‘Covid has ripped our rainbow flag in two’: Concerns about community division

“Our beliefs have been polarised to such an extent that there no longer is a middle ground. Our tolerance of each other has faded.”

Richmond Greens MP Mandy Nolan has written a statement voicing her concerns about division within the local community.

Byron Shire local, comedian and Greens candidate for Richmond Mandy Nolan has written of her “overwhelming grief” over the division within her beloved community.

In a post on social media, Ms Nolan described Mullumbimby as a place with “diverse opinions that manage to live harmoniously together”, or did manage to.

“Covid has ripped our rainbow flag in two,” she said.

“Our beliefs have been polarised to such an extent that there no longer is a middle ground.

“Our tolerance of each other has faded. I feel this overwhelming grief – like something I have loved has broken.

“There is a disharmony in my community I have never felt before.

“I see it when a man his 70s screams at a 16-year-old retail assistant about his sovereign rights not to wear a mask or QR code in.

“When a mask-wearing midwife is yelled at for being a sheep outside the IGA. And when I can no longer go to the cafe I have frequented for the past 15 years because the staff aren’t wearing masks and are playing know your rights anti-mask material rather than music. When did we start trying to indoctrinate each other?”

She said there is a “chasm” between those who believe we are experiencing a pandemic and those who write it off as a conspiracy.

“Narratives are born and curated on social media,” she said.

“Thanks to the internet we can now create cults without compounds.”

She said the conspiracy theories were akin to “the script for a florid psychosis”.

“How can this eclipse climate justice, or black deaths in custody, or the rape and murder of women?” she said.

“I don’t understand the outrage against masks, when there is so little about true loss of life and liberty. Wearing a mask is not the same as dying in custody.

“When I walk the streets of my town … I feel the divide.

“I watch the masked mingle with the medically exempt. There’s an unspoken agitation. A sense of Them and Us.

“My town is no longer a place of love and acceptance.

“It is not a place of compassion and kindness. There’s an undercurrent of distrust, suspicion and violence. We are being taken.”

Ms Nolan said she was nostalgic about when there was unity in her community.

“I find myself nostalgic for the community we had during the bushfires, when we didn’t need to have our house on fire to know that others were at risk,” she said.

“When we acted in the interests of others. When we worked together, when as a community we showed who we were. There was no conspiracy that divided us. We stood together, here at the base of our mountain.”