Socialist representatives in local government have led a push for councils to take a stand against Israel’s war on Gaza. Opposing them have been Labor Party councillors.
On Tuesday 21 November Maribyrnong Council in Melbourne’s inner west voted up a <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SKs0A3IYCfxVHo33OMKkLkL3cp22R0XM/view?fbclid=IwAR2Q3jorgQnUl6ODr3c6FKPzrPGDE5Is_3AWX00ENcB9dq0T_GpWOSsh9E8">motion</a> on “supporting peace in Gaza and Palestine”. The motion was moved by Victorian Socialists councillor Jorge Jorquera and gained the support of two Greens councillors and a nominal independent. It was opposed by the three Labor councillors.
Maribyrnong was the second council in Victoria to pass a motion against Israel’s war on Palestine. In early November, Merri-bek Council in Melbourne’s inner north voted up a motion moved by Socialist Alliance councillor Sue Bolton. It too was supported by Greens and independent councillors but opposed by those from the Labor Party. On 27 November a motion calling for a permanent ceasefire and “an end to illegal occupation of the Palestinian Territories” was voted up by Greens and independent councillors <a href="https://dandenong.starcommunity.com.au/news/2023-11-28/council-calls-for-gaza-ceasefire/">on Dandenong Council</a> too.
Jorquera’s motion called on the federal government to advocate for an immediate ceasefire and an end to Israel’s indiscriminate bombing, as well as an end to the siege on Gaza and the illegal occupation of Palestinian land. It also committed Maribyrnong Council to flying the Palestinian flag on a council building and a council boycott of businesses that profit from Israel’s occupation—in line with the call from Palestinian civil society organisations for a global movement of boycott, divestment and sanctions.
In an emotional <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCg0CI_oAi0&amp;t=59m32s">speech</a> at the council meeting, Jorquera highlighted the terrible death toll of children in Gaza. “I do not recall”, he said, “such a politically and ideologically motivated and calculated genocide as that which the Israeli state is now carrying forth”.
When the motion passed, cries of “free, free Palestine” rang out loudly and jubilantly from a crowd of supporters who had gathered to urge the councillors to stand on the right side of history. While motions like this won’t liberate Palestine, they are a means of increasing the pressure on all levels of government to stop backing Israel’s crimes.
The celebration, however, was short lived. A mere 24 hours after the Maribyrnong motion passed there was a push to overturn it. 
The motion succeeded with the support of Anthony Tran, who was elected as an independent councillor but who consistently votes with the three Labor councillors to provide them with a majority. In speaking in favour of the motion he pointed to the sustained mass protests for Palestine as evidence of community support.
However, Tran quickly backflipped, submitting a motion the following day to <a href="https://www.maribyrnong.vic.gov.au/News/Motion-to-Rescind-Supporting-Peace-in-Gaza-and-Palestine-Decision#:~:text=Council's%20Chief%20Executive%20Officer%20has,Council%20on%2012%20December%202023.">“rescind supporting peace in Gaza and Palestine”</a> that was co-signed by the Labor councillors. It seems—although he has not responded to media requests for comment—that a little pressure from them was enough for him to go to water.
When speaking against the peace motion, Labor councillors argued that opposing war is not council business. Jorquera, however, pointed out that no such qualms were expressed when, last year, 1,000 local councillors attending the National General Assembly of Local Government voted unanimously for a motion against Russian aggression and “in solidarity with the people of Ukraine”.
Another argument they tried was that speaking out against Israel’s war crimes harms “social cohesion”. The double standard is equally clear here. Why is it damaging to social cohesion when Palestine supporters speak out against Israel’s crimes, but not damaging when the Australian government speaks out in defence of them, or even provides Israel with material support in carrying them out? But of course it’s not really about social cohesion at all—it’s about silencing the pro-Palestinian side so that Israel’s crimes, and the government’s support for them, can continue with impunity.
Attempts to pass ceasefire motions in New South Wales—in the Inner West and Bayside councils—have also been blocked by Labor councillors. At every level, from federal to local council politics, Labor is proving itself to be an enemy of justice for the Palestinians, and a loyal ally of Israel and of US imperialism.
In most places, most of the time, they will—with the support of the Liberals and other conservatives—be able to win these votes. But they don’t speak for the growing number of people who recognise the horror and barbarity of what Israel is inflicting on the Palestinians today. The past two months have been grim. What has filled our hearts with hope has been the hundreds of thousands of people who have taken to the streets around Australia, turning grief into productive rage and love for humanity.
The motion to rescind Maribyrnong’s anti-war stance will be debated at the next council meeting on 12 December. Victorian Socialists is organising a community rally outside the meeting to send a clear message in support of the original motion, for peace and against Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. The rally details can be found <a href="https://victoriansocialists.org.au/civicrm-event/947">here</a>.
<div class="column_width_image article_inline_image"><img alt="protest details" src="https://cms.redflag.org.au/sites/default/files/inline-images/Palestine%20motion%20protest%20poster.png" /></div>

Liz Walsh

Socialist local councillors take on Labor over Palestine

We have lost a warrior. On 11 January Vivian Malo Podesser tragically passed away after a long battle with cancer.
Viv—a Gooniyandi woman from the Kimberley who lived, worked and fought furiously for justice on the lands of the Kulin Nations in Naarm (Melbourne)—was a force of nature. Her searing denunciations of the racist Australian state and capitalist injustice regularly rang out from rally platforms, making the crowd sit up and listen. 
Many of us first met Viv at the Occupy Melbourne protests against corporate greed, for social justice and genuine democracy in October 2011. She would go on to play a prominent role in numerous struggles over the subsequent decade. Viv was of course central to the struggle for Aboriginal liberation, from the annual 26 January Invasion Day marches, to the fight against Indigenous community closures in 2015, to protests against Black deaths in custody. She also travelled the country to participate in Aboriginal rights protests, including, in 2018, against the Commonwealth Games in Queensland.
Viv worked to build the bonds of solidarity between Indigenous struggles on this continent and those of other oppressed peoples across the globe. She was always willing to speak at protests in solidarity with the fight for West Papuan freedom, for the Palestinians, against Islamophobia and racism in all its forms and for climate justice. Many of these struggles featured on her long running 3CR community radio program <a href="https://www.3cr.org.au/theblackblock">The Black Block.</a>
In 2013, Viv wrote an <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/breaking-system">article</a> for Red Flag, in the form of a letter to “the System” in which she spelled out her desire for revolutionary change. “Just one last thing, System”, she wrote, “since it is my house you’ve been living in for the last 225 years (rent free) I am giving you notice to vacate. You’ve trashed the furniture and put holes in all the walls in the short time that you’ve been here. And it turns out the neighbours you were hating on and kept me from with your lies are actually on my side. Funny that—I’ll be coming back with them in a little while to make sure you’ve left the house.” 
“If you’re still there when I come back, we’re gonna bust you up so you can’t hurt anyone any more. And don’t bother cleaning up your garbage; I’m thinking about redesigning the place anyway. Goodbye System.”
Around this time Viv and her partner in life and activism Robbie Thorpe founded the group First Nations Liberation (FNL). You can hear her radicalism and righteous hatred of capitalism in the FNL “call to action”, which Viv penned in the lead-up to the “March in March” protests against then prime minister Tony Abbott in 2014. “Let’s tell them it’s not enough”, she wrote, “to shuffle the ‘leaders’ around in a system where profit and money is god. It’s the game, not the players”.
“No true sense of freedom can ever be attained for anyone without liberating us first from this out of control invader system. This always was and always will be a free peoples’ land, and the 220+ years of darkness will end when we see justice for the crimes against our humanity and land, and when the structures of oppression are toppled.”
Viv always spoke her mind, even if it meant challenging people on our side. At the “Bust the Budget” protest in 2014, Viv took to the stage to object to the constant talk of what a “lucky country” Australia had been historically. “This is an intervention”, she began, “Australia isn’t a lucky country if you're Black, especially not if you're Black and poor". She ended her speech with these powerful words: "You won't have your freedom without ours".
An example of Viv’s courage was her response to the sizeable right-wing anti-vax protests in the wake of the attack on the CFMEU offices in September 2021. She went along as a lone counter-protester, live-streaming as she challenged the far right, and was interviewed about her experience and reasons for doing this <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/a-strong-voice-against-the-mob-i-just-want-some-logic-20210923-p58u7u.html">in the mainstream press</a>.
She was verbally abused by many participants in the anti-vax rally. Viv, however, was never one for backing down. “I’m pro-vaccine and I’m not afraid to say that because I don’t want to see Aboriginal communities get hammered by this”, she told the reporter. 
Viv’s preparedness to take a public stand at a time when many others were watching on with horror from the safety of their homes was important. She made it clear our horror and disgust at these developments wasn’t enough, and that the far-right and the anti-vax movement needed to be actively challenged.
One of the last times many of us saw Viv was at the 20 November anti-fascist protest organised by the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/campaignarf/">Campaign Against Racism and Fascism</a> (CARF). Despite being increasingly physically frail she nonetheless took it to every anti-vaxxer or member of the far right that dared harass our protest.
Writing about the CARF action on Facebook she urged the Indigenous community to take up the fight against fascism. “What a crying shame”, she wrote, “so many been convinced by right wing agendas. I marched proudly with the Left today, as I've always done ... WILLIAM COOPER marched against fascism in 1938, when no one did! THAT’S THE SPIRIT WE NEED, not diluting black struggle for the likes of Craig Kelly and his mates FFS!!”
It’s a tragedy that Viv has been taken from us so soon. Her enormous heart, her anger at the system and her relentlessness and fearlessness in fighting for a better world—even when she was in enormous pain—have inspired so many people to take up the struggle themselves. Her example will keep on fuelling the fires of resistance.
Our solidarity and love go out to Viv’s family, friends and comrades who knew her best. Rest in Power Viv.
Viv’s name and image are used with the permission of her family.

‘We have lost a warrior’: A tribute to Vivian Malo Podesser 11/5/73-11/1/22

Footscray in Melbourne’s west has become the latest battleground over medically supervised injecting rooms (MSIR). Local rallies are a rarity these days, but over the last two weeks the suburb’s mall has been the site of two protests—a right-wing anti-MSIR rally organised by the Liberal Party and a community rally in support led by the Victorian Socialists West.
Supervised injecting facilities save lives, but there is only one in Victoria. It’s in North Richmond and was established as a two-year trial by a nervous Andrews government in 2018. Eighteen months into the trial, an independent review found that the facility had received 119,000 visits, managed 3,200 overdoses safely and saved at least 21 lives.
Injecting facilities improve the overall wellbeing of people who inject drugs. They reduce the risk of hepatitis C and HIV by providing clean equipment and offering screening. They help link users to a variety of health and social services, from dental and mental health services to legal and housing support. They also provide a gateway to rehabilitation programs. The North Richmond facility is reported to have provided more than 13,000 referrals to a variety of services.
Despite the vocal campaign against the facility by a hostile minority of traders and local residents backed by the Liberal Party, the submission by the local primary school also reported a decrease in public injecting and discarded needles and syringes.
There is a dire need for these important harm reduction facilities to be established in suburbs across Melbourne, including in the inner west. Out of fourteen local government areas in the north and west, Brimbank and Maribyrnong have the largest number of ambulance call-outs for heroin overdoses after Yarra and the Melbourne CBD. 
Despite the need, there are plans only for a new facility in the CBD. The Liberal Party, the Murdoch press and many small business owners are working overtime to demonise the proposed facility in the hope of intimidating the Melbourne City Council and the state government into scuttling the plan. Establishing a new facility in the CBD would be a step forward, taking pressure off North Richmond.
That there is no proposal for a facility in the inner west hasn’t stopped arch-reactionary Bernie Finn, a Liberal Party MP, from whipping up bigoted hysteria. Jumping on a fairly run-of-the-mill comment by Reason MP Fiona Patten, who made the case for MSIRs in Footscray, St Kilda and Dandenong, Finn organised a “No to Drug Injecting Facilities in Footscray” rally on 19 May. 
Finn is cynically attempting to build an electoral base for himself and the Liberal Party by making an alliance with the Footscray Business Association (FABA), which is the mouthpiece of Footscray-based Vietnamese business owners. 
The Vietnamese community traditionally vote Labor. Indeed, the Liberals do badly in the west. But the business owners are, unsurprisingly, a more conservative bloc. In the 2020 local council elections, FABA organised a right-wing ticket that tried to unseat Labor Party councillors and drew on Trump-style slogans—“Make Maribyrnong Great Again”. Their hostility for the Labor Party was matched only by their hatred for the Greens.
The rally of around 70 people, overwhelmingly older Vietnamese people, was a motley crew of fearful narrow-minded business owners and right-wing opportunists like Catherine Cumming, a Victorian upper house MP elected in Western Metro on Derryn Hinch’s law and order ticket. Michael Clarke, the ALP mayor of Maribyrnong City Council, disgraced himself by speaking at the rally. 
“Disgraced” is to put it lightly. Finn is closer to the extra-parliamentary far right than he is to the Victorian Liberal Party, however noxious it may be. He is notorious for organising annual anti-choice rallies aimed at re-criminalising abortion, at which the fascist Proud Boys supply security. He opposes the ban on gay conversion therapy, doesn’t believe in global warming, supports the death penalty for drug dealers and is a Donald Trump imitator. There should be political consequences for uniting with such a bigot.
Victorian Socialists West were alerted to the right-wing protest when progressive local residents started posting in online community forums dismayed by local businesses displaying posters for the right-wing rally in their shop windows. Hearteningly, there was a flood of comments supporting MSIRs. They reached out to Victorian Socialists local councillor Jorge Jorquera for assistance in organising a counter-protest, highlighting how Jorquera has already established himself as a fighter for social justice in the local area in the seven months he’s been a councillor.
Along with local anarchists, we heckled the right-wing protest on Wednesday night, shamed Clarke for his participation and handed out leaflets to passers-by, taking on the campaign of lies and misinformation. We also put up a change.org petition that has garnered nearly 1,500 signatures. But it was clear that we needed to do more.
So three days later, in a rally organised by Victorian Socialists West and local Footscray resident Phoebe McDonald, we mobilised more than 100 residents to demonstrate support for harm reduction and public health care for all. We drew together community organisations like Flat Out Inc., which advocates for women in the prison system, Harm Reduction Victoria, which gives voice to people with lived experience, and socialist activists. Speech after speech eloquently rejected the stigmatisation and criminalisation of people living with drug addictions. 
The loudest boos at the rally were for Michael Clarke, when Sally Thompson, Victorian Socialists West campaigner, drew the links between the fight for a safe injecting room and the broader fight against gentrification. This is not the first time Clarke has teamed up with anti-poor reactionaries. He recently rejected a proposal put to council to turn over empty international student housing apartments to social housing for the homeless. Clarke was bowing to a handful of residents in Seddon who complained that housing the poor would negatively affect the “local amenity”. Thompson and Jorquera are leading the charge to overturn this rotten decision by our council.
As housing prices soar, the working-class inner west is giving way to rapid gentrification. The fight for a supervised injecting facility is part and parcel of the fight over the nature of our suburbs. Is the inner west to be exclusively for the yuppie set who can afford million-dollar homes? Or can we help push back this process that is making the inner west increasingly inhospitable to workers and the poor by organising around the principles of social solidarity? There is plenty of left-wing sentiment out there. The task is to organise it if we are to have an impact. The Victorian Socialists West is committed to organising for a Maribyrnong for all.

Socialists take on Bernie Finn in Footscray

From the moment Karl Marx put pen to paper, pro-capitalist political commentators and academics have attempted to bury his ideas. But successive generations of political activists have continually turned to Marx’s ideas, from the best working class fighters who joined the various communist and socialist parties in the early 20th century to the student radicals who stood up to the horrors of Vietnam war in the 1960s, embracing his searing indictment of capitalism and his argument for revolution. 
Today, with millions around the world plunged into the indignity and pain of unemployment, hunger and homelessness, and with whole swathes of the Middle East torn apart, Marx’s ideas have an enduring relevance. They are essential for understanding why modern capitalism is so obscene. For those of us who want to win a society free of the misery and class inequality that scar our world, they are also indispensable as a guide to action.
“Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other – capitalists and workers” 
– The Communist Manifesto
Despite all the pronouncements that class doesn’t exist, that the biggest divisions are those between nations, sexes, or cultures, Marx was right about the nature of capitalism. It is a system defined by the exploitation of the working class by the capitalists. When Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto and later, Capital, capitalism dominated only in pockets of Europe and North America. Most of the the world’s population were peasants, independent farmers or tribal groups.
However, capitalism quickly became a global system. Around the world, peasants were thrown off their land and pushed into rapidly-developing urban centres. The working class and the capitalist class grew as nation states were established. Society became polarised between these two main social classes. The working class, which includes white collar and blue collar workers – anyone who has to sell their capacity to labour power to a boss in exchange for a wage – is now more than 2 billion people.
The capitalists on the other hand are a tiny part of the population. Yet they wield enormous power through their private ownership and control over the means of producing wealth in our society, whether that’s arable land, the mines, the offices or the factories. They are the ones who get to decide what gets produced and how it’s distributed, who will have a job and who will be thrown into poverty. They are the ones who decide whether our natural resources will be plundered or preserved. They are ones who can make or break governments.
As society has become polarised between the working class and capitalists, it has been increasingly marred by grotesque inequality. This is part of the structure of our society, and it helps to explain why the classes not only exist, but are “hostile camps”. Wealth doesn’t just come from thin air. The profits of the capitalists are not a product of their genius or hard work. They come from paying us less than the value that we produce at work. And because the capitalists are locked into competition with each other, they’re always seeking ways to cut costs and maximise the profits they can squeeze out of us. 
Capitalism is therefore characterised by a never-ending struggle between labour on one side against the capitalists and their allies in the parliamentary and legal system on the other. This class struggle is waged over the rate of exploitation, over safety and conditions at work, over whether essential services like hospitals and public transport that working class people rely on will be publicly funded or privatised, and so on. This class struggle is sometimes hidden and at other times it is part of an open battle. It can be clearly seen in the attempts by governments to slash social spending and hold down wages.
“What the capitalist class therefore produces, above all, are its own gravediggers” 
– The Communist Manifesto
Marx was also right when he argued that the only group in society capable of fundamentally challenging the inequality, war and oppression was the very class that was most impacted by these things – the working class. The horrors of capitalism inevitably push all its victims to resist. But Marx argued that the working class has a special capacity to be the system’s gravediggers. 
Marx saw the working class as the agent for revolutionary change for several reasons. First, we have numbers on our side. As the poet Percy Shelley famously put it, “Ye are many, they are few”. But more important is the centrality of workers to production and profit making. Without our labour in the workplace, not a single wheel of industry would turn, not a single product would be produced. If we withdraw our labour, the source of their profits would dry up.
No other group has this power to challenge the functioning of capitalism in such a fundamental way. The working class brings together all people – blacks, whites, gays, straights, men, women, etc. While everyone has a different identity in some way, it is as workers that they can truly wield power.
While capitalism forces workers to compete against each other for jobs, housing, university places and so on, it brings us together in the world of work where we need to cooperate with each other for our workplace to function. Similarly, to bring the economy to a halt, individual heroism won’t do. It requires the active involvement of our workmates. The need for collective action in turn requires that workers build democratic organisations that can inspire solidarity and convince and organise the majority of workers to take action. 
This collective nature of working class life and struggle under capitalism gives us the capacity to reorder society in the interests of the majority. In seizing control from the capitalists, workers can’t simply divide up the factories, the hospitals and the offices and share them out individually – one person taking a steel furnace, another a heart monitoring machine, another a photocopier. Obviously, none are sufficient for sustaining life. The only way workers can abolish the conditions of exploitation is to collectivise and socialise the means of production and distribution, democratising all aspects of production and decision making. Given the interdependent nature of the world economy, this process would have to be international, hence Marx’s call for workers of the world to unite. 
“The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas” 
– The German Ideology 
Today, pretty much every idea pushed by the education system, the media, advertising companies etc. justifies capitalism. Ruling ideas include the notion of social mobility – that if we work hard, anybody can make it. They also include the idea that the competitive, individualistic, dog-eat-dog nature of capitalism reflects, not the interests of the elite, but instead our human nature. And because of this “nature”, any attempt to radically alter society through revolutionary struggle will inevitably end in dictatorship, so we’d better not try. 
Once again, Marx was right when he argued that a key weapon in the hands of the ruling class is ideology – systems of ideas that attempt to naturalise their privileges and the subordinate position of the majority of people. This isn’t surprising: the capitalist system tramples on the needs and desires of the majority of people in the interests of a minority. To preserve the status quo and stop the gravedigging, they have to both break up the majority and win some of us over to the idea that nothing else is possible. The ruling class has at its disposal the means of disseminating and promoting its ideas on a huge scale.
Take the mass media, which have the capacity to shape public debate on a national scale. They are far from neutral observers. To deflect attention away from the real problems – like crap public transport and overcrowded hospitals – the media help stoke anti-refugee sentiments whenever they decide to give politicians prime time coverage to talk tough about “stopping the boats”. Why would anyone even notice, let alone resent, desperate refugees if it weren’t for the mass media carrying front page stories announcing their arrival? 
Another key institution for the dissemination of ideas in our society is the education system, where we’re taught that to get by in society you need to obey the rules and respect or at least tolerate the authority of those above you. These are the types of classroom lessons our rulers hope you will take with you into workforce. We’re also taught about how history is made by great men (and very, very occasionally great women), downplaying the role that masses of ordinary people have played in creating historical change. 
The reality of life under capitalism also plays a role in reinforcing pro-capitalist ideas. For instance, because of sexist discrimination in our society, women are generally in lower paid jobs which carry less authority. This fact can in turn reinforce the ideology that women are naturally inferior. The norms under capitalism can become established as natural rather than being seen for what they are – a social construction. 
However, while ruling class ideas are dominant, they are never completely hegemonic. Lived experience under capitalism not only reinforces ruling ideas, it also clashes with them. For instance, the promise of social mobility that capitalism holds out to us is continually dashed against the rocks of economic crisis. The clash produces contradictory and mixed ideas in workers’ heads. Most workers accept aspects of capitalist ideology at the same time as holding oppositional ideas. If this weren’t the case, if we were all brainwashed, radical social change would be all but impossible. The civil rights and women’s movements, which were a direct challenge to the ruling ideas, could not have happened.
Key to undermining these ruling ideas is the class struggle itself. When workers go on strike it can reveal to them the real social power that they do have. It can reveal just how indispensable we are to the capitalists and how little we actually need them. It can also undermine the bigoted ideas that workers may hold, because successful working class struggle requires unity in action and solidarity.
Divisions that the capitalist class tries to sow, like sexism and racism, can be overcome because the special oppression of one section of the working class sets back the entire class. As Marx wrote in Capital, “Labour cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the black it is branded”. 
“Philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it” 
– Theses on Feuerbach
Marx was not an armchair thinker. He argued that just understanding the world – knowing the real reasons for war, knowing about the lies the ruling class push, knowing that their wealth is based on our exploitation – was not going to change it. For Marx, gaining a deeper insight into the contradictions of capitalism was not some purely intellectual exercise. The point of developing theory was so that it could inform his political practice. The point of learning about historical struggles was so he could better understand the most effective levers for changing society. 
Ideas alone were insufficient for altering the world around us. It wasn’t the ideas of liberty, fraternity and equality that chopped off the heads of the aristocracy during the French revolution. For ideas to have force, especially those that run completely counter to the common sense under capitalism, they need to be organised and embodied in the actions of working class men and women, which is why Marx played a leading role in radical organisations such as the Communist League. 
Far from being a mechanical determinist, Marx understood that the victory of socialism over capitalism was not inevitable. Capitalism, despite being wracked by internal contradictions and periodic economic crisis, is not going to collapse of its own accord. Revolutionary social change needs to be fought for. Indeed, to achieve any progressive social change we need to demand, agitate and organise for it. If you want to see an end to the murderous wars; if you want to win genuine equality for LGBTI people; if you want to see the refugees freed from the concentration camps, then you need to put your actions where your mouth is. As the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass put it, “Power concedes nothing without a demand”. 
Just a cursory glance at history confirms this. It is working class people who had to fight to win the eight-hour day. It is working class people who have had to fight for and continue to fight for equal pay for women. None of these gains were handed to us by some impersonal law of economic development. Nor were they handed down by some benevolent politician. The leopard has not changed its spots. Twenty-first century capitalism continues to be steeped in the blood and suffering of ordinary people. It’s high time our generation learned how to fight with passion and tenacity against this beast.

Why Karl Marx was right about capitalism

The Victorian Socialists are a new political party. We stand for the interests of working people against the corporate interests that dominate mainstream politics. 
In last year’s Victorian state election, we gained nearly 19,000 first preference votes, a remarkable achievement for a party funded entirely by supporters and powered by volunteers. Our message – that society should be run for people, not the powerful – struck a chord in the northern metropolitan area of Melbourne, where people are fed up with years of privatisation, under-funded services and the pro-corporate priorities of both major parties. 
In the federal election, Victorian Socialists will again provide a voice for working people, contesting three lower house seats in Melbourne’s north: Calwell, Cooper and Wills. The emphasis of our campaign will be on fighting inequality, standing up for working class people, defending migrants and refugees from scapegoating and campaigning for a radical response to climate change that doesn’t rely on failed market “solutions”.
Australia is a wealthy country, but all the benefits are enjoyed by those at the top. A 2018 report on inequality by the Australian Council of Social Services and University of NSW found that the income of the top 20 percent of households is five times that of the poorest 20 percent of households, and the top 1 percent earn as much in a fortnight as the bottom 5 percent do in an entire year. 
Wealth inequality is even worse. The average wealth of households in the richest 20 percent is $2.9 million, almost one hundred times that of the poorest 20 percent ($30,000). The wealthiest 20 percent own two-thirds of all wealth, including 80 percent of investment properties and shares and more than 60 percent of superannuation assets. 
Victorian Socialists are committed to heavily taxing the billionaires by instituting a 50 percent corporate tax rate, ending rampant tax avoidance by large corporations, legislating an immediate increase to the minimum wage and award wages, and reversing anti-union regulations so that workers can fight to increase their share. We are committed to raising all welfare payments to above the poverty line, because no one should be forced to survive on a pitiful $40 per day. 
But equality is not just about wealth distribution. It’s also about ensuring access to properly funded health, education and welfare services so that everyone can enjoy a decent life. Privatisation has created a two-tiered system in which those who can’t afford the fees, insurance and out-of-pocket expenses receive a lower level of care. It has wrecked our public services and massively increased our cost of living. Victorian Socialists would reverse the privatisation of electricity, public transport and our health care system. We stand for free, universal health care and an end to subsidies for private health insurance. We will fight for funding for community-based health care networks and for free and fully funded public pre-school and aged-care systems. 
For too long, politicians have vilified immigrants, refugees, Aboriginal people and Muslims to distract attention from their own failings and whip up electoral support. The mainstream politicians have paved the way for rampant Islamophobia and the growth of the far right. Victorian Socialists are different. We stand in solidarity with all those victimised by racist policies. 
Immigrants are not to blame for congestion, inadequate and expensive housing or the lack of public transport. It is the politicians who have overseen years of privatisation and neglect of services who should be punished for the deplorable state of our cities. 
Finally, humanity faces a climate emergency. Yet the corporate executives who profit from mining, and the politicians who back them, refuse even to countenance reducing coal exports. Instead, they want to open a massive new coal mine in Queensland’s Galilee Basin. 
Market-based solutions have failed to reduce emissions while enriching polluters who game the system. Victorian Socialists call for an end to new coal and gas projects and for a publicly funded program to ensure the transition to 100 percent renewable energy with guaranteed jobs for affected workers before it’s too late. Instead of tinkering around the edges, we are committed to a far-reaching transformation of the economy, and we are prepared to confront the powerful interests currently invested in the fossil fuel industry to achieve that.
Only Victorian Socialists stand unapologetically on the side of working people against these big business interests. Neither Labor nor the Greens offer a satisfactory alternative to the Liberals’ pro-big business agenda. 
We need all the help we can get to get our message out there and maximise the socialist vote this federal election. Please join us and get involved!
CANDIDATE QUICK QUESTIONS 
Jerome Small is the candidate for the outer-northern electorate of Calwell. He has been a construction worker for two decades and a trade unionist activist for his whole working life. He is a long time anti-war and anti-racism campaigner.
What inspired you to run as a candidate for Victorian Socialists?
There are plenty of shit, pro-capitalist forces in Australian political life. It’s been great to be part of creating a small but serious socialist electoral alternative with Victorian Socialists. I’m keen to see if we can push it further.
What is your proudest political moment?
It’s always a precious moment when ordinary people suddenly discover, and demonstrate in practice, that we are the power. The S11 rally at Melbourne’s World Economic Forum in 2001 is one moment: some of the most powerful people on the planet made temporarily powerless by a crowd of tens of thousands of ordinary people. Being a part of the campaign with the Mirrar people that stopped the Jabiluka uranium mine. Playing a role over many years in squeezing the political and physical space that the far right have attempted to occupy in this town.
Who is your hero and why?
I meet new heroes just about every day! Working class people who keep their heads up amidst the insults and indignities thrown at us. People who manage to maintain humanity, in the often inhuman conditions that we’re forced to live in. 
As long as I live, I’ll never get tired of hanging out with heroes like the Chemist Warehouse workers: ordinary folk from the four corners of the Earth, standing around on a picket line, stopping the operation of a multibillion dollar corporation, like it’s the most normal, suburban, everyday thing to do.
Why should people in your electorate vote for Victorian Socialists?
Because we do our best to turn up, pay attention and have a go. Because we are uncompromising in defence of working class interests. Because people in Melbourne’s north deserve better than being poisoned by toxic fires and taken for granted. And because we want to use our campaigns to help develop people’s organising strength and political clarity – we need a lot of both of these things if we’re going to reclaim our future.
What is an important local issue in your electorate that people might not know about?
It’s been front page news that a toxic time bomb exploded in the north of Melbourne this week. Two workers in hospital and yet another toxic blast for everyone else. This is front page news. But behind the headlines are the chronic asthma attacks, the ill health from the long term toxic load, the fear and – the one that really hits me in the gut – the resignation of so many people, left for dead by the main parties, who after so many industrial fires and so much bullshit from the authorities have almost given up on the idea that we can do better than this. If our campaign can play even a small role in helping turn this around, it’ll be worth every bit of effort.
*****
Sue Bolton is the candidate for Wills. She’s been a socialist councillor on the Moreland City Council since 2012. She has a strong record of standing up against greedy developers and demanding action on the toxic waste dumps that scar the northern suburbs.
What inspired you to run as a candidate for Victorian Socialists?
Increasing inequality of wealth – the richest 1 percent in Australia own as much wealth as the 70 percent of Australians with the least wealth.
What is your proudest political moment?
The general strike in Brisbane in 1982 when the Bjelke-Peterson National Party government sacked 3,000 railway workers and workers throughout the state spontaneously walked off the job and went on strike. So many workers were on strike, that it was declared a general strike. I was part of a group of bus drivers who walked off the job.
Who is your hero and why?
Clarrie O’Shea. Clarrie was the Victorian secretary of the tramways union, my old union. His stance refusing to pay fines for industrial action was the culmination of the campaign to abolish the penal powers that were used to stop workers taking industrial action. Clarrie O’Shea was jailed for refusing to pay fines, which led to massive nationwide industrial action that brought much industry to a standstill. The bosses and federal government were not able to use the penal powers after that. It took them a couple of decades to work out new ways of kneecapping unions.
Why should people in your electorate vote for Victorian Socialists?
People should vote for Victorian Socialists because we recognise that the market does not resolve important social and environmental issues like access to affordable housing and serious action to tackle climate change.
What has been the highlight of your seven years as a Moreland councillor?
The campaign to stop development of a toxic site in Fawkner where the chemicals that make Agent Orange were produced. While we didn’t win the campaign once it got to the VCAT stage, the local community mobilised incredibly strongly to force the council to switch from supporting the development to unanimously opposing the development. This shows why you need community mobilising.
*****
Kath Larkin is the candidate for Cooper. She is a rank and file leader with the Rail, Tram and Bus Union. In 2015 she helped organise the first strike in rail in 18 years and in 2014-2017 she was the RTBU women’s officer to give women a stronger voice in the industry.
What inspired you to run as a candidate for Victorian Socialists?
Vile far right politicians like Hanson and Anning, and the mainstream parties that create the conditions for them to win influence. 
What is your proudest political moment?
It would have to be the marriage equality campaign. The day of the yes vote announcement, I was at the massive state library rally, surrounded by unionists, community supporters, veterans of the LGBTI movement, people who’d dedicated themselves to marriage equality since the ban was brought in, people who’d joined in along the way and people who were participating in their first ever activist campaign. It was amazing. This was OUR victory. 
Who is your hero and why?
Lizzie Ahern, a working class militant, a rebel woman and a revolutionary socialist. 
Why should people in your electorate vote for Victorian Socialists?
Because Victorian Socialists are the only people willing to do anything serious about growing inequality, the barbaric treatment of refugees and the destruction of the planet. And we’re not interested in the perks of parliament. We want to help rebuild participatory democracy: strikes, protests, mass public forums. We want to give workers and others who are ignored a voice and stand up for their interests. 
What has been your greatest achievement as a union delegate at Metro Trains?
As a socialist in the workplace, I live by the old Communist Party slogan “make every member an activist”. The best example of this in action was the 2015 strike, the first rail and tram strike in 18 years, and one largely led and organised by rank and file workers.
The day of the strike was the proudest and most joyous of my life. As it was about to start, we watched the clock and counted down out loud like school kids on the last day of school. We marched out the gates of Flinders Street station, cheering and posing for photos with our helpless managers watching on. 
We marched to Trades Hall, where we were met by hundreds of rail and tram workers from across the network before marching back to Flinders Street. The feeling of collective strength and power was incredible. 
Then the improved offers from the company started to roll in – we got our trauma leave, a pay rise, rostering rights and other wins. But the experience of solidarity was the most important win.
GET INVOLVED!
Doorknocking
Doorknocking is the most effective and rewarding way to build support for the Victorian Socialists. Help us speak to thousands of working class residents in the electorates we are contesting: 
*Mass Calwell doorknock, 12:00pm Saturday, 13 April, Broadmeadows Town Park, Pearcedale Parade.
*Mass Cooper &amp; Wills doorknock, 12:00pm Saturday, 27 April, Batman Park, cnr St Georges &amp; Arthurton Rd, Northcote. 
*Mass Cooper &amp; Wills doorknock, 12:00pm Saturday, 4 May, Bowden Reserve, cnr Nicholson &amp; Bell St, Coburg.
Help staff a polling booth
Sign up online for a shift, go to <a href="http://www.victoriansocialists.org.au">www.victoriansocialists.org.au</a>
To find out more, <a href="mailto:contact@victoriansocialists.org.au">contact@victoriansocialists.org.au</a> or phone Liz Walsh 0405 736 265 
Donate to the campaign
The Victorian Socialists don’t have the big money backing of the established political parties. The campaign is dependent on the financial support of ordinary people. Every little bit helps. Donations can be made to:
Victorian Socialists 
BSB: 063 262 
Account no: 1098 0094
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Liz Walsh is assistant secretary and member of Victorian Socialists governing council

Victorian Socialists: a socialist voice in federal politics

Anyone decent wants to see the back of the Liberal government. But we also know that a future Labor government is not going to be much better.
For starters, the industrial laws we so desperately need to change today are hangovers from the time of the Rudd and Gillard government.
Then there’s the vicious racist scapegoating ramped up to new levels by the Liberals. Shamefully, this is echoed by Bill Shorten, who also talks about the importance of “strong borders” to stop desperate people seeking safety in Australia.
And while the planet is burning, Labor has shown it’s just as committed to the coal industry, refusing to oppose the Adani coal mine.
What we need instead is a radical restructuring of the economy to save the climate and improve living conditions for the majority.
What we’re doing
These are some of the reasons the Victorian Socialists have decided to stand candidates in the upcoming federal election.
At the Victorian Socialists conference on 6 February, we decided to contest three seats in the northern suburbs of Melbourne.
One is Calwell, which covers the blue-collar working class and migrant outer northern suburbs, where the population has long been neglected by both major parties.
The other seats we are contesting are Wills and Cooper (formerly Batman). In both these areas we did well in the state election, and they are also where the battle between Labor and the Greens has been most fierce.
We want to make the case to people who are sick of Labor’s sell-outs that they also deserve better than the increasingly right-wing Greens.
All our candidates are socialists who have a long history fighting for working class communities and for social justice.
Jerome Small is the candidate for Calwell. He has been a construction worker for two decades and a trade union activist his whole working life. He is a long-time anti-war and anti-racism campaigner. In the 1980s he led student walkouts against the nuclear industry and US bases, and in the late 1990s he was a leader of the protest movement against Pauline Hanson.
Sue Bolton is the candidate for Wills. She’s been a socialist councillor on the Moreland City Council since 2012. She has a strong record of standing up against greedy developers and demanding action on the toxic waste dumps that scar the northern suburbs. Sue initiated the campaign for more trains on the Upfield line. She also has a proud record of standing with Aboriginal people. In 2017 she was central to the push to cancel celebrations of Australia Day (Invasion Day) in Moreland.
Kath Larkin is the candidate for Cooper. She is a rank and file leader with the Rail, Tram and Bus Union. In 2015 she helped organise the first strike in rail in 18 years, and as the RTBU women’s officer from 2014 to 2017, she helped give women a stronger voice in the industry. Today she is active with Unionists for Refugees. Kath has lived in the Cooper electorate for most of her life. She attended Northcote High and currently lives in Preston.
Get involved!
To organise the ground campaign, we have established Victorian Socialists campaign committees in each electorate. All Victorian Socialists supporters are welcome and encouraged to get involved.
Donate!
Every dollar you can donate will make a big difference to our campaign. Unlike the major parties, we don’t have big donors. We only have grassroots supporters like you.
Donations for the federal election campaign can be made to:
Victorian Socialists 
BSB 063-262 
Account 1098 0094
Melbourne-wide launch
Our campaign launch will take place on Saturday, 6 April, 6.30pm at the Preston City Hall, 284 Gower St, Preston.
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Liz Walsh is Victorian Socialists assistant secretary

Victorian Socialists to stand in federal election

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Two of the Liberal Party’s most prominent women resigned from politics this year – former foreign minister and deputy leader Julie Bishop and Kelly O’Dwyer, minister for jobs and industrial relations. 
The media have gushed about the style with which Bishop swanned about on taxpayer money, attending polo matches with the wealthy as she defended their interests on the international stage. 
The departures, we are told, have exacerbated the party’s “woman problem”. Commentators point to the handful of women who have eschewed the Liberals to stand or sit as independents. 
Women such as Julia Banks, who resigned from the party after Malcolm Turnbull was rolled as prime minister, Kerryn Phelps, former head of the Australian Medical Association, who won Turnbull’s blue-ribbon seat of Wentworth as an independent, and Zali Steggall, former Olympic skier and lawyer, who is challenging Tony Abbott in the seat of Warringah in the upcoming federal election. 
They’re all described as economic conservatives but progressives on social questions. Modern, pro-business women who in the past would have happily joined the Liberals but no longer feel at home in a party increasingly dominated by a right wing, culture war faction led by troglodytes such as Abbott and home affairs minister Peter Dutton. 
It is undeniable that the Liberals are full of misogynists. It’s also true that Bishop has encountered sexism during her political career. But the interests of the majority of women are not advanced by more conservative women presiding over a system that enriches the few by slashing the wages, welfare and rights of the many.
Look at Bishop’s record. She made her name as a lawyer for CSR, a mining company that poisoned generations of workers, their families and so many more, with asbestos. CSR knew the material was deadly but continued to mine and sell it because profits were considered more important than working class lives. 
While hundreds were dying excruciating deaths from asbestosis or mesothelioma, Bishop argued that CSR’s subsidiary companies bore no responsibility. She delayed court proceedings to make sure sufferers died before they could get compensation. 
As foreign minister, Bishop backed Israel as its snipers killed Palestinian protesters on the Gaza border. She built ties with the military junta in Myanmar as it committed genocide against the Rohingya, an ethnic minority. The government she represented forces Rohingyan refugees on Manus Island and Nauru to return to danger. And she backed Saudi Arabia’s murderous war on Yemen, a country experiencing one of the worst humanitarian crises of modern times.
Some of the most sycophantic pieces eulogising Bishop’s career make out that she was some secret feminist because she wore a designer white dress – supposedly a coded nod to the suffragettes – when delivering her farewell speech to parliament. But Bishop made it clear throughout her time in her “beloved Liberal Party” that she was never a feminist. She opposed quotas within the party to increase female representation and never once spoke against arch-conservative Tony Abbott, even when he appointed himself minister for women. 
As a prominent Western Australian politician, Bishop never objected to the incarceration of Indigenous women for unpaid parking fines, a situation that led to the avoidable death of Ms Dhu. Nor did she speak against the grinding poverty that full time carers, largely women, experience because their labour is not recognised and the welfare system has been shredded for decades by her “beloved” party. She did not care about penalty rates cuts in hospitality and retail, which mainly hit low paid women.
No, Julie Bishop is no sister of mine.
We don’t need more women like her in politics; we need radical women in politics. We don’t need women who rage against the Liberal Party’s misogyny with one breath and slash welfare for single parents with the next, like former Labor prime minister Julia Gillard. 
We need women like Bernadette Devlin, elected to the British parliament in 1969 as a socialist and voice for the Irish struggle against British occupation and for equal rights for Catholics. She took the fight up to the authoritarian, racist and imperialist traditions of Westminster – quite literally when she punched home secretary Reginald Maudling on the floor of parliament. Maudling had defended the actions of British troops who had gunned down unarmed civil rights protesters in Derry on what is now known as Bloody Sunday.
We need women like Debbie Kilroy from Sisters Inside, who campaigns tirelessly against a “justice” system that targets poor and Indigenous women. She fights for the lives of women like Tanya Day, a Victorian Aboriginal woman who died in police custody after being arrested for public drunkenness.
We need young women like Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish climate activist who has taken on the rich and powerful responsible for destroying our planet. Her stand has helped inspire a global movement led, in many cases, by teenage girls who have gone on strike from their classes and taken to the streets to demand real action on climate change.
And we need women like 28-year-old Kath Larkin, a working class fighter who is the candidate for the Victorian Socialists in the Melbourne seat of Cooper. She was the first woman to be elected as a delegate for Rail Tram and Bus Union at Flinders Street Station and was central to the rank and file team that, four years ago, pushed for and won the first mass rail strike in 18 years. 
As the old slogan goes, “A woman’s place is in the struggle”. We need more women in the struggle. Our struggle is against Julie Bishop and the women and men like her.

Good riddance Bishop, politics needs more radical women

In the week leading up to the tightly contested Batman by-election in Melbourne’s inner north, a social media storm erupted in what has become colloquially known as #placardgate.
The offending placard, carried at a Refugee Action Collective rally in the Batman electorate on 10 March, was a defaced corflute that had been promoting Labor’s candidate, Ged Kearney.
Her face was circled with a texta and crossed out, and the refugee campaign demand to “close the camps now” was scrawled below.
The placard was a sharp, entirely political, if provocative, critique of Ged Kearney’s candidacy by the left wing activist group Close the Camps Action Collective (CtCAC). It highlighted her refusal to break publicly with the ALP’s anti-refugee policies.
Other placards carried by CtCAC at the rally labelled Liberal and Labor refugee policies as “the same,” while pointing out that these policies “kill refugees” – all statements of fact that make many Labor members ashamed of their party.
When she was Australian Council of Trade Union president, Kearney had a strong track record of arguing for the trade union movement to oppose offshore detention, boat turn-backs and deportations to danger. She also spoke at numerous refugee rights campaign forums and demonstrations.
But after her candidacy was announced, Kearney was quoted in a Herald Sun interview saying that Labor’s anti-refugee policies were “a reality I accept” and that she would “respect” the decision of the 2015 ALP conference, which enshrined boat turn-backs as party policy.
The “reality” that Kearney accepted was the well-trodden path of all progressives-cum-ALP parliamentarians, which is that to get ahead in the party, you have to leave your integrity at the door.
Instead, she will publicly toe the line and “respect” caucus discipline – which means adding her vote in parliament to consigning people fleeing persecution and war to concentration camps on Pacific Islands. Whatever arguments she may conduct behind closed doors, her vote will be to turn back the boats.
Since the Herald Sun interview, Kearney has determinedly attempted to bury the question of refugees. Meanwhile, Greens candidate Alex Bhathal has put the demand to “bring them here” at the forefront of her election campaign and has a strong history of refugee advocacy.
At the Batman refugee rally, Bhathal was the only candidate prepared to speak from the platform. Kearney had been invited to speak, on the proviso she spoke to support the rally demands to end offshore detention, but unsurprisingly declined to attend.
Kearney would not have been isolated if she had spoken out publicly against Labor policy. It would have been overwhelmingly popular in the electorate and it would have amplified the call by members of the NSW Labor left for the ALP to dump support for offshore detention at the ALP national conference scheduled for July. If there were a time to speak-out to advance the argument in the party, it is now.
Kearney was in a strong position to stick her head out – her candidacy is a last ditch effort by the ALP, after the right wing disaster that was David Feeney, to stop Batman from turning Green. But party unity, lining up behind Bill Shorten’s leadership, was deemed more important.
In the aftermath of the Batman refugee rally, there were howls of outrage from union movement leaders. These were not directed at Kearney for backtracking on previous commitments. They were aimed at the Greens and Alex Bhathal for what amounts to being photographed, unknowingly, near an anti-Ged placard that pointed out the sad truth.
This placard, we should remember, was neither made by the Greens, nor was it held by a Greens member, let alone by Bhathal. Video footage shot by Anthony Snowden, an independent chronicler of protests in Melbourne, later confirmed that Bhathal even asked the activist holding the placard to move to another part of the march so she wasn’t seen to be endorsing the placard.
But let’s not let facts get in the way of a good story. And so the social media pile on began.
Luke Hilakari, Victorian Trades Hall secretary, decried the “disrespect” shown by the Greens to “our” national president, forgetting that Kearney had resigned from the role of national president to contest the election. Never mind that, as ACTU president, she oversaw the continued decline in union membership, strike levels and the stagnation of workers’ wages.
Columnist Van Badham, who is rumoured to be an ALP candidate in a northern seat in the next state election, weighed in with some truly mad online trolling. She labelled the placard sexist because, you know, it politically criticised a woman. She even absurdly likened the placard to the openly misogynistic “ditch the witch” LNP mobilisation during Julia Gillard’s reign, and demanded an apology from the Greens.
Interventions came flooding in from as far afield as Canberra, with Alexander White, former Labor student politician turned Unions ACT head, adding his two cents to the attack. John Setka, CFMEU Victorian state secretary, disingenuously tweeted: “Sad state of affairs when Greens use Labour Day weekend to campaign for another term of Turnbull/Liberal government”.
This confected outrage was not driven by genuine concern about how to build the strongest refugee rights movement. As Jeff Sparrow, left wing political commentator tweeted, “If you’re more outraged about a poster criticising mandatory detention than you are about mandatory detention then something is very wrong”.
No, the twitter angst was primarily designed as a tool of distraction. It aimed to shift the narrative away from Labor’s appalling record on refugees.
It also sought to feed the apolitical character assassination, circulated by Bhathal’s rivals within the Green’s and by the Labor Party, labelling Bhathal a bully.
It should be beneath the union movement to participate in this tawdry smear campaign. But sadly, many of today’s union leaders have forgotten that our movement should have an independent existence. Our unions should not primarily be vehicles to improve Labor’s electoral fortunes; they exist to improve and struggle for workers’ rights.
Victorian unions should not be using union resources to back the ALP campaign against the Greens. The Greens are not only better on refugees and Adani; they have a more pro-worker industrial policy.

Batman: Labor smears Greens to distract from its appalling refugee policies

For three weeks refugees in the Manus prison camp have heroically resisted a siege. The Australian government has been attempting to break the men on Manus by scattering them between different prisons on the island. All food, water, electricity and medical support has been cut off since the end of October.
Despite the pressure, and the threats of dysentery and cholera from the horrendous conditions they have endured, the refugees stood firm. With incredible ingenuity and with some support from locals, they were able to survive the siege.
Unable to starve them into submission, the Australian government and the PNG police decided to break the resistance with brute force. On Thursday and Friday this week PNG police, with the support of the Australian government, stormed the camp and attacked the nearly 400 men who have held out. They used metal rods and sticks to beat the men. Dozens were bashed. Their personal possessions were trashed. Any refugee caught filming the attack had their phone confiscated, a blatant attempt to silence the men and to stop the world knowing the horror that was unfolding. Refugee protest leaders were also targeted. Behrooz Boochani, the renowned Kurdish journalist and spokesperson for the refugees, was arrested and escorted out by police to try and demoralise the men. In the end they were forced to board buses for new prison camps.
Emergency protests have taken place across Australia to demand the refugees on Manus be evacuated immediately and brought to the mainland. In Melbourne, every protest in the past few weeks has been met with hundreds of police, including riot police and the mounted branch, blocking refugee protestors from marching through the CBD. In particular, they have attempted to prevent the rallies from getting to Flinders Street, which is the busiest intersection in the city.
Last night our protest was attacked by Neil Erikson, a Melbourne-based fascist who has recently been terrorising local councils for supporting an end to council sponsored celebrations of Australia Day. Erikson stormed the protest platform, grabbing the microphone and yelling that all the refugees were rapists and should be deported.
A participant in the crowd came to the defence of the rally platform and pushed the fascists away. He was head-locked by one of Erikson’s fascist goons. But it wasn’t the fascists who were tackled by the police. Within moments the police had the anti-racist protestor on the ground, his head pressed into the concrete. He reported the police stomped on his calves, his legs were kicked by the police and elbows shoved into his back. Meanwhile, the fascists were simply walked away under police escort.
Speaking to me about why he took on the fascists, Luke said: “It is important for the community to reject these views. Whenever the fascists organise we need to show we reject them. Otherwise it gets normalised and accepted.”
All Luke was doing was what the police should have been but weren’t – trying to stop a violent attack on a peaceful protest by known fascist goons. For that he was beaten to the ground and arrested, while the instigators of the violence were treated with kid gloves. Footage posted by the fascists show them chatting with the police in a friendly manner minutes after the event.
The police treated the anti-racist demonstrators completely differently. When people demanded they release Luke police moved in with force, throwing people to the ground. One man, a well known left wing activist, had his head cracked open from hitting his head on the ground. Blood gushed from his head. For over 30 minutes the police refused the man medical attention. Riot police surrounded him, and no ambulance was called. The refugee rally came to his defence, chanting “where is the ambulance?” Still bleeding, the man was dragged to a police van and arrested. For over an hour we surrounded the van to demand he be released but despite our efforts, he was driven away to a police station.
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We refused to be cowed by the police brutality and were determined to take our message of solidarity with the men on Manus through the streets of Melbourne. Hundreds of people challenged police lines and demanded the right to march. Some were pepper sprayed. But eventually we made our way through so that we could march through the city streets, finally reaching the Flinders Street intersection. It was a small victory for the right to protest and an important show of our determination to fight alongside the refugees for an end to the barbaric offshore detention regime.
The violence of the Victoria police that we saw on the streets of Melbourne is only a taste of the brutality that the refugees have had to face. We need to stand up against state violence on Manus and on our streets.
We will be protesting again for the refugees on Manus on Sunday at 11am. We will gather in the Bourke Street Mall before marching to Federation Square to join the Get Up! protest.
<a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/135392237181289/?notif_t=plan_user_joined&amp;notif_id=1511525807886459">https://www.facebook.com/events/135392237181289/?notif_t=plan_user_join…</a>

We need to stand up against state violence on Manus and on our streets

Manus Island is at risk of becoming a frightening confrontation. At least 400 refugees bravely continue to resist attempts to evict them from the prison camp.
They have received several ultimatums to move to three alternative prisons on the island in East and West Lorengau or Hillside Haus in Lae. But the stand-off continues.
There are conflicting reports about whether Papua New Guinea police will use force, but refugees have relayed to supporters in Australia that force has been threatened.
These fears are echoed by Ben Wamoi, spokesperson for the Manus Alliance against Human Rights Abuse: “My fear is, if the 600 men refuse to relocate, my fear is our government may use force. I know our police force. I know our military”.
<a href="https://www.marxismconference.org/program/voices-from-the-inside-refugees-speak-out-against-fortress-australia/"><img alt="Marxism Conference 2018" src="https://cms.redflag.org.au/sites/default/files/inline-images/RF%20articles.jpg" /></a>
This is, after all, the military that, on Good Friday, shot into the Manus camp 100 times.
If refugees are removed with force, we need to respond with outrage and emergency protests.
Since 31 October, the Australian government has cut off all essential services – food, water, electricity and medical services – to starve the refugees into submission. The sewage system has become blocked because there’s no longer any flushing mechanism. This is creating dangerously unsanitary conditions.
Attempts by refugee rights activists to supply the protest camp have been blocked by the PNG navy, and locals have been threatened with arrest if they provide help to the men, though some food is fortunately getting through.
At a Melbourne protest on 4 November, Greens federal MP Adam Bandt labelled immigration minister Peter Dutton a terrorist for using violence to achieve his racist political ends. He was right. And that terror has only increased.Metal fences surrounding the camp have been removed under the direction of Australian contractors, exposing the men to attack. It is psychological warfare. 
The fear of attack is not unfounded. In February 2014, Reza Berati, an Iranian refugee, was bashed to death after disgruntled locals and security guards on the Australian payroll stormed the camp.
PNG police and immigration officers have dismantled shelters used by the men for protection from the harsh tropical sun. Rubbish bins containing rain water they had collected were also emptied. 
Dutton has painted the resisting men as ungrateful hooligans who have “trashed the accommodation” and are irrationally refusing to move to superior lodgings.
Pictures obtained by the Daily Telegraph exposed this to be a lie. West Lorengau was little more than a muddy construction site. The “housing” is shipping containers, and security fencing is incomplete, allowing locals to traverse through the compound to get to their land.
In Lorengau, where the majority of refugees are to be detained, there will be only one doctor available in business hours – and miles from both camps – to service the hundreds of men who have suffered physical and mental degradation at the hands of their Australian jailers.
Six men have died on Manus, most from systematic medical negligence. More deaths can be the only outcome of dramatically worse medical support.
Even if conditions in the prisons were improved, refugees remain unsafe on Manus. They have been regularly robbed and attacked with machetes and bush knives when visiting Lorengau town.
Some attacks have hacked to the bone.
But above all else, the refugees are refusing to move because, after four and a half years of living hell, they have had enough. They can’t wait any longer for freedom in a safe country.
As Behrooz Boochani, a detained Kurdish Iranian journalist, said: “We will never retreat and leave this hell of a prison. We will never move to another prison. We will never settle for anything less than freedom”.
At times, the voices coming out of the protest camp are full of heartbreaking despair. A voice from Manus wrote: “Torture … stress … sadness … loneliness … powerless … starvation … humiliation … tears … thirst … careless … These are not just words … these are the part of life … and voice of heart …”
But, despite everything, they continue to stand their ground because this is a fight for their very lives and for any hopes they may still have for a better future.
Their courageous resistance is not new. For years, the Manus detainees have protested for freedom. And as the ​crisis loomed, for more than 100 days the refugees organised daily protests. These have been incredibly disciplined and always peaceful, a stark juxtaposition to the violence being meted out by the Australian and PNG governments.
The refugees have not fought alone. There has been a wave of protests across Australia in solidarity. Since the siege began, there have been weekly street mobilisations in major cities. Government buildings have been occupied or blockaded and public events such as the Melbourne Cup have been disrupted with daring creative protests.
One Friday night in Sydney, wealthy donors at a Liberal Party fundraiser had to run a gauntlet of hundreds of anti-racist protesters.
But while barbarism reigns on Manus, the media focused on what they considered was the real crime: among the pushing and shoving, Christine Forster, Tony Abbott’s sister and Liberal Party local councillor, had her “favourite” jacket torn. Oh, the horror!
Predictably, the ALP joined the chorus of condemnation, highlighting the bipartisan support for cruelty. The scale of the humanitarian crisis has not forced a rethink from the ALP. Labor leader Bill Shorten only days ago reiterated his commitment to cruelty: “Australia is not and must not be a resettlement option”.
Instead, he called on the government to accept New Zealand’s offer to take 150 people and prattled on about third country settlement. Under the Gillard Labor government, we got to see what third country settlement might look like – exiling refugees to Malaysia, where abuse of asylum seekers is rife.
Shamefully, no Labor member of parliament has broken ranks to call for the government to bring the refugees here. So it is right that deputy leader Tanya Plibersek was targeted at a recent public appearance by Mums for Refugees. We need to demand that Labor MPs break with their party’s disgraceful position.
Missing in action has been the trade union movement. It took 10 days of this brutal siege to push ACTU secretary Sally McManus into finally issuing a statement. “We have taken their dreams of a better life, and replaced them with an unrelenting nightmare”, she said.
The Victorian Trades Hall Council issued a similar statement. Both condemned the Liberal government and called for the refugees to be evacuated immediately.
This is a start. But their statement fudges the key question – evacuated to where? To New Zealand, which has offered to take only 150 people? To the US, which has taken a mere 54? The only place to which refugees can immediately be evacuated is Australia. The main reason not to spell this out is to limit the pressure on the ALP. This is not good enough. Now more than ever we need our unions to show ​courage.
We can’t let up on the demand that Australia bring them here now. The Australian government exiled these men by force to Manus Island when they were seeking asylum in Australia. The Australian government has spent billions detaining them in hellish conditions designed to break their spirits. And now the Australian government wants to abandon them. We can’t let it get away with it.
Importantly, a few individual unions have taken a stand. In Victoria, street protests have been addressed by National Union of Workers organisers who were also refugees. They were supported by a contingent from the NUW and Victorian Trades Hall. The Rail, Tram and Bus Union’s Rail Division Committee of Management has called on the government to “bring them here”. We must build on this. We need to pressure our unions to speak up now.
In the fight against the racist institutions that dominate Australian political life, our forces are painfully inadequate to the task at hand. But with the refugees on Manus refusing to give up, refusing to lose hope, we too must respond to the crisis with energy and urgency so that we can build a fighting movement capable of forcing both major parties to stop torturing refugees.

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