JourneyOnline
What’s coming up
Rally Against Racism
Yes to Multiculturalism, No to Xenophobia!
Saturday 8 September, 11.30 am to 12.45 pm, starting in King George Square, CBD.
Greens Councillor Jonathon Sri is hosting this rally to let the Federal Government know anti-immigration policies and racist rhetoric are not acceptable. The rally is a positive, family-friendly event featuring poets and performing artists, to say no to racism and imperialism, and yes to unity and multiculturalism.
The rally is a positive, family-friendly event.
Week in review
A Christian response to racism
President of the Uniting Church in Australia Dr Deidre Palmer has called on Australians to respond with love, hospitality and inclusion to a surge in anti-immigration rhetoric in Australian public life …
Do we need to rethink disability?
Podcast on God Forbid (ABC Radio)
Jesus healed the blind and the lame, so how do people with disabilities fit in at churches today? Far from being open to all, some church buildings have literal barriers to entry.
This 53 minute podcast is well worth listening to; just make a cup of coffee and put your feet up while you listen. More information about this podcast is here.
Australian refugee advocacy in Geneva
Years of work by the Refugee Council of Australia culminated in the ground-breaking first-ever Global Summit of Refugees in Geneva in June. The summit brought together 72 refugee delegates form 27 countries across the globe. It transformed the dialogue about refugee policy and programs. Read the report.
Refugees integrating just fine in regional areas
The Conversation surveyed 155 newly arrived adult refugees and 59 children from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan who settled in Queensland—suburban Brisbane, regional Logan and Toowomba …
In other news, Toowoomba is embracing Yazidi refugees from Syria …
Behrouz Boochani tells the story no one in power wants us to hear
“The prisoners exhale a raw horror and deep hopelessness; they hold onto their nightmares—hold the nightmares in their arms, deep inside, as if they are trying to hold back strong winds that would engulf the corridors.”
No Friend But the Mountains is the new book of Kurdish journalist Behrouz Boochani, who has been illegally detained on Manus Island since 2013. An important read. Buy your copy here.
Surprising news about the average homeless person
Indira Naidoo writes that the stereotype of the older homeless man on the street is outdated. In fact the average person experiencing homelessness in actually a young woman, often with a child in tow …
A choice between heating or eating this winter
We’ve long known the price of food is a problem for refugees, Indigenous Australians, people who are homeless and other vulnerable groups. You’d expect a dual-parent family on a median income to be able to put enough healthy food on the table. But once the cost of housing, transport and school are covered, too many Australians are having to choose between heating or eating.
But new research reveals almost half of the Australians who are classified as “food insecure” (48 per cent) are employed either full-time, part-time or casually …
Call to action
“Nothing good happens in a pokies venue at 3 am”
So says Tim Costello, chief advocate of World Vision Australia.
The Pokies Play You report that Woolworths have admitted that the staff of their ALH pokie venues collected personal information about poker machine users to encourage them to put more money into pokies. It’s terrible behaviour, and while they are promising to reform that, they’re not going far enough. They should not be able to operate between 9 am and 5 am daily.
Join the campaign asking Ministers and Regulators to reduce ALH’s operating hours to 10 am to midnight.
Australia: stop locking up 10 year-olds in prison
Amnesty reports the Australia is locking up children as young as 10-years-old and Queensland is the worst offender—this is far younger than the rest of the world. And it’s far worse for Indigenous kids, who are 30 times more likely to be locked up than non-Indigenous kids.
As parents, grandparents, aunties, uncles, educators, sports coaches and neighbours, let’s come together to say no. Sign up to tell Australia to stop locking up children younger than 14, and to fund community-led programs instead. It’s time to change unfair laws preventing kids from living their best lives!
Who supplies the weapons to kill the children?
Recently, media reports of a Saudi Arabia-led airstrike on a school bus in Yemen went viral. It’s time for Australia to stop supplying arms to countries committing war crimes like these.
Yemen is enduring one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises right now, and Australia is complicit. Our government is supplying military exports to both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates—two countries committing war crimes in Yemen—and Defence Industry Minister, Christopher Pyne, has plans to expand this arms trade.
What can you do? You can write to the Defence Minister, Christopher Pyne.
