“I wrote The Activist’s Handbook which is about how to organise ourselves and our communities and how to take political action. It was a project I wrote when I was in Vanuatu because I wasn’t able to be an Activist when I was an expat. I didn’t think it was any of my business. That country belonged to Vanuatu. It was their Indigenous business, not mine. When I returned as luck would have it, the book was published right at the beginning of the gas campaigns and the Lock the Gate campaigns so it became a little bit of a manual and then of course Bentley.
Bentley, Wow! Absolutely one of the highlights of my life and our lives as a community. What an amazing event! It can’t be underestimated. I thought what can I do? How can I bring all my abilities together? I’m a teacher, a writer, I’m an academic, I’ve lived through activism….Well I’ll write a handbook on how it’s done and that way I can train a thousand more people and also I won’t get exhausted. So going into the gas campaign I thought I can sell books, do training, do the non-violent direct action training and give advice but no! I got the tap on the shoulder…You’re coming with us. I felt this shiver go through my body….F#*K! I can feel another campaign coming on.
The very beginnings of Gas Free Northern Rivers began at Keerrong where we had meetings. We pulled together all the collective experience of the Activists of the Northern Rivers of the last few decades. We all got tapped on the shoulder and the collective wisdom, without ego swirled around each other, we didn’t take a top down approach at all and we said, we can’t lead this, all we can do is give birth to a social movement that knows no bounds and can grow and grow and be self organising. That was our aim and we called the group Capacity Builders. Annie Kia’s work with complexity theory was incredibly influential in the way we went about it and I learnt so much.
Bentley is absolutely historic. The Police have described is as the biggest public order challenge ever faced by the NSW Police. It’s the only time in Australian history where I can think of a social movement that was so big that the job facing the Police was basically to invade a community against its will, and they knew that and that’s why they didn’t want to do it. Here we had farmers, Indigenous, business people, the whole community and the Police were on side as much as they could be. We knew very move, every time they booked a Motel, every catering order they did and also historically it is the only time that I can think of where the community successfully defeated the Fossil Fuel industry. It doesn’t happen easily. I reckon the gas industry has picked a fight with the Northern Rivers because if they can win the fight with the Northern Rivers they can win the fight with any other community. I’m going to get teary because it was like there was this burden on us at a National level for all the other communities we were leading. We had to win this to inspire everyone else. It was genuinely won through non violent direct action.
800 Police had been stood down from their normal duties ready to come within days. We estimated 5 – 10,000 people would be supporting it. Strangely enough it almost gets forgotten because it didn’t become the conflict. We were so powerful we won without conflict. It was self organising and full of leadership. People can step into leadership roles wherever they fit. You saw people running the gate, running the parking, the coffee machine, the kids space, the music, the kitchen and everything. It was the most amazing manifestation of community self organisation which leads us beautifully to talk about floods.
If there’s three things that are sort of linked in Lismore, it’s the Lantern Festival, Helping Hands (HH) and Resilient Lismore and the Bentley Blockade because when the 2017 flood happened the Helping Hands network that suddenly appeared at the train station was largely sparked into action through the Bentley networks. The same people who knew how to work together and had done so recently went Bang! We see this all the time in Lismore, the self organised community are there so much faster than the State. HH were happening weeks before the State responded.
The Lantern Festival is a cultural and artistic celebration of our self organising surge capacity as a community. We can go to scale once a year in that really big way. The same with the CSG rally, same basic model. You start in the park, hundreds walk around the town and back to a big festival at the other end. Same people. Who did we need when the Bentley camp got so big we employed Robyn Kelly. It’s not about getting rid of the State, it’s just about stepping in where the State fails.
So we get to 2022 and look at the Tinnie Army. The Tinnie Army were there by dawn while the Government were organising all their protocols. Once again it was self organising and leaderful. Nobody ran it, it just emerged. It wouldn’t have been nearly as successful only that you put the people in the boat, you take them to the mainland and there’s a whole lot of people picking them up, wrapping them in towels and taking them off to the Tullera Hall or the Uni. What we saw in the first few minutes from dawn was the community take over.
What followed, I called the Lismore free state in the weeks and months that followed we lived in this incredible almost communitarian paradise. There were no shops, there was no government, there was only community organising and sharing. There was only mutual aid and that was all we had for weeks and weeks. Everybody shared everything. We shared digger machines, tools and hoses, food and cleaning and clothes and beds. I was in the Tinnie Army. I’m a fisherman with a boat and I also live in North Lismore so any flood above 9 metres I’m out in the boat, usually getting dogs back on land and helping people out but this time it went to scale. I saved 22 people. Everybody in their jet skis, they tinnies and their kayaks went out and got the job done, forget safety, it wasn’t safe, it was a disaster. I remember getting people out of their roof and they got taken away, the next thing their entire house went in to the drink.
Jimmy Willing and I said in some ways it was a privilege to live through such a major event in history. You don’t get to be a part of history without a bit of roughness and you don’t get to have a human life without a bit of roughness, and I don’t think that’s a tough upper lip, emotionally repressive attitude, it’s anything but. Feel all the emotions, feel all the things and let them all flow through you and then start walking.
I’m getting older and I’m at that Y junction where I reckon I’m here to be replaced by young people. I like to see young people taking over and I like to support that. I really like younger people and I’m amazed at how much more developed and wise they are than I was at that age. These days I still get asked to speak here and there but I don’t say yes to all of it. What I normally look for in life is, Does it really need me? Did Bentley really need me? Yes it did! Did the Tinnie Army really need me? Yes it did! I went down to the Newcastle Port Blockade. Was I really needed for Police liaison? Yes I was! I never know when something will tap me on the shoulder and say…You are actually needed.”