We, the undersigned staff members at Universities across Australia, support the University of Melbourne students who passed the recent motion ‘UMSU Stands with Palestine – BDS and Solidarity Policy’. We also support University students across the country who take a stance on Palestine in the face of an orchestrated campaign by Zionist groups who attempt to slander them for standing against settler colonialism, apartheid, and racism in Palestine.

How to write in the aftermath of Invasion Day? How to write about colonialism and the carceral logic that shapes this country? How to write about the cops – the everyday street cops, the cops on horses, the Kevlar-covered cops with their weapons – and the damage they do? How to write about the jails and the detention centres and the border logic and the black sites?

This Bill then, supported by the crossbench and a range of NGOs and lobby groups, should only be seen as a deeply ambivalent ‘solution’. Just like the Kids off Nauru campaign – which created the hashtag #KidsOff – this Bill has spawned a campaigning hashtag (#BacktheBill) and provides a very partial remedy to a much larger problem. It is a crisis response to a crisis purely of the politicians’ making.

Gaza has been under siege for 11 years, during which time its borders with Israel and Egypt have been almost hermetically sealed. Every few years Israel bombs Gaza, and then refuses to allow the provision of the construction materials that would enable rebuilding to occur. Unemployment rates are astronomical, and there is little access to sufficient electricity, clean water, food, or proper sewage systems. Hospitals are unable to provide proper care, and many are highly dependent on foreign aid in order to subsist.

When Lorde responded – to them and countless others who contacted her – by cancelling, there was a predictably uproarious response from some quarters. It’s difficult to be reminded that you stand outside the human rights mainstream, which almost universally condemns Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. It’s difficult to be reminded that, as a Zionist, the society you support is one that is fundamentally based on the violent appropriation of Palestinian land and life.

We need to remember the history of marriage even in the midst of making the argument for equal access. Otherwise we risk becoming inadvertently ahistorical and conservative, both in argument and politically. Looking to the history of marriage and to the history of queer liberation also helps to remind us that there are many ways to conceive of what constitutes a relationship, and many ways to express love outside of marriage, even outside of ‘relationship status’. And critically, this history helps us to imagine the vast possibilities for difference in the present and in the future.

On Saturday morning I woke up at Sumud: Freedom Camp. The camp is set up in Sarura, a reclaimed Palestinian village in the South Hebron Hills in the West Bank. It has been built on the principle of sumud, steadfastness. Between 1980 and 1998 the people of Sarura were expelled from their lands through the violence of the Israeli army into nearby villages and towns, such as At-Tuwani, Hebron and Yatta. They have remained displaced since that time, until Sumud Freedom Camp was established on Friday.

But what does it mean to work, think, and act in profound solidarity? What are the links between solidarity and justice? I have been thinking about these questions while watching the fallout from the International Women’s Strike in the US – specifically the opposition, distaste and (perhaps) fear that has resulted from women who identify as Zionist feminists.

But the tracking of lives through government documentation, in particular Aboriginal lives and the lives of other racialised people, has a long history. Despite Keane’s alarm, this kind of surveillance is not a novel breach of privacy. Certain lives and populations have been subject to tracking and surveillance since the beginnings of colonisation in this country; such scrutiny has been a key tactic of various Australian governments.

Baby Asha’s imminent deportation has been halted, but the struggle is far from over. What are the politics, potentials and pitfalls of Let Them Stay? How could we go from this moment – which is but one in a long history of opposition to the actions of Australia’s Immigration Department – to a broader dismantling of Australia’s racist border regime?