ccake: Dear Occupy Brisbane.com, @occupybrisbane and Occupy...

ccake:

Dear Occupy Brisbane.com, @occupybrisbane and Occupy Brisbane Facebook group
The fight you are taking on DOES NOT APPLY HERE, protest something we really do need to change in Australia. Protest the unequal marriage laws, protest the treatment of asylum seekers, protest the terrible plight of the original owners of the land we white fellas now occupy. 

I think thirtyknives summed it up beautifully

For fuck’s sake. Occupy Brisbane? Really? I will not be attending this because if the US could get to the point that Australia is at right now politically, they would not even know what to do with themselves.

We have socialized health care. If I get sick, I can spend no dollars, go to the doctor, and after a diagnosis spend like, a fiver on antibiotics or whatever. If you get a workplace related injury Workcover takes care of your physiotherapy, or surgery, or whatever, again, no dollars, and if you’re a permanent employee or you’ve been there over 18 months they can’t legally fire you for getting hurt on the job.

If I lost my job I get welfare, no questions, no time limit, and if I am on it for ages I am elegible for free retraining and assistance in finding work. If I have dependants I’ll get enough to cover their food. We have a rent assistance scheme to help people keep a roof over their heads, we have a disability pension scheme that may not be spectacular but helps keep people with disabilities from starving to death and helps cover the cost of living. You do have to qualify for it, but the bar to clear is heaps lower than in the States.

If I am really suffering I can get goverment housing, so my kids don’t have to live in a car.

Speaking of my kids, our schools are free to attend, and are nationally funded so they are dependant on nearby property taxes to survive. Simply put, a state run school in a poor neighbourhood is entitled to the same funding as one in a rich neighbourhood.

Australian politicians are required to make public their campain spendings or face electoral fraud charges - and we do charge, and we do punish, those politicians who abuse the system.

Speaking of politics, our system of government is wildly different to that in the US - a constitutional monarchy, and we have checks and balances that the Americans do not have. Our Prime Minister does not have the same degree of power that the President has, and given how roundly abused that power has been in the last decade I am terribly glad of it. We have more options that just the two big parties, with the Greens on the left and the Nationals on the right keeping the majors from descending into a right wing death spiral that you have happening in the states, and the process for getting yourself elected is a fucktonne cheaper than in the US. We have MPs who have been farmers, fish and chip shop operators, small business owners as well as weathier people.

I do not need the changes you are calling for. I already have most of the basic rights you have been denied. It’s not really appropriate to occupy what is basically a small tourist town for an unspecified amound of time, till a set of unspecified “changes” occur, in protest of how fucked over the Americans are. Especially one that eight months ago saw a serious natural disaster, the sort of disaster that caused pretty much everyone pull together and support one another. We’re still rebuilding, for fucks sake.

It’s kind of not the same at all. Sorry guys. A solidarity march would have been more appropriate. But this is really smelling to me like the left in the US trying to export their struggle. We’ve got our own damn issues to take care of. I am really excited that you are finally demanding the things you are owed, but honestly, the rest of the English speaking world is not automatically part of your empire, and we don’t need to import your political dramas.

The whole world is not America. We’ve got our own shit to deal with, thanks. Signed, Rest of the World.

Seriously.

We should be standing up against abuses against Aboriginal people and nations; fighting hideous misinformation about asylum seekers; and telling our government we are the future, all of us, and we don’t want them to fuck up our world by letting mining and deforestation companies run the country. We should be demanding rights and access for people with disabilities, proper health care for mental illness, fair pay for women and people of colour and access to education for absolutely everyone.

Fuck your rape culture, colonialism, child abuse, xenophobia, racism, heterosexism and transmisogyny. Fuck all of it.