Plebeian Power: Collective Action & Indigenous, Working-Class & Popular Identities in Bolivia
By Alvaro Garcia Linera
Haymarket Books, 2014
345 pp, US$28.00
Alvaro Garcia Linera, twice-elected vice-president of Bolivia, is the continent’s most prominent theoretician-politician to place 21st century Latin American left thought in a Marxist framework.
In launching the report Not so super, for women: Superannuation and women’s retirement outcomes” by David Hetherington and Warwick Smith on July 20, Australian Services Union (ASU) national secretary David Smith said: “Australia’s compulsory superannuation system is failing women. According to the latest figures, women are retiring with around half as much superannuation (53%) as men.”
Bus drivers and supporters rallied outside Burwood Bus Depot on July 20 to oppose plans by the NSW Coalition government to privatise Inner West bus services.
At the rally, petitions containing around 14,000 signatures against the bus privatisation were handed over to Labor and Greens MPs. Petitions with more than 10,000 signatures trigger a debate in state parliament.
The government reportedly announced a call for corporate expressions of interest in the privatisation the same day.
On July 21, a Western Australian Supreme Court jury found the man accused of chasing and killing Aboriginal teen Elijah Doughty with his car was not guilty of manslaughter.
It is the latest demonstration that the legal system is failing Aboriginal people and exposes the depths of a racism that remains the bedrock of mainstream Australian culture.
“In solidarity with Elijah’s family, his community and Kalgoorlie, we stand in protest” was the call by the Aboriginal group Fighting in Solidarity Towards Treaties (FISTT), which organised a rally of about 300 people at the Supreme Court in Sydney on July 24. It was one of a series of protest rallies around the country.
Wiradjuri elder Aunty Jenny Munro asked: “Where is the national outcry for this innocent 14-year-old boy? Where is the justice for the death of an innocent child? There is no justice for a murdered Aboriginal child.
Imagine a workplace where you could be put on a secret register for forgetting to say a word from a call centre script because it would be a breach of company policy. Then, if you left that company and tried to get a new job, your prospective employer would not hire you simply because you were on that register.
You would never know whether you were on that register; you would have no right of appeal; nor would your name ever be removed from it, regardless of whether you were eventually found not guilty of the allegation.
Some 50 activists played protest games, sang and danced in the Commonwealth Bank’s foyer in Sydney on July 24. Stop Adani Sydney spokesperson Rada Germanos told Green Left Weekly: “We’re playing games in the Commonwealth Bank’s Sussex Street foyer calling on it to stop playing games with our collective future and pull out of funding the Adani Carmichael coal mine [in Queensland].”
Warrnambool City councillors unanimously voted to support marriage equality on July 3. Councillor David Owen, who instigated the motion, said backing marriage equality would be a “symbolic act, in support of a very important social justice issue” and align it with 48 other councils in Australia.
The family of Ms Dhu, who died in police custody in August 2014, is to launch legal action against the state of Western Australia, the police and the Country Health Service. They plan to lodge a claim of misconduct leading to death and a complaint of racial discrimination to the Australian Human Rights Commission.
Ms Dhu’s uncle Shaun Harris said the claims were about accountability and instigating change. “We need to enforce change, custodial change and reform, not just in Western Australia but Australia wide. Without accountability there will be no justice for my niece.”
Members states of the Organization of American States (OAS) have once again failed to reach consensus to “take action on Venezuela,” which Caracas regards as interference in its internal affairs.
At a July 26 meeting of the OAS Permanent Council in Washington, 13 countries read a declaration calling on the Venezuelan government to abandon the July 30 Constituent Assembly elections.
That was two fewer member states than supported a similar resolution at the OAS foreign ministers' meeting on June 19, and five short of the number needed to pass a resolution.
Images of the Bolivarian National Police firing tear gas at protestors in Venezuela cannot be provided to us in large enough quantities by the mainstream media.
In the face of an escalating international campaign by the right-wing Venezuelan opposition, backed to the hilt by the US, to bring down the left-wing government of President Nicolas Maduro, solidarity activists around the world, including Australia, are stepping up their activities. Supporters of the Venezuelan right-wing opposition are also escalating their efforts aimed at undermining and attacking the solidarity movement.