It's like living in the not-too-dystopian future!

  

I got pepper-sprayed at the anti-Herzog protest yesterday, but it was actually some much less dramatic stuff today that gave me the ick; the nazis are marching, the imperial boomerang has returned (for white folk - for Blak folks it never left and is orders of magnitude worse), the genocidal head of state is lauded, the dystopian future ick.

Firstly, about the pepper-spraying, I mean, I knew something like that was coming. Lizzie Jarrett, the Blak activist, warned us as we faced down the cops at Town Hall steps, but I knew it before then. We had marched up there because we heard Black Caucus and MUA comrades wanted to march and we wanted to assist. And as I pointed out after we had run from the cops, and was recovering from the pepper spray sitting talking to a nice fellow protestor, it's nothing compared to what people go through in Gaza. I would do it again today and everyday. It's nothing. I lived in Korea for years. I've eaten spicier food than that haha.

 

What was worse today was when cops came onto campus this morning. A comrade in our Sydney Staff for Palestine chat shared a photo of cops taking down a painted banner on the footbridge over a busy thoroughfare. The banner in the photo read, "Jews say Herzog to the Hague". I'm old school and I remember when cops had to be invited onto campus, like vampires, so their presence at uni never sits well with me. I thought maybe people were being arrested too so I was worried for them.

 

I walked over there on a humid February morning only to find the cops walking back to their paddy wagon with the banner. Thankfully no one else was with them or looked like they were getting arrest.

I asked them:

- What's the matter?

And they said,

- There's been an antisemitic incident

 

Then I said

- But it was a banner from Jews, and it was talking about a foreign head of state. What's wrong with that?

The cops got shirty with me then and said

- That's part of the investigation

 

I didn't want to press my luck further so I backed off. You could see the city skyline from the south then, and two blue helicopters swung over the buildings. It was then that I felt like I was in some shitty dystopian future sci-fi.

 

People need to realise that politicians are not coming to save us as continual crises batter us - the ongoing march of imperialists, secular stagnation, the climate crisis, biodiversity loss. We keep us safe, and we are a whole world.

P.S. Please read the Sydney Staff for Palestine statement on the Herzog demo as it's much more coherent than this. It's here: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1GDt2nhhQ1/