People like you will change the world

Helen Albinis was an ordinary mum with two children and a job in pharmaceuticals when she first went into lockdown in Preston.

By the time she came out she was helping organise anti-Dutton rallies.

The story of her politicisation is one of neighbourhood solidarity in the face of a cruel refugee policy.

Who could forget her face as she stepped forward into the bicycle lane on Swanston St and began waving her phone at the windows of the Park Hotel?

Her black coat billowed around her. It was quite cold for a summer day and she looked as if she was standing on the edge of civilisation somewhere, signaling to the troops.

The day is etched in her memory as the first after the refugees she had grown to love as neighbours were moved from the Mantra Hotel in Preston to the Park Hotel in the city.

“When we were doing walks with the puppy, I realised how lucky I was to be walking. We had 101 days of lockdown. They’ve had 13 months,” she said.

Helen was determined to stay in touch with her lockdown buddies. She’d begun communicating with them while doing her daily walks and the sickening realisation that they were suffering was sending her half-crazy.

Helen is an immigrant, and she is not afraid to be articulate about her concerns. She realised early on that this was a battle of words.

By her fourth visit to the Park Hotel, actors on the back of a truck were performing the roles of Peter Dutton, the Minister for Home Affairs, and the Prime Minister Scott Morrison and condemning them as “professional racists” while a bunch of refugees waved from a window.

But the first time Helen arrived, the windows of the hotel had been darkened, covered by a film to stop the outside from looking in.

“I’m heartbroken,” Helen told Inner City News. “In Preston you could see their faces and signal to them. Nothing is visible here. You can use a phone. You can like them on Twitter. You can turn on a light. It’s the only way you can communicate with them. It’s very cruel.”

Helen checked her phone. A message had just arrived from a guy called Moz. “Hello I see you right now,” he said. Her spirits lifted. They could see out.

In the days that followed the numbers outside the hotel swelled. Hundreds of protestors gathered over the past weekend before Christmas with carols, performances, speeches and dancing but Helen was still worried.

“You can see they’ve been deteriorating in the last couple of weeks,” she said. She was worried about insects in their food and Moz had had a tooth extracted.

“I wanted to know what was happening, that he was receiving pain relief,” dentist Pela Soupos said, who did a consultation over Facetime from the street outside the hotel. “My understanding is that they are not receiving preventative dental care.”

She and her sister Maria were politicised two years ago when they saw the film made by Manus Island detainee Behrouz Boochani. Footage was sent out of the prison on a mobile phone.

On December 21, The Greens organised a rally outside the Department of Home Affairs in Lonsdale St to protest against the hotel detention. CBD activist Aspara Sabaratnam urged people to connect on a personal level to the struggles of the refugees.

“It can’t just be at a surface level,” swhe said. “It has to be deep level organisation.”

Moz, one of the Park Hotel detainees spoke in a recorded message at the rally.

“When I am inside my room and walk along the corridor, I feel I’m back on Manus Island,” he said. “It’s a different address but the same torture ... all of you who came to protest, people like you will change the world.”

Protestors are keeping up a vigil outside the hotel every weekday at 5 pm and weekends at 3 pm •