Every single week for the last 21 weeks upon #Gadigal land, there have been thousands upon thousands (sometimes easily tens of thousands) of people gathering in support of a #ceasefire in #Gaza and calling upon the Australian #Albanese government to stop supporting #Israel in its #genocide.
Every Sunday in Hyde Park at 1.30pm,* we've listened to #Aboriginal speakers, #Palestinian speakers, #Jewish speakers, politicians of various stripes (though neither of the major parties, of course, as they both remain complicit in support of the government responsible for most of the slaughter), elders who lived through the #Naqba, teenagers organising #StudentStrike4Palestine, community leaders, poets, faith leaders and more, with perhaps 75% of the speakers being women, and almost all being people of colour (most of the exceptions being MPs).
*Except when #NSWpolice has dictated otherwise, giving priority to (much smaller and only) occasional pro-Israel rallies and forcing a shift to Saturday a couple of times, under threat of #PoliceViolence.
Then we've marched (or rolled) with flags, banners, signs, drums and (loud!) voices: Arab, Aboriginal, African, Anglo, Asian and more; from those too old to walk (in wheelchairs) to those too young to walk (in strollers).
I have been to scores of rallies and marches over the decades: for climate justice, for First Nations justice, for clean air, anti-war, pro-refugee, against misogynistic violence, for marriage equality, against the erosion of civil liberties, for freedom of the press, against police violence, defending forests, opposing new coal mines, mourning #InvasionDay, for respecting science, supporting people of conscience in court, and more. I've done so with groups of all sizes: from crowds of 200,000+ to arrestable actions with just three or four others. I've supported strikes, participated in sit-ins, locked myself onto things, marched, chanted, been a rally speaker, joined in flash actions, brought along friends and family, lobbied MPs in sit-down meetings, held banners, made signs, and so on and so on. I have witnessed multiple acts of unprovoked #PoliceViolence against peaceful protesters (and been the target of some, with the scars to show it), and appeared as witness or defendant in multiple court cases as a result (no convictions recorded), including a case that went to the NSW Supreme Court.
My point isn't to boast of my activist credentials, merely to establish that I know a thing or two about protests in these lands now called Australia. So perhaps you might believe me when I say…
2/6
These #ceasefire rallies in support of Palestinians in #Gaza (and the #WestBank) have been, hands down, the most successfully sustained #MassProtests I've ever witnessed on this continent. Individual events have occasionally been bigger—the massive #StopTheWar effort in 2003, a handful of climate rallies, the annual #InvasionDay march—and there are protests that have been sustained much longer (nothing comes close to the multi-decade #AboriginalTentEmbassy), but I've never seen weekly rallies of this size sustained for anything like this long (>5 months and counting).
As I understand it, it is not just here on #Gadigal land in Sydney either, but similar events have been held weekly (or close to it) in most capital cities, with myriad further protests beyond that.
3/6 #Auspol#StopTheGenocide
In over two decades of regular participation in protest, not once have I seen mainstream media cover an event in a way that I felt did it justice. Two or three times an article or video story has come close. But they have been the exception. If they bother covering protests at all, most major media outlets look only for angles to discredit what is happening.
And thus has it been for this movement. After the first week, when tabloids could push a (now discredited) claim of antisemitic chants, and the second week, when politicians floated the idea of criminalising certain expressions of public solidarity with Palestinians (even as they were being slaughtered by Israeli bombs in unprecedented numbers), the mainstream media has almost entirely ignored us. Breathless, extensive coverage of every speaker at a recent (apparently much smaller) pro-Israel rally. But almost total silence when it comes to arguably one of the most significant protest movements of recent decades.
4/6
What’s this? Actual coverage? Mentioned in a headline? And then read on—surprise, surprise—to discover yesterday's instance of sustained weekly protest demanding an end to genocidal violence is treated as though it were a one-off event in response to the 'Flour Massacre' (one of the few Israeli atrocities to have received more than passing coverage by mainstream media), and Guardian Australia immediately contrasts it with a pro-Israel rally on the other side of the continent, an event that video and other reports put in the mere hundreds (with a pro-Palestinian counterprotest of similar size, the counterprotest unmentioned by Guardian Australia).
5/6 #FlourMassacre#GazaGenocide#Auspol#MediaBias#MediaFail
Indeed, there is a clear pattern in nearly all Australian media reporting that has even mentioned the existence of this weekly act of bearing witness against the slaughter of children at a rate unprecedented this century: we are only ever mentioned if there is a pro-Israel event to contrast us with. Though there will of course be plenty of coverage of those occasional events that doesn't even mention the larger pro-Palestinian event, typically held nearby on the same weekend, and the previous one, and the previous one, and the previous one, etc.
Pointing out #MediaBias is hardly groundbreaking, I know, but sometimes the patterns are so blatant as to be worth a little repetition.
6/6
The best of a bad lot is probably this ABC piece from November, which at least notes (unlike most) that the pro-Palestine rallies are:
a. weekly,
b. happening in many locations around the country,
c. are significantly larger than the contrasting one-off pro-Israel events the media always feels they need to justify covering pro-Palestinian activism in the first place.
Very few Oz media pieces touching upon pro-Palestinian activism have mentioned even one of those three points.
There are still numerous criticisms to be made of this article, but it's better than any other article from the mainstream press I've seen.
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