamophobia in this country. You cannot separate the work for Indigenous rights from anti-Islamophobia organising as Islamophobia will never end whilst we continue to maintain the oppression of Indigenous peoples. In order to achieve the realisation of Indigenous rights as well as in the fight against Islamophobia, we must recognise that the goals are linked and work in solidarity together."
"And it’s that demoralisation that is the paramount feature of offshore detention. It’s indeterminate, it’s under terrible, terrible conditions, and there is nothing you can say about it that says there’s some positive humanity in this. And that’s why it’s such an atrocity."
That awkward moment when your governments anti-refugee posters are straight up copied by nazis.
Source: redflag.org.au
"You see, most of my friends, even the professional ones, have never met a refugee – they form their views from tabloids and the increasingly shrill sound bites of politicians. But the thing is, when I look at you, I don’t see a queue-jumping, illegal, unauthorised, undocumented alien or for that matter, any of the other names used to strip you of your dignity. I only see a thoughtful woman, a loving mother and a vulnerable patient, with no husband and two young children, cursed first by geography and then illness."
"This is what is so shameful about the whole situation. If Australia can’t even come to terms with its casual racism, if it can’t even own up to the fact that it exists, how will it ever start de-constructing the institutionalised racism that pervades every aspect of society?"
Melbourne, glimpses of the Victorian countryside, and the highlights of the Great Ocean Road.
"Every person of colour fortifies themselves in different ways. Expressing my anger is just one of the ways that I have learnt to survive. My rage is in response to a system that not only subjugates me, it has the audacity to tell me that I have no right to be angry. It protects me from the corrosive nature of this system, liberates me, and gives me the fuel I need to create positive social change – and sometimes, just to go on."
The less constructively a society responds to its own diversity the less capable it becomes of doing so. Its reluctance to respond, fuelled by the fear of encouraging division, becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy – the erosion of national cohesion is a result not of the fact of diversity but of its denial and suppression
Malcolm Fraser
"There are many people asking the right questions, and while no-one can sensibly claim that this tragedy could have been foreseen and prevented, it is reasonable to ask why it is that, as a systemic issue, the system does not take crimes against women seriously enough?
There is another issue though, too. And that is whether Australian Muslims will be entitled to grieve the deaths of the two hostages and the trauma suffered by the survivors in a way that does not make their empathy and grief contingent on condemning, apologizing and distancing themselves from the gunman.”
"Tell me Australia, about the time you took to social media in your thousands and exploded with anger at the death of Mr Briscoe at the hands of Police in Alice Springs. You can see if you wish reporting on this website, that highlighted the case, that showed Mr Briscoe slowly dying in a cell, that showed his head being smashed into a wall and which showed his blood being casually cleaned up with an officers foot.
Or you can read about Ms Dhu, dead at the hands of police in WA while in custody for a few unpaid fines. Who begged and pleaded to see a doctor, yet died an agonising and needless death. Also from WA you can read about Mr Ward an Aboriginal elder from the Ngaanyatjarra lands in Western Australia, who having been driven a total of 922km in a boiling hot prison van literally cooked to death. He was a artist, a lands right activist who visited China as part of a delegation, a skilled hunter, an interrupter and assisted scientists in conservation. He’s dead at the hands of the justice system for a crime he was alleged to have committed that would have resulted in no more than a fine.”
First Dog on the Moon on counter-terror laws
Source: theguardian.com
"… the politics of liberal Islamophobia at the top of the society enabled the extreme Islamophobia of the right."
"Australia has been found guilty of almost 150 violations of international law over the indefinite detention of 46 refugees in one of the most damning assessments of human rights in this country by a United Nations committee."
"A group of prominent Aboriginal actors have been repeatedly refused fare by taxi drivers in Southbank and racially abused on a St Kilda tram while making their way back to work."