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The Sydney Festival is a major summer music and cultural festival in the nation of Australia's largest city, Sydney. It takes place on land previously owned by the first nation people of the Eora Nation, something the organizers take great pains to acknowledge, which makes the following ironically apropos.
In 2022 the festival hit a rather painful snag, with over 40 performers and acts withdrawing due to a single sponsor: the nation-state of Israel and its government funding of the Sydney Dance Company's performance of "Decadance." Requests to drop the funding failed, and artists acted according to their conscience and withdrew.
Why the commotion? It has to do with a single objective issue, Israeli apartheid. Protesters point to the endemic and increasingly draconian 54-year-long history of enforced policies and practices in the Occupied Territories and Israel's two-tiered legal system. This system includes laws that discriminate based upon race, origin, and faith within and beyond the Green Line.
The creative community is not a big fan of national exceptionalism when it privileges one group of people over another. Impacting the pocketbook, boycotting is one of the few non-violent acts of protest that hit supporters where it counts. It led to the end of apartheid in South Africa, and boycotts effectively turned the civil rights movement around in the United States. In both cases, industry and business ultimately figured out it was better to support human rights than go against them if they wanted to stay in business.
Though it did take several decades of pressure and boycotting in the US and South Africa, once the money men said no to racism and apartheid, the government had to support the movement and end the practices. See? Stop the money. End the political will to keep. End the practice. Simple.
The festival includes music acts, theater, documentaries, symposiums, workshops, and exhibitors. It was first held in 1977 and has continued to grow ever since. The 2022 incident has sent a clear message to organizers worldwide, and whether it continues to resonate, only future years will tell.
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