今天，澳大利亞人對暴政說不。
一句話就把他們激怒了。在這句話說出之前，當他們的工會領袖約翰-塞特卡從他們聚集工會總部走出來到他們聚集的外面時，就已經出現了麻煩。他告訴工人們往議會大廈遊行。但他們工人們想讓他公會主席領導他們時，他工會主席拒絕，工人人爆發了，他工會主席約翰-塞特卡退到了建築物裡面。從那時起，事情已經趨於緩和，因為他們中的一些人被允許進去與約翰討論他們的問題。而他們的問題就是強制接種疫苗建築工人身上。
現在，雨滴落下，"uber eat "送餐員穿過人群，遞上一疊疊達美樂披薩 在主要由男性組成的身著連帽制服建築工人群相互介紹並交談。而令人矚目的是，這些談話都是一樣的。
盡管大眾媒體近兩年來一直在報導社區的情況和這一切的恐懼從我們國家的領航者，它的船長告訴我們ㄧ切的恐懼並告訴我們反覆遵守是唯一的前進路線，但這些工人發現，盡管通過無休止的封鎖而被隔離，但他們並沒有買帳。
他們都清楚，有權勢的人這樣做並不是出於對他們健康福利的關心，而是出於對權力的渴望。而且受到攻擊的不僅僅是他們的自由，還有整個世界的自由。這不是為了控制一種病毒，而是為了控制他們和他們的孩子。用他們自己的話說，這就是大家一直在說的。這是一場戰爭，如果我們在這里倒下了，那麽好幾年後他們會在我們的血管里注入東西，然後是我們孩子的血管和他們孩子的血管。自由將是一個謊言；一個你必須服從的商品，以享受它過去的陰影。
這里沒有指揮官，只有願意聽任何人說話的耳朵，以及在每一個爆發的呼聲中擡起的沒有面具的臉。
"操他媽的賈伯！"
"去他媽的丹-安德魯斯！"
"不同意！"
但是，他們唱得最響亮的，就像一個集中的合唱團，雨水也無法使之變得圓潤，那就是......。
"為了我們的孩子! 為了我們的孩子！"
當塞特卡在3AW電台直播時，他們就是這樣唱的，聲稱他們是像抗議現場的廁所，他們只不過是一群反疫苗的極端分子。
一場現場直播的廣播采訪，通過他們的手機，以燃燒的導火線的速度和強度在人群中分享開來。導火線由一個詞點燃，即極端分子。他們不是極端分子，他們只是渴望被聽到，而這個詞讓他們知道，除非他們站起來反擊，否則他們永遠不會被聽到。
現在的呼聲是："是時候了！" "時刻到了！" 事實就是如此。
第一次爆裂是一個塑料水瓶在空中飛過，在CMFEU的黑色玻璃墻上彈出。黑玻璃的力量。更多的瓶子接踵而至，玻璃瓶砸碎了這些黑色的窗戶，對每一個裂縫，人群都會歡呼。它開始了。
某種噴霧劑，也許來自滅火器，從破碎的窗戶中噴出。這本來是為了驅散人群，但看起來卻像是這些瓶子中的一個切斷的動脈。緊隨其後的是來自其他滅火器的白煙，它們在空氣中彌漫著霧氣，無法掩蓋任何東西。這是力量，正在流血。這就是真理。
我們的領導人明確表示沒有 打喵沒有工作. 盡管他們要求大家在接下來的一兩天內遵守，。盡管在主流媒體的新聞報道中過去，那些你從未意識到的自由，現在已經消失了，這棟大出血的大樓，是另一個勝利的可能性。一個未來將再次獲得自由的地方。而如果一群自發組織起來的建築工人能夠打傷這個國家最強大的工會，也就是他們自己的工會，那麽未來就沒有什麽好說的。
即使當推拉門打開，一幫據說是摩托車手的大漢湧出來，開始攻擊著火的人群，但這只是一個短暫的沖鋒，很快就被擊退了，因為這些人退到了里面，開始用家具堵住破碎的推拉門，就像水手們拼命地試圖堵住沈船的漏洞。
現在是另一支軍隊行動了。他們不得不這樣做。
"準備好，孩子們，警察來了。"
"靠在一起！. . . 團結起來！"
整個上午都有不少警察站在遠處。現在，其他的人正在湧入他們的隊伍中。藍色的手套，藍色的面具，腰間掛著槍。然後，新的防暴隊帶著他們的圓形透明盾牌和防彈衣加入他們。他們用警棍敲打著盾牌，開始排隊前進。
但這與最近的其他遊行不同。這不是所有年齡段的人的集合，他們高舉著呼籲自由的旗幟，這些人大多是男人，當雄性激素在他們的血管中湧動時，他們共同重新發現，他們不僅仍然是戰士，而且他們在一起很強大。
在他們工會的黑色旗幟下，即他們剛剛打破的旗幟下，，有機的和無領導的一個真正的工會形成了，已經撕下了它的官僚枷鎖，現在正向這些的官員和他們的領導人前進，圍困在上面的樓層，以及任何其他正在觀看的人表明，戰鬥精神，即歷來看到工人階級從強權手中爭取自由；擁有房子的自由，有假期，有適足的工資，為他們的孩子提供自由和希望生活的自由，現在已經蘇醒。
它不僅醒了，而且背靠著暴政的圍墻，除了前進，它無處可去。
警察們來了，警察的隊伍越來越大，每走一步，緊張的氣氛都在增加，直到這兩股力量，正如他們在世界各地所做的那樣，面對面地站著。
警察帶著他們的新彈丸槍，在他們面前，一個新成立的大隊來回踱步，他們互相注視著對方。
起初，似乎新的聯盟正在讓步，但當緊張局勢降至熱氣騰騰的僵局時，你意識到這支新鮮的軍隊並沒有退縮，而是找到了自己的四肢，也就是新領導人的聲音。
突然間，從這些接過接力棒的自然領袖、新的技術員口中喊出了命令。"呆在一起。繞過他們。堅守你的陣地......。堅守陣地。"
現在怎麽辦？
又有一些警察加入了他們的隊伍，但人數不多，他們需要打敗這群暴徒。這些是便衣偵探，被派來試圖守住防線。
在大多數人的注視下，一些勇敢的工會成員走在他們的隊伍中，拍攝警察的臉，當那些帶著胡椒噴霧槍的全副武裝的警察跑過來並舉起他們的武器。
更多的呼喊聲。"操注射針劑！" "去他媽的安德魯斯！"然後是不安的平靜，隨著人們對過往車輛吹響喇叭表示支持的歡呼，這里平靜被打破了。
幾天前，警察在人數多得多的情況下，面對的是更小的人群。一群和平的抗議者。但即使是這群人數眾多的老鼠，也沒有回家。有一次，他們甚至成功地突破了警戒線，他們像囚犯一樣從破損的監獄墻壁中逃出來，向前湧動。
曾經歡迎黑命貴問題抗議的政府，現在將這些抗議者重新歸類為國內恐怖分子，這意味著他們現在有權力，由於他們的新法律，不經審判就拘留這些要求自由的澳大利亞人。
不，這不是一群為自由而站起來的勇敢的老鼠標記的公眾。這不是一個溫和但挑釁的老奶奶，她把我們的國旗當作超級英雄的披風，官員們把她推倒在地，然後用胡椒噴霧攻擊她的臉。這些是她的兒子和孫子。
現在他們高呼口號，讓警官和任何聽眾都知道，不斷刺傷和隔離的嚴峻的未來並沒有成為現實。我們的未來現在就在這里，在這兩支軍隊之間的空隙中，有一份掉落的合同在等待著，沒有簽署。
但誰會得到它？塑造它？簽署它？
是拿著武器的軍官，還是這群不願意退縮的人，因為他們無法退縮，因為沒有地方可以退縮，除了一個他們決心不留給自己孩子的國家？甚至最年輕的人也在表明這一點。年輕人準備戰鬥，以保護他們的後代的自由，他們的後代還在他們的球里。
然後，隨著對峙的繼續，隨著時間的推移和細雨的落下，人群開始高呼口號，從那天晚上政府的反應來看，很明顯，每個當權者都聽到了。
"每一天！"
"每天！"
"每一天！"
他們會不會辜負這些？他們明天還會回來嗎，也許人數更多？
在寫這篇文章的時候，明天已經是今天了，而且有一個帖子呼籲人們在同一地點聚會和抗議，所有的人，像病毒一樣被分享，其癥狀是自由和未來，不是持續的醫療服從，而是選擇，好吧，我想今天會告訴你。
Today Australians said No to Tyranny.
One word would set them off. Before it was spoken there’d been trouble when their union leader, John Setka had emerged from the union headquarters they had amassed outside of. He had told them to march to parliament house alone. But they wanted him to lead them and when he refused, they had erupted and he’d retreated inside. Since then, things that had mellowed to a simmer, as a few of them were allowed inside to discuss their issues with John. And their issue, mandated vaccinations.
Now, as the rain fell, and uber eat delivery riders walked through the crowd handing out stacks of domino pizzas, the crowd, dressed in high vis uniforms, and constructed mainly of men, introduced each other and talked. And what was so remarkable was that the conversations were all the same.
Despite almost two years of the mass media’s narrative that the community was onboard, despite too, fear being our country’s navigator and its captains telling us that repeated compliance was the only route forward, these workers discovered that despite being isolated through endless lockdowns, they had not bought any of it.
It was clear to them all that the powerful weren’t doing this out of concern for their welfare, but out of a hunger for power. And it wasn’t just their freedom under attack, it was the world’s. This was not about a controlling a virus but controlling them and their children. In their own words this was what everyone kept saying. This was war, and if we fell here, then that was it, they would be pumping stuff into our veins for years, and then our kids’ veins and the veins of their kids. Freedom would be a lie; a commodity you would have to obey to enjoy the shadow of what it used to be.
And there were no commanders here, just ears willing to listen to anyone who spoke, and raised mask-less faces as they lifted their voices to every chant that erupted.
“Fuck the Jab!”
“Fuck Dan Andrews!”
“No mandates!”
But the chant they sang the loudest, like a focused choir that the rain couldn’t mellow was . . .
“For our kids! For our kids!”
This was what they sang as Setka went live on 3AW, claiming they were protesting about on site toilets and they were nothing but a bunch of anti vaxxer extremists.
A live radio interview that was shared through the crowd, via their mobile phones with the speed and intensity of a burning fuse. A fuse lit by one word, extremists. They weren’t extremists, they were just desperate to be heard, and that word had let them know, that unless they stood up and pushed back, they never would be.
The chant was now, “Times up!” “Times up!” And it was.
The first explosion was a plastic water bottle flying through the air and bouncing off the black glass wall of the CMFEU imposing frontage. Black glass for power. More bottles followed, glass ones that cracked these black windows, and to each crack the crowd cheered. It was on.
Some sort of spray, perhaps from a fire extinguisher sprayed out of the broken windows. It was meant to disperse the crowd but instead looked as if one of these bottles had severed an artery. This was followed by the white smoke from other extinguishers which filled the air with a mist that could not hide anything. This was power, bleeding. This was truth.
Despite their demands that everyone complied in the next day or two, No Jab No job. Despite the mass media press reports where our leaders stated clearly that the past, meaning those freedoms you’d never realized you had, were now gone, this hemorrhaging building, was the possibility of another victory. One where the future would once again be free. And if a spontaneously organized crowd of construction workers could wound the country’s strongest union, their own, then the future was anything but set.
Even when the sliding doors opened and a gang of large men, reported to be bikers, surged out and started attacking the fired-up crowd, it was only a brief charge that was quickly repulsed, as these men retreated inside and started using furniture to barricade the broken sliding doors, like sailors desperately attempting to plug the hole of their sinking ship.
It was now the other army moved in. They had to.
“Get ready boys, the cops are coming.”
“Stick together! . . Stick together!”
A hand full of police had been standing off in the distance all morning. Now others were streaming in to fill their ranks. Blue gloves, blue masks and guns on their hips. Then the new riot squads joined them with their round transparent shields and body armour. Shields they banged with their batons as they began to move forward in a line.
But this was different that the other recent marches. This was not a collection of people of all ages holding up banners calling for freedom, these were mostly men who, as the testosterone surged through their veins, were communally rediscovering that not only were they still warriors but together they were strong.
Under the black banner of their union, the banner they’d just broken, a real union, organic and leaderless, had ripped off its bureaucratic chains and was now revealing to these approaching officers, and their leaders, besieged on the floors above, and to anyone else who was watching, that the fighting spirit, that through the ages had seen the working class wrench freedoms from the powerful; the freedom to own a house, to have holidays, a livable wage, the freedom to offer their children a life of freedom, of hope, had awoken.
And not only was it awake but with its back against an enclosing wall of tyranny, it had nowhere to go but forward.
In the officers came, a growing line of police, and with each step the tension grew until the two forces, as they have been doing all over the world, stood face to face.
The police with their new pellet guns and before them, a freshly formed brigade pacing back and forth as they eyed each other up.
Initially it seemed that the new union was yielding ground, but as the tension reduced to a steaming stalemate, you realized that this fresh army wasn’t retreating, but finding its limbs, which was the voices of new leaders.
Suddenly orders were being yelled out from these natural leaders picking up the baton, new Technicians. “Stay together. Go around them. Hold your ground . . . Hold your ground.”
What now?
A few more police joined their ranks, but not in the numbers they would need to defeat this mob. These were plain clothed detectives sent in to try hold the line.
As most watched, a few braver unionists walked astride their line filming the faces of the police, as those heavily armoured police with pepper spray guns ran over and raised their weapons.
More chants. “Fuck the Jab!” “Fuck Andrews!” and then an uneasy calm, broken here and there as the people cheered to passing cars blowing their horns in support.
A few days before, the police, in far greater numbers, had faced a smaller crowd. A crowd of peaceful protestors. But even that outnumbered rat tag group had not gone home. At one point, they had even managed to break their line, as they surged forward like prisoners escaping through the walls of a broken jail.
Now the government, who had once welcomed a black lives matter protest, was now reclassifying these protestors as domestic terrorists, meaning they now had the power, thanks to their new laws, to detain these Australians demanding freedom, without a trial.
No, this wasn’t a brave rat tagged group of the public standing up for freedom. This wasn’t a gentle but defiant grandmother wearing our flag like the cape of a superhero, a grandmother the officers had pushed to the ground before assaulting her face with pepper spray. These were her sons and grandsons.
It was now they chanted the chant that let the officers and anyone listening know, that the grim future of constant jabs and segregation was not a done deal. Our future instead was now here, a dropped contract waiting, unsigned in the gap between these two armies.
But who would get it? Shape it? Sign it?
The officers with their weapons, or this crowd that would not back off because it could not back off, for there was nowhere to back off to, except a country they were determined not to leave to their children? Even the youngest men were making that known. Young men preparing to fight to protect the liberty of their offspring who were still in their balls.
Then, as the standoff continued, as the day aged and the drizzle fell, the crowd began chanting the chant that by the way the Government reacted later that night it was clear that everyone in power had heard.
“Everyday!”
“Everyday!”
“Everyday!”
Would they live up to this? Would they be back tomorrow, perhaps even in greater numbers?”
Well at the time of writing this tomorrow is already today, and with a post calling for people to meet at the same place and protest, all people, being shared like a virulent virus, whose symptoms are liberty and a future, not of constant medical compliance, but of choice, well I guess today will tell.