Elissa Jenkins – Green Grrl

It was a fabulous evening. Unfortunately, not enough people attended to appreciate the sheer fabulousness of it. You all missed out! To make up for your absence, please send donations to:

Qld Greens Human Rights Working Group
PO Box 5763
West End, QLD 4101

“We’re all in this together’ – Friday March 31, 7pm-9pm, Metro Arts

The official launch of the Human Rights Working Group of the Queensland
Greens. Issues, ideas and entertainment…

Special guests included:

**Chris Maver, popular gay activist and entertainer, performed songs and a reading from his book, The Girl in the Lime Green Bikini. He was sensational!

**Zoe Rathus, Senior Lecturer at the Law School, Griffith University. Zoe discussed imminent changes to the family law system, particularly in the area of domestic violence. Scary stuff actually.

**Juanita Wheeler, Queensland Greens spokesperson for Human Rights and Australian Greens convenor, focused on the need for an Australian Bill of Rights.

**Carman Parsons from Action Reform Change Queensland (ARCQ) spoke on LGBTI rights. Zoe discussed local and federal issues. Her information was so important and necessary. I needed to know this stuff. Thanks Carman.

Special features included:

**Bellydancing by Lorelle from the Academy of Middle Eastern Dance and friends. They were so fabulous! They all wore green too. Absolutely stunning.

**First public screening of ‘Baxter 05: A Greens Perspective’. About the journey of 35 Brisbane refugee activists last Easter.

**Screening of ‘Australia’s New Gulag: Christmas Island January 2006′ with Senator Kerry Nettle. Unfortunately, the CD was too scratched and didn’t work.

Greens hug people too. We tried to raise funds to support policy development and direct action for Human Rights in Queensland. Unfortunately, not enough people knew about that event. Well, I’m hoping that’s the reason anyway!

Attended Qld Greens Management Committee meeting tonight. Yay! Fun!

I had to miss the rally and march today as I was hosting a fundraiser for work, but heard a mention from someone that a peace protest was holding up the traffic so that was great!

Please Bush, please Blair, please HoWARd. Stop the war.

Now.

Fellow Queensland Greens member Glen Ryman is running as the candidate for the state by-election in the seat of Gaven.

Glen, I wish you all the very best in your campaign and I encourage all Gaven electors to discover more about Glen’s Gold Coast campaign at www.goldcoast.greens.org.au.

Elissa.

As acting convenor I facilitated the Qld Greens State Council today. It was a challenging but good day (as any good political meeting should be). I enjoy consensus decision making and grassroots democratic processes.

Everything else is confidential.

A friend of mine lives in the country. He’s always wanted to be a wildlife carer and, last night he told me he’s taken the big step and is adopting a baby roo. He’s going to have to feed the roo every 3 hours. It’s a huge commitment. I admire that commitment. Unfortunately, he’s apprehensive about taking the roo to work because he feels it’s a political statement he’s uncomfortable making in his workplace. He’s concerned about one person in particular – a roo shooter or something like that. I said he should be confident and proud to live his lifestyle in the same way this person is confident and proud to live their’s. He told me I didn’t understand. I like to try.

Tonight while driving in the wet I saw a creature injured on the road. It was doing a great job of attempting to crawl across the road. It was a flying fox. I slowed down, got out and waved to the car behind me to not hit the animal. She thought I was in trouble, so turned around and – when she realised it was the bat I was referring to, she left again.

By this time the bat was in the gutter. It was raining really hard and it looked really distressed. The water was gushing over it. I couldn’t see blood. I ran to the car to get a blanket to try to scoop it up. However, I knew they could bite and scratch so was scared to do that. So luckily I had the phone number in my phone of a local wildlife carer. I rang her and she said she’d come out and help me. I was really determined to scoop it up in the blanket so I tried over and over to grab it. Flying fox have such beautiful eyes. They are the cutest creatures up close. The gorgeous little thing didn’t scratch, didn’t bite – it was almost as though it knew I was trying to help it.

Once I helped it onto the sidewalk, it used both its wings to slither across the grass and then it started climbing up the tree. It was really dark and I didn’t have a torch so tried to check it was OK but couldn’t find it.

I rang my wildlife carer friend and told her that I lost it in the tree and she said that I probably saved its life. She said it probably needed to recover for a while and if it was in the tree, it would probably be OK.

It was a pretty emotional experience and I got totally drenched. Wildlife carers saves the lives of our native creatures every day. After tonight’s experience, it’s certainly clear to me why they do it. Amazing stuff.

Oh – and by the way. The woman in the car drove back with a male friend. When they saw the bat was OK they tooted and drove away. That was pleasing.