APEC protester to run for the Senate

Alex Bainbridge, a prominent organiser of the "Stop Bush" protest during the September APEC summit, will head the Socialist Alliance's NSW Senate team. Others on the ticket are Susan Price, a National Tertiary Education Union branch activist at the University of New South Wales; environmentalist and feminist doctor Kamala Emanuel; and Wollongong University student and anti-war activist Tim Dobson.

"The APEC protest showed that there is a widespread mood of discontent with mainstream capitalist politics", Bainbridge told Green Left Weekly. "More importantly, it showed that there is a significant minority who are confident enough to defend our rights on the streets — even in the face of the unprecedented intimidation campaign that we saw in the lead-up to APEC."

"This confidence is good news for the whole progressive movement, and we in the Socialist Alliance believe it is important to tap into this confidence to promote a socialist alternative in every political arena we can reach, including the election campaign."

"Our campaign is firmly located in the 'throw Howard out camp", Bainbridge explained. "But it is not enough to just come behind [federal Labor leader] Kevin Rudd. We need to build a working class, socialist alternative to Labor's pale imitation of Howard."

"We take seriously the message of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez that for the sake of humanity's future we need to make major socialist advances in the coming years, and that's why we we'll be reaching out during the election campaign, trying to involve more people in the Socialist Alliance."

[For more information or to get involved in the Socialist Alliance election campaign, visit http://www.socialist-alliance.org.]

From GLW issue 725