Speech by Anna Tate, Anti-Poverty Network SA Assistant Campaigns Coordinator, to Palestine Rally, November 10, 2024.
I’d like to acknowledge we are on Kaurna land and pay my respects to elders past and present. I would like to acknowledge that poverty disproportionately impacts Aboriginal people, that historically racist policies made it impossible for Aboriginal families to build intergenerational wealth and that stolen wages further disadvantaged Aboriginal people. We all have a part to play in righting these historical wrongs. We are on stolen land and we need to pay the rent.
The Anti-Poverty Network is an Adelaide-based grassroots group campaigning to lift all people out of poverty and housing stress. As APNSA is a welfare rights organisation, I would also like to acknowledge the incredible legacy of Aboriginal women as advocates in social work, nursing and education. Their tireless work means that today there are Aboriginal specific services where people get the culturally responsive care they deserve.
At APNSA we say that poverty is a political choice. We live in a society that is stacked against people living in poverty, this fact has become even more stark in the last few years as the housing crisis has worsened. As our government commits to spending billions on the AUKUS deal, whilst it allows multinationals to damage our environment and sacred sites, people are sleeping rough and dying from exposure, whilst others are making choices between having dinner, filling medication scripts and paying their electricity bills.
Amongst a housing and cost of living crisis, Marine Airspace Technology will host a dinner on the 18th at $4000 a head. The wealthy have always shown us who they are, they will use corporate funded media like the Murdoch press to pit us against each other. They will hoard their riches whilst they try and convince us that welfare recipients such as refugees, single mums and people with chronic health issues are conning the system.
At the same time, they will take millions of dollars in corporate welfare whilst doing everything they can to avoid paying taxes. In Australia, poverty inordinately impacts marginalised communities, the young and elderly, woman and people with disabilities, these same vulnerabilities are very apparent in Palestine.
Palestine is a feminist issue, the naval blockade of Gaza had meant that prior to the genocide, women were already unable to access specialist healthcare services, including for reproductive care and were bearing an additional caring load. Now they face severe malnutrition, starvation and along with children, make up 70% of casualties.
Palestine is a disability rights issue. The naval blockade stopped vital medical equipment reaching Gaza. The targeted attacks on healthcare workers have also left those who are disabled and chronically ill without access to specialist medical care. We are now seeing cases of polio, which will have far-reaching effects for Palestinians.
The mass-destruction has also allowed contaminants into the air which will result in ongoing respiratory conditions. The destruction of infrastructure makes life incredibly hard for disabled people with limited mobility and is then compounded by continuous forced displacement. Children and elderly people face the same difficulties as they are more vulnerable to attacks. The genocide has killed at least 700 of the survivors of the Nakba. The children who have survived this genocide will face ongoing psychological trauma and many of them will need years of physical rehabilitation as well.
The primary aim of the apartheid state, as we know, is not to separate Israelis from Palestinians, but to separate Palestinians from each other, because the occupation recognises what a threat collective mobilisation is to their settler colonial project. Like Palestinians, we are stronger together.
Over the past couple of months, we have seen two conservative governments come to power in the NT and Queensland, on a platform of locking up children. We have seen Trump elected again after a race to the bottom on Palestine, immigration and incarceration and we’ve seen communities turn on and blame each other. It is understandable to feel isolated but what we need to do now more than ever is unite and mobilise.
I also wanted to highlight the importance of mutual aid, as a direct and very human response to this crisis. We should keep raising for organisations that have infrastructure and can get in vital supplies and personnel, but mutual aid is also an opportunity to build a relationship with a person on the ground, to provide financial and emotional support, and to bear witness to their individual struggle.
I have started a GoFundme for a couple in Gaza and I’d like to read a few of the messages I received from the young woman yesterday: I was speaking to her yesterday and this is her message to us:
“Thank you very much my dear. I see what is happening abroad and what you are doing for us, really we appreciate it. Your voice is making us hope every day Please don’t stop. You are giving us this hope of ending the war soon Because really we are tired. We are tired of the difficult routine of life that we live every day. God willing, with your help and your voice, wars will end forever and we will live in peace. Thank you.”
