Manifesto of The Sydney Ghost Committee

The Sydney Ghost Committee is a loose and opportunistic association of creative activists who intend to make their dissent artful and visible during the Sydney APEC meeting of heads of state, 7-8 September 2007

The Sydney APEC conference will be the biggest gathering of neo-liberals ever to be hosted in Australia. Never have the rich and the servants of the rich felt so in command, so confident, so arrogant, so brazen.

From behind the cover of a massive and expensive security operation, a blizzard of media spin and phalanxes of riot police, the rich and powerful will celebrate their domination of the Earth and its peoples.

For Australian Prime Minister John Howard, facing an election soon after, Sydney APEC is meant to be the crowning glory of his neo-liberal ascendancy.

For ordinary Sydney people it will mean huge public cost ($318 million) and the seizure of their public and business domains. "Thanks for nothing, NSW tells world leaders" is one headline in the Sydney Morning Herald, "Sydney's gain is a case of capital punishment" was another.

In this time of resource wars, environmental pillage and the stripping of both civil society and civil liberties, think of the world leaders planning to attend Sydney APEC and ask: is there anyone of them for whom you would willingly give up your seat on a crowded bus?

Yet the APEC plan is to restrict and deny access to Sydney business and recreation precincts to ordinary Sydney citizens. From Friday 7 through Sunday 9 September, APEC will render Sydney a ghost city.

The aim of the Sydney Ghost Committee is to respond to this challenge and enact its shadow by gathering ghosts, ghouls and skeletons to the CBD on the evening of Friday 7 September, the APEC imposed public holiday, to parade through the city and dance before the police lines.

With the APEC attendees besieged in their pleasure domes and casinos, we will demonstrate our creative dissent and our fathomless cynicism and despair.

Climate change threatens us all, but APEC will be advocating big business as usual, more unrestrained corporate greed, more resource piracy, more corruption of government and more devastation of the Earth, its waters, its creatures and its native peoples.

The true consequence of APEC advocacy is dispossession of the poor, deepening poverty, violence within nations, war between nations, environmental catastrophe, famine, pestilence and death!

If that's the Earth that they would have us and our children inherit: let the dead dance!

The Sydney APEC Ghost Dance draws its inspiration from my teachers in celebratory art, Welfare State International, my experience of the Forbes 30A Creative Workshop of 2004 and the protests in response to the Sydney visit of US Vice President Dick Cheney, 23 February 2007, and the Ghost Dance that arose amongst the native peoples of America in the late 19th century.

We want to honour that native American tradition. See a 1890 description of a Ghost Dance and view a YouTube video of a tribute by Robbie Robertson and the Red Road Ensemble.

We want to honour as ongoing and global that struggle for survival of those native peoples when faced with murderous and Earth destroying capitalism and colonialism in that time. It is the struggle of all who work for justice and peace, all who honour the Earth and who would hold it beautiful and sustaining for future generations.

We want to honour that Ghost Dance and extend it by reaching out and engaging other indigenous "ghost dance" traditions, art and imagery from all the native people's of the nations represented at Sydney APEC.


Sydney of course has its own ghosts and they who are senstive to these things say the very walls and the foundations weep and cry. Not just oyster shells were exploited as a source of lime for the mortar to build colonial Sydney, the bones from ancient burial grounds were mined for this use too.

Plus we will do our own Skellie dance arising from our own post industrial art to invoke the ancestors and the power of death and resurrection. Best we can.

From this time through to 7 September, we will work at promoting Sydney Ghost Dance.

Along the way we will set up a website, give our planning an international context, set up Skellie workshops and help interested community groups make costumes and theatre in preparation for the event.

There is much planning to be done but the framework for the event will be an assembly in Hyde Park in the afternoon of Friday 7 September, a parade through the CBD to the police lines followed by a wild dance party in the streets.

The Sydney Ghost Dance will be produced without permits, public liability insurance, corporate sponsorships or government grants.

A carnival of liberation is our aim; joyful, artful and safe our credo. Generosity, resourcefulness and ingenuity will be our means; friendliness our path.

We will assert our freedom of assembly and negotiate openly and closely with the APEC police command for a win-win outcome that assures safety for all.

Let the rich cavort. Let the police display their potential for violence and let us not provoke it. Rather let the police lines become the backdrop of our macabre theatre.

For the Earth! To the dust!

Graeme Dunstan
16 May 2007

Graeme Dunstan under a Skellie backpack puppet of his construction in the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade, 7 March 2007. This was part of an entry of the Glitter Militia, a loose collective of Redfern based artist/anarchists, which won the Judges award for the best entry. Photo Sydney Star Observer

Ghost Dance Home page

Ghost Dance blog

Ghost Dance Media

Ghost Dance Police Liaison

APEC fears

Peacebus.com home page

Past campaigns and productions of Peacebus.com


If you want to get Peacebus.com media releases, notice of upcoming actions and reports of those actions, send us @n email and we'll put you on our emailing list.

Peacebus.com can be contacted in Australia on 0407 951 688
and by email at
graemedunstan@peacebus.com

 

Doing best we can. For peace! For justice!
For the Earth!

web-design by rebelart ;O)--~