Chris di Pasquale is a teacher and a member of the Independent Education Union.
In the early hours of Thursday morning, following the shameful passage of the Religious Discrimination Bill through the lower house with ALP support, Labor leader Anthony Albanese tweeted the “breaking” news that Labor had “been successful in protecting LGBTQI school children from discrimination”.
I’m a socialist gay activist, so I’m used to being attacked for my politics. You learn to take it in your stride. But one of the most dumbfounding denunciations I ever received was issued by a few other apparently progressive queer activists, who slammed me in May 2017 for the heinous crime of speaking at a protest against the Liberal Party.
As French politicians and parties swing into campaign mode a year out from the 2022 presidential elections, polls strongly suggest that the final round runoff will be between current President Emmanuel Macron and far-right leader of Rassemblement National (National Rally, RN) Marine Le Pen. Compared to the last time these candidates faced each other, the margin between them has narrowed significantly: in 2017, Macron defeated Le Pen 66-34; a recent poll by Harris has Macron winning 53-47.
In a recent post-inauguration op-ed titled “The case for Biden optimism”, New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote: “Just by who he is, Biden sets the stage for a moral revival. His values cut across the left/right, urban/rural culture war we’ve been enduring for a generation. This will begin to heal a broken and ungovernable nation”.
Brooks’ case for Biden optimism is that Biden has the right agenda, one that transcends the toxic, left-versus-right culture wars that have dominated the last four years.
Someone needs to order Victoria’s bosses a round of babycinos: these guys never stop whinging. Last weekend, 78 “members of Victoria’s business community” took out full-page ads in all the Sunday papers decrying the “Orwellian nightmare which Victoria has become”. This week, Sorrento hotelier Julian Gerner will The Black Panther Party were revolutionaries, working to create a new mixture of Marxism, Black nationalism, and anticolonialism. As the FBI tried to crush them as quickly as possible, the Panthers were fighting to develop a strategy for revolution in the US, and to build a party that could both overthrow capitalism and end the oppression of Black people.