Jafri is an anti-racism campaigner who protests with his distinctive sign every Friday outside Melbourne's Flinders Street Station. This is his story.
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I started doing this campaign last year. I was racially abused at the Royal Melbourne Hospital by a doctor. I complained to the hospital but they denied it. So I complained to the Health Service Commissioner and after contacting the hospital, no one could help me.
I said to myself, I was racially abused and no one is helping me, so I'm going to start protesting. I made some signs and went to the hospital to protest, telling people I have been racially abused here and no one is helping me. So a few days later, the hospital came and apologised to me, I told them they had denied that I was racially abused here so I wanted an apology letter.
After they sent me the apology letter there was no point in me continuing to protest there. I went home and thought to myself, I need to continue fighting racism, so from the hospital I moved to Flinders Street.
My campaign started with these signs in Flinders Street and since then I have protested against racism. In Australia there are two groups of people: there are those who are racist and there are those who are not racist.
You find most people in Australia are against racism and discrimination. These are the people that make people like me feel welcome and make Australia a great country, but unfortunately not everyone is good like them. That's why racism still exists in our society. Just because most people aren't racist it doesn't mean there shouldn't be any interest in campaigns, which is why I'm campaigning.
You find one out of five people in this country have been racially abused. Then you find almost every young black male like myself in this country has been racially abused. If you find one who says “No I haven't been racially abused”, it means he has just come to Australia or he has only been here for a week or a month. But it's not going to be long before someone picks on him.
We have racism in this country, but not everyone is racist. I tell people on the street just because I'm campaigning against racism, it doesn't mean everyone is racist. But we do have racism in the country.
Some bosses and employers that are racist won't hire you because you are black or you sound foreign. Someone like me takes longer to find work. A black job seeker needs a lot more interviews than a white job seeker, so we do have some racism in our society.
On the street there are people who have called me using the “N” word. There was a guy who told me to go back to my own country. There are people who have told me: “If you don't like it here, then why did you come here”. These are the kinds of negative things I hear from people. It's a shame to tell someone who has earned their Australian Citizenship to go back to their own country.
I believe I'm making a difference to the people who come to me and encourage me. They say things like “You're making a big difference in our society” and “We need more people like you”.
I'm inspired by many people, such as Martin Luther King, who said: “People must not be judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character”.
I'm inspired by people like Nelson Mandela who said: “No one is born racist”. I'm inspired by people are trying to make a difference in our society. There are many people who try to terminate the differences in our society, like musicians.
I think first of all you need to recognise racism before the problem can be tackled. There are many people out there who deny racism. When I am on the street, people walk past and say “'this is bullshit”. We need people to recognise racism to fight the problem.
Secondly we need education. We need some changes in our school curriculum. Having some compulsory anti-racism subjects for young children will teach them that even though we look different, we are the same. They must be taught to love at an early age.
Thirdly we need policies and laws; for instance we can have harsher laws and penalties for people who abuse others and we need online surveillance to stop hatred and violence.
We need to organise campaigns, for instance we have the No Room For Racism campaign which we need to fund. We need people to speak up, if you see racism speak up against it, don't be quiet.
We need media support. I stand on the corner holding the sign up in winter when I'm freezing, but the media doesn't give a damn about me, the media ignores people like me. It's not ok. They are trying to promote racist propaganda. We need the media to speak against racism, we need the media to cover issues affecting the society such as racism. If someone is being racially abused, the media has to talk about it and not ignore it.
The media shouldn't be talking about vulgar issues that affect society, it should be talking about important issues that affect society. Another thing we need is love. The victims of racism must not retaliate to those who abuse them. Retaliating and hating will only make things worse. Love is the only force that can make an enemy become your friend. If you hit me and I show you love, it will change your mind. This is how we can fight racism according to me.
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