Brenton Eccles

A Week Experiencing Changing the World

Reflections on setting out across the nation with the world’s cream of the crop (in terms of personality, and more) to bring about change in the world, for those who have no voice.

It’s now over a week since the road trip ended [and as of publication, over a month], and having been meaning to collect my thoughts on the whole experience I feel that the time is now well due.

I’ve sat down a couple of times in attempt to do this and, for whatever reason, each time I have found myself not quite able to find the right place to begin. I know that even as I sit at this kitchen table in the light of this beautifully overcast day that I’m going to get distracted and write this in blasts of inspiration.

I suppose it might be worthwhile to attempt to articulate this in the form of  an after the fact diary, a narrative of sorts to describe the week that was – it was my original intent to do it in this way on the road, but I didn’t find enough time to write much between the campaigning and sleeping. I’m going to begin with where it began, on the Saturday morning in Melbourne.

Saturday May 8th – Melbourne, Victoria

The night before…

I’m not living in the city yet [though as of publication, I now am]. I spent all of Friday night (and some of Saturday morning too) driving down to Melbourne from my current home in Warrnambool. Normally, that’s only a three to four hour drive. On this particular night, however, I had to drive an hour to my father’s house in Camperdown – to borrow his awesome sleeping bag – and then backtrack even further by driving to Stawell to rescue one of my best friends from that isolated place (he had just finished his nursing placement) and then finally head to Melbourne via Ballarat.

So, at about 2AM after about eight hours in my car – I finally arrive in the city. By this time my friend is incredibly weary and we get a bit tense at each other. The amazingly relaxing feeling when we finally got into our hotel room that night is indescribeable.

I have a flashmob in just eight hours, and despite being exhausted I still want to be prepared properly. My friend rubs through some burgundy hair dye and goes to bed while I sit up emptying the contents of a cask of red wine and waiting for the dye to develop. Finally at around 3.30AM I make it to bed.

The exhaustion, the excitement and the sense of ‘this is finally happening’ hit me and I cry myself to sleep. But it’s not one of those depressing times. My last thoughts as I pass into sleep are of how lucky I am as a person: to be involved in the MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY campaign, to have a core group of amazing friends and to have the mind and inspiration (as well as the society) to pursue what ‘gets me off’. We’re really all lucky to have that, if you think about it.

A new day dawns…

It was with that sense of being an advantaged person in life, that I wasn’t bothered at all when I woke in the morning to a phone call from my group leader. I was late. Everyone had dropped their bags of at Treasury Gardens and would be heading for City Square pretty soon. There was no way I was going to miss our flashdance, though.

I rush out of bed and dress myself quickly. I was supposed to look a little ‘celebrity’ and decide that corduroy jeans and a vest will do. Along with burgundy hair, the metallic rims of someones glasses I had found in a carpark and some eyeshadow. This makes me feel like a well iced cake.

I do a quick rush around my hotel room to collect belongings that I’ve scattered about the place, and rush out the door with my luggage. A large black suitcase, a smaller bathroom bag and a sleeping bag with mat: this is going to be the limit of my material life for the next seven days.

I realise that I have absolutely no idea where City Square (the location of our flashmob) is, however I end up converging with the other ambassadors at exactly the right point. Someone takes my luggage out of my hands for me, and shortly afterward we begin our flashmob.

The flashmob involved groups converging on City Square, and when all of approximately 280 ambassadors arrived the majority ‘chased’ a few ‘celebrities’ down to City Square – all the while screaming and yelling at them like crazy fans. I was one of the celebrities. It was pretty exciting, and apparently I played the part well.

Once ambassadors reached City Square, everyone simultaneously did a dance routine which we had rehearsed a week ago. After this Oaktree’s CEO Tom O’Connor spoke, and reinforced the message related to our flashdance that there’s ‘no paparazzi for extreme poverty’.

After this energising beginning, everyone heads to our buses at Treasury Gardens and the Victoria 1 Group – which I and about eighty other Victorians were part of – heads to Geelong for lunch. The first day was a pretty laid back start, because after the flashmob we didn’t have any scheduled campaign work until later that afternoon at the Corangamite Electoral forum in Torquay.

Prior to that, however, we went on our first doorknock (and also, interestingly our only time going up to private homes) around the Torquay residential area to collect signatures for the Act to End Poverty.

I’d never done this sort of thing before, and really nothing prepares you for how you might best approach an individual with the issue of extreme poverty because everyone reacts differently.

Some people want you to give them a good reason to support the campaign. Others stop you from going on a long narrative about the importance of ending extreme poverty, either because they already support the campaign and don’t need to hear it all again or at other times because they don’t care for what you’re talking about. Every individual reacts slightly differently, a realisation that’s important to ponder on.

Of all reasons to bring this up, I think that experience campaigning on a ‘political front’ allows you to begin to guage just what the Australian public is like. There are people that are utterly for themselves, think you’re out to get money or something and they are the hardest to engage. There are those who will do anything if it’ll just better the world. Then there are those who will add their name to the campaign, yet you leave them with a sense that they didn’t actually understand a word of what you said.

Ultimately that experience of interacting with the Australian public in this way, leads me to think a lot about how we might better reach ‘all walks’ of Australian life more effectively in the future.

Coming back to the electoral forum, I think that the first notable thing about this event was the surprise of both politicians who attended – Darren Chesseman, Labor and Dr. Richard di Natale of the Greens – at the size of the crowd and the overwhelming majority of young people. That’s something that I’ll probably come back to, because it often evoked a discussion.

The forum was a good exercise in encouraging bipartisan involvement on the issue, however it became clear that some politicians are more motivated to care about those in extreme poverty than others (just as anyone else in society). This is not even necesarily because of who they are as individuals, or even about their own ‘vested interests’. Often we need to blame ourselves, the electorate, for not letting our leaders know often enough that we care – something that the road trip was able to turn around.

Cheeseman is himself an example of someone who initially knew very little of the Millennium Development Goals, foreign aid or anything else related to ending poverty. However, through the forum he demonstrated a quite educated stance – although sometimes reluctant to give definite answers.

From the consensus of the crowd, however, Dr. Natale was much more educated on the issue of extreme poverty as well as being much more aggreeable with our campaign. Something else that became clear throughout the campaign week, for me, was just how well the Greens understand extreme poverty. They’re also much more steadfast and direct in regard to delivering answers on what they think should be done about it.

Granted, providing answers to questions is only half-way to a solution (perhaps not even that) and this leads me to admire Cheeseman’s conservatism to a certain degree – being a member of a major party he should be all too aware that strong promises can be very hard to deliver.

Yet I am still at favour with the Greens because I really do believe that it is better to be highly idealistic, for even though you might be aware that the highest ideal will not be achieved in it’s totality it also seems clear to me that you’re more likely to ‘land closer’ to the optimum place if you aim there in the first place. Closer is better than miles away.

Directly after the electoral forum, all of us little activists headed to our accommodation for the evening at Anglesea.

As tired as I was (and I think that goes for everyone), it really did manage to be a tense evening. Like everyone else, I promised that much of the events of the evenings were not to be made for public consumption – so there’s not a chance I’ll write about those times in any detail. Ever. Except for my own very general feelings and impressions.

Sunday May 9th – Geelong and Colac, Victoria

Of all the days on the roadtrip, this day was by far the most profound for me – before I get to that I must recall the events of that day.

I was quick to adjust to the early mornings, which kind of surprised me. Honestly, on the first morning I think I was up so early just to avoid having to be in the shower room with guys everywhere. I’m like that at swimming pools and the like, too, I just hate it – and have been known to go into one of the showers or toilets to get changed. However, I digress…

My road trip group (which has in more recent times adopted the name ‘team awesome’) was one of the groups that chose to attend a service of the Uniting Church – as far as I’m aware it was a common theme among road trip groups across the nation to visit and dialogue with church groups, and especially the Uniting Church due to their long-term committment to the Make Poverty History campaign.

At 8.45 AM, we arrived at the Wesley Uniting Church to the welcome of what I would consider a moderately sized congregation led by Rev. Lisa Stewart – an incredibly warm and modern individual.

I am not myself a Christian in the sense that is determined in the traditional sense (i.e., in relation to the value system that most would stereotype a Christian would hold), but neither was this congregation. When Rev. Stewart talked about the Gospel of Jesus Christ, I could tell that she had pondered on the meaning and relevance of those scriptures in a way that is very positive and progressive for humanity.

When Rev. Stewart talked about the Christianity of her people – and that which she saw as appropriate – I noticed an emphasis on service, of considering one’s self a steward of the Earth and not that of having an inflated sense of disrespect for humanity and the Earth that is not uncommon in many Christians in the mainstream such as some of the absolute nonsense of one preacher when talking on the Haiti earthquake.

I was nothing but overjoyed to be in this congregation of people that weren’t complaining about their first world ills. I was in a group of people with whom I found myself praying peace for the whole world. Now that’s what I call activating the inner Christ.

It was great to network with a church demographic on the Make Poverty History cause, and it was an encouraging way to begin our second day – to discover everyday Australian’s that have been behind the movement to end extreme poverty for quite some time.

Following this, we had a bit of spare time. With Miss Amy Shand’s amazing driving skills (not kidding – something I was all too happy to point out throughout the trip) we found ourselves in Belmont – eyeing off a market across the road from us, which we found time to attempt campaigning at.

And gee, were they of a different attitude to those we met at church!

When I arrived at the market, I saw fellow members of my campaign team approaching members of the public who were wandering and perusing goods. It became clear that the vast majority just weren’t interested at all.

I recall seeing my group leader having a conversation with a guy, who seemed somewhat receptive, who then turned to his partner and asked her if she’d sign the petition for them both. The response was something that made me think of the Cleetus character from The Simpsons: she pursed her lips, gave a surly smile and said ‘NUH!’

I’ve got to be honest, and to do so I have to say that there were definitely many horrible people at that place that I felt saddened for – and fellow ambassadors are welcome to highlight others in the comments (I’m looking at you, Claire). At the same time there were a few gems there that made the time spent there worth our time.

There’s always a diamond in the rough, I find. And really, everyone has the opportunity to turn into one.

Following our short foray to the market at Belmont, our road trip group joined with everyone else located around the waterfront in Geelong. The rest of the day consisted of the type of campaigning that was essentially approaching people wandering the streets to talk with them about the Make Poverty History cause, and most importantly to get them to add their supporting voice by signing the Act to End Poverty.

Personally, I found the larger majority of people in Geelong to be receptive to our campaign.

Oh, and I should highlight a major success from Geelong:

Accommodation for the night was in Colac, at a scout hall facing the lake – which was pretty gorgeous to wake up to considering the giant windows that opened out onto it. This evening, was particularly special for me as an individual as well as for me as a person sharing my points of view.

I have said that I will only speak of my personal feelings about the evenings, however, so much of the evening will remain a shared memory – not something that’ll be just blathered off. There’s definitely something special about that.

It was during that evening in Colac that I really began to feel connected in some way with the wider road trip team and, judging by the comments of others, it seems that I took a unique opportunity to give something that created a deeper sense of understanding and community for everyone in the group.

All those illumined faces, facing me. That night was profound beyond words, and I think that the only accurate way to express it would be a tearful outburst of emotional joy.

Monday May 10th – Colac and Ballarat, Victoria

If Sunday was a high in terms of campaigning, then elements of Monday were (you know, by comparison) a massive low.

Upon our mid-morning arrival in Ballarat, we wandered around approaching businesses asking them to put material up showing their support for the Make Poverty History campaign, which looked like this:

Beside this form of campaign work, everyone continued approaching members of the public on the street to talk to them about the movement to end extreme poverty and to ask them to add their support to the Act to End Poverty.

In Ballarat, I experienced a lot of rejection and this seems to have been a common theme of that day. I must highlight here that all we were asking people to do was to add their  name to this campaign, and nothing more – and we were terribly clear about that.

We weren’t asking for money. We weren’t asking for anything material whatsoever. We were asking the nation to evoke it’s soul in a deafening howl – directed right at our political leaders.

At about 2PM we staged a flashmob at the Bridge Mall. It involved a symbolc representation of the ‘every three seconds, a child dies from extreme poverty’ slogan. A drum-beat would sound, and individuals would fall to the ground (representing death) until everyone was dead. At that point, the drummer boy talked about extreme poverty and how unnecessary it is that these conditions still exist in the world for over 1 billion people.

The ‘in your face’ use of the symbol of death was controversial to a certain degree. But what are we if we aren’t honest?

This flashmob was attended by various television and print-media. That’s great, but I was way too tired to actually care at the time – at all. There’s a photo of me doing one of the flashmob scenes and I look other-wordly (perhaps rather ironic considering the use of death symbology in this event).

If there was an epic moment of campaigning, it was wandering around the residence of the University of Ballarat. Not many people could pull off such great tact in getting signatures to end extreme poverty like Amy Shand could. I’m given the feeling that if Coco Chanel were an activist, she’d campaign Amy Shand style.

To be honest, the highlight of the day in Ballarat for me was sitting in Nandos with my team having something to eat and having a hilariously good time giving ‘directions’ to our accommodation in the evening – which was entertainment in the least for my team, as well as Peter and Sahil (road trip leaders). Ask either of my friends Callum or Jack about my sense of direction when in a car, I promise you that fantastic dialogues could be created from such experiences.

At the accommodation, I ate so much food that it made me realise just how tired I was. I went off up to my bed, intending to have a short rest and – missed the evening activies – had a very good sleep.

There was so much red bull and hyperactivity in this day, seriously. Well, I noticed it more on this day than any other. I think that being on such a high from all the contents of Reb Bull made me realise just how tired I was. Add to that how horrified I was by how I looked when I saw the photos one of my friends Sian (who I was ?verj?yed to see) took of me and her in Ballarat (there are others that I look much more tired in, but I’m not posting them). Distance and lighting really do save us sometimes.

Tuesday May 11th – Ballarat and Bendigo, Victoria

Our activist flair across Victoria was nearly over. We energised for this last day with  a routine of sorts. Let’s just say that if you want to energise young people that al you really need to do is get them to dance in sync with guys in short shorts. It really is that simple and nobody is allowed to question the formula, ever.

Let’s just say that Bendigo was all kinds of epic.

LaTrobe University, we salute you and your hordes of students and teachers who took it as a given to get behind such an important campaign. If more of the world were like you, perhaps the satirical social comment attached to the term ‘first world problem’ wouldn’t need to be so popular.

I think it’s needless to say that we felt very welcome at Latrobe. Some of my team members were lucky enough to have the opportunity to speak to a packed lecture hall (at the request of the lecturer) and have the Act to End Poverty passed around the entire room.

Later, we engaged another flashmob at an open street mall in the centre of Bendigo. This one involved the use of three taglines which went something like: ‘I refuse to be blind to the plight of the poor’ ‘I refuse to not listen to the cries of the poor’ ‘I refuse not to speak on behalf of the poor’.

I’m not too sure about our success in regard to actually reaching members of the public wandering the mall because there weren’t many people around, but the media did attend.

Afterward, I rested and socialised with my group at a pretty nice cafe. We could have campaigned more, but I think it’s important to remember just how important community is within any social movement. Take away community and a sense of relating to another in a free and open way, and you’re fucked as a movement (very simply put) until you bring it back. I know this all too well through my past association within the (by all means) stagnant organisation known as The Zeitgeist Movement.

On the contrary, the Make Poverty History road trip was an amazingly successful example of how social movements should bring groups of people (and society at large) together.

The final night at Bendigo was a very relaxing, reflective time.  I recall how inspired I was by Jasmine that night, and fighting fits of laughter when Romy looked to me at a certain time for validation of which I gave none.

I slept very well that night.

Wednesday May 12th – Bendigo, Victoria to Canberra

Very early morning and basically the whole day in the bus, in what felt like an exodus to Canberra. Only one thing can adequately describe that leg of the road trip. Photography.

We didn’t stop much at all, because we had so much ground to cover. Obviously it was a very beautiful drive, but I didn’t take any photos of all that. Some of my fellow trippers did.

As we were nearing Canberra I got somewhat emotional because I had originally intended to apply to go to the Australian National University, and wanted to be in Canberra especially for it’s beauty. It occurred that my mother never took me to the open day, so the consideration left my mind. Once I was in Canberra I felt compelled that eventually I will study Arts & International Relations at ANU.

When we arrived in Canberra, we arrived to more than 1000 campaigners from across the country:

Then we slept a freezing night in the tents, and laughed hysterically to maintain our sanity (or lose it, you decide). I had so much clothing on to keep warm that my suitcase managed to near being empty, and when I got up early to get ready for the breakfast with MPs at Parliament House my feet were frozen for hours. It would be the last night that anybody would sleep in the tents.

Thursday May 13th until Saturday 15th – Canberra

The first day in Canberra began with an early start, because I was one among many of the ambassadors to have the opportunity to represent their electorate at a massive breakfast at Parliament House with a lot of politicians. At the time I was living in the electorate of Wannon, and so met and dialogued with David Hawker on the issues surrounding extreme poverty.

The highlight of the breakfast was definitely the speech by Sarah Hanson-Young. While it was great to talk to lots of political leaders, many of them were very stand-offish and just trying to make us feel good that we cared about something and were trying to do something serious about it.

This being just one more example of how understanding the Greens are on the issue of extreme poverty (and climate change, I might add) when they are compared with the two larger parties.

After this time the Make Poverty History summit began which spread over all of Thursday and Friday, culminating with a celebratory concert on the Friday night.

It seems to me that so much was profound and important about the summit, that I’m not quite sure where to begin in terms of writing about it and processing that information – in many ways it has stagnated my sense of what to do next. If anyone would like to offer suggestions as to how to process the summit, and all that it was, I’d love to talk with you. If you’ve written about it, I’d love to read it.

Coming to the end of this lengthy reflection on the road trip (which I’ll probably expand on even further in future edits) I don’t know what to say.

There have been times since the road has ended that I have thought of it as one of the most building and inspiring experiences of my life. Because of the people – Amy, Romy, Jasmine, Bridie, Kody, Anthony, Amy [Wells], Claire and the masses of other people that I perhaps only had time for one conversation with I have a strong sense of connection to this cause and hope to work alongside some of them with projects in future.

Above all, I feel like I have seen that light that everyone who wants to change the world needs to see at some time or another. The ‘how’ of change. I feel so in tune with the world now, and have so much more confidence in the possibility for change that I did prior to the road trip (I came to the road trip through cynically questioning it over Facebook), and look so forward to being a part in creating that better world we all want to see.

And what I say of how great it was is not at all an exaggeration, because the Act to End Poverty was moved in Parliament:

There is much to celebrate, and still certainly much to do. If you’ve read this far, I love you.

(There are many videos and other such things I could, but most of it is uploaded on Facebook and therefore pretty hard to embed).