Lachlan Malloch, Sydney
"The views of the Aboriginal community in general, and residents of the Redfern Block in particular, have fallen on deaf ears since the death of TJ [Thomas Hickey]", Redfern Aboriginal leader Lyall Munro told a meeting of 100 people at the South Sydney Leagues Club, organised by the Socialist Alliance, on March 4.
Susan Price, the Socialist Alliance candidate for City of Sydney mayor, called for solidarity with the Indigenous community "who are under siege" and vowed to take the fight against racism and police violence into the electoral arena.
The mood of the diverse audience was initially sombre as Ray Jackson, from the Indigenous Social Justice Association, recounted in detail the events of the weekend of February 14-15, when 17-year-old Hickey died after being chased by police.
Jackson, who is also a Socialist Alliance member, presented a thorough rebuttal of the police lies about Hickey's death. Not only were police statements contradicted by eyewitness accounts, the lie of the land in Redfern meant that the police must have been chasing Hickey. In disgust, Jackson recalled that the police had pulled Hickey off the fence on which he had been impaled "against all medical training".
Jackson was not inclined to describe the ensuing black youths' fightback against police as a riot, because it was "too stage-managed, with the police in control". He believed the police allowed the angry, open confrontation to continue for many hours because it would help to "take the heat out of police involvement in TJ's death".
As the meeting unfolded, two key themes emerged — the continuity of Aboriginal oppression and resistance over the past two centuries, as well as the need for solidarity between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people against racism.
Munro connected today's Redfern Block resistance to the history of black activism and gave an eloquent insight into the history of police and government control over Aboriginal people's lives. He recalled taking part in Charles Perkins' famous "freedom rides" of the 1960s. He subsequently moved from a Moree mission, which he described "a concentration camp", to Redfern as direct police control over black people's lives in country towns began to wane.
Darcy Byrne from the Balmain Youth Organisation and Rihab Charida, a Palestinian activist from Bankstown, hammered home the ties that bind working-class young people across Sydney. Solidarity was needed not only because Aborigines are under attack, but also because black and poor non-Aboriginal youth share a common experience — police harassment.
Byrne pointed out that, tragically, the general public are only made aware of the death of young people in police chases when a brave confrontation ensues, such as the Redfern Block riot. Who, he asked, has ever heard of Michael Hancock's death a year ago in Glebe?
Jackson entreated the audience to reject defeatism and realise that there are alternatives to racism and continuing violence: "Vote Socialist Alliance! The two mainstream parties are landlocked into stupidity and bigotry [and we've got to] make our own alternatives", he said.
An organiser of the meeting said that the Greens and the Labor Party had not taken up an offer to speak on the evening's platform.
Lyall Munro concluded the meeting with a call to further protest action. Hickey's family will lead a protest march, starting at the Block at 11am on March 24 and proceeding to a lunch-time rally outside the NSW parliament. A national black rights march on Parliament House in Canberra will follow next month, on a date yet to be decided.
From Green Left Weekly, March 10, 2004.
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