The Power of the Small.

Cafe Locked Out, The Essays

We met her in Ballarat. She was wearing a specially designed backpack with a solid transparent back, wide air holes at the top, and an odd flat base upon which a curious but calm kitten sat.
She told me the kitten had been abandoned and she didn’t want to leave it alone, so she’d brought it to the march.

She then went on to share how she had been a wildlife rescuer specializing in healing injured kangaroos – a volunteer job she could no longer do because of the mandates.
While interviewing her, she teared up with frustration, wanting to know who she could possibly spread COVID to when, at night and usually alone, she would search a lonely paddock for a kangaroo that had been reportedly hit by a vehicle.
But since Victoria’s mandates trumped common sense, she’d been informed by the wildlife-rescue charity that her services were no longer required. With nowhere else to turn, she had come to the march to share her story with us.
She told us that the wildlife organization she’d been dedicated to was already severely short on volunteers, and so out there now injured kangaroos were dying instead of receiving a chance to be healed under her care – all of this for the sake of “health”.

She was a gentle woman, a single mother whom you might mistake for being too soft for this world, but that assumption would be a mistake.
Now she comes to all the marches. Now she takes photos and holds signs as she chants for freedom.
Last week her youngest son joined her. He wanted to come, she said, and he arrived dressed in a Spiderman suit, bulging with polyester muscles and holding a ‘Free Hugs’ sign.

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A Sense of Place Publishing

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At this march he and his mother teamed up with me as we escorted the “Free Hug Army” down the sides of the protest.
My job was to use my megaphone to encourage the masked people to hug one of our free huggers and then to congratulate anyone who did.
“Here comes the Free Hug Army, healing our country’s divide one hug at a time,” I would cry out.
“Masks are slavery; hugs are bravery,” was another.
The marches were often long, and so this day, as our little Spiderman tired, I lifted him onto my shoulders and together we carried on.
It was joyous to watch the masked onlookers conquer their fear by simply opening their arms and accepting a hug.

What was really interesting was how passionately they did hug. Often they would remove their masks and close their eyes as their faces melted into a smile. They looked like lost people who had just been found. Usually, after they’d had one hug, they would move to one of our other huggers for more and hug them too.
You have to remember that all this took place under the shadow of the Government’s decree that ‘staying apart keeps us together’. That’s why we saw each hug as a celebration, a victory for humanity, that would see many of these hugged people – and often us – tear up.

Today we had a star with us. And whenever I put Spiderman down he would hold up his free-hug sign, which would see the passing protesters stop and buzz around him as they lined up to get hugged. Then, as we moved along, the protesters started offering him high-fives as he proceeded down the city streets, perched on my shoulders.
He was, for that day, our mascot.

Yet as we continued to march, keeping to the wings of the great herd of defiant Victorians who were moving, hopefully, toward freedom, I realized that our Spiderman was building a bridge across our divide all on his own.
Now, whether it was because he was a little boy or because Spiderman was a beloved hero to many, he was attracting the attention of the police.
As a rule they always escorted us, patrolling each side of our march with their masks and gloves on. And despite many of the protesters trying to reason with them, these attempts were largely ignored. It was clear to us all that the police had been ordered to avoid interacting with us. In fact, the masks and gloves and the silence were a way for them to communicate to the greater public that we were dangerous – despite the fact that in all our marches we’d never broken a window, set fire to a car, and the only violence we’d been involved with, was when these police officers attacked us with pepper spray and the like.

This was why I ignored them. What was the point of interacting with someone who was being paid overtime (for we marched on Saturdays) to do their job even if they knew that job was to oppress their brothers and sisters?

But as we marched down one narrow city street, the police stood with their backs to the shopfronts as though they were protecting the dying businesses from us, and I noticed that as we passed each one our little Spiderman, still perched on my shoulders, was offering them his open hand – a high-five. And most of them, despite their blue gloves, did high-five him.
Secretly I was watching them in the reflection of the stores’ windows.
Often they would hesitate, but since Spiderman kept his hand extended, more often than not they would break from protocol and connect.

Later, as we amassed outside the police headquarters, the officers stood lined up before their multistorey building like an army guarding their keep from orcs. They even had a long row of mounted police lined up outside the entrance.
Did they really think we Victorians were going to storm their castle? To do what?
No, it was all theatre – photo opportunities for the mainstream media so they could make us appear dangerous.

But regardless of the palpable tension, Spiderman and I moved along the line nearest the police. I felt it was all bluff and knew that from our side at least there would be no problems. Then one large sergeant – all muscles, body armour, and masked up – charged straight towards me.
At first I was confused. What had I done?
But then he began motioning to my rider and his intentions became clear.
The sergeant wanted to know if little Spiderman, who still had his hand extended to the officers (though now he was after fist-bumps and still receiving them from the police), was thirsty.

My ward nodded, and the sergeant went off, returning with a cool plastic bottle of water.
Amidst the stand-off, the sergeant reached his arm across no-man’s-land – like half a bridge – until Spiderman’s little arm completed the bridge, taking the bottle and saying, “Thank you,” in reply.
It might have been only a brief connection, but that bridge was ancient.

Inside the Spiderman suit was an innocent little boy enjoying the attention, and most of us – police and protesters alike – had a natural inclination to protect him.
If something awful had happened, a fight between the police and us, none of us, I wager, would have expected this child to save us. He would have been spirited away to safety even if the people who removed him had to risk their own lives.
Because this is what people – and many living things – do in times of danger; they protect the young.

I have seen small birds risking their lives to attack a hawk flying too near their nest. I have seen parents sacrifice their dreams, working long hours in soul-crushing jobs, so their children can have what they need. And throughout history, most parents have done this without acknowledgment or a reward greater than knowing that what they are doing must be done.
Protecting the young is a pragmatic law of nature, a decree by the gods of love that we have obeyed since we hid in the caves.

Yet now we are being sold a new law. For the sake of our health, this new law states, this young boy must risk his own health with a trial vaccine to protect old people – us.
And since he is too young to understand the implications of this, we are forcing him to do it.
Perhaps we should teach him to shoot a rifle too so that, if we are invaded, we can send these five-year-olds to the front lines. For it’s clear that he wants to help – why else would he wear the suit of his favourite superhero?

Sometimes it feels like we have collided with a parallel universe whose values are consuming ours – a reality where their morality is opposite to ours, where apathy outweighs empathy and compliance is integrity.
But today this one little boy, a soldier of our besieged morality, wore his red polyester armour and, without realising it, allowed both sides of our conflict to come together in the communal love for our children. And in doing so he did more to help heal our country’s growing divide than all our politicians combined.

Which begs the question: if one little boy can accomplish this in an afternoon – and have fun doing it – what can you do to change things?

Michael

26 January, 2022