Free, Free Palestine!

Today I went to my first real rally for Palestine and it was also my first real rally for anything, for that matter. It started on the steps of Parliament House, and we marched down North Terrace, took a right hand turn onto Pulteney Street, and ended up at Hindmarsh Square. The rally started at 2:00pm, so I asked Mum to drop me off, which she did. I stood at the base of the steps of Parliament House as different people began arriving.

I took the following photo of a group from SA Socialists. I like this photo because there’s a man behind them holding up a handmade sign that says, “Israel: The New Holocaust Deniers.”

More and more people started to arrive with all sorts of signs. Some were shocking, like the one below:

And this one:

I thought the printed signs were incredibly effective, but I really liked the handmade ones. Here are a few I spotted below:

I particularly liked this one:

I took the following photo of people sitting on the steps of Parliament House with their signs, waiting for the speakers.

While I was waiting to meet up with a group I’m involved with, a deaf woman asked me to take a photo of her holding up a sign. I took the photo, and since I can sign letters, I spelled out a few words for her, which I think she appreciated. I finally met up with the group, and we all sat on some steps that were quite low down.

The speakers got the crowd revved up, and everyone was yelling and shouting things like “Free, free Palestine” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” as well as responses like “Shame.” People were beating drums, and it was loud. One of the women I was with was a speaker, and she made a powerful speech, ending with a poem she’d written about the situation in Gaza. In retrospect, I wouldn’t have sat on the steps—we couldn’t see the speakers, and I got really self-conscious, like people were looking at me. I know they weren’t; there was such a large crowd and they were focused on the speakers, but all the same I felt like a bit of a goose. I took the following two photos from my spot on the steps:

The photos I took might not make it look like there were that many people, but I’d say the crowd was a few thousand strong. After the speakers, we all got up and started walking down North Terrace toward Pulteney Street and then to Hindmarsh Square. The group I was with handed me a flag, and I held it over my shoulder. There were police everywhere. People—myself included—were chanting all sorts of things, and I felt very at home among them. You can see three photos I took of the march to Hindmarsh Square.

When we reached Hindmarsh Square, people were chanting through loudspeakers and everyone stood around for a while. I then left with my group and we went to The Griffins for a drink. I didn’t stay long—just a quick chat—and then I came home. At the moment our gas heater isn’t working, and even though it isn’t too cold outside, it’s absolutely freezing inside. We’ve got the bar heater and the radiator on full blast in the lounge room, and we are currently huddled up next to them to try to keep warm. We’re going to get the gas heater serviced, hopefully this week.

Back to Palestine. Australia, the UK, Canada, Portugal, France, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, and San Marino all recognised Palestine as a state at the latest United Nations General Assembly meeting this September.

They were saying at the rally today that it’s a little too late for all of that, but I think it’s a positive thing.

On Friday night Mum and I watched Benjamin Netanyahu address the UN to an almost entirely empty house. Some delegates didn’t rock up at all, and most of those who did staged a walkout.

He was defiant, though. He said the states that recognised Palestine had done a bad thing, he said there would be no Palestinian state, and he seemed to patronise what little audience there was with pop quizzes and by asking them to zoom in on a QR code he was wearing on his jacket.

But what I found morally and ethically repugnant was this: he said he had speakers placed around Gaza so the hostages could hear him during that very speech. He addressed them and said some crap—I can’t remember exactly, but from memory it was about how they hadn’t been forgotten. He also said he had arranged for his speech to go through to Palestinian phones.

If you think about that, it’s a kind of cruel and inhumane torment. I don’t know how true it was that he had speakers set up so the hostages could hear, but if he did, it wouldn’t have been just the hostages who heard him.

Scared, vulnerable, completely shattered Palestinians would have heard it too. That would have scared them, intimidated them, and inflicted what I’m sure could only be described as a form of terror. He really is a megalomaniacal, sociopathic maniac.

Since I last wrote in this blog, I have applied for a job—not just any job, but a job at my beloved Red Cross in their Lifeblood call centre. The role involves dealing with donors and possibly potential donors; I’m not entirely sure. I want the job so badly, because, as I’ve written here before, I believe in the mission of the Red Cross.

When I did my résumé, I realised I have no chance at this job. I pretty much have no formal qualifications, I haven’t worked in ten years, and I’m not sure there’s anything employable about me. I applied through SEEK; you had to attach a cover letter and résumé, and you also had to fill out a questionnaire. There were some basic questions, and then came the one I wasn’t expecting but when I saw it, I wasn’t surprised: “Do you have a criminal conviction?”

My conviction is technically spent, and it came up in my volunteer application with the organisation because I deal with aged care and vulnerable people. In a normal police check it should be recorded as spent. I didn’t know how to answer, because I thought if I said no it might still come up, so I said yes.

That really upset me. I didn’t cry, but I realised this conviction is going to haunt me for the rest of my natural born life. I thought it would exclude me from the shortlist, so I felt I had nothing to lose. There was a contact name in the Red Cross material, so I emailed her: I explained that my conviction is a traffic offence from 2013 and she emailed back and thanked me for letting her know.

The next day I received an email saying I’d made it to the next round and asking me to do an audio interview through a website. I did it, and now I’m waiting to hear if I’ve made it through. I highly doubt I will—I’d bet my life I won’t get this job—but I had to try. If I don’t get it, I’m going to temp and study online.

I’m going through a transformational period in my life.I’ve mentioned before that I’m dealing with a very adult problem, and I'm very much an adult. To be honest, I’m not far from being a senior citizen. Very soon I’ll be forced to confront this problem.

I’ve also become incredibly reflective, thinking about my future—what’s left of it. I don’t know how I’m going to spend the rest of my life living with this criminal conviction.

I got it in the first place because of my fear of judges. That fear isn’t so much about the judge himself as about what he represents to me—the person I was when I had the audacity to leave a Post-it note on a District Court judge’s bench; the person I was when, so out of it, I sent him an absolutely fucking insane letter exposing myself as the fake, the phoney that I am.

So I Googled our Chief Justice, who I’m currently having my book of oaths rebound for. I hoped I might read something that would inspire me to finally let go of my judge issues.

I did find something: His Honour is giving an oration in Melbourne on 6 November for the Hellenic Australian Lawyers Association. I booked a ticket and I’m going to fly to Melbourne to see him.

I am hoping to meet him after the speech, as I often have with other speakers. It will be one of the most confronting things I’ll ever challenge myself to do. I don’t know if it will work, but I feel this experience may help me let it go. I’m the sort of person who is into creative ways of dealing with problems, and I think this is both creative and practical at the same time.

I don’t know if it will be a big or small event, but I do know there is a high chance I could say hello to His Honour and get a selfie with him after he speaks. Regardless of what happens, I will see the judge up close and personal. It will force me to face the stark reality that judges are just human beings. And whilst they aren’t all good, they aren’t all bad either. And if I ever find myself in a position where I want to contest a traffic fine again, I need to have the courage to step up to the plate and go to court.