For three weeks in a row, angry demonstrators have taken to the streets of Australian cities to voice their disgust at Rudd’s plan to ban all refugees who attempt to get to Australia by boat.

The biggest of the refugee protests so far has been in Melbourne, with 5,000 turning out on 27 July and 1,500 on a freezing night the following Friday. Thousands have also turned out in Sydney, and in other cities hundreds have protested and marched.

The most inspiring aspect of these mobilisations has been participation by new layers of young people who have not been involved in the refugee campaign before, but who are now coming out onto the streets enraged, defiant, and determined to take a stand.

The most popular slogans shouted by demonstrators have been those directed squarely at Rudd and the ALP. For all the disappointment there has been with the Labor Party these past six years, there has been nothing to match this latest atrocity in generating pure rage against the party, which claims to stand for social justice and human rights.

And no wonder. Rudd’s plan, as originally conceived, was vile enough. But every week new revelations cast an even darker light on the ALP’s catapult to the right on refugees. Melbourne’s The Age revealed on 4 August that Papua New Guinea’s most thuggish paramilitary police unit – allegedly responsible for rapes, murders and other serious human rights abuses – is being funded by the Australian Immigration Department to secure the Manus Island asylum seeker detention centre.

Then, just before calling the election, Rudd announced that Nauru had signed on to a similar deal to that signed with PNG. This plan is not just about the permanent denial of hope to refugees, it is also about Australia’s role as a regional bully that pushes its problems onto its neighbours.

Everyone else who is sickened by Rudd’s policy should make the effort to get to the protests during the election campaign. Saturday 24 August is set for a national mobilisation, and there are other rallies in particular cities at other times (details below).

Building a movement on the streets is the only way to begin to turn the tide against racism in this country. Bitter experience has shown us that waiting around for the right politician to get elected, or in the vain hope that the current crop will find their conscience, is a fool’s hope.

The politicians, the media, and all the institutions of racism and reaction have spent more than a decade building a mountain of lies and hate around refugees. Having flooded every corner of the country with their poison, they now compete to see who can come up with the most sadistic method of torturing the desperate people who come here seeking our help.

But to get away with it, they need our acquiescence. They rely on the fact that supporters of refugees are so downhearted, so despondent, that we think there is no point in taking action. It is true that defenders of refugee rights are for now in a minority – the relentless racist campaign has seen to that.

But there are still hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of people, who look at Rudd’s smug pronouncements on asylum seeker policy and feel sick to their stomachs. If even a quarter of those people took to the streets and vented their rage collectively, the whole refugee debate in this country would be turned on its head.

Rudd thought that support for refugees was so weak that he could get away with implementing this murderous new policy with no opposition. The passionate response by thousands of people indicates that it doesn’t have to be this way.

The road ahead, under Abbott or Rudd, will be long and bitter. But the uplifting protests of the last few weeks should galvanise every supporter of refugees to get onto the streets and join the struggle.