As I write this, we do not have a result for the Voice to Parliament referendum. But as you read this, we might. There’s no point speculating on the result here – whatever it is, the analysis will come immediately, from everywhere, and none of it will be all that helpful. Instead, I want to end this strange, short time in Australia’s history on a note of personal optimism.

If you are a left-leaning person, a progressive, a self-described feminist, or someone who just tries to do the right thing… you owe one group of people a huge thank you. The First Nations individuals who bravely, generously offered up for public consumption their thoughts, ideas and beliefs on the Yes and Progressive/Sovereign No vote put themselves at risk. Our whole country owes them a thank you – really, an un-repayable debt – for having the grace to continue to try to educate the rest of us, in the face of danger and idiocy.

I personally must thank those from the Blak Progressive No movement. When I wrote on LinkedIn that compiling the Voice to Parliament Referendum spreadsheet was the most important piece of journalism Zee Feed would produce this year, I did not realise it would also be the work to change me the most. I have learned an enormous amount from listening to their logic and watching how they move. The experience has profoundly changed me. It has made me a better person. It is very fucked up that my self-improvement has come at the expense of First Nations wellbeing, in both the individual and collective sense – to be very honest, I’m not sure what to do with those feelings yet.

Regardless of the result, I urge every non-Indigenous Yes voter to read/watch/listen to every single No perspective on the document. You will be better off for it.

So, now what? This is how I’m choosing to find optimism a post-October 15 Australia. The Voice campaign was a true test on listening and acting in solidarity for young progressives – some soared, some did ok, and some of us failed fucking miserably. A lot of Yes voters fall into that last group, based not on their vote but their conduct. If we can do the honest self-reflection and take the hard lessons from it, this could be a transformative moment in the personal politics of an entire generation.

So much incredible First Nations thinking has been pushed into the mainstream, made so readily and generously available. More than I’ve ever seen in my life. Let’s learn from it. Let this be the start of our listening era anyway. The discourse has brought out so much good, useful criticism about what’s wrong with the status quo, and now we can simply… start making the changes in our own lives, communities, work places.

The duress we just put the entire First Nations population through doesn’t have to have been for nothing. That’s entirely within our power – and I’m optimistic, as always, about how we will do better now that we know better.

– Crystal
Founder & Chief of Everything at Zee Feed
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Smart stuff on the Internet 💭

All the stuff I found on the web that made me think, smile, or have an ‘aha!’ moment. Spend your Sunday reading them – you'll be better off for it:

Nobel prize in economics: Claudia Goldin’s work is a goldmine for understanding the gender pay gap and women’s empowerment on The Conversation
"Goldin coined the term “quiet revolution” to describe the dynamics of the gender gap in the labour market and the increase in labour force participation of married women in the US in the 1970s. She showed that there are two key ingredients to this quiet revolution: investment in education, and postponement of age at first marriage.”

Don’t believe everything you see and hear about Israel and Palestine on Vox
This article outlines the SIFT method of assessing potential misinformation on social media, developed by digital literacy expert Mike Caulfield. This might be controversial, but if you are unwilling to commit to this four-step process which will require you to “open up a bunch of tabs” then I don’t think you should share anything on social media regarding the Israel-Hamas war.

How AI reduces the world to stereotypes on Rest of World
“[Prompts for] ‘An Indian person’ is almost always an old man with a beard. ‘A Mexican person’ is usually a man in a sombrero. Most of New Delhi’s streets are polluted and littered. In Indonesia, food is served almost exclusively on banana leaves… The accessibility and scale of AI tools mean they could have an outsized impact on how almost any community is represented.”

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