At 1am on 14 May, I received a text message informing me that another refugee had attempted suicide inside Broadmeadows detention centre. It was the third attempt this month; another stark reminder of the effect mandatory detention has on refugees.

Jasee, a Tamil refugee, tried to hang himself after viewing a Mother’s Day special on TV. It had reminded him of his mum, who died during the civil war in Sri Lanka. He was 13 at the time.

One of the asylum seekers from the Oceanic Viking in 2009, he remains in detention today even though he has been recognised as a refugee by the Department of Immigration. Like more than 55 other refugees, negative ASIO security checks condemn him to a life of indefinite detention. He is stuck in legal limbo. His refugee status and legitimate fear of torture or death if returned to Sri Lanka mean he cannot be deported. Yet the Immigration Department refuses to release refugees that have been condemned by ASIO’s secretive process of security checks and “character assessments”.

Continue reading…

On Friday, the Refugee Action Collective (Victoria) – which I’m apart of – will be holding an action outside the Department of Immigration demanding an end to indefinite detention and an end to ASIO security checks. See Facebook for more details.

It was important to march last night on the week of the Nakba, the day Palestinians were evicted from their land, and in light of the inspiring stand Palestinian prisoners have been taking by going on hunger strike to draw attention to their unjust detention.

With the demo taking place in the middle of the trial of 16 activists who were arrested last year at a similar protest, police spared no expense. Hundreds of police swarmed the city, with a crack team of riot police following the peaceful march as it made its way through the city to Max Brenner in QV. At times, the march was flanked by a tight line of police on either side. It was a clear sign of intimidation as if those opposing Israel’s war crimes were the threat, not Israel itself. Many who would have come up and joined us kept their distance because of the heavy police presence. It is revolting that they do anything they can to try and dissuade people from exercising their right to protest. But it was inspiring that hundreds came out despite this and defied the intimidation.

The trial continues in the Melbourne Magistrates Court and defendants say that the police are trying to drag the trial out for as much as possible, putting a ridiculous amount of resources into the case. Already it has been revealed in the case that police were briefed before last year’s protest with specific intent to make arrests to send a message. QV management met with Zionist groups and the Victorian police to coordinate efforts to stop any criticism of Israel, and especially companies or the Australian governments ties with the state.

I’ve been looking through the program and trying to decide what events I really want to go to. This year is tough because I feel like I have more time, being a student and having the break between semesters, and yet I am no longer working so I am kind of broke.

But the festival and studying really compliment and reinforce each other. Studying has been really useful to focus myself on my own writing practice and the chance to give as much energy as I can to it. It is important to see that I am not studying to later become a writer once I graduate, have passed the test and learnt stuff, but I am practising now, submitting, being published and developing as I go along. Also, we will never stop learning and developing ourselves as writers.

I’ve heard some things being said around the Twittersphere and various corners of the Internet about creative writing courses, and whether or not they are useful. The debate seems timeless and will keep coming up, but I think it’s worth looking at from my perspective as a new student that’s previously been working on my writing without study.

I definitely didn’t need to study this course in order to be a writer. No publisher asks for your degree when you submit a short story, and most of what you learn is by just writing a lot and reading as much as you can. There are also many things you can’t ‘learn’ in the formal sense. But I don’t believe in this idea of innate talent and the idea that you’ve either ‘got it’ or you don’t.

The benefits of the course include being surrounded by your peers, working alongside them, developing with them, and the regular practice of writing to deadlines, workshopping, as well as some of the theory and exercises it provides. It doesn’t necessarily teach you how to write but provides you with the means to teach yourself how to write and to develop.

But I think it would be a mistake to think that developing as a writer stops at going to class, doing your assignments and maybe submitting something at the end of semester to a magazine. My first semester has been a process of discovering how my own writing practice and routine can fit into the new routine and schedule that’s been placed before me. It’s something I’m still working on, but finding that time to write your own stuff outside of the course is important as well as finding other avenues of development.

Which is where the Emerging Writers’ Festival comes back in. It’s an opportunity to surround yourself with another group of peers, of people outside of your own university, and those that have finished studying or haven’t studied in that formal sense. EWF raises issues and talks about things probably not covered in your course, or an issue covered in a new way, or from a different angle. The Town Hall conference on the first Saturday and Sunday is the premiere event of the festival and is jam-packed with ideas and inspiration.

There are also the performance events, the open mic and lots of chances to drink and chat at Rue Babelons. I will be blogging throughout the festival on the festival in general here, and then on spoken word and poetry specific things at MelbourneSpokenWord.com.

My piece ‘Occupying Writers’ will also appear in The Emerging Writer, the festival’s journal, which will be launched during the festival.

But a show of opposition to the cuts to education is crucial tomorrow. The cuts to TAFE have to be seen as part of a broader assault on education led by Liberal State governments in the Eastern states. Arts are being savaged in Queensland, both Macquarie Uni and Sydney face major cuts, as well as the whole school of Music at ANU. It is not hard to imagine that if all of this goes by without even a whimper of opposition, a Liberal Federal government under Abbott will be pretty confident to continue with cuts and savage more education as well as other social services.

If you think education cuts don’t affect you, your course could be next. Your job could be next. Your kid’s school, your local hospital could be next. Wayne Swan says that our economy is the envy of the rest of the world, and it is true insofar as everywhere else is shit, but we are not immune and there are signs that some states are already in recession. From the perspective of those in power, cuts will be needed to maintain an edge over the rest of the world, and they want to do it sooner rather than later, before it gets so bad that people are forced to resist.

Resistance in essential in Australia. Solidarity with TAFE students is crucial. If they get to TAFE, they’ll come for your course next and when you look for support, it will be too late and there will be no TAFE students to defend you.

Protest against cuts to TAFE, outside Baillieu’s office at 1 Treasury Place from 12.30

I will port the domain over to here when I find the time, but for now, it’s benjaminsolah.wordpress.com. The hackers have won. It’s too much effort and really not worth it to try and run the blog yourself and WordPress.com does most of that stuff for you. Back when I set up benjaminsolah.com, you couldn’t have a free WordPress blog like this anyway, and you just stuck with fucking Blogger.

The Emerging Writers’ Festival is coming up so I plan to blog more, but am slightly hindered by the fact that I’m writing this from a Uni computer as my my MacBook has been in the shop for a few weeks now after its Hard Drive died. It’s been really hard to write and settle into a routine, but it seems writing in uni computer labs make me damn productive, far more productive than using my partner’s Windows laptop from home.

The police, in overalls and leather gloves, sent squads into the crowd and arrested protesters. They mostly targeted those holding megaphones or those seen to be leading the demonstration. Charges range from trespass and besetting, to ‘behaving in a riotous manner’ – despite the fact that it was the police that were ‘besetting’ the store, blocking all entrances with more officers than protesters, whilst we linked arms in a completely non-violent protest. The violence came from the police who grabbed protesters in headlocks, with one arrestee losing consciousness for a time.

The court case for the majority of the nineteen begins this Tuesday and is going for two or three weeks, which is insane given that they are being tried for trespass and besetting, fairly minor charges in the scheme of things. But the Victorian police want to make a big deal about this and it has pretty serious ramifications.

If the Victorian Police get away with attacking pro-Palestinian activism in Melbourne, it sets a precedent that the police can basically do the same to any other protest. If they don’t like what you’re protesting about (and police aren’t really known for being fans of political protests), they can declare any public place a designated area and if you remain in that area, you get arrested for trespass in a public place. Yes, Bailleau actually introduced a law where you could trespass in public.

It’s pretty crucial that we mobilise as much support for those being tried as possible to defend the right to protest in Victoria. There will be a protest outside the Melbourne Magistrates Court from 9am on Tuesday morning. There will also be a forum on Friday night at Trades Hall with arrestee Vashti Kenway, Overland editor Jeff Sparrow, MUA secretary Kevin Bracken and Israeli anti-Zionist activist Inbal Sinai.

This is also a bit of a call out to bloggers and tweeters that want to defend civil liberties in Victoria. This crucial court case has been forgotten a bit and it would be really useful if bloggers blogged about it and tweeters started tweeting (using the hashtag #MaxBrenner19), discussing it and promoting the protest and the forum.

In the process of trying to restore my site and then update the theme, I lost the old style sheet so had to use an old backup. When I find time, which is in short supply at the moment, I’ll upgrade or restore it back to its previous glory.

Some things: -

The Marxism 2012 conference over the weekend was the kind of adrenaline shot I needed. Malalai Joya was simply inspiring, so brave and hopeful in the face of such terror from the US Occupation and the war lords. With over 900 people attending the conference, it is clearly the largest gathering of left-wing people in Australia and is proving that with each year. There are still those on the Left that have a hostility to Socialist Alternative or the idea of an organisation with a set of politics, but the conference proves that the organisation is able to engage with debates and any left-winger in Australia needs to seriously think about coming along next year.

I’ve given up my regular spot writing for Write Anything. I had to ditch a commitment to fit everything in. But it’s a great site and anyone new to writing should be reading it. But then Melbourne Spoken Word seems to have taken its place, and more so. I’m doing lots with the website and hopefully more soon.

One realisation I’ve had is that I’m writing a lot of poetry, spoken word, and non-fiction, with gives me the impression that I’m doing a lot of writing (and I am), but fiction and prose has kind of waned as of late. I miss. I want to write more of it.

And this blog has suffered as well with my change of routine. I hope I can find the time to check in more soon.

A light bulb hangs
like strange fruit
casting small shadows
lighting windowless walls
so he can’t see out
and we can’t see in

And a door offers no way out
so he takes the light bulb
in his weak hand
on the stem of a scarred wrist
he crushes the light
and swallows the pieces
hoping that perhaps
it will piece together
inside his body
and light up his beating heart
so we can see it beating

Last Tuesday I had the exciting opportunity to co-host the Percy Shelley Poetry Slam alongside Santo Cazzati and Dexter’s in Clifton Hill. As part of that, I performed the above poem inspired by free speech activist, Mario Savio.

The night was amazing, full of left-wing political poetry in front of a packed and excited audience. We also launched a dual EP, Duel Power with tracks by both me and Santo Cazzati. Both the slam and the CD were part of a fundraiser for the Marxism 2012 conference taking place this Easter, where Santo will be performing the poetry of Pablo Neruda.

The next gig I’m doing is for the first ever Keep Left, a new left-wing arts event. That’ll be at the Noise Bar, Brunswick, on March 24 from 6pm.