This week in the news
April 30, 2008 at 10:47 pm (Redfern, blog, borders, class, community, diaspora, erasure, family, feminism, gender, gentrification, heterosupremacy, policing, queer rights, race and racism, sexuality, the state, violence, white supremacy, women of colour)
I made my blog private for a short while because I have a paper to write, and the blog world is just too distracting for me to avoid. The paper remains unwritten, but I decided to make SWS public again because today has been an eventful day and I feel the need to say something about it.
1. Today hundreds of Melbourne taxi drivers blocked off streets in the centre of the Melbourne CBD
I walked into work today to see the TV covered in images of shirtless, shouting brown men in the middle of Melbourne and wondered what was going on.
Notice how I highlighted race first? Apparently it never occurred to the news media, who framed it as an issue about safety, about cabbies wanting safety screens. According to the mainstream media, this is not about the fact that Jalvinder Singh, an international student from India, was stabbed while doing one of the few jobs available to international students and that mounted police were called in. If it’s about anything else, it’s about the mental health of his attacker.
Which brings me to my final point: are student organisations going to take this up? I have a feeling they won’t, despite being in one, and despite the fact that May Day is tomorrow.
2. There has been a massive bust at the Block in Redfern hot on the heels of the unveiling of a new plan to upgrade the train station and build new high-density apartments in the area
I don’t have time now to go into the entire history of Redfern, the 2004 uprising, or the State government’s triple-pronged attack in the form of: ghettoisation, gentrification, and police brutality (perhaps adding co-optation of the local Aboriginal Housing Corporation into the mix). Suffice it to say, this is convenient timing for a drug raid, when anyone who walks through the station knows that police can see everything that’s going on from the top of their tower down the road.
This is not something the newspapers will tell you, though they’ll happily print the two stories side-by-side.
I have to confess to being somewhat blind to the legal aspect of this, and to the implications for queer politics (who’s advocating for what model of rights for same-sex unions, who’s likely to feel how), but I have to say it looks pretty ambitious. De-facto relationships have many of the privileges of marriages… which is why I’m wondering what the Opposition’s response will be (not that it’s terribly relevant, given that the ALP has a majority in both houses of parliament).
4. [Something I should've blogged about before, but:] A refugee family from Sierra Leone is being kept apart because of the prohibitive costs of DNA testing, which the Department of Immigration demands before they can go ahead and reunite the family
Regarding the families of people of colour, I was thinking about something Brownfemipower was talking around with regard to feminism, women of colour, and families. It seems like Bfp’s focus on this issue was informed by critical engagement with racial issues as a parent and a feminist (notice that I say was). As a young, unmarried, childless woman, that stands out to me. It’s something I think needs to be engaged with more, at least in the feminism I’m exposed to and practice with my peers.
I want to explore this more: violence against families of colour and other social bonds between people of colour, not because I think those bonds are inherently virtuous (hell, they can be oppressive and downright abusive at times), but because of how white supremacy constitutes itself through enacting these forms of violence. How are white families constituted when they’re not subjected to the same kind of institutional violence? At the risk of ending up with a heavily functionalist analysis, what is white supremacy doing, when it’s attacking familial structures this way?
Secondly, as it pertains to women of colour, as women, what are these politics — of fertility, of sexuality, of bodies — producing in the consciousness of women of colour?
It might seem like I’m asking these questions because nobody is answering them, but I know that isn’t the case. I think I’m highlighting my own ignorance more than anything. Or perhaps the way that important voices are silenced, so we go over the same problems again and again.
I’m being brief and rather more simple and direct than I normally am, because I don’t have much time. I did want to mention these things, though.
tigtog said,
May 1, 2008 at 12:11 am
Good catch on the taxi-driver demonstration - the issues of race entwined with immigration status and student visas underlying the obvious safety issues simply hadn’t struck me. I do know that in the US cabbies have the highest male workplace mortality rate, and there too it’s a job that is mostly held by immigrants and foreign students, at least in the most highly urbanised areas.
The State government plans to dismantle the community of the Block have been obvious for years.
A small nitpick on the bill for same-sex equality with heterosexual de facto couples: Labor doesn’t have a majority in the Senate now, as the outgoing Senators forming the Liberal majority are still in office until June 30, and they didn’t win enough Senate seats in the last election to have an outright majority after July 1 either. They need to have the Greens plus the two independent Senators Fielding and Xenophon on side to pass any legislation, and there’s no way Fielding will vote for this bill. If the Liberals allow a conscience vote though then there should be enough supporters there to get the bill up.
The demand for DNA testing seems clearly biased on its face: do they demand the same of other immigrant families? If not, then why just this one? To see cases like this must induce feelings of vulnerability in other women of colour who worry about being in a similar situation.
bez said,
May 1, 2008 at 3:19 am
They don’t have direct majority in the Senate.
In order to pass the de facto bill, they’re going to need
Coalition support, or
the support of Family First senator Steve Fielding, and independent Nick Xenophon.
Fire Fly said,
May 2, 2008 at 12:05 pm
Re: Senate support for law reform removing discriminatory measures against same-sex couples.
The ALP seem pretty confident of getting the laws through. I haven’t been able to find out what Steve Fielding or Nick Xenophon think, but the Democrats and Greens should be in favour. From the article linked above:
“The Australian Democrats have long supported the reforms and there will be no problem with the laws passing the Senate before July 1.”
And even Brendan Nelson hasn’t opposed them:
“Whilst we will steadfastly oppose gay marriage, gay adoption and gay IVF, we will carefully scrutinise the proposals being put up by the government, and if they are affordable and reasonable we will certainly be providing support to them.”
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23621817-2702,00.html
princess mob said,
May 8, 2008 at 10:27 am
On the taxi drivers strike, if you haven’t seen it already, you might be interested in Liz’s comments & the discussion on the strike & the connection between student visas & the labour market & a bunch more:
http://archive.blogsome.com/2008/05/04/students-migrants-workers/
Fire Fly said,
May 8, 2008 at 11:19 pm
Hey princess mob,
I did see that discussion. It’s heartening to hear that students are organising, and it reminded me of the NYC taxi drivers’ organising too!