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 Published in "Byron Underground" October 2000 (photo: R359-27) It always rained on Anzac Day in Adelaide. We stood in our raincoats every year, pushed to the front of the crowd so we could see the march. We watched all the uniformed, grey-haired men and women walk, hobble and wheel past, carrying their scars and disabilities proudly, many fighting pain and immobility to march on this one sacred day of the year. We were silenced and wonderstruck by the missing eyes and limbs, the weirdly distorted faces, the prosthetics, the medals, the solemnity. We were impatient to see our grandpa, our Doodie, come into view in the marching ranks, our hero wracked by malaria, his endless nightmares still haunted by the heat of the Arabian sands burning his running feet as the tank chased him through the desert, and the sound of the bombs going off in his head. We were taught always to remember what our grandfathers, brothers, sisters, fathers, cousins, grandmothers, uncles, aunties and neighbours did for us: they went away from their homes, leaving love and security and family comforts to risk their lives and limbs to protect our freedom, our lifestyle, our health and our happiness from forces that would destroy and enslave us. At any cost to themselves. At ANY cost. |
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 And so we sang "Lest We Forget" and we honoured their commitment, their love and their sacrifice, even after their deaths. We filmed them, we interviewed them, we wrote books about them, and we gave them pensions and cared for them for the rest of their lives. We upheld the ideals they fought and died for. Our heroes. We have not forgotten, even if in our twenty-first century wisdom we no longer countenance war and killing as legitimate human activities. But have we forgotten the principles? Our new "soldiers", our protesters, leave home, love and family to risk their lives and limbs in their own country to protect our freedom, our lifestyle, our health and our happiness from forces that would destroy and enslave us. But they are branded louts, radicals and troublemakers by the media. They are truncheoned until their faces bleed and their bones are broken; they are shot at, gassed, beaten, jailed and persecuted. They are even called "Un-Australian" in their own country by their own government and media! They are our new heroes and yet they are being silenced and destroyed. |
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 They wave their placards, hand out their petitions, chain themselves to our magnificent trees and sing their protest songs. They call out the injustice being perpetrated against us and our environment by the transnationals who ply uranium, poisoning our land, water and people, and make weapons of mass destruction; by the drug and chemical companies who blackmail our government and farmers into pouring their toxic products into our food, water and land; by the companies who tear down our life-giving forests for toilet paper and throw-away chopsticks at 9 cents per tonne; by the global utility companies who grab for total control of our water, power and communication, so that we will not be able to eat, drink, cook or speak unless some anonymous billionaire approves of us. We have forgotten our principles. We need to wake up and remember. I have marched in protests in the streets of Adelaide against oil wars, against rainforest destruction, against the taxing of education, accompanied by many of those old Anzacs in their uniforms with their medals pinned on, and by their grand-daughters with their children on hips and in school groups, and by grey-suited business people flexing long lunch breaks to add their voices to the collective voice. At the anti-Gulf War rally I climbed onto a balcony and counted heads with my telephoto lens: 3,000 in one street and more coming around the corner. But later that day on the 6pm news, I heard that a total of 1,500 "demonstrators" had blocked the streets and the footage showed only a few vociferous, shaven-headed punks, seemingly the main representatives of the community protest. The mainstream media lies. Always remember that it LIES. |
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 No matter how they are mis-represented and under-represented by the media, our protesters are our heroes. Our hippies, ferals, greenies, radicals, war veterans and schoolkids are now risking life and limb to protect our environment which we depend upon for every moment of our lives, to protect our freedom, our jobs and our right to speak our minds, to live the way we choose and not the way some faceless, filthy-rich board of directors, with no allegiance to anything but their own bank balances, chooses. We are people, not cattle or commodities. We have our heroes and we must support them, speak for them when they are attacked and jailed, help them in their work, acknowledge them and make their sacrifice worthwhile. I asked my love Bruce the Pixie to write a song for our heroic protesters. It is called "Lest We Forget". Listen for it on the streets of Byron Bay, and remember. |