Sept 22nd Shrine of Remembrance Melbourne Australia Victoria Covid-19 Vaccine Passport Lockdown Protest
Cafe Locked Out
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWea0q3X--Q
Real Rukshan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gngUH9KDh0M
Melbourne Ground
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElmCBpLahdc&t
Cafe Locked Out
Damien was never an "essential" worker nor is he an "authorized" one now.
It was now as we crossed a park that a black armoured vehicle, known as a bear cat, stopped suddenly and officers dressed like a swat team leapt off its side and started firing rubber bullets and these other things, I’m not sure what they are.
Terrified, we ran.
Once clear, and still astonished, instead of heading home we decided to head back to the city in search of the main group, our rattled party led by three young women who were determined to be heard. I’m not sure why we followed, for it was clear we didn’t stand much of a chance, but then all that was waiting at home was compliance.
A short time later, on a city street, with a slightly bigger group, the bear cat returned and again started firing, indiscriminately. I was shot in the hand, a ricochet I think, but it hurt and still does, and my live feed grabbed this image. The man closing in leapt onto the back of the man next to me, and so I walked, waiting for the same thing to happen to me, but it didn’t.
And so once again we ran off but this time our dispersed group met a few others and then these numbers grew until we reached Flinders Street where we found a major group.
And that was it, because we’d reached the centre of the city in numbers this big, and I’m not sure how many there were, they stopped firing. Instead, they blocked all the side streets as we, like the day before, began walking around the city picking up numbers as we went. Displaying, as we walked, our injuries to each other, and many people had them. One young man was bleeding from the back of his head.
Finally, even though it was on the other side of the city to where we were, someone who had a loud speaker suggested the Shrine.
As they said this it felt like a perfect idea.
Remarkably, we reached it without further incident. I was expecting the police, who had the numbers and the weapons and that armoured car, to block us. But they didn’t.
Did they want us to go there? Was the person who suggested it working for the police?
Whatever the case was, we knew, as we sat on the hallowed steps of the shrine that we finally had, as powerless people, a little bit of power. For as the police encircled us it was clear to both sides that despite all their weapons and armour they had a problem, their souls.
Despite all the mass media on their side, who effortlessly were portraying us as the bad guys, rioters, we knew they couldn’t find a way to shoot us here, like they’d been shooting us in the city streets all morning and do so, while remaining the good guys in the lack storm trooper uniforms.
So, despite us being heavily outnumbered the standoff began, our only protection their attempts to orchestrate what would happen in a way that they could sell it to the world.
It was a moment none of us saw coming, where we, looking like a group of Aussies at the cricket, belted out our chants for freedom, and then sung the national anthem with the gusto of prisoners who were momentarily free. And them pondering what to do.
And we weren’t here because we thought we were Anzacs. We were here because this place was unmistakably good. A symbol of freedom, where we hoped that the ghosts of our country’s ancestors, the ones this shrine was dedicated to, the ones who sacrificed their lives fighting tyranny in other lands, would protect us.
As time passed, the police sent in undercover cops, pretending to be protestors, who sat with us and suggested things like, look, we’ve made our point, let’s go home and come back tomorrow.
Then they had other people, who we didn’t know from the battle in the streets, talking to us on loudspeakers, They offered us this deal that they had apparently negotiated with the police. IF we left via St Kilda Road, we would be free to go. But Sky news was already posting the fact that those that were leaving were being arrested and even shot at with those strange weapons. So we replied with the chant, Stand our Ground.
The trouble the police had was that we had no leader. We were just a group of people who were making a stand before tyranny, a group of people attracted to the one flame, the flame of freedom.
This was why we stayed. We knew we would get arrested at some point. We knew we were finished. But if we got arrested alone on the streets, or later at home, the world’s media wouldn’t hear about it or care, but if they had to arrest us here, as we sat together, peacefully demanding freedom on a monument built to celebrate freedom, then maybe, just maybe the footage might leak out past all these black storm topper uniforms, like a bright ray of truth.
Stop
