Unruly WA, a three-day multimedia exhibition which promoted our democratic right to protest, reminded us of the power movements have to create profound change. It also sought to prepare the fight-back to defend these rights from WA Labor’s attacks.
Hosted by Right to Protest WA, over June 2 to 4, in Walyalup/Fremantle, the exhibition featured art, music and discussion about the many forms of dissent and how to defend it.
Organiser Janet Parker, herself a long-term Socialist Alliance member and founder of Jews for Palestine WA, opened the exhibition saying: “While we’ve not always won our demands, people power has helped shape the world as we know it.”
Parker warned that Western Australia’s Labor Party’s bills “represent an assault on our most basic rights”. The Public Order Legislation Amendment Bill 2026 seeks to grant police more powers to restrict or ban public protest and the Criminal Code Amendment (Post and Boast) Bill 2025 will make it illegal to disseminate information on criminal acts (through videos or social media posts).
Parker said the first of these two bills “claims to prevent ‘hateful ideology’ but at this moment in history that is being defined as critique of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and the West Bank and more broadly of the ideology that underpins it — Zionism.”
“Our key message is that we will not accept laws that deepen the erosion of our rights. This exhibition is just the opening shot in preparing the ground for a fight over these laws; a fight for our right to protest and for our freedom of speech.”
Human rights lawyer Anna Copeland MCed a panel with Bibulumun Noongar advocate and community organiser Tanesha Bennell, long time peace activist and former Greens senator Jo Vallentine, photographer, activist, artist, educator and researcher Marziya Mohammedali and Greens MLC Sophie McNeill.
Mohammedali, a photographer, said dance is a form of communication at rallies and events. “Creativity really underlies a lot of the protest movements. It can be a very powerful tool to amplify the messages that are not being heard otherwise.”
Mohammedali described being one of several who, following a spate of post-election violence in their native Kenya in 2007, used poetry to give voice to those who “went missing” when called to give evidence of this violence.
“A group of us had come together as poets, as people who either had witnessed the violence or who were attached because of our ties with the country and had been thinking about what was going on, but realising that these voices were being lost.
“These voices were effectively being silenced, sometimes in very violent ways themselves. We thought how to preserve this? How do we make sure these voices are heard? And we came together to form what was called the ICC Witness Project.
“We wrote a suite of about 140-something poems, that were published online, anonymously at first. We looked at statements. We looked at reportages. We looked at affidavits. We looked at all sorts of things. And turned these into poems.”
Reflecting on the repression across Australia against peaceful protestors, Mohammedali said there was an undeniable “chilling effect”, particularly after the arrests in Queensland of people who had uttered the phrase “From the river to the sea”.
“We are back in that space where we’re being told not to talk about it; not to amplify the voices of how people are being affected in Gaza; how people are being affected around Blak deaths in custody, refugee rights, queer rights … that’s where creativity can be an act of subversion and an act of resistance in itself,” Mohammedali said.
Parker thanked contributors including Nancye Myles-Tweedie, Marziya Mohammedali, Alex Bainbridge, Danny Reardon, Steve Mitchell, Giselle Woodley and Panizza.
She said people will keep demanding their rights for “a better world that seeks to preserve the planet for future generations.
“We will defend these rights. Indeed, we will push the boundaries of existing limits with many and varied campaigns that will be both peaceful and include acts of civil disobedience when necessary. Right to Protest WA has been set up to help coordinate this response.”