The annual Reclaim the Night rally was followed the next day by a conference discussing feminist campaigns organised by the Geelong Women Unionists Network. Jacqueline Kriz reports.
Celeste Liddle
A Yes vote won’t change whose constitution it is; a no vote won’t take the struggle back decades, argues Arrente woman Celeste Liddle.
Arrente woman Celeste Liddle believes that fear is winning the day in the Voice referendum discussion and that a process of truth-telling first could have achieved a different result. Pip Hinman and Ruth Heymann report.
Several hundred people protested to free the refugees imprisoned in the Park Hotel and Melbourne Immigration Transit Accommodation prisons.
The enormous — some estimate 60,000-strong — Invasion Day rally in Melbourne was a fitting rejoinder to the conservative campaign pushed by the mainstream media and politicians in the lead-up to January 26.
The right-wing Institute of Public Affairs released a poll on January 24 that, unsurprisingly, found just 11% of those surveyed want the date changed.
The Radical Ideas Conference organised by Resistance: Young Socialist Alliance over August 18 to 20 attracted young and older radicals committed to “sparking the resistance”.
Celeste Liddle, an Arrente woman, union activist and writer joined abortion rights and Socialist Alliance activist Kamala Emanuel and Mia Sanders from Resistance in a fascinating panel “Women fight back against misogyny and rape culture”.
Last week the ABC broadcast Recognition: Yes or No?, a program following the joint travels of federal Labor MP Linda Burney and conservative commentator Andrew Bolt as they debate whether Indigenous peoples should be “recognised” in Australia’s Constitution.
Viewers are told at the outset that they will be asked to vote in a referendum on constitutional reform. The program claims this referendum “could unite or divide our nation” and asks: “How will you vote?”
Chace Hill is a young Koori man who lives in Perth. He recently completed an honours degree in criminology at Murdoch University looking at racism. He is also a Resistance Young Socialist Alliance member.
He spoke to Green Left Weekly's Zebedee Parkes about racism in the justice system and the recent Four Corners program about the abuse of Aboriginal children in the Don Dale detention centre in Darwin.
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Tell us about your honours thesis.
Today, thanks to the power of social media, I have come across this despicable act. I am so angry about it that I feel compelled to write something in the 20 minutes I have remaining in my lunch break.
The accompanying photo is of the so-called “Uluru bark petition”. It was presented to the federal government, much to the gleeful hand-rubbing of the Liberal Party and particularly anti-marriage equality campaigner Senator Eric Abetz.