By Justin Harman
PERTH — On November 8, around 150 people gathered in Murray Street mall to hold a speak-out against racism and intolerance. Organised by the socialist youth organisation Resistance, and co-sponsored by a broad range of other organisations, the speak-out was the first opportunity for many of the participants to publicly voice their anger at the racist attacks of recent weeks.
Unlike Pauline Hanson, who regularly uses parliamentary privilege to voice her unfounded and misleading views, those in opposition to racism have not had the same opportunities to be widely heard. Even the speak-out was almost silenced by the Perth city council when permission for the action was withdrawn. It went ahead anyway, with well over a dozen people, some as young as 11, taking the megaphone and having their say.
Dawn and Lucas, students at Middle Swan Primary School, had doorknocked for three days prior to the event after they learnt of two racially motivated attacks in their area. Despite this, Lucas believed that young people are still much less susceptible to racism than the older generations. "I've got many white friends at school", he told Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, " and they're not racists".
The ideas spread by Hanson that migrants are taking our jobs and getting it easy were shattered by people like Vinicio, a Guatemalan migrant, who related to the crowd his experience as a migrant worker. "My boss regularly exploited the fact that I couldn't confidently speak with him in English", he said. "Over a period of nine months he managed to underpay me, using excuses like I was late or I spoke too long on the phone."
Clarrie Isaacs of the Aboriginal Government of Australia told the speak-out that racism in Australia didn't start with Hanson. "We've always had people like talk-back radio host Howard Sattler who've been peddling racism through the media for the past 15 years", he said.
Arun Pradhan, representative of Asian Australians Against Further Intimidation and member of Resistance, spoke about the way forward in the fight against racism. " Racism is a political tool. At the moment it is being used by the Liberals to scapegoat an easily definable sector in society for the government's cuts to welfare, education and health", he said. "We need to fight racism politically, to continue to organise against racism, like we are today, and against the Liberal's cuts. If we can draw out the links between these issues and organise people to fight against them, then, and only then, can we begin to understand and eliminate racism in our society."