'Fight Racism!' conference
By Jo Brown
SYDNEY — The "Fight Racism!" conference in Sydney on September 27-28 will be an opportunity for young people and anti-racism activists to discuss the history of racism, the nature of racism today and how to defeat it.
The scheduled plenary sessions and panels include: What is racism?; Fighting Racism: then and now; Migrants and work; and a final session devoted to discussion about the next steps for the campaign.
The conference agenda will also include a public meeting on Aboriginal rights, with feature speakers including Graceland Smallwood, recent recipient of a Libyan peace prize, and other representatives from campaigns for land rights, including that to defend the Redfern "Block".
Organisers hope that the conference can make a useful contribution to debates around the sources of racism, the role of Pauline Hanson's One Nation party, how to combat the far right (and whether to call for racist groups to be censored), the role of the Labor and Liberal parties, and how to win campaigns against racist attacks such as the recent cuts to Abstudy.
For more information about the conference, call (02) 9267 4462 or (02) 9690 1977.