It is a sunny Saturday in October 2024. Russell Square, a small tree-lined park near the Perth CBD, is bustling with the green, white, black, and red of Palestinian flags. People are dressed to match or wearing *kufiyah* (traditional Palestinian clothing with black and white patterns), chanting “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” They are not just Palestinians who were forced to leave their homes. People of every race, gender, and culture have gathered, demanding the government—or someone—take action against the situation in Gaza.

The solidarity marches for Palestine are occurring on a larger scale in other major Australian cities, including Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide. In all these cities, the protests have been consistent over the past year. So why do people continue to protest, even after a year has passed and the federal government has not sanctioned Israel for its actions? What motivates people to continue to take to the streets every weekend, raising their voices?

Motivation to protest

For Yara Ismail*, protest is a way of dealing with survivor’s guilt—a way to cope with the feeling of enjoying an undeserved privilege of having shelter and the ability to sleep without fear of bombs and airstrikes, which claimed the lives of some of her family in Gaza back in 2014.

Born and raised in Perth, Ismail says the current crisis, the tragedy and the protests changed the way she felt about her Palestinian background: 

“I didn’t really understand what any of it meant until I was 12 years old, when my cousin’s family was killed in Palestine. That’s when I started feeling the rallies meant something. Just being able to go out and see other Palestinians, realising there are people who understand you and that you don’t need to explain yourself. That’s what rallies are for me.”

Former Greens senator and activist Scott Ludlam says he first became an activist because he felt a sense of fulfilment and joy in doing so. 

“It never really felt like a duty or obligation to me. In a way, it felt quite freeing and joyful,” he says.

“The anxiety that I used to feel about the catastrophic state of the world, I was able to transform into something that felt more hopeful and active.”

For many at these Palestinian rallies, the protests provide a space where they know they are surrounded by people who share their feelings and understand their pain, without the need to explain. For some, “it gives them a sense of community,” Ismail adds.

While the protests in solidarity with Palestinians are currently the most prominent and frequent demonstrations in WA, they are not the only ones the state has witnessed. Over the years, Western Australia has seen protests demanding change on various issues.

The history of protests

WA does not have an expressed right to protest. It is only an implied right that comes from the freedom of political speech. According the Environmental Defenders Office, while it is not unlawful for a protest to occur without a permit, having a permit protects the attendees from convictions or arrests, as long as the protest is conducted in accordance with the permit.

Photographer and activism researcher Marziya Muhammedali notes that WA’s protests have often been for localised causes, but they also reflect broader global issues, leading to solidarity protests, like the current ones for Palestine.

One of the most significant protests in the history of WA was held on May 1, 1946. Around 800 Indigenous workers marched on the town of Port Hedland in Pilbara, defying the Aborigines Act 1905.

The Aborigines Act 1905 was said to be an act for the “better protection and care of the Aboriginal inhabitants” of WA. However, it extended the powers of the position of Chief Protector of Aborigines, and gave that person, who in most cases was not Indigenous, authority over every first nations child to the age of 16 and more control over the Indigenous community.

The protest movement was started by Donald William McLeod, a non-Indigenous man born in Meekatharra, in the WA wheat belt. He dedicated his life to the rights of the Indigenous community. When McLeod was working in a pastoral station in the Pilbara called Bonney Downs he wanted to employ Kitchener, an Aboriginal man, and applied for a permit to employ him.

This met with resistance and he caught the attention of the officials. The police constable of the time D.M. McMahon wrote a letter to the then Commissioner of Native Affairs, Francis Illingworth Bray, saying he “would not recommend that this … or any permit be granted to McLeod for the employment of Natives.”

This, then led to a six-year-long campaign where leaders like McLeod, Clancy McKenna, Roy McKay and others organised protests for the freedom of Indigenous people, despite arrests and resistance from the officials throughout the period.

Lecturer in Politics at the University of Sydney, Stewart Jackson, says, “There have been protests for various reasons—like climate change, anti-nuclear activism, farmers’ rights, and solidarity protests, like the one for Palestine, happening now.” In recent years, these protests have increasingly been met with more force from authorities than in the past. 

“In the 2010s, whether it was climate change, road construction, environmental causes, or union actions, we began to see the state responding more strongly or negatively. Penalties started to increase,” Dr Jackson says.

Being arrested is now not a novelty for activists. They have accepted that it is a part of their movement to be arrested. An example of when protestors were arrested was in August 2019 when members of Extinction Rebellion disrupted WA Parliament demanding climate change action. Some protestors were arrested and put in handcuffs.

Extinction Rebellion, originally based in London but with a branch in Perth, is a prominent activist group advocating for various issues, but primarily climate change, while adhering to a strictly non-violent approach.

Laraine Newton, a member of Extinction Rebellion WA, casually uses the word “arrestable” and also notes that the tension between protesters and police has “gotten more intense in recent years.” Despite this, she believes Extinction Rebellion has maintained a relatively positive relationship with the police. 

“XR [Extinction Rebellion] is very transparent about what it does. We wouldn’t tell them that we were going to do something arrestable, but we don’t deny doing it either. We’d say, ‘Yes, we did this, and this is why,’” explains Newton.

One of the most persistent activists in Western Australia is former Greens senator and a member of People for Nuclear Disarmament, Jo Vallentine, who has been active in anti-nuclear protests since the mid-1970s.

Vallentine was arrested numerous times for her activism. In 1987, while she was a Senator, she participated in a march against the Australian-US joint facilities at Pine Gap and she was arrested along with 97 other protesters.

Protesters rarely see success in their movements in the form of their demands being met. But Vallentine recalls a significant moment from 2008 when she protested against then-Premier Colin Barnett’s plans to open 11 uranium mining sites across Western Australia.

“We got rid of 10 of them by going out and walking in the country with Indigenous people during CHOGM [Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting] in 2011, and we’ve managed to keep uranium mining at bay,” says Vallentine.

She believes that when Indigenous people are joined by non-Indigenous allies, their united call for change creates a power that is difficult for the state and federal governments to ignore.

Sound of the Police

Protesting comes with challenges, especially when tensions rise between police and demonstrators. Ludlam says that while he was arrested on three occasions during protests, he believes protest is sometimes the only way to address certain issues. 

“We have democratic processes meant to address grievances, injustices, or destructive actions, but when we find ourselves living under oligarchy or corrupt practices by those in power, protest can be the only way to resolve these issues,” he says.

He was arrested during a protest to shut down uranium mining, at a protest to stop forest logging and also with 28 others from Extinction Rebellion during a climate protest in Sydney. “At all three of these cases, rather than sitting down with demonstrators and activists to figure out what was going wrong, they sent the police at us, to shut the event down,” he explains.

Ismail recounts a similar incident she witnessed during the Palestine rally in Perth on October 5, 2024.

Ismail noticed a woman holding a hand-painted banner that said “Israel kills kids – Hold them accountable”. She wondered if some officers would interpret it as offensive, and decided to keep an eye on the situation.

“The whole rally had at least three media organisations there, cameras down the whole time, journalists not doing anything. Police surrounded the protest as if it were some kind of cage,” she says.

About an hour into the rally, the police spotted the banner. Ismail recalls seeing 20 officers moving in, and another 20 coming from a different street, dressed differently than usual. Soon after the police arrived, the journalists and media also rushed to the area.

A video filmed by another protester shows the police confronting the couple with the banner and them asking the police, “What is illegal?” and “Who is it upsetting?” The police response is not audible in the video.

Ismail continues: “There were hundreds of people at the rally that went on for two hours, with no media attention or tension. But this one instance was captured—that’s what the media published, that’s what the police highlighted, that’s what the government focused on. And that one moment distorted the message of the entire rally.”

Vallentine shares a story of how she once dealt with police officers in the 1990s when they came to her house over her involvement in the Jabiluka uranium blockade in the Northern Territory.

The police knocked on her door, and showed her a warrant for her arrest for her involvement in the blockade. It was not long before Christmas that year, and her daughter was expected to come home for the holidays.

“I was thinking quickly and said to the officer, ‘well come in and have a cup of tea’, so that is what you do, you sit the police down, give them a cup of tea, it disarms them straight away,” says Vallentine.

After this she told them her daughter was returning in a couple of days for Christmas and “it would not be a very merry christmas if her mother was in the jail at that time.” She then asked them if it would be alright if she presented herself at the police station at a later date in January. The officers agreed.

“That was the sort of thing with police, you could talk to them and be reasonable, even have a joke with them,” says Vallentine.

With the landscape of media and communication constantly evolving, the platform of protesting is also evolving alongside. What are the changes seen in the recent times, and what is causing them?

New activism landscape

Ludlam says the platform of protest has seen a shift since the emergence of social media. “The most significant shift in these spaces is the advent of digital campaigning, which has changed the way people organise campaigns and protest, for the better and worse,” he added.

Mohammedali agress: “Social media is a channel or a virtual space; you might not be shouting in the streets, but you are shouting virtually.”

An organiser of the weekly protest for Palestine in Perth and a member of Friends of Palestine WA Hiba Farrah says, “People are now seeing the suffering of victims in Gaza on their phone through social media, and they cannot pretend they do not see. This is motivating people to attend the protest and call out for action.”

When social media is used for digital campaigning, it sparks conversations and, sometimes, debates.

An article in Forbes about the Gaza protests in San Francisco, explains that protest images and videos often go viral on social media and sometimes reach wider audiences than images on news media. While some protests go viral, the reaction to them is usually largely divided opinion.

According to a peer-reviewed journal article by Simon O’Rourke from Edith Cowan University, protestors have embraced the use of social media platforms like Facebook and X by channelling their ability to magnify their voices and help organise.

Social media usage includes some risks, such as losing control of their audience, and the potential to lose contact with some of their more experienced and older members due to them not being as familiar with the platforms as the younger members.

However, when an issue arises that needs to be addressed, regardless of age, gender or nationality, anyone who wants change to happen happen can take to the streets asking for the change. For this, unfamiliarity with platforms is no barrier to anyone who proudly calls themselves an activist or a protestor.

After answering questions like why do people protest? What motivates you? What has changed? How do the police react? The only question I found that none of the activists, experts, academics or protestors could answer was, “How loud and long do you have to protest for in order for change to be made?”

It’s a question reminiscent of Bob Dylan’s famous lyric: “How many times …”.

*: A pseudonym is used for this subject due to security concerns.

Photo Gallery.

Photos: Yousuf Shameel.