Never feud on the front lines – Stand with the Matargarup homeless this Saturday

May 27th, 2015

FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda

Matargarup First Nations refugee camp established on March 1 – Photo, Gerry Georgatos

In the last week I have had some close witness of so-called feuding between two families who are related to each other, where sides have been drawn and imposed by blood line. It happens that these are Noongar families but with most of the family members not wanting any of this. The feuding almost tore apart a recently hard fought worthy social justice struggle – nearly usurping the real ‘feud’; the one between Government and the disenfranchised, our homeless.

Small time familial feuding played out larger than life on a part of Matargarup (Heirisson Island) between several members of two related families.

This article is not about the aggrieved parties, nor whether one family is more at fault or at total fault but that feuding of any sort has no business in any big picture human rights struggle. I am not one to hold back on my truth – I believe in the truth as the way forward. How else?

Matargarup refugee camp has survived nearly 100 days in the heart of the City of Perth, as a place of refuge, as a safe space for Perth’s increasing homeless. Large homeless families have arrived to the island camp – families of two, three, four and five children. One family with four children, the oldest aged ten years, has been homeless for more than three years.

These families have appreciated the respite they have secured while at Matargarup – the feeling safe, the not having to move from alleyways, condemned squats to $40 a night at caravan parks where they can pitch a tent and when they run out of money they are back to the alleyways and squats. At Matargarup the homeless enjoy campfire warmth, music, meals, assistance from kind hearted souls.

For nearly 100 days the Noongar champions who established and hosted Matargarup have made visible to Western Australians our most vulnerable – the homeless and their plight. But in the last week Matargarup could have come undone after being tested by a feud.

My heart goes out to everyone – to everyone caught up in the feud, including the few who it really involves and even to those whom to me seem to be the at fault party. However, in who may be in the right and who in the wrong in this pointless and damaging feud, I am not interested. I will never be party to anything that disservices the big picture. What few select rights we have, what improvements we have within the human condition have been achieved by unswerving focus on the big picture.

The ridiculous feuding at Matargarup was just that – a feud and certainly not a cultural matter. These small time but pernicious feuds have little to do with cultural dynamics, nothing to do with universal value systems. Feuds disservice all objectives pursuant of harmony, this is not rocket science. Feuds can be long running arguments and sometimes stupidly draw people into their vacuum along blood lines and on occasion generate clan wars; well that is how it was once, more often than is the case today. Hopefully someday we may be done with this sort of behaviour. Feuds have more to do with one party feeling aggrieved or a sense of resentment at something said or done. But a feud only sustains itself because of the degeneration into a cycle of provocations.

For three days Matargarup was held victim by a feud, perpetuated by the nonsensical anger and agitation by one party and to the point that police were called in on three consecutive days.

In the end, there is no place or excuse for violence, or threats of violence. End of that part of the story.

In the end, we must always strive for the ways forward. This is the beginning of the part of the narrative that matters most.

In the end, we should never blow away progress. We cannot undermine the hopes and needs of the many. When we blow away progress we perpetuate narratives of human misery and suffering.

I have seen these various types of feuds in many layers and pockets of society – in Government bureaucracy, in boardrooms, in the workplace and even in grassroots social justice groups and not just between neighbours and families.

Even social justice groups can have the hopes of a cause destroyed with overt protocols and turf wars over who should speak. My view has always been the gracious willing of power to the many, to multitudes of voices. Let us will away power from the self to everyone, and ground ourselves in its consequence; unity.

In the last week many had converged to Matargarup from around the nation for a gathering of voices to highlight some of the pressing issues of our times – the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families by our Governments, at the most horrific rates yet known – and to highlight the threat to the Homelands – and to highlight the horrific suicide rates among this continent’s First Peoples.

Matargarup camp has been a safe space to the homeless and as a result of this camp’s incredible stance we are now campaigning for homeless friendly precincts, for a sliver of dignity to our homeless. Nothing should ever stand in the way of the cause.

There is no greater legacy that any of us can have, whether we power on from the coalface or through engagement with Governments, than to improve the lot of others to the point we save lives.

Despite the inadvertent undermining from a feud that had no business on Matargarup, on this occasion the social justice stalwarts have held solid.

I know I can be a polarising figure because I go with my truth, saying it as I see it. I am who I am 24/7, not just part of the time. I am the same person and without any compromise of premises, precepts, principles, at the coalface and in my engagements and gigs at the Government level. It is time that everyone at the coalface comes together, stays solid in their thinking that unity is be all to the end all. We must always remain true to multitudes of voices – power willed to everyone. Cultural shifts are the only way to get the attention of Governments.

Feuds have no place, not on Matargarup, not in any social justice cause or group – the human rights struggle fearlessly foremost.

This Saturday, Matargarup, will be a gathering of many, of the multitudes – the organic Concert for Matargarup – Refugees on our Homelands commences at 11am – be there from 10:30am. From my end, I care about the homeless. I care about the large homeless families on our streets. I am devastated that babies are born homeless, that children wander alone on some of the world’s most affluent streets. Australia, the 12^th largest economy, one of the world’s wealthiest nations has more than 20,000 children less than 12 years of age who are homeless. Some of these homeless children, homeless families have wandered into Matargarup. Let us focus on them, spread the love, do the caring, make good things happen. I have worked for years with the homeless and with my colleague, Jennifer Kaeshagen have found housing for some of them. The Concert is the opportunity to highlight the plight of the homeless that even the calendar event, Homeless Week (August) glosses over.

The scores of volunteers and hundreds of supporters who have got behind Matargarup care about what will happen to the homeless in the event Matargarup wraps up at some point during the winter.

Let us stay solid and keep up the pressure united and fearlessly chase in these homeless friendly precincts that Governments should have established a very long time ago.

Far too many die on our streets, and no-one should be born onto the streets, at least not in this ridiculously wealthy island continent.

Other reading:

We must get homeless friendly precincts out of them because we are not going to get the public housing

This family of six children is now housed.

This family of four children and one baby grandchild is now housed.

Ruthless City of Sydney Council – “Who do you think you are stealing the tents of the homeless?”

“We need homeless friendly precincts.”

Eight little children on the streets – youngest less than 30 days old

A nation shamed when the solution for its children is homelessness

What sort of Australia is this? Seven homeless children in an asbestos slum

Six homeless children fighting for a better tomorrow

Homeless family living in a tent near Perth