This is why I helped write Suicide.
When governments normalise collapse and call it “risk management”, they’re gambling with civilisation itself.
Read it here:
rev21.earth/product/suic...
When ecosystems collapse, interdependent social systems will follow.
It's weird how at the end of anger, all consuming hateful anger, is always love, and not really forgiveness but just a shrinking of the power abuse has, in compared to love, which always wins, which has already won.
Death cannot kill us, cannot kill our kind. We will shine forever. We will shine.
These sexist men, these murderers, do not have control over our luminous bodies. So when he threatens to hurt you and calls you a fat bitch, say thank you. Say thank you very much.
The power in their beauty can not be murdered however. It can never die.
Jesus was a woman, Muhammad was a woman. It's only the healers who are murdered, it's only the best and the brightest of us, the sisters who stand with the sisters. The aunties that hold us till we heal. They are the ones who are murdered by misogynistic violence. That's who we bury today.
It's not a shame when a woman so joyful, so kind, so full of love, who laughs loud, who cares, who is loved by her community, who loves fearlessly her own, who stands for justice, who embodies peace, is murdered, because only women like this are. We are destroyed every day, we rebuild twice as hard
This also affects artists, female artists, as more often than not artists are employed in care work to supplement an underfunded arts sector, where full time professional artists can not make enough money to survive. As a musician I often finished packing up the PA at 3am to start work at 6.
Sourced and paraphrased by Dave Monson, my old housemate.
This is a workplace death, industrial murder, and thus an industrial and political failure that results in loss of life. When a worker on a building site dies every worker downs tools. For women there is no such solidarity.
Alfar had a 'violent criminal history' noted at his bail hearing yet was receiving NDIS funded care. NDIS failed to provide Velvet with a safe workplace and failed to prevent her exposure to danger. Velvets death highlights how care gets organised, gendered, isolated, and doesn't protect workers
inadequate risk assessment protocols. Workplace violence for women in this fields exceeds other industries. Velvet was found dead with injuries at the property of Wael Abdullah Saleem Alfar she was caring for on January 12. She is the first in Australia's femicide count. Velvet was my friend.
The intersection between feminised care labour and intimate violence puts women increasingly at risk, where women's care labour becomes the site of their endangerment. Care work places women i proximity to clients with complex behavioural patterns, sometimes violent histories with inadequate risk
The NDIS dissolves collectivism, collective worker protections as workers work as independent contractors amongst dispersed sites, making union organisation difficult and safety inconsistent. This is structural, and this is how the scheme distributes and manages risks.
the gap between policy and material safety conditions produces workers deaths. Clients deaths trigger major inquiries, but workers deaths don't. This hierarchy positions workers as safeguarders and expendable. The NDIS fragments care into individualised consumer relationships.
privacy legislation means care workers are often attending clients homes with no back story or information about the client at all. WHS obligations are ambigous in clients homes as they function as both workplace and private territory, which creates jurisdictional friction.
or even an on call nurse. There is no duty of care for a safe workplace from organisations, risk is distributed across individual workers and not institutions. The enforcement of safety guidelines and practice standards are weak especially for unregistered providers and sole traders.
When people who are volatile are pushed into individualised disability framing the results for them are confusing, angering and isolating. Care workers operate in isolated decentralized configurations, and are often alone in client homes without institutional backup of direct supervisory presence
We need more collective enactments of care and social therapy under the NDIS framework. Care work is female dominated and workers are seen as expendable. In 2018 the NDIS incorporated psychosocial disability and mental health, scrapping cohort funding for vulnerable and volatile people.
