Noongar man and unionist Clint Uink delivered this speech, which has been slightly abridged, to the May Day rally on Whadjuk Noongar Country on May 3.
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I’ve been a union member now for 20 years. I acknowledge we’re meeting today on Whadjuk Noongar Country.
I acknowledge Uncle Hedley and brother Fabian Yarran. I’ve worked alongside Uncle and Fabian and many others organising our event on January 26. The team of volunteers was courageous in their work at the event. In the face of extreme danger, they all managed a very serious and scary incident.
We were attacked on January 26: It was a terror attack on our community. We should all be able to safely gather in public. On our home country!
The trade union movement has long known the threat of bullets and bombs, going back to the 1886 strikes that led to International Workers’ Day, which is a big reason we are here for May Day today!
I think it’s fair to say we should get a public holiday here for May Day!
We’re under constant attack as the targets of divisive culture wars, to the point where a man was convinced to attempt mass murder on us on January 26.
We’ve got to fight racism. This is life or death for us.
We can’t fight fire with fire. We have to fight it with water. We have to fight racism, fascism and capitalism with solidarity. That’s how we win. It sounds simple, and it is more simple than most of us realise.
The hardest part is doing the work. But that’s okay because we’re workers. We know work.
We just have to stop working for the benefit of those who seek to divide us and start working for the benefit of us, the masses.
We’re isolated and divided — within our own unions, industries and in workplaces. But we are all part of the same struggle.
This goes for the Aboriginal working class too.
I know that we can achieve great advances for our people. But this can’t happen until we build a larger and stronger trade union movement.
The past tells us that it’s possible to make great gains for workers when we are big and we are strong. We are strong when we are united and we are strong when we strike!
The evidence is there from what our ancestors achieved. They built a strong union movement and took decisive action. We have a big advantage compared to those in the past, in that we have a whole history to learn from; in the early days, they were starting from scratch.
Our people have taken action against the genocide in Gaza, because we’ve seen and experienced genocide in our own communities.
We’ll never truly free Palestine until we free ourselves from the organisations and governments that support their oppression.
If we are to truly progress our country and achieve milestones like treaties and ending poverty and homelessness, we need to work across the entire trade union movement.
While the corporations and their political parties are in charge, we will continue to see our rights suppressed, our wages drop, our culture, our country and our people erased, abused and destroyed.
We need to organise and educate our communities right across the country. That looks like truth-telling — political education that gives us the tools to not just challenge the systems that harm us, but to replace them with a structure that is built by workers and for workers.
Then we can truly win! We can win a four-day week, a treaty, the right to strike, a pay rise! Our only limit is our imagination and our will to fight.