Hi everyone, Here are some rough notes from our meeting tonight. The next meeting will be on Friday, 25th of July at 5:30pm, Ginnys Cafe, Blacktown. Some preliminary ideas are: *a banner drop over a bridge on the M4. We need some input on what material would be most suitable and if you like, a location. A suggested slogan was Westies For Refugees: No One is Illegal. *A talk with 3 guest speakers and a Q&A to give people a safer space in our area for those who are pro-refugee to hear the speakers and to have a chat. This would be the first action toward the end of August and possibly at the library or another central location. It would also provide an opportunity to build the group and people who join might want to organise. *a candle vigil that is contextualised as a response to a certain event. *For 2015, a stall at the Blacktown Festival. Some of us have work and other connections to organisations who serve refugee communities and we are going to try to forge links and build relationships this way. We also talked about how the commonwealth government uses funding and contracts to silence workers and organisations around refugees in our area (sure this happens elsewhere as well). We have a high population of refugees in our area and we find how the commonwealth government uses funding to silence to be shameful. Our area also houses refugees and refugee families in community detention. We also want to support refugees and communities of colour who contain refugees with the work that they are doing. This is, among other things, to recognise their extensive and continuous work and to avoid duplication. We want to speak to the Refugee Action Coalition for some support in how to organise.
Posted on: Thu, 10 Jul 2014 12:09:37 +0000