Autumn 2003

This newsletter was so hard to get into. A few weeks ago I was so distressed that I nearly thought I would scrap all that I have written and just send pages with the word PEACE repeated over and over. I had planned to have the newsletter out a month ago but the events of the past few months and the build up to the unfortunate inevitable war that I prayed so hard not to be inevitable and that I put a lot of personal energy into has taken its toll. What I wanted to say was hanging on what would happen, and as I keep writing this, the war is well into the fourth week and apparently, the coalition will soon claim victory - what ever that means.

Last Saturday I invited Dancers to join me at the rally, as I did on the day that the war broke out but I couldn’t go, I was burnt out. After a couple of days of centring, walking by the creek and support from great friends, I feel much better. Except now I have a cold. The war has affected my mind as well as my body, as it has so many of us.

On my way home from shopping, on the day I didn’t go to the rally, I heard a woman telling her story on the radio. The woman had been locked up in the Port Headland detention centre. I sat in the car and wept. I feel so helpless, useless, powerless. I can’t believe that I live an a xenophobic county that needs to lock away a few hundred people who have left their homes and risked their lives only to come here, and be treated like animals and criminals. How do people in other countries see us. I know I have said this before.

I wake up some mornings, like today and I feel this grief. I feel teary and I wonder why. I wonder if it is because I have a premonition that something’s going to happen to a loved one, that I don't yet know about. But I feel the premonition is more global than that.
Every time I hear or see any one talk about the people of Iraq I begin to cry, I think of all countries where people are being bombed, shot, violated and are starving and hungry. Why are we so extremely brutal. Some would argue that the animals are brutal. But we have the ability to be more than that. At this point in the evolution of humankind there should be no brutality, war or hunger at all.

What has helped me get through all of this, was to stop watching or listening to the news. I wanted to be informed. But I can’t do it any more. I realised that I was forgetting my core beliefs - to know, that all is as it should be. And what has had the most profound affect on me and brought me back to myself, are the spiritual people who have encouraged forgiveness and to pray for all our leaders to stop the negative rhetoric and to pray, that they act for the good of humanity and yes, to be idealist and believe that world peace is really achievable. And most importantly to know that it begins within ourselves, first.

This has made me question my own actions. Do I get so carried away, so angry that I become just like those that I don’t agree with. Is this what happens at some peace rallies when they become violent. I believe people behave this way out of frustration. We can all relate to a personal relationship that has gone wrong, where you feel misunderstood and not heard, so you scream or lash out and then, the other only sees or hears the screaming and not the cause. Which also relate to the so called rioting in detentions centres - all acts of desperation. We all need to be understood and accepted.

It is important to accept which ever way people need to express their opposition. A different kind of example, is that I hear people criticising the peace movement because it is involved with the Trade Unions, they say they are only there to push their own barrow, which I do not believe to be so and what does it matter any way, that is not the point. Unions are important. They represent the worker, the people who work hard and are the back bone of our country, like my late father. I will keep going to the rallies. In Melbourne they were peaceful. So many people from all walks of life united. The day the war broke out - they walked with tears in their eyes.

And on a different note, here is something we can do something about. A couple of weeks ago I read a story in the Melbourne Times about plastic bags. No matter how hard I try to say no to them, they always appear. I wash them, I try and keep a collection in the car for when I go shopping. I am a member of Friends of the Earth So when go there I am armed with my basket and bags and jars and bottles. Of course it takes much longer to shop, which is one reason why major supermarkets like Woolworth's (who in Victoria own Safeway) uses plastic bags, it makes every thing quicker and time is money.

Here are some plastic bag statistics that I borrowed from the article in the Melbourne Times.
•••• Australians go through 6.9 billion bags a year •••• Land fills all over Australia are full of more that 36,000 tonnes of them except for the bags that are still blowing around like coloured balloons.•••• 3% of the 6.9 billion are recycled. Most end up in land fill, 80 million end up •••• As litter which end up in the creeks river and oceans ••••• The bags kill wildlife - creatures eat them, or are strangled by them or get entangled in them. •••••• They block drains and gutters creating stormwater problems ••••• Up to 100,000 birds, dolphins and whales mistake plastic bags for jelly fish and choke to death. •••••• The energy needed to make one plastic bag is enough to power a car for one kilometre

Environment Victoria is lobbying the government to introduce a levy on plastic bags - Supermarkets have fought the levy because they’re afraid of loosing sales. They’re afraid that customers won’t impulse buy if people bring their own bag. Then they will only buy enough to fit into the bag. Well Well Well (three holes in the ground)!
They say prices will go up because the consumer will spend less and they make going through the check out quick and that is why we get them for FREE! Ikea introduced a fee of 10 cents for their plastic bags and the store instantly went from 8000 to 250 a week. WELL WELL WELL (more holes in the ground)

The thing that gets me the most is watching some one who has one tomato in one bag one cucumber in another and a carrot in another etc. etc. I assume they simply aren’t aware. I very seldom go to major supermarkets, I shop at my local Italian supermarket who are happy for me to pile my fruit onto the scales without a bag and they give me a box. I mostly shop organic which also means that boxes or paper bags are a matter of course. The other thing I love to support local businesses, who talk to me and know me. We have a relationship and at Christmas I get a Calendar or some kind of token for being a regular customer.

Some supermarkets have introduced a bag free lane others say they are training check out people to pack more efficiently, I think it is a good thing instead of them giving us the mandatory monologue of “how are you today” and then looking out into the distance completely disengaged from their task. What about major supermarket re-introducing cardboard boxes. Sometimes I try and ask for one and I am treated like an alien looking for a ticket home and told there aren't any. Where do they all go?

Write to Woolworth's or Coles and ask them what they are doing about plastic bags and make some suggestions. I wrote to Woolworth's and they told me that the boxes get recycled and that if they take away plastic bags people will just use garbage bags and that won’t solve the problem. Why do they
always talk about people as if we are all stupid or something.

On June to 21st to the 23rd there will be a “World Peace and Prayer Day” at the Brambuk Aboriginal Cultural Centre at Halls Gap in the Grampians. This is a special gathering with the traditional Elders of Gariwerd and Chief Arvol Looking Horse (the founder of this international event) and other indigenous elders and peace leaders across the world. Every one welcome!


Summer 2002/03

The day of the Bali bombing I was in the country. I had just walked into my son’s lounge room, he was lying on the couch extremely under slept with a hang over from the escapades of the night before. I looked down at the TV and I heard Bali and then bomb and then lots of people dead, young people, young footy players on their end of season celebration to the land of fun. My heart dropped into my stomach and I looked down at my footy playing boy, who had just finished his playing season - he had gone to Nelson, Victoria for his end of season celebration. That could have been him.

Welcome to the real word Australia! We have lived in complaycency over here down under, watching from our TVs as the world, wars and starves and bombs and mothers lose their sons every day. What a privilege, what a gift, to live with the illusion that it could never affect us. It was a fine romance, The bubble has burst we are a part of the globe in every which way. Do we become fearful now waiting for something to happen. Is that what people are doing in Iraq or Palestine or Ireland day after day for years and years. Maybe we need some advice here. As I look out the window on this sunny Sunday morning and I hear my neighbours getting into the day and the birds singing and my chimes moving with the wind. It all feels the same. as it was before. But in my heart it isn’t the same. I am not afraid, but I am deeply conscious that I can no longer walk the path of complacency and in some strange way I feel that I am now a part of the real world. Because why should I be so privileged as to feel so safe when others have never had this privilege. Never the less, what I want for Christmas more than anything else is World Peace.

So now our illustrious heads of state want us to go to war and kill innocent people in support of the fight against terrorism. Again following the USA, the gun happy country that can not even take care of its own, where getting the flu can cost you a couple of hundred dollars and even people with low paid jobs are homeless because they can not afford to rent. Is this where our leaders are taking us, first war then loss of social services? Terrorism will never ever end this way.

What an opportunity we have in Australia. This island could be a forward thinking autonomous country, instead of another pawn to the USA. We have all the resources we need to be independent and make our own decisions. We have all it takes to be humanitarian and generous. We could live together in peace with all religions.

If we weren’t so ignorant and afraid of the unknown we wouldn’t have this thing called the Refugee Problem. Everyday in the news I see and hear things that I hate. Sometimes I don’t want to know, I turn it off. I work at not getting angry because that won’t change a thing and it only hurts me. So I practice speaking out and being useful. I have just finished a training course with the ASRC (see below). That is better than being angry, but I can’t help sounding passionate when I speak. I have included a paper published in a newspaper compiled by the Edmund Rice Centre for Justice and Community Education. called Debunking the Myths about Asylum Seekers. I am so ashamed, I can’t believe that our leaders can allow people to be locked up and treated like criminals when they are in so much pain already.

Australia is a very big country. If we don’t have enough food for every one it is only because we are so greedy and disconnected to what the fundamental purpose of food is. Why do we need the1000,s of cubic metres of frozen dinners that line the rows of our supermarkets? The amount of space that supermarkets occupy could be housing and those frozen dinners and every other variety of packaged good are making us sick. What happened to the simple food? We know the answer to that, it takes too much time to prepare and there's not enough time because everyone is in a hurry because everyone has to work harder and longer hours. If we don’t have enough jobs it is because everything is becoming dehumanised and computerised which is supposed to give us more time. If there is not enough money to pay people it is because some are grossly over paid and there is nothing left. The gap is widening every second. Try standing in a queue at Centre Link for a couple of hours - good for the soul. The staff are trained to talk to you like you are a number on a list. The system constantly crashes and they go round in circles constantly making mistake. Fitzroy Centre Link staff went on strike last week, three of their managers walked and they are grossly under staffed too.

Please support The Asylum Seekers Resource centre. A week before the Benefit concert which Yalla played in, the centre was broken into and robbed of food, computers, fax machine and printer. The ASRC is a volunteer run organisation, which is funded by the good will of people and donations. There is no income to replace these things.

Things you can donate to help the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre material aid program are;
FOOD
• red lentils • salt • chick peas • sugar • noodles • vegetable oil • olive oil • plain flour • semolina • spices • jam • coffee/tea • rice • life long milk • beans • baby food • dried fruit
TOILETRIES
• sanitary napkins • soap (vegetable base) • shampoo • toothpaste • toothbrushes • nappies •razors • shaving cream • toilet paper
CLEANING
laundry powder • diswashing liquid
OTHERS
• met card • phone cards • office supplies
• furniture and white goods • computers

If you wish to support the plight of refugees
in Victoria. Contact -
The Asylum Seekers Resource Centres
Thornbury - 9484 9655 or Footscray - 9689 5075

If you wish to support helping women in the world, you can contact IWDA (International Women's Development Agency) ph 9650 5547


Spring 2002

Did you know that a major supermarket chain won’t buy oranges from commercial orange farmers unless they doctor their oranges with all these different chemicals and things (that are harmful to us) to make them look shiny and apparently appealing? Doesn’t matter about the taste - it’s all about the look. Farmers are having to buy all this expensive chemical product to compete on the mass market to produce inferior quality tasteless oranges that look shiny. I think this is a metaphor for a lot of things. I wish they would to spend their money on growing organic oranges, that could then bring the price of organic oranges down so more people would by them.

The other day I went to an introductory meeting to become a volunteer at the new Asylum Seekers Resource Centre in Thornbury. To become a volunteer you need to go to 3 training sessions before you can join. As we were taken on a tour of the house that has been leant to them by the local Lebanese community, I see this newspaper clipping on the wall. I've seen it before. The plight of a woman who was on the Tampa and taken to Nauru, while her husband and children were already in Australia. And the ordeal she went through and time it took before they were all reunited. And then I hear all these atrocious stories about people being woken up on the early hours of the morning and shipped of to the other side of this country, living in fear like the Jews in the second world war in Germany, never knowing what will happen next. I hear that families are separated and given different rights and privileges - the mother a visa, the father not; the children financial support, the parents not. And I am ashamed and disgusted. This is the country I was born in. This is Melbourne where I live, my most favourite city in the world. I became teary. I can’t understand why so many Australians aren’t outraged by this. What happened to the lucky country?

I sit in this room with 12 other people all wanting to be volunteers in a house in Melbourne and I touch base with the Melbourne I love again. The grass roots Melbourne. The fringe alternative Melbourne the true socialist Melbourne.

This organisation is run by volunteers, except for one paid co-ordinator, who is paid by a philanthropist and they are extremely organised. There are many people involved from all walks of life, form highly trained professionals such as lawyers, doctors, social workers, to people like you and me who care and would like to assist in some way.

No, Australians are not all morons but unfortunately some are, or just very misguided and uninformed. And it seems may be they are the ones that answer opinion polls which are then called “the majority”. If they are the majority then I belong to the minority and so do a lot of other people I know. Have I said all this before, may be I have, but it needs to be said. If you would like to help, become a volunteer or make a donation. These people have no money and no way of earning money. They need household goods, food, clothing, computers. They need tickets to travel on public transport, everything we take for granted.

If you wish to support the plight of refugees
in Victoria. Contact - The Asylum Seekers Resource Centre
Footscray 9689 5075 or 9687 1434



If you wish to support people who care for the earth and endangered animals GreenPeace
wwwgreenpeace.org.au Call 1800 815 151
or
Friend of the Earth
PH 94198700 http://www.foe.org.au


Winter 2002

I’m a Radio Nationl listener mostly in my car. I only have AM Radio in my car and no stereo so the more time I spend in my car the more Radio National I get. There’s Life Matters, Book Talk, Away (the aboriginal arts program), Sandy McCuchen talk back, the only no bias talk back show on Australian radio, where every one gets a say. Then there's The Daily Planet with Lucky Oceans, a music show that plays everything from Electronic to World Music. What I appreciate mostly is the discussion about what the commercial media leave behind as old news because it has lost its sensationalism.
It has been approximately 4-5 weeks since the announcement of the potential war between India and Pakistan. It was on the front page of the paper for a week or so and now it has disappeared. Except for Radio National, who discuss the fact that now it has disappeared they are discussing how much of a reality is it? Will these 2 countries go to war? Will they push the button? Most people say that if a button is pushed it will be an accident, because they both know too well the repercussions of an atomic blast. And then again, as I listen to the media reporting who did what and who didn't do what and who wants what etc. etc. who’s the goody, who’s the bady. It brings me to think, how interesting it is that we can reduce everything, to who did wrong and who's fault is it and who started it. And the longer that a conflict or a war goes on, the more people loose sight of what it exactly was that they were fighting about. Countries do it, neighbours do it, families do it, friends do it, like India and Pakistan are fighting over possession of Kashmir, a country that really just wants to be independent of both of them. If this bomb explodes it will affect every one on this planet. Which part of the labyrinth will you be standing in?

The Dalai Lamas visit bought up a lot of things for me. I didn’t get to see him but I thought about him a lot, and I heard him on Radio National, of course. One day I was at my massage course and a fellow student sitting next to me, asked me if I was dressed in orange for the Dalai Lama and I had to agree with him that I think I was. What a beautiful human being. Did you see him or hear him? He laughs all the time. He won’t be worrying about the bomb, but he knows its there.

Please pray for Palestine and Israel another war that has lost sight of why there is a war. Be mindful of refugees in this country. Support the freeing of Refugees. Australia has enough room for every one. The people in those camps are here because they had no choice, what terror they have experienced in their journey out of their country, and now another terror. And when and if they are granted asylum and residency what memory are they going to have. I hope they remember that there were 1,000s of Australians rallying for them and this will give them a sense of belonging and peace.

If you wish to support the plight of refugees
in Victoria www.maribyrnong2002.org ,
Ph: Refugee Action Collective Office
9659 3505 or 0408538916

If you wish to support a worthy organisation helping woman in the world, you can contact IWDA (International Women's Development Agency) Ph 9650 5547

If you wish to support people who care for the earth and endangered animals GreenPeace
wwwgreenpeace.org.au Call 1800 815 151
or
Friends of the Earth
PH 94198700 http://www.foe.org.au


Autumn 2002

Six months have passed since Sept 11, Osama Bin Laden is still at large, and every day, everywhere in the world there are acts of terrorism, and even if they catch him, punish him, sentence him to death, that won't stop terrorism. To do that is not in the hands of a country leader, or an army - it is in our hands. Yours and mine.

Let’s begin with the small acts of terrorism, close to home, the every day violations that people experience, the terror in the home between estranged couples, the terror, aggression and rage on the road between drivers competing for that extra inch of road, the terror of society toward the underprivileged who are powerless and falling further and further down the social ladder. We are all affected we are all victims and perpetrators.

On a global as well at local level, the terror, degradation, violation and disregard of women and children, in this so called modern world, as you sit in the comfort of your home reading this, be aware that the most atrocious acts are going on every second of the day. Women being raped, millions of women in the world suffer from Female Genital Mutilation; little girls, children left on the streets or locked away to die because for whatever reason, they are not wanted, young girls who are married from as young 8 years of age, become pregnant as soon as they reach puberty, either die giving birth or the baby dies and they are left with a torn bladder and crushed organs. Because of that they are cast out because they become incontinent and smelly and they can never marry again or possibly have children. This all happens before they are even 16. I have a 16 year old daughter, she is extremely fortunate and leads a happy creative life compared to the above but on a much lighter note, yet very important, if she goes out into the work force when the time comes, she will not be paid the same wage as a man. And last but least, there is the plight of the refugees in OUR country (the lucky country - Australia).

Some people don’t want to know, some find it too depressing - yes it is depressing, it certainly makes me cry, but pretending it isn’t there won’t help, I have to do something, so I am writing this and I try support groups like IWDA (International Women's Development Agency), and as a performer I do benefit gigs in aid of causes I believe in, and I try and be thoughtful as I walk in the world and sometimes I fail, but I keep trying.
There is immense power in collective consciousness and prayer.
If you wish to support a worthy organisation helping woman in the world, you can contact IWDA (International Women's Development Agency)
Ph 9650 5547

Summer 2001

The human journey for 2001 has been very challenging, especially for us westerns. We Aussie's, as citizens of the lucky country, have never really felt a threat to our existence as have many others in the world. After Sept 11th we got a slight taste of it. Most of us have enough to eat and a roof over our heads and a choice. But it makes me sad to see that in this abundant country there are more and more underprivileged people in our streets.There is, at least, a welfare structure that is able to pick that person up even if for a moment, however that structure is becoming more and more fragile.

What has been brought home to me over the past few months, is how horrendous it must be to live in constant terror, to be hungry all the time, to have nowhere to live, to watch your children die from hunger and to have war going on around you, or to be a woman in a fundamentalist country, who can’t even get food to eat for herself or her children because she no longer has a man who is a husband, son or relative and to not have the resources to change any of this. To not have a choice. To think that millions of people in the world live like this and they did so before Sept 11th and after. Sept 11th is of no significance to these people. There seems to be no end to it.

I am extremely privileged that my worries centre around getting this mail out done and what I'm going to give every one for Christmas. Will I buy it or make it.
Have a wonderful summer. Enjoy the sun and the sand, enjoy your Christmas and time with loved ones and family. Take time to enjoy your life. Because you can too.

Love and Blessings

Maria