Like many people, I’ve been pushed out of the inner city by the housing crisis. I live in Tarneit, in Melbourne’s outer west. Every morning, I debate whether to spend two hours on public transport or try my luck driving across the West Gate Bridge.
Around 150 people gathered on 3 December at Melbourne’s State Library for a snap rally to protest two recent deaths in custody. On 29 November, a 30-year-old woman in Victoria died in hospital after being transferred from the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre, a high-security women’s prison in Victoria. The next day, a 44-year-old woman died in Townsville Women’s Correctional Centre. By the time the ambulance arrived, it was too late.
In an opinion piece in the Age titled “I doubt I’ll bother attending another climate rally”, Nicola Philp laments: “I have begun to think that this traditional form of mass protest may have run its course. In the age of social media and very busy lives, such disruption to passers-by may actually be detrimental to the cause and serve to tick people off more than engage them with the issue of protest”.