A few weeks back, this guy who comes to lunch at Credo asked me if I could help him research his family history online, because he doesn't know much about where his family came from or anything. Anyway, we found a bit about his family, including that the Queen of England is his seventh cousin twice removed, and that his 20th great grandfather was Chaucer.
This morning I caught the train down to Noble Park to help Adam move into his new house. We lived in Noble Park until I was almost 15, and I think Adam was about 12. Adam's moved back there to do stuff with Urban Neighbours of Hope.
I got there fairly early, so I had a bit of a wander around.
This is where we went to Primary School:
This is where we got haircuts, bought five cents worth of lollies and got fish and chips for tea:
This is the street we lived in:
And this was our house:
(When we lived there it had heaps of trees out the front, but the new people cut them all down.)
This is the UNOH van, which Adam used to move his stuff:
(The van was painted by the kids from Springstarz, which is a kids program that they run in Springvale.)
Adam's new place is on top of a shop, just off the main street, and he works at the Salvos across the road. Here's some pictures:
Tab: heyJessie Taylor (a lawyer who's been having a lot to do with asylum seekers in detention) is running an alternative commentary of the election campaign:
Tab: guess what?
Chris: what?
Chris: elephants?
Tab: only 6 weeks left of annoying election campaigning!!!!!!1
DAY 1 – Monday 15 OctoberYou can follow the commentary here.
Lunchtime - RW placed in solitary confinement pending his deportation. His migration agent is not notified of his negative outcome until 1pm Monday, despite the decision having been made on Friday. Conversation ends with “we’ll be removing him tomorrow”. All afternoon, he begs to speak to friends – Nicki Moseby, Jessie Taylor & Joan Lynn. Nobody is allowed to speak to him, despite our incessant attempts to contact him. The Privacy Act is cited as the reason, despite his having begged to speak to us. We are told that we’ll have to go through his migration agent.
Afternoon – government announces billions of dollars in tax cuts. Cheap, cheap, cheap tricks to woo an electorate which is hopefully smarter than that… although precedent is not reassuring…
The Age has published an article about how Kevin Andrews comments about Africans have given permission for people to bash Sudanese:
Youth leader Paul Bor Gatwech said said the minister's comments had given others licence to attack Sudanese people. He said an apology from Mr Andrews would help quell community fears that Sudanese-born migrants were being targeted.The full article is here.
Yesterday Mr Andrews was standing by his remarks on Sudanese refugees. A spokeswoman for the minister said: "Funerals are a very emotional time and the minister stands by his comments."
I wouldn't have expected John Howard to support the death penalty. But this is what he said regarding the Bali bombers:
"The idea that we would plead for the deferral of executions of people who murdered 88 Australians is distasteful to the entire community," Mr Howard said.(The Labor Party's foreign affairs spokesperson, Robert McClelland, has promised that a Labor government will campaign against capital punishment in south-east Asia.)
"I find it impossible myself as an Australian, as Prime Minister, and as an individual, to argue that those executions should not take place when they have murdered my fellow countrymen and women."
'PM slams Rudd over death penalty' - The Age
This weekend we have six New Zealanders from Praxis (youth work/community development training) staying with us. They're visiting Victoria for the week and visiting places like Urban Seed, UNOH and the Footscray Salvo mob. Last night we stayed up and watched Australia get beaten by England in the Rugby World Cup. Then we got up at 4am to watch New Zealand and France. Leon said, 'Jesus came to me in a dream and said we're going to win.' New Zealand get beaten by France. When the All Blacks were beaten, Greg Morris (he was an Urban Seed resident years ago) said he couldn't go back to New Zealand anymore.
Just came across a blog called Revolution in Jesusland. It's being done by a guy who's trying to encourage reconciliation between secular progressives and evangelical Christians, and showing what both of these groups can learn from each other.
The Age's social affairs editor Farah Farouque has written a response to the federal government's decision to accept less African refugees:
RMIT's Professor Desmond Cahill, who was responsible for helping develop Vietnamese and Greek settlement programs, certainly sees something familiar in this week's debate. "In any immigration and refugees debate there are echoes of the past," he observes.The full article is here.
"When the Turks came in the early 1970s there was much doubt about there capacity to settle and integrate, followed by the East Timorese and larger Vietnamese groups. "Migration and refugee policy has always been a controversial topic, and most groups have taken a long time to be accepted.
"By the early 1970s, for example, 40 per cent of the Australian population did not want Italians admitted to Australia, even though most had already arrived."
Kevin Andrews says that the government has cut Australia's intake of African refugees because they have difficulty integrating into Australian society.
"We have detected that there have been additional challenges in relation to some of the people that have come from Africa over the last few years," he told reporters in Melbourne.(The full article from The Age is here.)
"We know that there is a large number of people who are young.
"We know that they have on average low levels of education, lower levels of education than almost any other group of refugees that have come to Australia. We know that many of them, if not most of them, have spent up to a decade in refugee camps and they've spent much of their lives in very much a war-torn, conflicted situation.
"And on top of that they have the challenges of resettling in a culture which is vastly different from the one which they came from," he said.
Last week during Mission Exposure, Ray took us to Buoyancy, a drug counselling place in Richmond. I was pretty amazed that in a lot of ways it seemed to have a similar feel to Credo and Urban Seed - except that I suppose they're professional, whereas we're nonprofessional.
Anyway, a few people from our group were a bit taken aback by the title of this little booklet that Buoyancy have put out:
(If you click on it, there's a PDF version.)
Deborah Homburg (the CEO of Buoyancy) was saying that when they start working with a new client they tell the client that there's nothing wrong with them. Some people from our group reckoned that was a bad thing to say, and that they should be telling people that things are wrong, because they're using drugs.
I think that the Buoyancy people are trying to get across that using drugs is not an unusual way of trying to cope with trauma. I think as well they're trying to get people to look at different kinds of behaviour as helpful or nonhelpful, rather than good or bad.
Last week I sent an email around asking people to sign a petition in support of the protests in Burma. Today I got this update about the campaign:
Dear friends,
Burma's generals have brought their brutal iron hand down on peaceful monks and protesters -- but in response, a massive global outcry is gathering pace. The roar of global public opinion is being heard in hundreds of protests outside Chinese and Burmese embassies, people round the world wearing the monks' color red, and on the internet-- where our petition has exploded to over 200,000 signers in just 72 hours.
People power can win this. Burma's powerful sponsor China can halt the crackdown, if it believes that its international reputation and the 2008 Olympics in Beijing depend on it. To convince the Chinese government and other key countries, Avaaz is launching a major global and Asian ad campaign on Wednesday, including full page ads in the Financial Times and other newspapers, that will deliver our message and the number of signers. We need 1 million voices to be the global roar that will get China's attention. If every one of us forwards this email to just 20 friends, we'll reach our target in the next 72 hours. Please sign the petition at the link below -if you haven't already- and forward this email to everyone you care about:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/stand_with_burma/t.php
The pressure is working - already, there are signs of splits in the Burmese Army, as some soldiers refuse to attack their own people. The brutal top General, Than Shwe, has reportedly moved his family out of the country – he must fear his rule may crumble.
The Burmese people are showing incredible courage in the face of horror. We're broadcasting updates on our effort over the radio into Burma itself – telling the people that growing numbers of us stand with them. Let's do everything we can to help them – we have hours, not days, to do it. Please sign the petition and forward this email to at least 20 friends right now. Scroll down our petition page for details of times and events to join in the massive wave of demonstrations happening around the world at Burmese and Chinese embassies.
With hope and determination,
Ricken, Paul, Pascal, Graziela, Galit, Ben, Milena and the whole Avaaz Team
The other week someone defaced the big stencil of Brent in the laneway. The funny thing is Brent came out while they were doing it, and asked them what they were doing.
Last week we had four people staying with us at Urban Seed for Mission Exposure, which is a time for people to find out a bit about what we do, and the ideas behind what we do. We started off the week by each sharing a bit about our faith journies, particularly how different things have influenced how we see God, the world and our place within the world. We tend to end up with some fairly diverse ideas in the room, so I started off the sharing time with some thoughts on some things Jesus said:
Then some people brought to Jesus a man who was blind and could not talk because he had a demon. Jesus healed the man, so that he was able to talk and see.This is a bit confusing, because it seems like Matthew has Jesus saying that people who aren't part of your group are against you, and as though Luke has Jesus saying that people from other groups are really trying to do the same things as us.
The crowds were all amazed at what Jesus had done. 'Could he be the Son of David?' they asked.
When the Pharisees heard this, they replied, 'He drives out demons only because their ruler, the Devil, gives him power to do so.'
Jesus knew what they were thinking, and so he said to them, 'Any country that divides itself into groups which fight each other will not last very long. And any town or family that divides itself into groups which fight each other will fall apart. So if one group is fighting another in Satan's kingdom, this means that it is already divided into groups and will soon fall apart! You say that I drive out demons because the Devil gives me the power to do so. Well, then, who gives your followers the power to drive them out? What your own followers do proves that you are wrong! No, it is not the Devil, but God's Spirit, who gives me the power to drive out demons, which proves that the Kingdom of God has already come upon you.
'No one can break into a strong man's house and take away his belongings unless he first ties up the strong man; then he can plunder his house.
'Anyone who is not for me is really against me; anyone who does not help me gather is really scattering.'
(Matthew 12:22-30)
An argument broke out among the disciples as to which one of them was the greatest. Jesus knew what they were thinking, so he took a child, stood him by his side, and said to them, 'Whoever welcomes this child in my name, welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me, also welcomes the one who sent me. For the one who is least among you all is the greatest.'
John spoke up, 'Master, we saw a man driving out demons in your name, and we told him to stop, because he doesn't belong to our group.'
'Do not try to stop him,' Jesus said to him and to the other disciples, 'because whoever is not against you is for you.'
(Luke 9:46-50)
I flew up to Canberra yesterday for Amber's Dad's funeral, on behalf of the Urban Seed mob.
When I got to Canberra I caught a taxi to the church where the funeral was (which turned out to be quite expensive). The service was really nice. It was interesting hearing about Amber's dad's involvement in the A.C.T.'s transition into self-governance.
Afterwards one of Amber's friends gave me a lift into the city, so I could wander around a bit before going back to the airport.
(I went past the British, New Zealand and Canadian High Commissions as well as the Chinese Embassy, but the sun was coming from the wrong direction, so pictures didn't come out any good.)
The Reclink Football grand final was on Thursday, so we closed Credo for the day and had lunch there. I had a gelati. EcoPaul was appalled. He doesn't like ice-cream because sometimes people put chocolate in it. So he said he wanted to take a photo of me eating it, and he wanted me to put it on my blog, so it would be Internet gelati.
(It was pretty weird gelati.)
Thursday night we looked after Oscar and Jackson, so their parents could celebrate the grand final. Oscar screamed for about two hours (he's one year old), and then smiled. After that he just cried whenever someone left the room... In the morning I had to change his nappy. (I hadn't had to change a baby's nappy since I was about 16.)
