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Keywords: Palm Sunday

  • RELIGION

    Palm Sunday protests and the pursuit of peace

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 27 March 2024
    1 Comment

    Palm Sunday stands at the intersection of the world of justice and goodness and the brutal political realities in human societies. It mocks the pretensions of power that considers only the expediency of actions and not the human reality of the people affected by them. At that intersection today, refugees lie in the centre.

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  • RELIGION

    The unlikely hope of Easter

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 03 April 2023
    6 Comments

    Easter is a story of unlikely victory, which underlies the hope that inspires Christians to link the Palm Sunday March to the plight of refugees and to walk with them. This hope acknowledges the power of evil in the world which drives people out of their country, yet it refuses to be intimidated by such evil or to allow it to pass unchallenged. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    April is the cruellest month

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 07 April 2022
    6 Comments

    Palm Sunday alternates between March and April. When, as this year, it is celebrated in April it keeps company with a number of days that provoke us to ask what and who matter, what and whom can you trust. If it is a cruel month, it is so because it tests, even mocks, our comfortable assumptions. In a year overshadowed by manifestations of climate change, of persistence of Covid and of the horrors of war, it is not a bad month to endure an election.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Unnecessary red tape aimed at silencing charities

    • Frank Brennan
    • 17 August 2021
    9 Comments

    Last Wednesday, the Senate Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Delegated Legislation chaired by the Government’s Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells tabled a report highlighting problems with a proposed new regulation affecting charities.

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  • FAITH DOING JUSTICE

    Embracing new arrivals helps Australia evolve

    • Vincent Long Van Nguyen
    • 24 June 2021
    15 Comments

    With the average length of detention in Australia now at an historic high, it is timely to review how immigration detention is used. It should be a last resort that is used for the shortest practicable time so that people who pose little risk to the community are not unnecessarily deprived of their liberty, and that they are able to contribute to the community.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Proposed law changes put charities at risk

    • Joe Zabar
    • 11 May 2021
    10 Comments

    The Morrison government will use the federal budget to set an agenda which will focus on those policies which will deliver it victory at the next election and reconnect — at a policy level — with its traditional supporter base. The reconnection with parts of its base could spell trouble for charities that undertake advocacy activities.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Palm Sunday Refugee Rally

    • ES Staff
    • 14 April 2019
    2 Comments

    'Let's march together for justice today, and then beyond today, until we've restored justice for refugees.' We spoke to some of the people at today’s Palm Sunday march for refugees in Melbourne. Tens of thousands turned out at events throughout Australia.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    That old Easter story

    • Paul Turley
    • 01 April 2019
    5 Comments

    What a poor showing. This collection of the desperate clinging to a dream so old it is just a tattered mumble for old men in the fading light. All myth and spittle.

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  • RELIGION

    Has Pope Francis sold out Chinese Catholics?

    • Erin Cook
    • 27 September 2018
    6 Comments

    On a pure numbers basis, China is one of the top 25 most Catholic countries on Earth. But like so much of China, large raw numbers don't equal power for minorities. A freshly inked and still secretive Provisional Agreement between the Chinese government and the Vatican promises to improve that. Believers aren't so sure.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Palm Sunday protests demand a better way

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 21 March 2018
    15 Comments

    Critics are right to say the marches are ineffectual in the face of bipartisan and popular support for Australia's brutal behaviour. But the faces of those who take part - refugees and activists, older Australians and children, churchgoers and atheists - witness that the Australian community can wear a compassionate face.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The value of protest lies in ritual not results

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 31 March 2016
    5 Comments

    The Palm Sunday Refugee Marches have come and gone; the travails of people who seek asylum continue. In a recent article that reflects her rich experience, Moira Rayner was right to say that marches are not effective in changing policy. Where they are, as in the Vietnam War marches in Australia or in Manila under Marcos, the fortress was already crumbling. Yet even when they are not effective, marches are not a waste of energy. Their value lies not in their effectiveness but in their ritual.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Change is possible when democracy runs deep

    • Moira Rayner
    • 22 March 2016
    18 Comments

    When I received my invitation to 'lead' the Palm Sunday Walk for Refugees my first response was to ignore it. This was partly ego and partly disillusionment. It's true that in Melbourne at least 6000 people walked or struggled or strode along Spencer Street. But I no longer believe marches for huge national issues have any effect on local powerbrokers. I believe as Saul Alinsky said that the most powerful force for change is local activism on local issues and generational organisation from the grass roots up.

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