Celebrate Palestine South West (CPSW) activists set off down the main street with their flags and banners on February 19 to show solidarity with the Palestinian struggle, for the 52nd week in a row.
More than a year ago, and just a month after it formed, CPSW called a snap action to protest Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s catastrophic decision to suspend funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.
The encouragingly high turn out led CPSW to make “Wednesday Walks” a weekly staple.
Since then, its weekly protests have attracted support from passionate volunteers, visitors and the politically-engaged.
The response has been overwhelmingly positive, as measured in cars honking (usually solicited by a CPSW member’s 8-year-old son holding a “Honk for Palestine” placard) and applause from passers-by as well as the 4pm pub crowd.
These interactions with strangers, locals and tourists are important signs of hope that the corporate media’s distortions do not reflect the attitudes of everyday, working people witnessing Israel’s genocide.
This hope has been nurtured by bonds of solidarity that have grown among CPSW organisers and volunteers.
A directory of WhatsApp chats and regular potluck meetings at organisers’ homes has helped activists park their despair and direct their energies into strategising and learning, and organising fundraising events to promote the Palestinian struggle.
Fundraising was kicked off with a bake sale and screenings of Gaza Surf Club and 1948: Creation and Catastrophe at the local Men’s Shed.
Other events have included a “Paddle Out for Palestine”; a seaweed-lettering intervention at the Margaret River Pro surfing competition; Community Learning Circles on the Nakba, food sovereignty and police abolition; a second bake sale; a screening of Strange Birds in Paradise for A30 For West Papua; speaking about a just peace at the Making Peace conference; and a larger weekend rally.
The group’s most ambitious undertaking was a fundraising art exhibition last September: “Sumud: Voices from Palestine” was attended by 200 people, including Wadandi Elder Billy Webb, Independent Senator Fatima Payman and Cami Femia, a Palestinian descendant of Nakba survivors, who grew up in exile.
The exhibition, which emerged from a collaboration with Jordan-based artist-activist, Nidal Elkhairy from Naji Collective, included work by eight Palestinian artists and three poets living in Gaza, the West Bank and the diaspora, as well as a handful of local artists.
Funds raised went to the exhibiting artists and poets — all of whom are active in the campaign to free Palestine.
CPSW organisers have now decided to connect with the wider anti-colonial and anti-capitalist struggles and have formed Action and Resilience Collective Wooditchup (ARC), with CPSW continuing within this organisation.
They want to strengthen the activist networks in the south west, the common thread of which is to promote the interconnectedness of struggles and the need to change the capitalist system.
It’s been more than a year since the horrors perpetrated against the people of Gaza hit our screens and sparked our consciousness and will to act.
Nothing could be more true than the rallying cry so often heard around the globe: “We are all Palestinians”.
[Sign CPSW’s petition to Augusta-Margaret River Shire Council to publicly acknowledge Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people, raise the Palestinian flag and join the BDS movement here. Ned Reilly, a glassblower by trade, is an organiser with CPSW and ARC, based in Wooditchup on stolen Wadandi Boodja (saltwater Country), and is a member-at-large of Socialist Alliance.]
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