During the first couple of years of Covid, it felt like there was a running joke about the prevalent use of the word "unprecedented". Things that had never happened before, that the whole world was suddenly having to deal with, in a world population much bigger than it had been for any previous pandemic.
But it feels like perhaps we need to break that word out again. For so many different reasons. (Some of these comments will be more about Australia specifically, but others are more broad)
Places are literally on fire. The Greek islands have been burning recently, with crazy high temperatures, evacuations needing to happen all over the place. But, you know, why would we try to cut our emissions? Why would we try to invest in renewable energy? Why would we stop investing in coal? Crazy ideas....
The property market is - kinda crazy? I don't have as good a sense of that, but it feels like more and more folks are finding it difficult to buy, or even rent, a place. (Speaking personally as someone who has zero plans to ever buy a place)
The price of living is climbing higher, and higher, and higher. More and more people are needing access to government support, reaching out to charities like FoodBank, and struggling to make ends meet.
Yet, at the same time, wages are not keeping up. Multiple groups of workers have campaigned for better wages and working conditions (nurses, teachers, and rail workers coming to mind), with it seems like fairly little progress.
Likewise, the government payments to people without work, like JobSeeker, fall seriously short. Recent increases feel like a drop in the bucket, and almost laughable.
But the big companies (like, say, banks) are still making record profits. Because of course they are.
Yet it feels like we mostly just sit and take it? Like, we complain about it online. But that's about it, for the most part.
Honestly? All of this makes my blood boil. Seeing the potential, and ability, for support and help to happen, and it not happening, because apparently it's "not a priority" or it will "hurt the economy" - how about lives? There are people that are starving, people that are homeless, people that don't know how they'll make it through the week, people that are dying, because the government doesn't feel like helping. Let's put more money into the military, into nuclear submarines, into coal, into putting on fancy dinners for people and flying folks in expensive planes everywhere, rather than actually caring about human lives.
People should be marching and shouting in the streets. People should be striking, and rioting, and making those in charge listen. Making it clear that this is unacceptable. That lives are not negotiable. That they need to be called to account for what they have refused to do.
Having said that - I'm the biggest hypocrite here. I don't do any of this. I've never been in a protest march. (They're too big and noisy for me.) I don't know how to actually make change happen. I tend to stick to writing about it, singing about it, talking about it. But most of the time, I'm preaching to the choir. I'm just educating people a bit, rather than helping to make change happen.
I don't know what the path forward is. I'm tired. Life does a good job of exhausting me, draining me. It doesn't feel like I can do much sometimes. But it feels like more of us need to get angry - to do something about what's happening. To stop it. To change it.
