Correspondents #08: Solidarities and Co-Struggles

Authored by Tasnim Mahmoud Sammak and Carol Que

Published in The Funambulist, 4th May, 2021

Solidarities and Co-Struggles: Resisting From and Against the Australian Settler Colony 

What does it mean to fight for collective liberation as racialised non-Black minorities living in settler-colonial Australia? Can our communities divest from liberal multiculturalism and defend ourselves against the vicious onslaught from right wing politicians, mainstream media, and fascist ideologies? How do we fight, not as white allies and saviours, but as targeted communities in coalition?

These are questions that we find urgent yet difficult to answer, especially with their echoing relevance within first world western contexts: as we marked two years to the Christchurch mosque shooting where 51 Muslims, mostly of refugee background, were killed, last month the Atlanta attack took place where six out of eight people murdered were women of Chinese and Korean heritage. The similarities between both acts cannot be missed; murders all at the hands of white supremacist settler violence committed towards the fascist end of anti-Muslim, anti-Asian elimination. 

We come to write this correspondence piece as friends who have studied and organised together since we first met at the 70th commemoration of Palestine Nakba Day in Naarm (Melbourne). We quickly saw in each other something steadfast – not just an admiration for each other’s individual values but also aligned commitments and practices in building anticolonial refusal and solidarity as our life’s work. In the experiences we’ve had through working together, we’ve developed critiques around frameworks of solidarity here that don’t work for us, as racialised settlers who are both non-Black and non-white, but also of having different trajectories in coming to so-called Australia. 

We actually arrived to this continent around the same time in 2003 and 2004, and were living on separate sides of the city.