On 22 February, more than 200 social and community service workers in Melbourne stopped work to protest in solidarity with the Palestinians. Demanding community sector organisations make a statement against the genocide in Gaza, the workers marched from the Victorian Council of Social Services to the offices of the Federation of Community Legal Centres.
It’s difficult to comprehend the horror of London’s Grenfell Tower fire: the images of people screaming for help at their windows; their phone calls to loved ones as they waited to die; the accounts of children being thrown from windows – one only moments before her mother was engulfed by the fire; the trauma that survivors, families and the community will now endure.
Charges of intentionally causing injury were heard last month in the Melbourne Magistrates Court against 27-year-old Liam Danial Sweeney. During sentencing, the magistrate made some unusually frank statements about his assessment of the matter. In doing so, for a moment he exposed a reality that is usually well hidden in the criminal justice system: some people matter and some people don’t.