Talking With Elise about Accompaniment
A conversation with Elise Ganly on her accompaniment of a refugee. Growing up in Port Augusta, South Australia, Elise passed the Baxter Detention Centre hundreds of times. Through her involvement in YCS (Young Christian Students) she began to comprehend that there were people beyond the barbed wire and this helped her to see the issues facing the refugees inside. While working in Brisbane as an organiser for the Queensland Community Alliance, she became involved in a refugee protest outside a hotel where 120 refugees had been detained for at least a year. For Elise, faith sometimes requires us to take “strategic action” which requires us to make difficult choices about confronting authorities and people with power.