Photos from refugee rights rally, April 6, 2012 in Darwin. Read the full report here.
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Ever since the US-supported coup attempt against President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela failed in April 2002, Washington has been pursuing a variety of strategies to remove the overwhelmingly popular South American head of state from power.
About 120 refugee rights activists from multiple Australian cities gathered outside the Northern Territory’s parliament house in Darwin today to protest against mandatory detention and the three detention centres located around the region.
The event kicked off protests that are taking place at the detention facilities over the Easter long weekend for the annual refugee convergence. Each year refugee activists gather at a place in Australia where refugees are held in remote or difficult-to-reach location.
On the first day of the Darwin convergence for refugee rights, activists visited the Darwin Airport Lodge (DAL) after rallying in the city.
The near-continuous introduction, change and reversal of several federal government policies on asylum seekers arriving by boat have had a severely damaging effect on refugees held in the Northern Immigration Detention Centre in Darwin.
An Iranian man who arrived on Christmas Island just after the government announced it would “swap” 800 asylum seekers in Australia for 4000 refugees from Malaysia, said he was told every day he would be deported. “It was the worst two months of my life.”
1500 Sydney University students and staff rallied on April 4 to protest against management's move to sack 360 staff. Protesters marched through the university, culminating in 100 students occupying the Arts administration building in opposition to the attacks.
The Queensland ALP “snatched disaster from the jaws of defeat,” socialist activist Gary MacLennan told a public forum at the Activist Centre here on April 3. The forum, sponsored by Green Left Weekly, discussed the Liberal National Party’s (LNP) rise to power in Queensland, the crisis in the ALP and what this meant for the labour movement.
MacLennan said: “When the Queensland people said no to the [Anna] Bligh Labor government, they were not saying yes to an LNP government.
Labor’s Conflict: Big Business, Workers & the Politics of Class
By Tom Bramble & Rick Kuhn
Cambridge University Press, 2011,
226 pp., $39.95
Trade Unionism in Australia: A History from Flood to Ebb Tide
By Tom Bramble
Cambridge University Press, 2008
293 pp., $49.95
Tom Bramble and Rick Kuhn, through Bramble’s Trade Unionism in Australia and their jointly-authored Labor’s Conflict, offer substantial histories of two very important elements of the workers’ movement in Australia.
A new report released on March 28 said climate change has already led to changes in the frequency and severity of extreme weather, such as heat waves and heavy precipitation events, in many parts of the world, ClimateCentral.org said that day.
The report was released by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC).
About 100 teachers, parents and concerned community members rallied outside NSW parliament on March 29 to protest against the relocation of Gosford Public Schools to the grounds of Henry Kendall High School.
Speakers at the rally included Unions NSW secretary Mark Lennon, NSW Teachers Federation president Maurie Mulheron, NSWTF officer Debbie Westacott, NSW Greens Legislative Council member John Kaye as well as staff and parents from Gosford Public School.
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