A Night with the Picketers

The multitude, motley masses stand by the picket line, made of wooden palettes also used to burn fire in giant barrels at night time – those very same palettes workers are told to load everyday while the bosses play golf.

The union flag is floating on a pole. A snooker pool table has been set up by the kitchen area for workers to kill time. On the other side of the line, cops are watching like vultures, waiting for a faux pas.

But the mood is light tonight. The picketers have with them the innocence of those who own nothing but their labour, and have nothing to loose but their chains. There are Chinese, Pakistani, and many other nationalities.

No perceived anxiety over identity can be felt, everyone greeting each other with an Aussie ‘yes mate’ as if they really meant unity from below – and they do. Here is the multicultural real, not a governmental or academic version of it.

Not everyone understand each other, as the many tongues loosen and resonate in the air with the acrid smell of burning sausages, but shared material conditions of life mean words are superfluous.

One can hear racist or sexist jokes here and there (‘common Jackie Chan!’ or ‘Hey, where’s ya girlfriend!’) but nothing too contrived; an act of ‘mimicry’ or ‘sly civility’, if you will, a way to scoff at authority that is, as an intellectual like Homi Bhabha would have it.

Yet we are in an industrial area in the outer suburbs of Melbourne, Australia, not Harvard University, I must remind myself. Tonight is a celebration of working class solidarity, beyond race, gender, sexuality and the language games of academe.

Tonight is about the picketers and their fight for equality.