The ongoing strike at Sydney University attracted national media attention on March 26 when strike-supporting students were dragged from a lecture theatre by riot police.
The students were engaged in a “roaming picket” that was disrupting one of the few remaining classes held that day when police intervened. This sparked debate as to whether student supporters used appropriate tactics to make their presence heard.
Resistance!
This week on campuses across the country, Resistance members are opening their books and getting back into study. Our “Bachelor of Revolutionary Activism” will be open to anyone who is interested in getting an education in socialist ideas.
Classes will include a discussion on Marxist-feminism. Others will be about how we can save our environment, or how best to support the Palestinian people. It’s a little bit different in each city or campus, but there will be common themes. Everywhere Resistance will be putting forward an alternative vision on how to run the world.
Important rallies were held across the country in defence of the single parent payment on February 5. After having the welfare safety net in Australia for some time, it seems insane there is a need to protest to protect such rights.
But protests like these made welfare a reality in the first place. These protests are defending an unprecedented attack, it's a return to the action that made social welfare possible.
To do so, it is important to understand the reason that welfare is under attack in the first place.
The recent floods in Queensland, as well as bushfires in three states, have dramatically shown that climate change is a serious threat and is getting worse. Climate change is not an abstract issue that will be a problem at some point down the track; it is having real impacts now.
Extreme fires and floods are becoming the norm in Australia, rather than infrequent disasters. It is expected that there will be more frequent and more damaging extreme weather events if action to stop climate change soon does not happen soon.
Resistance is an activist youth organisation that is involved in campaigns for the environment, for queer rights, feminism and anti-racist issues.
Sometimes it can be useful for even the most experienced activists to renew our skills and examine what, how and why we do things. To do this, Resistance is holding an activist skills camp in Melbourne from January 21 to 23. Workshops covering practical activist skills and socialist theory will be held over three days.
Around Australia, proponents of neoliberalism have led attacks on tertiary education an ideological onslaught against the idea of well-funded public education.
In July, Fred Hilmer, vice-chancellor of UNSW and chair of the Group of 8 Universities, a coalition of university managements, called for total fee deregulation and “cutting red tape”.
The federal government has begun “trials” of a controversial new plan for compulsory income management in five places around Australia. This policy began in the Northern Territory as part of the "NT intervention" in 2007, but is now expanding into other states and territories.
The university semester is coming to an end, so now is a good time to take stock of developments in Queensland student politics.
In recent months there has been a rise in political consciousness and activity on campuses. Most big universities have had students protesting against alleged corruption in the student union or university.
Resistance members have been heavily involved in many of these campaigns.
Queensland University of Technology (QUT), University of Queensland (UQ) and Griffith University are the three major campuses in south-east Queensland.
With the escalation of the war on Gaza in the past week, now is the time for the Greens to urgently reconsider backing the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign (BDS). This campaign aims to bring international pressure on Israel until it stops human rights abuses against Palestinians.
BDS has grown rapidly in Australia in recent years, though mainstream politics has barely noted its progress.
Even the Greens, generally far more sympathetic to the suffering of the Palestinian people, have now completely abandoned BDS.
More than 100 students from the University of Tasmania attended a forum on October 16 to question university administrators over plans to restructure the Faculty of Arts.
It was organised by students of the university in response to disquiet over potential changes to degree structures and curricula.
This came just a week after the faculty dean, Professor Susan Dodds, announced that the existing 10 departments would be amalgamated into three bigger entities.
If your home was going to be demolished in 15 minutes, what would you save? Facing a life of poverty, would you salvage valuables? Or, would you retrieve sentimental items, knowing that every day your people lose pieces of their ancient history and culture? For Israeli “refusenik” Sahar Vardi, watching Palestinians being forced to make this decision at gunpoint just a few kilometres from her own home changed her life.
Members of the socialist youth organisation, Resistance, came from around the country to Adelaide over July 20-22 for the 42nd Resistance Conference.
The conference consisted of plenaries on Australian politics, international politics, plans to build Resistance and “Perspectives for the Left”.
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