"He pretty much told me to fuck off"

Last Sunday two activists from Families for Palestine sat down outside Anthony Albanese’s office on Marrickville Road. A round-the-clock vigil has been there ever since.

“We went to the rally [in the CBD] on Sunday and we came back here. Zuzia told me her plans to stay here indefinitely,” says Sarah, a Palestinian activist who runs a cafe in the inner west. “We started brainstorming ideas, contacted all the people we knew who might be able to come down. We had about nine people by 11 o’clock that night. Zuzia did the first 24 hours. And then suddenly we had 60 people.”

“We didn’t plan anything, really. There were no logistics or organisation behind this. It was an act of desperation in desperate times,” says Zuzia. “The news of what happened to Hind and how she died, and that Rafah was going to be attacked, was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I didn’t know how to function with the grief anymore.”

The numbers of attendees at Little Palestine at Albo’s go up and down depending on the weather, the time of day and people’s commitments, but there is never no one there.

Like anything else, the longer a protest runs the more logistically difficult it becomes to maintain. Since it began there have been heatwaves and days of torrential rain. As it became more popular questions of food, water, bathrooms, laundry, seating, weatherproofing and rubbish collection became pressing.