Cronulla

[seachangeblog]

I’d like to say something about yesterday’s riots. Those of you in Sydney, and many of you who aren’t, will probably have heard about them by now. For those of you who haven’t, yesterday, about 5,000 people ended up in Cronulla, supposedly after an SMS was circulated inciting violence. Twenty-eight people have been arrested, and thirty are in

Comments

[oothoona]

This morning I went to an award ceremony for a class of ESL children, some of whom were "graduating" to mainstream classrooms in normal schools. You should have seen these kids - from all over the globe, so energetic and bright eyed and diverse. I knew a tiny fraction of their histories, so I know that some of them have seen war first hand, some have lost their parents, some have spent years in detention, both here and OS. Yet here they are in their little Canberra classrooms, working and playing and forming friendships in spite of immense cultural and linguistic difference.

I know it must sound odd, but somehow the ceremony this morning and the events of yesterday are inextricably linked in my mind - like the two sides of the one coin. And I need, for my own sanity, to hold on to the image of hope, in the face of the unfathomable motives and behaviours of so many people yesterday.

You want to know how it has affected people? Right now I am still numb, and struggling to truly grasp how much we have lost.

[jen_tlemnfarmer]

Thank you for raising the bar for all of us on the way this is talked about - with openness and respect.

I'm shocked and alarmed, & weirdly feel more Australian than ever; I'm not there but so many of my loved ones are, and I feel like these are the moments when citizenship means something. When one has the opportunity to engage in conversations that determine, in whatever tiny way, the direction of events. I think the challenge is now to make something - some expression of community - that is more memorable than Sunday's events. So that this is a turning point in a positive direction.

[_ariadne_]

I wasn't there, but being in a suburb equidistant from Rockdale and Brighton le Sands, I have to say I find it extremely weird going to bed two nights in a row to the soothing sound of police helicopters circling overhead.