Faith, hope and direct action

Faith, hope and direct action

Pooja Malla’s first visit to a Christian church proved a real eye-opener.

“It was very, very good. I enjoyed it. I would like to go back and meet those people again,” the young mother said.

The Hindu woman, who has been cleaning in central Sydney since arriving from Nepal three-and-a-half years ago, was one of a group of retail cleaners who stood up in front of a Uniting Church congregation and told their stories of low wages, heavy workloads and insecure employment.

“I told them the truth,” Pooja said. “I told them about all the cleaners, how hard we work and that we don’t get enough money for a decent life.

“I told them about Clean Start and what it would mean for our families.

“A lot of people came up and talked to me. They know the money is not fair and they support what we are doing.”

Pooja said she was surprised by the number of people at the Pitt St church who signed Clean Start petitions and offered to get out and support the campaign.

Cleaners were impressed that the sermon and bible readings chosen for the day had a strong social justice theme. 

“It was a very good experience for me,” Pooja said, “so many good people.”

Pooja’s brush with Christianity is part of United Voice community campaigning that has been given a shot in the arm by the arrival of the Sydney Alliance.

United Voice assistant secretary, Mel Gatfield, says the Alliance has opened up new avenues for people like retail cleaners to spread their messages.

It was Alliance contacts, she said, that had seen cleaners involved in industrial action embraced by church communities and other community organisations.

United Voice cleaners also spoke to parishioners during a Uniting Church service at Forrestville on Sydney’s North Shore.

Blacktown cleaner, David Westrip, has been at the forefront of meeting groups in western Sydney where a series of informal lunches have introduced cleaners to a cross section of Alliance members.

This has proved particularly valuable at Mt Druitt where, the union says, intimidation has some immigrant cleaners wary about waving the Clean Start banner in public.

Instead, Mt Druitt cleaners have been able to tell their stories informally to people from Mission Australia, the St Marys, Rooty Hill and Bidwill Uniting Church congregations, Urban Neighbours of Hope, and the Washhouse.

They slip away during their lunch breaks and explain the effects of low wages and insecure employment on their families over sandwiches and a cup of coffee.

Mel Gatfield says the response has been “very encouraging” and a number of other church visits and western Sydney lunches have been pencilled in for next year.

After a huge year in 2011, the Sydney Alliance will be going local in 2012 to build relationships and power across civil society. To find our more contact the Sydney Alliance or register for training in February or March.

Emily Prosecutes Penrith Case

 Being followed into empty carriages and being propositioned by an ageing opportunist are two of the lowlights of Emily Peace’s City Rail experience – but only just.

 

The 20-year-old Penrith student’s dreams of becoming a lawyer have almost been derailed by a transport system that doesn’t meet the needs of western Sydney people.

 

But the metal worker’s daughter is fascinated by criminology and still wants to be a prosecutor who locks up the bad guys.

 

Emily started a social science degree at UWS Penrith and was able to transfer to a law degree this year but it meant moving to the university’s Campbelltown campus.

 

But, two terms into that degree, she has opted to add a year to her studies.  Emily has cut back her days at uni in order to spend less of her life hanging around railway stations.

 

Despite western Sydney being home to over half of Sydney’s population there is still no direct rail link between its two largest centres, Penrith and Campbelltown.

 

A round road trip of about 100km can be a four-hour endurance event by rail.

 

“It is very frustrating and it lowers your motivation. This week I have had a virus and I haven’t been able to face the trip to university. Last year, when I studied at Penrith I would have got up and gone,” Emily said.

 

“I can easily spend 45 minutes waiting at Glenfield Station for a connecting train after 7pm. It’s uncomfortable and I don’t feel safe.”

 

It was at Glenfield that a man followed her into a carriage and propositioned her.

 

“He got up and left when he realised I wasn’t going to play along,” she says. “In fact, he got off the train, he wasn’t even travelling. It was frightening.”

 

As most Sydneysiders will tell you, their rail system is okay for single trips but, if you need to make a connection – good luck!

 

And that’s the problem for people who travel between Penrith and Campbelltown.

 

On a good day Emily can get there in 1.5 hours but good days are thin on the ground. Two hours each way is more common and it is the hanging around, waiting for connections that often don’t arrive, that is really frustrating.

 

Emily’s odyssey involves boarding at Penrith, getting off at Granville, jumping on a train to Glenfield, disembarking and waiting, sometimes three-quarters of an hour for the connection to Macarthur. From there, it’s a 10-minute walk to the university.

 

Some days she is up at 5am and doesn’t get home until after 9pm.

 

The trip costs her $15.60 a day. Because she works one or two shifts a week behind a counter in the Penrith Arcade she doesn’t qualify for a concession.

 

Emily has joined the Sydney Alliance’s Nepean organising committee and is keen to work on improving public transport in the region.

 

“It is one of the biggest complaints you hear,” she says. “I would say that Penrith people avoid using the trains as much as we can.

 

“At the moment, public transport is a deterrent. If you don’t drive you are in trouble and I think we can do better than that.”

 

JM/

 

 

Vision Survives Knife Attack

When a hood drove his knife into Vanu Coughran’s left eye he changed her life forever.

The mother of four walked away from a career in the corporate sector determined to help people like her attacker turn their lives around. It was a decision that surprised colleagues in the police where she was working as an executive assistant on a project aimed at speeding up emergency response times.

 Vanu will never forget the evening of Saturday, April 10 2007.

 After getting home from an afternoon’s youth work at the Uniting Church, she decided to take her youngest son, Tatala, for ice-cream while she did some chores is Wiley Park.She went to a convenience store to withdraw her rent and buy petrol as she had a dozen times before.Vanu noticed two teenaged girls watching as she took money from an ATM and, as she handed over $20 for petrol, they pounced. She fought back and the struggle brought down racks and scattered groceries but didn’t move the shop keeper. “He didn’t do a thing to help, he didn’t even speak to me,” Vanu recalled. “I was quite upset.“As soon as I got outside I knew I was in big trouble. There were four of them, the two girls and two young guys. They all attacked me and, I never saw it, but I felt the knife go into my eye.” She could feel the eye ball bouncing on her cheek and the blood spurting but she was fighting for her life. She dragged a male assailant to the ground and wouldn’t let go while holding Tatala to her midriff so he couldn’t look up and see her face.“I didn’t feel pain just this mighty urge to survive,” she recalled.Doctors said the adrenaline saved her. So tight had been her grip the police had had to prise her fingers away from an attacker’s hair she had grabbed and wound around her wrist. An ambulance rushed her to the Sydney eye hospital, with seven-year-old Tatala along for the ride, and it wasn’t long before her police officer daughter was also by her side.Vanu had knife wounds to her wrists and arms but it was the severed eye that really hurt. During 11 crucial days, in and out of operating theatres, she prayed for the glimmer that might have saved her eye. But the light never came and surgeons operated to replace it with a hand-crafted replica.

 “I was ready,” Vanu said. “The hospital staff had been very good. They were honest about the chances from the start. “It wasn’t a shock and I just wanted relief from the horrific pain.”

 She spent three weeks in hospital and four weeks off work but full recovery would take much longer. Vanu wore an eye patch for six months. It was eight months before she got behind the wheel of a car and 18 months until she was confident to drive at night. Life was going to be different for the long-time NSW and Australian volleyball rep.

 “All my life of running up and down railway station steps I never knew what the painted white and yellow lines were for,” she says. “Now I know, they’re for people like me.”

But her biggest challenge was to be strong, forgive her attackers and to work for a city that gives a damn about youngsters like those who had taken her eye.

 Back with the police, she became increasingly upset about Juvenile Justice papers that would cross her desk. Senseless crimes and useless punishments, she felt. “I was starting to hate working in a system that just threw people away without making any effort to help them,” Vanu said.

 

So she turned up at Centrelink and announced her intention to work in the community. They kept pointing her at corporate jobs and she kept telling them she wasn’t interested. Eventually, Centrelink suggested a community services course at TAFE which led to a placement with the Metro Migrant Resource Centre in Marrickville. Her enthusiasm led to a permanent job working with immigrant groups.

 Samoan-born, New Zealand raised and educated, she loves helping Korean, Chinese and Arab women with their Australian Citizenship tests, running safe driving programs, and assisting the unemployed in their quest for work.

 She still finds time for her own projects – youth work with the Uniting Church and going out on youth patrols with Campsie and Bankstown police.The patrols sit down and talk with young people they find drinking or abusing drugs. They listen to the kids’ concerns and try to point them towards activities that can reconnect them with broader society, often through police youth clubs. “The idea is not discipline but to listen and we actually manage to reach some of them,” Vanu says.“It reinforces to me that the most basic policing comes from inside the home. All of these kids, each one of them, has some kind of family problem.”

She has also been active in helping cool tensions between Sydney’s Tongan and Samoan communities.

Her life, she says, is more rewarding, and busier, than it ever was.

 But the fact more needs to be done was brought home in dramatic fashion in late May as she waited for a train home from Bankstown.

 It was early evening when two young men came down the stairs towards her, pushing and shoving. They looked like an Asian and a Samoan and, suddenly, right in front of her, the smaller young man reached inside his jumper, pulled a knife and drove it into bigger boy’s chest. Reaching behind her, Vanu dialled 000 as the Samoan wrenched the blade out of his heart and lashed out, slashing his attacker and another youngster before collapsing to the platform. Vanu reached out and held his hand as he died. “I wanted to help but I was scared,” she said. “My mind went straight back to the attack four years ago. “It still goes through my mind that I could have stepped in. Maybe, if I had spoken to him in Samoan, he might still be alive.

 “As a community worker I want to find a way to talk to these people, to get these youths together. I have lost an eye and now I have watched a young man die. “I won’t be backed into a corner to die of hatred and bitterness. There must be a way to reach out and help these young people.”

 Vanu delivered that challenge to communities across Sydney at the Alliance’s founding assembly.

 

Sydney Greets Its Alliance

Sydney Town Hall was overflowing, as people from over 45 organisations with members numbering 500 000, came together to found the Sydney Alliance.

Between 6 and 7pm over 2000 people spilled over the streets, square and footpaths around the town hall, coming together to find a new way to have a say over the decisions that affect their lives in Sydney.

Randa Kattan, the chairperson of the Alliance told the crowd, “we have arrived”.

Statements of support were received from the Governor of NSW and Cardinal George Pell. Governor Marie Bashir wished us well and said the work of the Alliance “can demonstrate a model which will contribute to the greatness of Australia, a model for communities everywhere.”

The Cardinal’s message said “the Sydney Alliance is a new and significant force for the common good in Sydney. Its strength is found in the range of organisations and viewpoints involved and the fact that they take seriously the task of rebuilding community in this city.”

All our organisational leaders spoke in a fast-paced roll call – as people in the hall stood to be recognised as the new founding partners of the most diverse alliance Sydney has ever seen.

We heard the story of the Sydney Alliance – how we grew in response to the challenges of the Cronulla Riots and attacks on the fair go. How we stand on the shoulders of community coalitions that go before us, like the Green Bans of the 1970s. How we built the Alliance through one-to-one relationships, then training across our diversity – where we “don’t ask people to sort out their differences, but to engage in their commonalities.” Then a vision was case for the future of Sydney – where the trust and respect that we have built inside the Alliance can be cast out to the city as a whole.

Wishes of support were received from our sister organisations in London and New York, and Joe Chrastil from the Industrial Areas Foundation spoke to us, saying “it was one of the best” founding assemblies he has seen in all his time organising.

A new bread of community leaders spoke. Liuanga Palu, a young community leader from Marrickville Uniting Church shared how she used community organising to help reconnect her community after one of her friends had been killed.

The Agenda for the Common Good was launched – with a new vision for community care and health, transport and social inclusion.

From Community Care and Health we heard about the need to provide support for families who often struggle under the pressure to care for others at significant times of their lives – whether kids, illness or age. Anne Robertson shared the story of her mother and the personal strain she has experienced in an aged care institution.

We heard a vision of an inclusive city – where people’s gifts and strengths are valued. Vanu Coughran told her story of being violently attacked at a Sydney petrol station in 2007. But she said “it was the loss of her eye that allowed the eyes of her heart to see.” Her decision to forgive her young attackers led her to a life of community organising, where she works to ensure young people are accepted and have a stake in the city. When Izzy Hadife, 19, told the crowd he wanted a city where he could be a young man not a man of “middle east appearance,” the crowd exploded in applause.

Maha Abdo, from the United Muslim Women’s Association invited Victor Dominello, the Minister for Citizenship, Communities and Aboriginal Affairs to the stage, and asked him if he would work with us on social inclusion by coming to our people’s assemblies in 2012. He said “yes, yes, yes” and committed to being a champion of the Alliance in Macquarie Street.

Gwen Hackett and Emily Pearce shared their experiences of getting around the outer western suburbs of Sydney. Gwen struggling with buses that don’t come and Emily often spends four hours getting to and from her University – because she has to travel from Penrith to Campbelltown.

Sue Day spoke about our vision for transport – where we can move around Sydney on public transport that is an alternative to the car. She said “we must be different to what has gone before”, and talked of our vision of an enforceable customer service standard.

Bob Schroder from the Rail Tram and Bus union quizzed Charles Casuscelli, Liberal Member for Strathfield, and Dr Geoff Lee, Liberal Member for Parramatta – asking them to attend a transport assembly in Penrith to discuss the customer service standard. They both said “yes”.

Then the call to action went out – people were asked to stand to come to Alliance orientations, 2 day trainings, and to get involved in the transport assembly, social inclusion assemblies and our community care research. Most in the hall stood at one time – and over one thousand commitment cards were collected at the end.

We finished the Assembly listening to the “Harbour City” a song written especially for the Sydney Alliance.

It was a great beginning.

Transport Fails Uni Exam

Spending four hours a day crammed in a public bus has become a daily routine for second year Sydney University student, James Lean.

He’s had some tough times trekking from Avalon to the CBD and back but one story stands out.

“My worst ever experience was after uni on a rainy day,” says James. “It was 5pm peak hour traffic and the bus was packed when some scaffolding fell down in the CBD. It took us an hour and a half just to get to the Harbour Bridge.”

From there, it took another two hours to get to Avalon – that’s three and a half hours to travel less than 40km.

James said it was his most horrifying public transport experience, so far.

“It was enough to almost bring my girlfriend to tears,” he said.

Last year the daily grind saw James spending an average of 20 hours a week on the bus. It meant 5am starts, five days a week, to get to uni on time.

This year he’s resorted to skipping lectures on Wednesdays so he can have an extra day off.

“I get so cramped up after the ride that sometimes I don’t mind the long walk from Central Station to uni” James says.

Although it isn’t exactly the best study environment, James tries to get as much of his university reading and work done during the bus trip as he can.

“When the only option you have is a two hour bus ride to uni, you’ve got no choice but to cope,” he says, gritting his teeth for another endurance test.

Transport is a key issue for the Sydney Alliance which is working on a series of practical improvements it hopes to put before decision makers this year.

Alliance director, Amanda Tattersall, said an ineffective transport system was a major problem for the city.

She said individuals, businesses and communities were all being handicapped by a system that no longer met the needs of Australia’s largest city.

“Transport is a key priority for the Sydney Alliance because it is having negative impacts on our ability to work and study, and on our quality of life.

“It is handicapping businesses and the wider economy,” she said.