I've recently moved to the picturesque area of New South Wales known as the Illawarra. It has incredibly beautiful beaches with the backdrop of a rain forest escarpment. It is stunning.
Over the weekend news headlines throughout Australia were painting a picture of a violence that appears at night in Wollongong, the capital city of the Illawarra. The media reported on the high incidences of violence fueled by alcohol in the Wollongong city centre. The reports referred to the number of people, including police officers, assaulted. Local media in turn commented on how unattractive the Wollongong city centre is aesthetically and how this media attention on violence makes Wollongong an even more unattractive place to visit.
I'm interested in finding alternatives to violence, reducing levels of violence and creating a safer world for people to live in. For more people to frequent the city centre it must be a safer place for people to visit. As most of the assaults occur late at night, controlling the hours that pubs and clubs are open seems one simple way to control the amount of alcohol consumed in the city centre. Reducing the amount of time that people can access alcohol could lead to a reduction of violent assaults.
Harm reduction rather than total bans or abstinence seems to be an easier strategy to introduce. I'm wondering what other creative ways can be used to reduce the occurrences of violence in our communities?
Trevor - congratulations on this initiative! I'll be really interested to see how it develops; in the meantime, all my best wishes for it.
ReplyDeleteLast year the Australian Catholic Bishops' Social Justice Sunday Statement was on violence in Australia. You can see it at http://www.socialjustice.catholic.org.au/CONTENT/PDF/140910/2010%20Social%20Justice%20Sunday%20Statement.pdf.
One of the speakers at the launch was Brendan McKeague of Pace e Bene Australia. I vividly remember his words:
'I need to declare that, just because I stand here before you this morning speaking about nonviolence, does not mean that I am nonviolent! I am a man still capable of many forms of violence in my life … my task is to try to become more nonviolent each day.'
One thing I think we all have to do is to acknowledge the violence within us, to examine it, to know how to express it and thereby to know how to renounce it.
Thanks for your comments David. I agree with what Brendan McKeague said. Men who want to encourage the way of non-violence in the world need to confess or admit to their own actions and words of violence on a regular basis. This is important especially in regards to our personal relationships with our partners and children or close relatives. I'll explore this later on.
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