Gary Meyerhoff, long-time activist and founder of the Network Against Prohibition (NAP), died from an AIDS-related illness on October 7. A tireless campaigner for the rights all those who slipped through societys cracks, Meyerhoff was an optimist and not afraid to push the limits. He organised around issues and with sections of society that other activists usually put in the too-hard basket.
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Fast Food NationDirected by Richard LinklaterBased on the book by Eric SchlosserWith Kris Kristofferson, Greg Kinnear, Patricia Arquette, Ethan Hawke, Catalina MorenoIn cinemas October 26
Queensland Murris (Indigenous Australians) and their supporters marched on the state parliament on October 10. In a protest called to coincide with the first sitting day of the newly elected Labor government, the 600 demonstrators confronted Premier Peter Beattie with the demand that senior sergeant Chris Hurley be sacked.
Forums about the occupation of Palestine, film screenings, mock Israeli checkpoints and protest actions were held on university campuses in NSW as part of a week of solidarity with Palestine on October 9-13.
ERIC SCHLOSSER was in Australia in September for a publicity tour to launch Fast Food Nation. Green Left Weeklys BELINDA SELKE interviewed him about the film.
The popular movement in the southern state of Oaxaca has called for solidarity, fearing a massive wave of repression because of a recent step-up in numbers of police and military in the state. Since a strike by Local 22 of the National Teachers Union began in May, the conflict has escalated to a national issue. At its centre is governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, whose repressive methods have sparked a movement to remove him.
For two days in early October, the sides of the barren Posokoni Hill above the mining town of Huanuni, 150 kilometres southeast of Bolivia’s capital La Paz, were transformed into a war zone in the two most violent days since leftist Evo Morales was elected the country’s president last December.
To judge by the coverage in the corporate media, the main opposition candidate in the December 3 presidential elections, Zulia state governor Manuel Rosales, is on the march and making ground against socialist President Hugo Chavez. This is despite pro-Chavez forces winning every national election since 1998, and most polls suggesting Chavez
is certain to win the presidential vote.
In April 2000, the people of Cochabamba captured the imagination of anti-corporate campaigners the world over. Only months after the US transnational Bechtel took control of the regions water supply forcing citizens to pay for rainwater they collected the people of Cochabamba, organised through the Coalition in Defence of Water and Life, rose up and booted out the corporation.
At its first conference to be held since Tommy Sheridan and his supporters split from the Scottish Socialist Party to set up a rival organisation, SSP national convenor Colin Fox said that the party had been through a “real-life horror movie, a nightmare so acute that it would have broken other parties completely”, but “with every passing week, more and more people are overheard saying that it was the SSP that was telling the truth all along”.
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