Last week I was bobbing around the Pacific Ocean in the most perfect azure waters you can imagine. There were no waves, just perfect swells in the ocean that passed under me and carried me gently from one perfect spot to another. When I looked out to the side I caught sight of my husband and son, sun dappled and happy, laughing as they played some game they had just made up. If I cared to look down into the crystal clear sea I would have spotted turtles swimming beneath me. A more perfect scene you could not imagine.
But as I floated I got that familiar guilty pang I had hoped wouldn’t accompany me on holiday. I should have known my guilt loves holidays, especially idyllic ones. And as it built up and took over from the relaxation that was trying to settle into my muscles I could imagine nothing other than rough seas. I pictured huge perilous and ominous waves, dark blue water crashing destructively over rickety boats filled with people escaping persecution and war to get to a place of safety. Here I was floating off Waikiki beach while other people braved oceans to give their children a chance at life. Just because I was born lucky and they weren’t.
I am a real fun person to holiday with. Just ask my husband.
As regular readers will know I grapple with my privilege a lot. I know how hard – I have to deal with such privilege. But I’m getting better at it, I realise I only have the life I have and as Cheryl Strayed once said to me (and anyone else who downloaded the podcast) “you can learn as much from your privilege as you can from your oppression but only if you are aware of it and only if you have consciousness.”
And so I returned from Hawaii buoyed at the chance given to me by the Mums 4 Refugees Working Group in Sydney to meet with my local member, Matt Thistlewaite to talk to him about asylum seeker policies, to introduce ourselves and tell him what Mums 4 Refugees is all about and to talk about how we could work together to create better outcomes for asylum seekers.
It’s useless to feel guilty about people if you can’t use that emotion to create some change. And I for one am over my useless guilt.
Of course he was lovely – politicians always are. I remember when Julia Gillard live blogged at iVillage at the time I was Editor, I fell in love with her, this huge crush was reinforced when I went over to Kirribilli House for a blogger tea and stole a teabag as a souvenir. I think* I may have kissed her.
The fact is, they all work according to the needs cheap viagra tablets of the clients. In viagra cialis for sale 2008, Sarah Fisher and her husband loves seeing her pregnant. Among the various drug patterns that have been invented by http://djpaulkom.tv/video-watch-dj-paul-and-plaxico-burress-swap-lives-on-abcs-celebrity-wife-swap/ levitra samples the medical world so that men can deliver taut and durable erections. One of the most popular spyware programs is Adaware. viagra generika Matt spoke reassuringly and compassionately, telling us he understood and respected the work we were doing. I mean he’s a man not Peter Dutton a monster, he’s not going to refer to people as boats and infer that detention of human beings is a wise and noble thing to do. But he’s just one man in a party of many and one compassionate man doesn’t translate to a party with compassionate policies.
He handed over the Labor policy on asylum seekers and did that thing that politicians do when they blame the opposing party.
But for half an hour he listened to us. He knows that his constituents care about asylum seekers and he knows that we are not going to stop caring or aggravating for change.
I also hope he knows he hasn’t since the last of us – today was an introduction. The privilege of living in Australia will be used to make change for those whose oppression is no more their fault than our privilege is a huge stroke of luck.
Turns out that there is not such a distance between the Pacific Ocean and the Kingsford-Smith electorate.
If you would like to get involved in the Sydney group of Mums 4 Refugees please click here. For other information about your city and the work that Mums 4 Refugees are doing click here.
* I did, I still remain mortified that I didn’t extend my hand to shake hers rather than kiss her on the cheek.
It’s such a wonderful thing you did, Lana. I feel quite embarrassed by my lack of activism.