racism - Notes from Pig City

Nicky Winmar: the game-changer

Nicky Winmar is exhausted. For months, he has been dreading this anniversary. He schemed about how he could avoid the fuss, dodge the media, or somehow wish the events of 30 years ago away.

But there’s no getting around it. Now he’s doing his best to embrace the moment. Tomorrow, April 17, marks the day in 1993 that the St Kilda legend turned and lifted his jumper to a feral Collingwood crowd who had been racially sledging him, and pointed to his skin.

“I’m proud to be black,” he fired back at the mob.

His team had prevailed. Winmar had kicked the sealer, storming through traffic at full tilt to intercept and slotting a goal from outside 50 metres. His Indigenous teammate Gilbert McAdam had kicked another five. And Sunday Age photographer Wayne Ludbey had captured the moment that froze Winmar in the public eye forever.

That public image has been a heavy burden to carry. A statue of Winmar, striking the pose that landed him on the front page of the paper the next morning, now stands outside Optus Stadium in Perth. But Neil Elvis “Nicky” Winmar the man is no statue.

“I did get tired after that game.… Read more..

Here are all the great Aussie protest songs

Music / May 21, 2019 / 5 minutes of reading

On Tuesday an Australian newspaper of repute published an earnest think-piece asking the question: where are all the great Aussie protest songs? Where oh where – in this, our Age of Unreason – are the new Midnight Oils, Goannas, Redgums and Chisels, the author, Jeff Apter, asks?

“Why do the musos of today … seem more concerned with navel-gazing and their fragile broken hearts than weightier, more universal issues?” he writes. “Why the resistance? It’s not like there’s a shortage of subjects to rail against.”

Indeed there isn’t: asylum seekers, Australia Day, violence against women, Aboriginal deaths in custody, marriage equality. And if you spare a moment to actually listen to the musos of today – particularly women, who don’t rate a mention in the piece, and people of colour – you’ll find each of those subjects feature in some of the best new Australian protest music around.

So, where are all the great Aussie protest songs? Well, a lot of them are on Spotify, where it took us about 10 minutes to make a playlist. Feel free to make your own!

AB Original: January 26 (2016)

A mic drop on the nation. If the mark of a good protest song is to start a conversation, this song applied a set of jumper leads to the question of when we should hold our national day of celebration – and got voted to #16 in Triple J’s Hottest 100, before Triple J decided to change that date too.… Read more..

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