FRIDAY 11 FEBRUARY 2005
FREEDOM RIDE IS RIGHT ON
Australians for Native Title & Reconciliation - ANTaR - congratulate ReconciliACTION and students of Sydney University for mobilising young Australians to make a stand against racism.
The Freedom Ride 2005, leaving Sydney tomorrow, re-enacts the 1965 Freedom Ride, which followed a demonstration outside the U.S. Consulate in Sydney in 1964, against attempts by U.S. Senators to block the Civil Rights Bill.
“It’s shameful that Australians, in 2005, still feel compelled to protest about racist behaviour and policies in our communities,” ANTaR National Director, David Cooper, said today.
The Freedom Ride was a landmark civil rights event, mirroring U.S. civil rights action in the early ‘60s. Veteran Aboriginal rights campaigner, Charles Perkins, then one of Sydney University’s first Indigenous undergraduates, gathered fellow students and a bus and set off through country NSW to raise awareness of racism against Aboriginal Australians.
Protesting against segregation at swimming pools and RSL Clubs, the Freedom Riders excited vocal and sometimes violent expressions of anger in the towns that they visited.
The ’65 Freedom Ride successfully stirred up debate and publicity on the state of Aboriginal affairs around Australia, bringing pressure from outside and within Australia for reform. This debate was maintained up to the 1967 Referendum, when Aboriginal Australians’ citizenship rights were recognised; the Freedom Ride also been helped end the ‘White Australia’ policy.
Re-enacting the Freedom Ride forty years later, salutes the late Charles Perkins, who would be both proud of the new Freedom Riders, as well as saddened that the need for such protests still exists.
“ANTaR commends the Freedom Riders and is one-hundred percent behind them,” Mr. Cooper said.
“A huge amount of volunteer organising and fundraising work has gone into this. At a time when ATSIC is being disbanded, racist violence is regularly reported in the press, and yet another damning assessment of the Australian Government’s performance on the elimination of racial discrimination has been submitted to the UN, it is heartening to see young Australians coming forward to say “this is not good enough!“
Media contact: Hilary Blackman 0413 334 632
