The Stringer - Independent News

“They came through the gate with my boy’s body more than six hours later”

By Gerry Georgatos – “They took my boy’s body away. I wanted to go with my son. They left us behind. They didn’t care to listen.” “They just looked at us. They flew off, right in our faces.” “They left us behind.” “They just left us,” said mother, Gwen Sturt. Through the night, with torrid rains
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The suicide prevention space is immature and inauthentic

The suicide prevention space is still raw and immature. There is a lot of work to be achieved in understanding the extensiveness of the space and its multifactorial issues. There is quite a bit of ground to travel in order to unveil the various ways forward. It’s a space vulnerable to exploiters, carpetbaggers and snake
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Three youth suicides, buried next to each other – we were not put on this earth to bury our children

Three young people took their lives within a fortnight. They knew each other. There are no words for their loss, no words that can calm the grief of their families. Their community despairs. Three funerals in five days, days shy of Christmas. A fifteen year old girl, a seventeen year old youth, a 25 year
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“It is not like me to cry…” – no more lies, our children should not see suicide as the solution

18 years young, Phillinka died on October 18 last year. At the time, at her anguished mother’s request I wrote of the loss of Phillinka and of so many others in the Kimberley. I am once again in the Kimberley – surrounded by the most pristine nature and by the loss of so many young
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It’s ‘Homelessness Week’ but who will house our toddlers, the babies?

The calendar event, Homeless Week, is upon us this week and quite a few parliamentarians and mayoral types will mix it with the big end of town and the homelessness sector at various red ribbon events. But nowhere in sight will there be the homeless. We will not hear from the homeless. These political
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The issue of our time – 1 in 3 deaths by suicide

Suicide rates in the Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander age group of 15 to 35 years are at horrific rates. Suicide is the leading cause of death in this age group. Thirty per cent of deaths in this vast age group over the five year period 2008 to 2012 have been by suicide. This is
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Australian made racism

When my father left his mortal coil Good Friday last year, my head lay on his chest, I was bereft. I had been by his side 21 days in vigil. My mind raced with memories, many of them were of my childhood, with some of these memories of the racism we had felt from far
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24 year old Saeed’s hunger strike should have stirred the nation, but barely a whisper

Barely a whisper about 24 year old Saeed Hassanloo’s 40 days of hunger striking – willing death rather than spending more time in Australia’s dirty detention system. Mr Hassanloo has been held in detention since he was 19 years old – the bloom of his young adult life bled in Australia’s catastrophic human rights abuse
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Ruthless City of Sydney Council, who do you think you are stealing the tents of the homeless?

The inhumane mercilessness of the City of Sydney Council was on show in February when they had the police muscle up in escorting council workers to remove the tents of the homeless from inner city Wentworth Park. Sydney’s homelessness is extensive and on the increase. Governments – local, State, Federal – are doing next to
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Understanding Australia’s suicide crises

Each day, a suicide is brought to my attention. I have written widely on the suicide crises. I have written about the disproportionate rate of death by suicide for the descendants of the First Peoples and for first and second generation Australians and for LGBQTI Australians. Recently I wrote about the tragic suicide of 18
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8 little children on the streets; youngest less than 30 days old

On New Year’s Day a little girl was born, opening her eyes to the world, but to what kind of a world? Compassionate or merciless? By this Thursday, only 28 days old this little baby will be homeless. It is bullshit a 28 day old baby should be homeless. Not just this little baby but also her
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Shame job Australia – “They came through the gate with my boy’s body more than six hours later”

“They took my boy’s body away. I wanted to go with my son. They left us behind. They didn’t care to listen.” “They just looked at us. They flew off, right in our faces.” “They left us behind.” “They just left us,” said mother, Gwen Sturt. Through the night, with torrid rains pelting the roof
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Focus on suicide toll, not the rate – 2019, record high toll

Gerry Georgatos – Tragically, 2019, will report the highest ever Australian suicide toll. I estimate in excess of 3,200 Australian lives lost. Alarmingly, Victoria will report its highest ever suicide toll, thereabouts 700 lives lost. NSW and Queensland will each Read More →
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Robodebt suicide, 19-year-old mum

Gerry Georgatos – A Robodebt contributed to the death by suicide of a 19 year-old-mother. Stressors and suicide are always the story. Society is defined by the sum of its relationships, and many relationships are that classist, racist, sexist, ableist, ageist Read More →
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Evictions from public housing in WA sky high – classist, racist but there’s a project making a difference

Gerry Georgatos – Children evicted onto the streets… It is a reprehension that occurs throughout the nation but the more west we journey across the continent the worse it gets – with the rate of evictions from social housing highest Read More →
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Public housing’s poorest Australians and the suicide toll

Public rental homes – ‘social housing’ – surprisingly to many only account for 4 percent of Australia’s 9 1/2 million households. There are only 400,000 public rental homes nationwide. Within these homes, after the homeless, live the poorest Australians. Only Read More →
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West Australia is to Australia what once Alabama was to the United States – a mother of injustices

West Australia is the nation’s backwater. It is the mother of injustices, inequalities and the draconian. West Australia and the Northern Territory leave the have-nots that far behind, for many their lot appears irreparable. If there is a Mason-Dixon line Read More →
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Australia’s homeless – 3rd highest rate OECD and street homeless deaths increasing

There are many faces to homelessness. A 51-year-old woman walked into my Perth office. She has lived thirteen consecutive years street-homeless. Not long ago, she spent eighteen months sleeping her nights in the same park. She is weary, harrowed by Read More →
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Malawi – international aid, more spent on the helping hand than the help

Often beleaguered by international aid work I have lifelong been involved in; the increasing unmet needs, the mongrel injustices, I have argued the horrendous lie of our generation is that poverty is being reduced around the world. There are countries Read More →
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Young, Black and Behind Bars – 101 East – Al Jazeera

Al Jazeera’s 101 East – As the Black Lives Matter movement spreads across the globe, we investigate Australia’s Indigenous incarceration crisis. Across Australia, Indigenous people are disproportionately arrested and locked up – some as young as 10 years old. In Read More →
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The National Indigenous Australians Agency (NIAA) needs to actually be First Nations!

Gerry Georgatos – In the 1970s and 1980s, the various Offices of Multicultural Interests did not majorly employ migrant born Australians nor Australian born children of culturally and language diverse migrant Australians. A sea of White privilege, two decades long, was Read More →
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“You do listen” but Governments don’t, and preventable suicides escalate

In the fog of my memories the deep cut through the mist is the connectedness, the meeting of people. One community I have had much to do with but had not been to until only several years ago is Beagle Read More →
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Phillinka Powdrill – the majority of suicides were preventable

Gerry Georgatos – Lena Andrews thinks of her daughter, Phillinka, every day. Phillinka, eighteen years old, died by suicide in the Kimberley’s Fitzroy. The services failed Phillinka. No-one but her family was there for her. Phillinka ended it all by Read More →
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West Australia is to Australia what once Alabama was to the United States – a mother of injustices

West Australia is the nation’s backwater. It is the mother of injustices, inequalities and the draconian. West Australia and the Northern Territory leave the have-nots that far behind, for many their lot appears irreparable. If there is a Mason-Dixon line Read More →
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The oppressor would not be so strong, if not for accomplices from among the oppressed

Gerry Georgatos writes we should examine the oppressor, not the oppressed, otherwise all hope is lost. Oppression is not a phenomena of modernity but a deliberation through the human ages. We are born with inherent rights to live in ways Read More →
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The intergenerational criminality of the oppressor

I have often written of racism as an ‘original sin’ and of racism as ‘a tool for exploitation’ – here I write of the intergenerational criminality of the oppressor. The theorisation of race is the vehement behemoth borne not of Read More →
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