Image credit: Kirsten Hammermeister
Students and members of the community rallied outside the library to advocate for a ‘yes’ vote for the Voice to Parliament and fight what they called racist rhetoric in the ‘no’ campaign.
Around 40 people attended alongside local media: ABC Illawarra, Win News and Illawarra Mercury.
President of the Wollongong Undergraduate Students’ Association, Ela Akyol, led the rally.
“Our rally is about calling out the racist ‘no’ campaign and [a] reporter did ask me if I thought that no voters were racist, which I obviously don’t believe at all. I don’t think people voting no are racist, but our rally is targeted to the ‘no’ campaign, the leaders of the campaign. The politicians that are leading the campaign, they are making racist statements and we need to call it out but in no way is that referring to people voting no being racist,” Akyol told Tertangala after the rally.
“I think what is unique about [student protests] is the fact that students are so keen to fight for Indigenous rights and I think that’s something we haven’t really broadly seen in the ‘yes’ campaign.
“As students we have to be more progressive on it. We have to critically analyse these issues and think ‘once the referendum happens, where do we go from there?’ And where we go from there is fighting for the treaty and fighting for the truth-telling and fighting for Indigenous rights more broadly.”
Video credit: Will Olteanu
Speaker Owen Marsden-Readford called the rally to confront racism.
“Racism does not go away if it is ignored, or [if] it’s placated. Racism has to be confronted in society, openly and publicly and in number. And so to do this, the best way to keep doing this, obviously, is to call the racists racist, but to keep fighting for Indigenous rights after the referendum,”
“We can take inspiration from the struggle to desegregate just here in the Illawarra. The Illawarra was the first place in Australia to be desegregated and to allow Indigenous people to drink in pubs because it was a campaign led by Aboriginal activists, the trade unions, student unions and other progressive people who wanted to fight against the deeply entrenched white supremacism here.” Marsden-Readford said.
He led the rally to the lawn outside McKinnon building. Protesters chanted demands for a yes vote.
Australians will vote Saturday on establishing an Indigenous advisory body in the Constitution, called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.