Share The Mic Now Australia
The #ShareTheMicNow social media campaign was created to magnify Black women and the important work that they’re doing in order to catalyse the change that will only come when we truly hear each other’s voices.
The organisers believe that, “When the world listens to women, it listens to white women. For far too long, Black women’s voices have gone unheard, even though they’ve been using their voices loudly for centuries to enact change. Today, more than ever, it is necessary we create a unifying action to centre Black women’s lives, stories, and calls to action. We need to listen to Black women. This is why we created #ShareTheMicNow.”
In Australia myself and fellow author, Zoë Foster Blake, knew we had to hear from indigenous women.
"… whiteness needs to be interrogated as a specific form of privilege. However, the real challenge for white feminists is to theorise the relinquishment of power so that feminist practice can contribute to changing the racial order. Until this challenge is addressed, the subject position middle-class white woman will remain centred as a site of dominance. Indigenous women will continue to resist this dominance by talkin' up, because the invisibility of unspeakable things requires them to be spoken"
Talkin’ Up to the White Woman: indigenous Women and Feminism by Aileen Moreton-Robinson
STATEMENT:
When the Black Lives Matter movement exploded after the murder of George Floyd, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australia felt the agony of police violence, of systematic racism, as have colonised and racially marginalised people, around the world. Australia reacted by muted their social media, but afterward it was if there was nothing else to say? The loss of momentum around social justice issues is a tired trope that we want to move away from by highlighting #ownvoices in the public sphere in order to hear uncomfortable truths, share ideas on real, continued reconciliation, reparation and social justice together, and how to be an anti-racist ally in Australia today. This is a call to stand with us, walk with us, not only during Reconciliation Week, or NAIDOC day, or last week’s march – but on that road that is everything we carry when we Act and Write and Sing and Advocate for an honest truth telling for the nation and a vociferous, dignified, just future for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. It’s a call for a wider audience to do the difficult work themselves too after we’ve spoken.
FUTURE
Because both Zoë and myself have busy writing careers and families, we can't run the campaign alone, especially from across timezones every week, as intended. However, I'm working with an Aboriginal owned and run media campaign company to build a strong foundation so that this campaign can be ongoing in Australia with practical information hubs, amplifying vital services, and community organisations on the ground doing great work. If you would like to be involved, please follow the Instagram handle @sharethemicnowaustralia and direct message through that platform. In that way, you will be up to date with the future of #sharethemicnowaustralia within it's Instagram home.
Thank you, in solidarity, Tara June Winch