What happened during the G20 - day 1

Early Friday morning we arrived at the blockade, across the intersection from the Hyatt, outside the Gucci shop, and set up our little gazebo. (It was fairly difficult to set it up because there were so many media people getting in the way.) Then police told us that we couldn't have it in front of the shop, and that we'd have to move it into the road, in the lane that was blocked off. So we moved it over there, and we started laying down the cardboard we'd brought to sit on, and then the police told us that we couldn't have a structure, because it could block traffic. So we started dismantle the gazebo, while Jess explained in front of one of the TV cameras that the authorities had decided that the third world and the environment we're allowed to have a structure for shelter. Once we'd packed up the gazebo, the police decided they wanted us to move back onto the pavement, outside the Gucci shop.

Because there weren't many other protesters around we got a lot more media coverage than we expected, and we were able to get our message across pretty clearly, before the big protests began, and the media just started sensationalising everything. At about half past ten I got a call from Mum, who'd forgotten about what we were doing, and had gotten a surprise when she saw us on TV. We spent a lot of time talking to people about why we were protesting. We got a lot of encouragement from various anarchists who'd turned up to see if anything was happening yet. We got along quite well with the police as well. In the afternoon we had a visit from Melbourne Radical Cheerleaders.
Friday evening I had to go to work. When I got back at about midnight I was absolutely wrecked, so I didn't sleep at the embassy.
When I came outside Saturday morning the embassy was gone. Turned out that the police had woken everyone up at 3:30am and said that they were extending the barricades, and that they had five minutes to vacate the area. Three people decided they weren't going to move, so the police moved them.

We've gotten a mention in The Age:

Tomorrow, a group calling themselves "a G20 Christian Collective" will begin a 60-hour vigil outside the Grand Hyatt demanding "tickets" to the summit on behalf of those excluded from it.
The group - which includes teachers, lawyers and church ministers - will set up a temporary "embassy" and some will consume nothing but rice and water for the duration.

We've also been mentioned in the Herald Sun and Australian.
Going down there now.

Today Luke is back, after getting married the weekend before last:

What's going on during the G20?

This weekend the G20 meetings will be taking place at the Grand Hyatt, just up Collins Street from here.

There are going to be prayer vigils held on Tuesday and Thursday outside the Hyatt (Russell St entrance) from 7pm till 9pm. (Thursday's vigil is going to be held as close to the Hyatt as possible, because the barricades will have been set up by then.

Wednesday night between 7:30 and 9:30pm there's going to be a G20 Bible Study called 'Luke, Capitalism and the Kingdom of God' at the Den (our education office), 116 Little Bourke Street, Melbourne. The Den's number is (03) 9663 0699.

I'm part of A G20 Christian Collective who will be attempting to set up a Third World and Environment Ministers Embassy beside the barricades surrounding the Hyatt as a way of demonstrating the exclusion of the poor and other essential factors in the G20 meetings. We're planning to be there from Friday morning until Sunday evening. This will be a peaceful 60 hour non-stop vigil in solidarity with those who won't be represented in the meeting. Others are welcome to join us.

On Saturday from 9am till 3pm there will be a prayer and reflection space on the steps of Collins Street Baptist Church, with a sausage (and veggie burger) sizzle.

On the Saturday Stop G20 are parading a Carnival Beyond Capitalism, which will be starting at the State Library at noon.

On the Saturday, Make Poverty History is holding a festival in the Alexandra Gardens between 10am and 8pm. It will feature bands, stalls, information booths, and reflection spaces. I believe my brother Justin's going to be doing some artwork there.

Update: Justin's art demonstration at the Make Poverty History festival has been canned because it is believed that it may be seen as an endorsement of graffitti. But he might still be able to do it as part of the prayer vigil on Saturday, at the Baptist Church.

Karl Rahner

Last week Tab posted a quote from Karl Rahner, so I've been rereading the chapter on his ideas in The Tapestry of Christian Theology. There's a fair bit that I don't understand.
One thing I find interesting is Rahner's understanding of the hypostatic union - the nature of Jesus as completely human, but at the same time completely God. It seems like Rahner reckoned that it made sense for the Christ to be completly God and completely human because if God became a human he would actually be more human than the other humans around him. He would be human in the way that he origianlly intended all people to be. In 'On the Theology of the Incarnation' he says,

Thus Christ is most radically man, and his humanity is freest and most independant, not in spite of, but because of its being taken up, by being constituted as the self-utterance of God.

It seems he also reckoned that since spiritual things and material things both come from God, they shouldn't be seen as though they're in conflict with each other. He thought that we shouldn't want to transcend physicality, because we can learn about God's nature through his physical creation. (That's what the quote Tab used was about.) He reckoned that a person is constantly in relationship with God, but not always consciously, or in a way that they could explain with words. It's similar to Michael Polanyi's idea of tacit knowledge, that 'we know more than we can tell.'
There's a whole heap of other stuff too, but I find it difficult to get my head around. Might write about more of his ideas another time.

After church tonight, Tex (he's into country music and says he's a cowboy) was giving everyone all these Metropolitan Fire and Emergency Services Board (MFB) tattoos that he'd gotten at a community fair or something. So now I have a sleeve of MFB logos.

Pain in the Arts 2006 Exhibition

Me and Tomsy and Nigel got most of the installation at the City Library Gallery done last Friday. I took this picture of Tomsy when we were taking all the art over there:

I was thinking it looked like he'd just been shopping, and bought a heap of paintings.
Tonight we had the exhibition opening. Nate-Dawg took these:

(I've got some more pictures of artists with their work, but I need to check if it's okay with them before I put them up here.)
After the opening, me and Damo and Nomes went out for coffee. On the way there we ran into someone we know who'd been at the opening, and he asked if he could come with us, and we said that was fine. As soon as he finished his coffee, he got up, said, 'I have to go now,' and rushed off without paying! We didn't really mind paying for him though, because it was pretty funny.
At the moment there's an animation of Damo doing some of his writing, being projected from the Vic Hotel onto the ground in our laneway (Baptist Place, off Little Collins Street). It's going to be running at night during the exhibition.

(The photo's a bit blurry because I had to do a 6-second exposure for it to come out clearly.)
There's info on the exhibition here.

'Field notes from the underground'

Just read this article from the Boston Globe, about America's underground economy.

ON A COLD FEBRUARY DAY on Chicago's South Side, two men are having an argument in a church parking lot. One is a local hustler who fixes cars and does his work wherever he can. This month, he is paying a local pastor to use the church parking lot. The week before, he paid a nearby store owner to work in a back alley.
On this day, he has just fixed the car of a local resident who is not happy. His customer thought the cost to repair his rusty 1986 Cutlass Ciera was $20, but the mechanic insists that his estimate was $30.
The dispute quickly gets out of hand. The mechanic refuses to return the keys to the car. The car's owner throws the mechanic to the ground, punches him repeatedly, takes the keys and drives away in his repaired vehicle. Bloodied and angry, the mechanic pursues him.
The mechanic makes his way to his customer's apartment building, where he begins yelling for him to come out. In full view of the neighbors, as well as the local block club president, he grows frustrated, breaks into the apartment, and walks out with a TV and VCR in hand. He utters a profanity, shouts "You better believe I get my money," and marches off.

It's interesting to hear how the conflict is resolved.

Fire escape films

I managed to set up the dataprojector on the fire escape, to project onto the adjacent building. Tested it with Zoo TV Live from Sydney, and took these pictures:

Then we watched this video that we made early in the year of Jono (an ex-resident from Urban Seed) playing some of the Credo songs for us, so we could learn them. After that we took the projector back in (it was cold and windy) and watched Lost Boys.

Dataprojector

This afternoon Ali was taking some stuff out to Braeside for Green Collect, and I wasn't doing anything, so I went along too. There were a couple of dataprojectors, so Ali asked if I wanted one, to see if I could get it working. It had a sticker on it saying that it'd been tested in June and there'd been nothing wrong with it, so i took it home, and I've been able to get it working.

My capsicum plant has started growing fruit:

Today at Pain in the Arts, one of the youngest members of our community painted for the first time.

Next Wednesday is the opening of our Pain in the Arts exhibition, at the City Library.

Common Work Day

Today we cancelled lunch and had a Common Work Day, to do a whole heap of maintenance work around Credo. Previously we've just had afternoons for Common Work, but we've been finding that we haven't been able to get much done. So now we're going to be having a day each month where we just do Common Work.
In the morning me and Nathan cleaned the laneway, and then Chris, Woodsy, Tim and Jo helped us repaint the walls light blue. For lunch we had a barbecue on the roof. After lunch me and Ali did a bit of decorating in the newly painted laneway. I made a pigeon stencil and used it to paint a whole heap of pigeons on the wall, going into Credo, and Ali wrote a whole heap of stuff, which I reckon will probably get defaced. But that's okay.

Bangkok blog

Adam and the rest of the team are blogging here about what's going on while they're in Bangkok.

Goodbye Adam

We've just been to see my brother Adam off at the airport. He's going to be spending a week an a half in Bangkok with Urban Neighbours of Hope, teaching English to kids who live in a slum.

Dad pretended to cry:

Urban Seed ♥ North Korea

Andrew Bolt was slagging us last week, saying we want Australia to be like North Korea. I'll just quote Nate-Dawg:

andrew bolt wrote the most bizar article last friday that drew parallels between north korea and u/seed :S

marcus (he'll be taking the jevermoreny walk this fri) then wrote a response on his own blog

they're a bit of a read, especially the response, but I found them well worth while, if only to reaffirm with Marcus's response why I do what I do :P

and, if you're keen, here's one I found in my online travels, an interesting article contrasting Christian right and left, using Kevin Rudd and Bolt's articles (in response to Rudd) as a basis

I have a vision!

I've got all my TVs going now:

My tomato plant is starting to flower.

This evening I started reading Paul's letter to the Philippians. This bit particularly stood out to me:

Brethren, together follow my example and observe those who live after the pattern we have set for you.
For there are many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, who walk (live) as enemies of the cross of Christ (the Anointed One).
They are doomed and their fate is eternal misery (perdition); their god is their stomach (their appetites, their sensuality) and they glory in their shame, siding with earthly things and being of their party.
(Philippians 3:17-19)

Was thinking about how easy it is for us to live simply to consume (whether it's food or music or drugs or whatever), particularly in a culture that values sensation so much, and where all that matters is the surface.

Hard rubbishing

There's currently a hard rubbish collection going on near where Ben lives, so last night he took Ray, Ali and I out there, and we got a whole heap of people's unwanted stuff.

So now I have seven TVs. That's more than Elvis had.

Now I have to see if I can get them all going.

Screaming

Haven't blogged in over a week. What has happened?

On Monday afternoon I was washing the dishes, and heard a woman screaming, 'NOOOOOOOOOO!' So I rushed out onto the fire escape, to see what was going on in the laneway. I couldn't see anyone down there, so I ran back inside to look out the window, into the other end of the laneway. Couldn't see anyone from the window either, so I ran down the stairs to the laneway and had a look around the laneway, but still couldn't find anyone. Heard the scream again: 'NOOOOOOOO!'
It turned out that in the other laneway, which goes from Collins Street, alongside the church building, there was a film crew shooting, and one of the actors had to scream a lot.

On Thursday after lunch, I went with Alfred to a certain fast food restaurant, becuase he hadn't wanted to eat what we had for lunch that day. There were two girls sitting near us, probably about 14, and they'd finished their meal, so one of the staff came to get their tray. One of the girls screamed at him, 'Don't take my f***ing cup!' and threw her cup at him, so he picked it up and threw it back at her. At this point both the girls stood up and started screaming at him, and he quickly went back behind the counter. The two girls stood at the counter screaming at the staff for about ten minutes, and then stormed out, yelling, 'F***ing city bums!' The police turned up just after they left.

Gardening on the fire escape

This morning I went up Brunswick Street and checked out a couple of nurseries, trying to find some plants to grow on the fire escape. Ended up getting a tomato plant, a capsicum plant, two pots, and sixty litres of organic potting mix. Got them back into the city on the tram. When I got of the tram this lady who was on her lunch break carried the pots and the plants for me, which was nice.
During lunch Emma asked me if I could look after her son Jack for a little while in the afternoon, so we potted the plants and watered them.

A deformed model, a barbecue and an artist colony

Was sitting in Bourke Street Mall today and saw one of the fashion icons being taken down. The huge sheet of vinyl was flapping all over the place in the wind, making the image of the model look all distorted and weird...

For lunch today we had a barbecue in the laneway.

After lunch some of us headed out to the Montsalvat, an artist colony in Eltham, to help Mark set up for the World Vision Australia staff prayer day, which he's running tomorrow.

Yoga with the elephants

At lunch on Friday, Maureen had a whole heap of free tickets to The Melbourne Zoo which she'd been given, and she gave me two. They had to be used today, and there was going to be 'yoga with the elphants' in the morning.
So this morning me and Ray caught the train out to The Zoo, and indeed there was a yoga class, and they brought an elephant out to take part in the exercises. Was a bit strange. I don't know much about yoga at all, but I don't see why you would get an animal to take part in a spiritual exercise that it probably doesn't understand.
After that, spent a few hours wandering around watching the animals, and trying to avoid all the noisy kids and their noisy parents.


I don't think I'd been to The Zoo since about 1998, and I saw it fairly differently today. I didn't like seeing the bigger animals like the lions and tigers and seals in their little enclosures. Seemed like they'd be pretty bored spending their whole time there, and not even getting to hunt their food like they would in the wild. Was talking to Maureen about it, and she reckons it's okay because we and the animals are all one. She thinks the animals choose to live in The Zoo, because they're becoming extinct, and they want to stir people's consciousness.