Barely a day goes by that we don’t hear some horror story involving racism: police brutality towards Indigenous people, a refugee dying in a detention centre, another Islamophobic attack or a racist comment from a contemptible politician. Why is it that racism seems woven into the very fabric of society?
Race and racism are relatively new concepts, coinciding with the emergence of capitalism. As English capitalism’s insatiable appetite for cotton developed in the 1800s, a workforce was needed to capture this untapped wealth. Black African labour was abundant and captive. Slavery in the US cotton fields provided the new system of capitalism the kick-start it needed – the beginning of large-scale capital accumulation. Plantations, shipping lines, manufacturers, banks and governments all made their fortunes off the backs of slaves.
“Direct slavery is just as much the pivot of bourgeois industry as machinery, credits, etc”, wrote Karl Marx in The Poverty of Philosophy. “Without slavery you have no cotton; without cotton you have no modern industry. It is slavery that has given the colonies their value; it is the colonies that have created world trade, and it is world trade that is the pre-condition of large-scale industry. Thus slavery is an economic category of the greatest importance.”
But slavery, while intensely profitable for the bourgeoisie, ran counter to capitalism’s ostensible ideology: liberté, égalité, fraternité. A resolution to this contradiction was needed, and came about in the concept of race – the idea that certain characteristics made some groups of people less worthy of rights. The emergence of social and pseudo-scientific theories such as eugenics helped to cement this new concept as supposedly natural and legitimate.
Forging and maintaining new capitalist economies required bloody suppression, and at times genocide. In Australia, the British Empire’s thirst for new colonial outposts first indiscriminately murdered Indigenous people, then coopted them as slave labour on pastoral leases and missions. A policy of “assimilation” throughout the 1900s was a concerted attempt to “breed out the black”, and wipe out language, culture and ties to land. 
While the colonial era may be over, imperialism continues to create racialised enemies. After the 11 September 2001 attacks, Australia threw its support behind the US’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Muslims and Middle Eastern people were vilified by the government and media as part of this campaign, repeatedly portrayed as intent on forcing women into headscarves and subservience, unable to integrate into Western society, hostile to progressive thinking and all secretly terrorists. 
This racist campaign was calculated to dull opposition to the interventions in the Middle East, while Australian capital reaped the benefits of oil and military control in the affected countries. 
Australia’s geographical location creates a tension between the nationalist image of the country and the reality of the geography and population. 
Establishing an “enemy” has been vital to the capitalist class’s strategy of divide and rule and to creating a sense of nationalist consciousness to usurp class identification and interracial solidarity.
Throughout the 20th century, different migrants became this enemy at different times. During Irish migration to the colonies in the 19th and 20th centuries, a campaign of vitriol was directed against them. Characterised as lazy, stupid, disloyal to Britain and raging radicals, the Irish endured rhetoric virtually identical to that aimed at Muslims today. 
When the White Australia Policy was introduced in 1901, it codified the virtual apartheid that migrants, especially the Chinese, suffered. For decades, being Australian meant being white.
During World War One, Germans were rounded up and dumped into concentration camps. They were deported, fired from their jobs and ostracised. During World War Two, they were joined by Italians and Japanese. Those who managed to avoid this fate were relegated to the margins, working poorly paid jobs and living in poverty.
Governments worried that many of the migrants coming to Australia came from countries with their own histories of class struggle. Many Irish were trade unionists and had fought Britain’s brutal occupation of Ireland, Italians had fought against European fascism, and after the Vietnam War, the Vietnamese came from a country devastated by the West.
Today, it’s Muslims, Africans and refugees who are the prime targets of anti-migrant racism. Vilifying these groups to justify Australia’s involvement in occupation and war has resulted in anti-terror legislation that has strengthened the state’s power to spy and intimidate. If refugees can be imprisoned and brutalised, so too can poor people and workers.
Racism is not purely a social phenomenon; it has a specific economic use. 
Societies in which racism is more pronounced have in general lower wages and poorer working conditions. In the US south, historical divisions between black and white workers created a downward pressure on wages for all workers and have contributed to the confidence of the bosses to ruthlessly exploit both black and white workers. 
To this day, workers in the US south are the most poorly unionised and lowest paid in the country. Of the five US states that have no minimum wage laws, all are located in the south (Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee and South Carolina).
This is not a product of the retrograde views of your average racist, but a legacy of slavery, segregation and the prevalence of racism that has weakened the workers movement and held down working conditions.
In Australia, so-called “guest labour”, migrant workers on 457 visas, are often employed on worse conditions than permanent residents, with no guarantee of safety or job security. 
Those on precarious visas toil in some of the most exploitative industries in the country. A 2015 expose by Fairfax media revealed that workers at 7-Eleven stores – many of whom are international students – were paid below minimum wage, subject to intimidation, sacked if they spoke up or joined a union and under constant threat of deportation. Racism and national borders make this situation possible – a windfall for the bosses. But it’s a disaster for all working class people, both the migrant workers and those struggling to defend hard-won gains. 
Experience of explicit racism often comes in the form of individual racist behaviour or comments. This is objectionable, certainly. But being “ignorant” or “uneducated” doesn’t create or perpetuate the inequalities that keep Indigenous people poor and incarcerated or refugees in camps. It’s not the “uneducated” who are enacting repressive anti-terror laws or sentencing young Muslims or African youth to jail. And it’s not the “uneducated” who run the newspapers or TV stations that nightly peddle racist trash. 
Indeed, some of Australia’s most high-profile bigots had excellent educations. 
It’s the structural elements that link racism and capitalism, and over which most people have absolutely no control.
The treatment of Muslims by the powers that be demonstrates this. In 1998, only 3 per cent of Australians considered Muslims a problem. Today, after more than a decade of persecution and vilification, 32 per cent admit to holding negative views toward Muslims. 
But that doesn’t necessarily mean people will swallow anything that is spoon-fed to them. In recent years there has been mounting opposition to Australia Day, with tens of thousands marching in Invasion Day rallies. 
Educating white people to be nicer to brown people won’t address the very real material underpinnings of inequality – it doesn’t build more houses, or give poor people jobs. Organising workers to overcome racial divisions and stand together against their bosses and government is what helps sideline racist ideas. It’s no accident that high points of anti-racist struggle have coincided with upturns in class struggle – the daily brutality of capitalism frequently lays bare our real adversaries.
This is how we overcome racism and the system that perpetuates it, a system in which money and power matter more than human lives.

Miranda Wood

Why is society so racist?

Debbie Kilroy doesn’t mince words. “Poverty in Western Australia is a crime – and the state government is ensuring that Aboriginal women are being criminalised because they’re poor.”
Kilroy is head of prisoner advocacy group Sisters Inside, which last month launched a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for women imprisoned for unpaid fines. 
The project initially aimed to raise $99,000 to pay the fines of 100 women. But within 24 hours they had smashed that target. After two weeks they had raised an astronomical $280,000.
Sisters Inside is working through the women currently jailed for fine non-payment, Kilroy told Red Flag. “Organisations have been contacting us on behalf of Aboriginal women, and we’re working with the prison registry to find out what their fines are, if they’ve got warrants, and paying them. And we’re also getting prisons to notify us when women are coming in.”
In Western Australia, the registrar of the Fines Enforcement Registry has the power to issue a special warrant allowing the state to jail people with unpaid fines. If you can’t pay, you do jail time.
A typical woman at risk “would usually be a single Aboriginal mother, who is struggling, living in poverty, the majority of the time trying to pay the fine off”, Kilroy said. 
“[She] may have entered into a payment plan but just couldn’t keep up the payments because she has to make a decision between bread and milk, or pay a fine down. Or you’ve got women who are homeless, couch surfing, and just not surviving. We’ve got Aboriginal women with severe mental health issues, who don’t even understand what’s happened … We have Aboriginal mothers and their children in domestic violence shelters trying to escape violence who just can’t afford to pay the fines. These are the women we’re talking about.”
According to a 2016 report from the Office of the Inspector of Custodial Services, an average of 803 people were imprisoned for fine default each year between 2006 and 2015 in Western Australia. Aboriginal women are the most likely to be locked up on this basis. 
Sisters Inside’s clients include a mother of three who felt unable to call police about her domestic violence situation for fear of being arrested for a $3,100 unpaid fine debt. Another is a 22-year-old woman pregnant with her second child facing jail for a $2,456 debt. 
One of the most damning cases is that of 22-year-old Yamatji woman Ms Dhu, who in 2014 was imprisoned in the South Hedland lockup in Western Australia’s north for fines totalling $3,622. In what the coroner described as “inhumane treatment”, Ms Dhu was left for three days in extreme pain suffering from septicaemia and pneumonia, with no access to medical treatment. She later died in hospital.
Coroner Ros Fogliani made numerous recommendations in her report on the case, including that dedicated lockup keepers be present at stations where detainees are being held, mandatory training for lockup workers, cultural competency training for police and an end to the system of special warrants that lead to imprisonment for unpaid fines.
The state Labor government pledged to change the law in line with the coroner’s recommendations before winning the 2017 election. So far, this has not happened.
“Ms Dhu died four years ago. She called [police] for a domestic violence incident for her protection, but they arrested her and she was killed in the watch-house after being in agony for three days”, says Kilroy. “The laws are still not changed, there was a coronial inquest into her murder two years ago with findings from the coroner that stated clearly that the laws needed to change, and yet both [successive state] governments … have dragged their feet. We say enough is enough.”
Alira Kelly-Ryder recently came dangerously close to becoming another statistic. The Perth woman had $3,744 of unpaid fines for driving and dog registration offences. After sticking conscientiously to a payment plan, she lost her job and missed two payments. When Kelly-Ryder called the Fines Enforcement Registry to rearrange her payments, she was given an ultimatum: pay up or spend a week in jail. 
She told ABC News, “I had the kids lock the doors, shut the curtains. That frightened me … They could take me right there on the spot in front of my children and take me to prison. I didn't drive to the shop, I didn’t leave the house, I got my friend to buy milk and bread.”
Kelly-Ryder is a close relation of Ms Dhu. For her, the consequences of fine default are all too real. She was fortunate to link up with Sisters Inside and has had her fine paid off. But for Kilroy, it’s a story that is repeated over and over. “If you have no money and you’re told in a letter to hand yourself in, or that if the cops pick you up you’re going to be arrested, it seems official and women feel defeated … They just accept that as part of their life: this will happen and their kids will be removed.”
Sisters Inside’s GoFundMe campaign continues to attract donations. Kilroy says she would love to get all women out of prison for fine default, but she also has a larger goal.
“We have to change the laws, we have to end the situation where people are criminalised and sent to prison because they can’t pay a fine. Poverty should not be a crime – it’s one of the worst examples of capitalism that you can see.”

‘Enough is enough’: resisting the criminalisation of poverty

The Yindjibarndi people are no strangers to struggle. After a 14-year battle with Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest’s Fortescue Metals Group (FMG), they are one step closer to gaining compensation from a mining company — a first in Australian history.
Initiated in 2003, the case is one of the longest running native title disputes. Many elders have passed away in that time, including Mrs Pat, mother of death in custody victim John Pat.
In 2017, Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Corporation (YAC), located near Roebourne in Western Australia’s remote Pilbara region, won their native title claim to exclusive possession of their lands. Prior to the ruling, they held non-exclusive possession, opening the door for mining to be carried out. Yindjibarndi land is where FMG’s massive Solomon Iron Hub mine currently stands.
FMG has appealed last year’s decision. However, YAC has maintained for years that if FMG’s appeal fails, it will sue the company. 
Back in 2011, YAC CEO Michael Woodley told the Sydney Morning Herald, “They say they will mine 60 million tonnes a year at first, rising to 100 million tonnes or more in future. That 60 million is worth around $10 billion at today's prices and these are rising all the time. Fortescue’s $4 million a year cash offer was for a fixed payment of just 0.057 per cent of the mine income”. 
Since then, the Solomon Iron Hub has cashed in $4 to $5 billion in gross revenue from its production. The Yindjibarndis are yet to see a single dollar.
Under the Native Title Act, traditional owners are able to negotiate land usage “in good faith” for six months. In 2011, after negotiations broke down, the then Liberal state government granted FMG a lease to mine the iron ore-rich Yindjibarndi country.
In the negotiations, YAC was seeking 5 per cent of the mine’s production value. FMG refused. YAC then brought its claim down to 2.5 per cent. This, too, was not good enough for FMG.
YAC then proposed 0.5 per cent, the standard across the industry for Pilbara iron ore royalties for traditional owners. The result? No deal. 
FMG’s proposed deal was a capped amount of $4 million per year plus training, employment and housing benefits valued at $6.5 million a year, regardless of the level of company profits. This time, YAC said no.
FMG’s modus operandi in recent years has been cost cutting and super profits. In 2016, by addressing “inefficiency” and “reducing its workforce” (read: sacking workers), it posted a half-year profit of US$1.2 billion, a mind-boggling increase on the US$319 million it made the previous year.
WA’s Pilbara region has long been a place where massive wealth rubs shoulders with abject poverty. The mining towns of Karratha and Port Hedland boast the administrations of some of the biggest iron ore operations in the world; some white mine workers can earn more than $100,000 a year. 
By contrast, in nearby Roebourne, where many Yindjibarndis live, the majority Indigenous town lives in sometimes slum-like conditions. Jobs are scarce. For Yindjibarndis, mining tribal land is a troubling concept.
“We don't want to be trained as labour for Fortescue's mines”, said Woodley. "We want a fair share in the mineral wealth of our traditional country, to create our own businesses and jobs, to deliver better health care and educate our children.”
Woodley last year told the Australian newspaper, “This shows the arrogance of Andrew Forrest as chairman of this organisation, and the lack of respect he has for Indigenous people. It also shows there is no chance FMG are wanting to build a relationship with the Yindjibarndi people”.
Twiggy Forrest has a history of “helping” Indigenous people. In 2017, he told the ABC in a statement, “We oppose ‘corporate cash welfare’, largely because we have seen the statistics of communities that are run by people who simply believe in hand-outs, hence the significant effort and resources we have provided to date in education, training, housing, and employment”. 
The hypocrisy is galling – one can imagine the outrage if the same logic were applied to Forrest and his billionaire mates who enjoy generous corporate tax breaks and subsidies.
Forrest has previously stated that the more he knows Indigenous people, the more he loves them. This avuncular, plantation-style affection seems to evaporate when those same people stand in the way of land he wants to mine.
YAC’s vice-chairwoman Margaret Read told the ABC in 2017, “It might make other Australian people’s lives better … but he’s actually destroyed the Yindjibarndi tribe. We don’t ask for many, many dollars. All we’re asking for is a fair go … for whatever they do on our land, we need to be compensated as well. All I can say to you is, when we get our native title, we will be putting in for compensation, and we will make you pay dearly”.

Yindjibarndis vs. Twiggy: ‘We will make you pay dearly’

The federal government’s beleaguered Community Development Plan (CDP) has been labelled a “policy disaster” that exacerbates poverty and continues intergenerational trauma. 
The program, which has been widely criticised for its punitive system of fines and payment cut-offs since its introduction three years ago, overwhelmingly affects Indigenous people in remote areas, who make up about 80 per cent of its participants. The compliance requirements for the program were tightened in July this year.
Bibbulmun Yorga woman Corina Abraham-Howard, a former social worker and community advocate, told Red Flag, “Working up north in Kununurra, I saw the impacts. It’s basically slave labour”.
“It makes the issues in our community far worse”, she continued. “What’s happening now in places like Halls Creek, Kununurra, they just can’t survive. It’s been a top-down approach with no consultation. There’s not enough jobs in those communities for people to be in paid employment or to better themselves. It doesn't help them professionally, or help them learn. There’s even elderly on the CDP … It sets our people up to fail.”
Introduced by the Liberal government in 2015, the CDP has roughly 33,000 people registered, all of whom are required to participate in 25 hours a week of jobs and activities to receive the Newstart allowance. It exists in every state except Victoria and Tasmania. CDP workers earn about $11.20 per hour, and must complete activities for 46 weeks of the year. By contrast, their urban and regional counterparts in Jobactive are required to do activity for only six months of the year. 
CDP workers do not receive superannuation or workers’ compensation and are not party to federal occupational health and safety laws.
Participants who “default” — fail to attend activities or check in with Centrelink — can be docked up to $50 per day or have their payments cancelled for up to four weeks, and must reapply to continue receiving payments. 
For those in remote areas with no phone or internet connection, no public transport, and the nearest Centrelink offices up to 1,000 kilometres away, fulfilling these requirements is next to impossible. Add to this already dire poverty and, for many, English being a second language, and the effects are devastating.
“People are starving”, according to Abraham-Howard. “They’re depressed, going without the essentials, can’t buy hygiene products or medical needs. There’s homelessness. They’re staying with an auntie or uncle and a number of people are surviving on just one person’s payments.
“It’s the remoteness of not being able to actually go into a Centrelink building. You’re struggling to get phone credit, you can’t understand what people are saying, you’ve got to wait for hours, sometimes they can’t deal with your problem, sometimes people get frustrated, and Centrelink just hang up on you.
“If you can’t afford the utilities, people will do crime if they have no food or power. [It continues] the intergenerational trauma that’s impacted on our people.”
In December 2016, the Australian National University published a report describing the CDP as a “policy disaster”. Co-author and researcher Dr Inge Kral told the ABC, “They’re now without money, they’re on an eight week no-payment penalty, they haven’t eaten for three days, they’ve got no money coming in and they can’t effectively engage with Centrelink by themselves”. 
A June 2017 Senate committee submission by peak group Jobs Australia described the CDP as causing “unnecessary financial hardship, exacerbating poverty, creating disengagement and doing more harm than good in remote Australia”.
Information obtained by the ABC under freedom of information provisions shows communities with high numbers of Indigenous participants copped significantly more penalties. 
In 2017, participants from the Milingimbi/Ramingining region of Arnhem Land and Halls Creek/Tjurabalan region in the East Kimberley, where more than 98 percent of participants are Indigenous, received 15 and 12 penalties per year respectively. At around $650 per person per year, this amounts to about 6 per cent of annual income — a significant blow to those already well below the poverty line. 
By contrast, in the Queensland central west region, where only a quarter of participants are Indigenous, participants were fined only about 0.33 times each on average. The trend appears again and again in the government’s own data.
In some remote communities, unemployment rates are as high as 51 percent. A 2018 report by the Australia Institute showed that fewer than 10 percent of CDP workers stayed in paid employment for six months.
“How can you put [people] through a work ready program when there will never be any work for them?”, asks Abraham-Howard. “And it’s the impact of being bullshitted to all the time — how many times do you believe them?”
CDP participants are required to attend activities to claim payments. One such activity, according to a document prepared by the Prime Minister’s Department for the ABC in 2016, is 3D printing classes, to make, among other things, “glow in the dark totem bike spoke clips; jewellery; and fabric stamps to decorate clothes” – an absurd activity given that many remote communities do not have hospitals, let alone 3D printing businesses. 
Another is the downright humiliating and racist women’s hygiene classes, designed to “[teach] women about personal grooming and hygiene to avoid becoming ill and spreading disease”.
Indigenous affairs minister Nigel Scullion has repeatedly denied any problems with the CDP, a 14 June press release asserting “CDP is yielding great results”.
Scullion was one of the Coalition members to vote in favour of One Nation senator Pauline Hanson’s “It’s OK to be white” motion in the Senate last week. The Coalition’s support for the motion was later dubbed an “administrative error” by prime minister Scott Morrison in an appeal for understanding. Yet understanding is something rarely extended to Indigenous welfare recipients.
When asked about the minister’s claim of CDP success, Abraham-Howard is blunt: “Nigel Scullion, you need to go on CDP yourself and then tell us about success. You need to come down to our level in community. We’re not on missions or reserves or concentration camps any more, we’re on the CDP”.

Work for the dole: punitive, dehumanising and racist 

A single Facebook post on 7 May, among a sea of local news articles, was the only acknowledgement of a young Indigenous man’s sudden death days earlier in the West Kimberley Regional Prison, near Derby in north-west Western Australia. 
The 19-year-old man reportedly collapsed on the floor of the prison in late afternoon on 3 May. Less than an hour later, he was dead. The jail, which opened in 2012 and is designed specifically for Indigenous prisoners, was described as a “game changer” by the ABC in2014. 
“Suspicious deaths in custody have a long history in Australian prisons. If deaths like this are not acknowledged in Australian news reports, it will only help to create an environment where the lives of prisoners in these remote prisons are devalued”, Change the Record co-chair Damian Griffis told NITV News.
“To deny this young man any mention of his passing is to deny his humanity. 
“The number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander deaths in custody has climbed because governments have failed to prevent the over-imprisonment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Prisons are destroying the lives and futures of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, families and communities.” 
Only a few days after the young man’s death, on Sunday, 6 May, horrific footage emerged of Perth police appearing to deliberately run down an 18-year-old Indigenous man in Perth’s southern suburbs. 
William Farmer, who was run over from behind while walking along a road, was knocked to the ground and had a seizure. In a statement, police called the accident a collision; footage of the incident paints a much different picture. 
Prominent human rights lawyer George Newhouse, who is representing Farmer, has called it racial profiling. He told Perth’s Ten Eyewitness News, “It’s not the first time. It seems to be a consistent theme that the WA Police abuse their power when it comes to Aboriginal people in WA”. 
The Australian Law Reform Commission’s 2017 “Pathways to Justice” report found that, between 2006 and 2016, imprisonment of Indigenous Australians increased by 41 percent. 
In Western Australia, a state that retains some of its frontier history, Indigenous children are imprisoned at a rate higher than that of Blacks in the US. 
The Western Australian police are investigating the Derby man’s death and are conducting an internal investigation into the running down of Mr Farmer. 
Yet again, cops investigate themselves.
The Derby man’s case has the tragic echoes of the cases of John Pat, Julieka Dhu, Mr Ward and others who died in police custody. His name will be added to a long list of others whose lives were cut short in the hands of the state.

Another life lost in WA’s criminal injustice system

On 4 August last year, the Dhu family received a shattering phone call. They were told that their daughter, Yamatji woman Julieka Dhu, had died in police custody. They later learned that her death – in a prison cell in South Hedland, WA – had been slow and that her last hours were spent in pain. One year on, her family are still waiting for answers.
Dhu was in prison for unpaid fines, of around $1,000. She was picked up after police received a call about domestic violence. When they discovered she had fines owing, instead of taking her to a refuge, they took her to the South Hedland jail. There, she became desperately ill, and repeatedly complained to staff. She was twice taken to the local hospital, and twice sent back, having never seen a doctor.
Shaun Harris, Julieka’s uncle, told Red Flag, “We had to wait so long to get Julieka’s body back. Here we are one year later – still no medical records, still not knowing what happened to her”.
Julieka’s is the 339th Aboriginal death in custody since a royal commission into the issue almost three decades ago. Harris and the Dhu family have faced a wall of silence and evasion from authorities. They have spent the past year campaigning for justice. They want the truth, and an inquest into her death, as well as conviction of those responsible.
“After we put together a timeline of what had happened, we put the call out for a national day of protest. There were people we knew, family and friends in all the major towns and cities. And people we had never met before”, said Harris.
Hundreds of people rallied in Perth last August in the wake of Julieka’s death. The Dhu’s campaign received so much attention that WA Liberal premier Colin Barnett was forced to meet with the family in the South Hedland lockup where Julieka was imprisoned.
At the Perth rally, the premier said that he would make a “personal commitment” to stop Aboriginal deaths in custody and address the number of Aboriginal people in prison. However, given his government plans to close 150 remote Aboriginal communities, his words were an insult.
After 12 months of campaigning, the Dhu family have finally got their inquest, scheduled for November 2015. It’s a start, says Harris, but they want more.
“We’re glad we got an inquest, but [the police] need to be held accountable. We shouldn’t have to have an inquest at all, because she should still be here. Justice for Julieka means a conviction for those who did this”, he said.
“[Deaths in custody are] a reality for First Nations people and indigenous people worldwide. Being put in a WA lockup is basically a death sentence. People are still being locked up for stealing bread, for unpaid fines. The whole system has racism flowing through.”
The WA government recently announced that the Aboriginal Legal Service, one of the few lifelines available to help Aboriginal people navigate the justice system, will be cut completely from the towns of Roebourne and Karratha. Harris points to this service as vital to preventing deaths in custody.
When asked what he would like to say to the police and the state government, Harris says, “Stop treating us like fucking animals. You’re getting away with murder. You’re getting away with genocide”.
“It’s been a long road. But our time will come, and we will get justice for Julieka.”

Still waiting for answers on death in custody

A 50-year-old woman died in a Perth prison on 16 June. The woman hanged herself in the shower block of the notorious Bandyup Women’s Prison, in the city’s north-east.
Hers is the fourth death in custody in Western Australia in the past 12 months. Marc Newhouse, from the Deaths in Custody Watch Committee WA (DICWC) and Bandyup Action Group, isn’t surprised.
“This is not new”, Newhouse told Red Flag. “In 2000 we sent out a letter to every WA politician about the overcrowding in the prisons here. It’s an ongoing issue, and it speaks volumes about how the state views women who find themselves in prison.”
In 2014, the inspector of custodial services, Neil Morgan, released a report describing Bandyup as the “hardest and most neglected prison in the state”. The prison has a stated capacity of 183. In the first week of February, the ABC reported that there were 340 women at the facility. More than a third of these women were on remand.
Prison authorities have estimated that Bandyup will hold 450 inmates by mid-2016. It has installed double bunks in most cells to cram in more prisoners. Prisoner advocates point toward overcrowding as a key cause of serious problems in Bandyup and the WA prison system more widely.
“How many deaths are acceptable to the government before change happens?” Newhouse asked in a statement released by DICWC. The Department of Corrective Services has made no formal statement about the latest death.
Bandyup Action Group has called on the state government to release all women held in prison for fine default and other minor offences, and to release minimum security prisoners to home detention, or parole, where possible.
Figures released by the state opposition in November 2014 showed that the number of Aboriginal women jailed for defaulting on fines had increased from 33 to 223 between 2008 and 2014. One in six Aboriginal people in prison in WA were there because they had not paid fines.
In August 2014, 22-year-old Yamatji woman Julieka Dhu died in a South Hedland watch-house within three days of her arrest and detention over unpaid fines.
The government shows no signs of pulling back from its jail for fines policy. It is converting part of Hakea men’s prison to accommodate the growing female prison population. The refurbishment will not be ready until the end of 2016 at the earliest.
Newhouse told the Guardian in April, “We hope it will not take a death in Bandyup before the government acts on the numerous suggestions, reports and recommendations on women’s imprisonment in WA”. For the latest victim of the WA injustice system, it’s already too late.

Prison death highlights overcrowding shame

Hundreds gathered in Perth’s Stirling Gardens on 6 June for an emergency counter-rally against a mobilisation backed by Reclaim Australia.
Reclaim Australia followers had planned to hold a “sex slave auction” performance where women in burqas would be sold off. They were outnumbered by anti-racists who carried banners and placards opposing their Islamophobia. The racists – numbering about 12 – left the park, without attempting their offensive skit.
The counter-rally, organised by <a href="https://www.facebook.com/UnitedABR?fref=ts">United Against Bigotry and Racism</a>, a WA based campaign group, heard from Aboriginal activists, unionists and Muslims about the need to stop the rise of far right groups like Reclaim Australia.
“These are a bunch of white supremacists who are out to demonise and vilify Muslims and minorities”, Ayan Rafhiid-Mohamed, anti-racist activist and member of Socialist Alternative told the crowd. “It is extremely important that everyone here comes along to the next rally to stand up and speak out against these racist bigots, and shut them down once and for all.”
Reclaim Australia is far right Islamophobic group, which has organised rallies across the country, calling for an end to multiculturalism, bans on immigration from Muslim countries and claiming that halal food funds terrorism. Its supporters have publicly encouraged violence against Muslims.
The group is organising rallies in most major cities over the weekend 18-19 July. In April, the last time they organised nationally, Reclaim Australia Perth mobilised many hundreds more than the dozen who turned out this time.
While the success of the counter-demonstration on this occasion was an important signal of our determination to stand against them, we have our work cut out to beat back the rising force of Islamophobia in this country.
<a href="https://www.facebook.com/UnitedABR?fref=ts">United Against Bigotry and Racism</a> is organising another counter-rally in Perth on 19 July when Reclaim Australia will again attempt to take to the streets. We should be prepared for the racists to muster larger numbers than they did this time. It is vital that we build ours as well.

Anti-racists win in Perth, but fight continues

In one of the more perverse developments in immigration policy, the Productivity Commission has argued for putting a price on the right to immigrate to Australia.
The commission’s “Migrant Intake into Australia” issues paper proposes that, instead of migrants being assessed on skills or family connections, the government should consider a person’s bank balance as the main determinant for a visa.
The proposed scheme is part of a deal to secure Liberal Democrat senator David Leyonhjelm’s support for the reintroduction of temporary protection visas for asylum seekers. Leyonhjelm flagged $50,000 as a possible fee for entry to Australia.
The paper suggests two options: setting a price, with the size of the intake dictated by demand; or setting a cap on the intake and allowing demand to dictate the price of entry. It suggests creating an “immigration lottery” and implementing a HECS-style payment system for immigrants to pay back their entry fee.
The Australian government already has the Significant Investor Visa scheme, which was introduced in 2012 for those willing to invest $5 million or more into Australia’s economy. For the rich, it offers virtually automatic citizenship.
Contrast this to the racist “No way. You will not make Australia home” advertising campaign targeting income-poor refugees, and the immigration rigmarole most migrants have to endure.
This highlights the fundamental reason for “border control” – to enable the wealthy and their capital to flow seamlessly across borders, while the state puts severe restrictions on the movements of the labouring classes. We’re told it’s about “security” but it is really about social control.
Even more telling is the fact that the report quotes the research of the late right wing US economist Gary Becker: “The proposal is that governments should sell the right to immigrate. The government should set a price each year and anyone would be accepted, aside from obvious cases such as potential terrorists, criminals and people who are very sick and who would be immediately a big burden to the health system. But aside from these cases, you would allow anybody to immigrate who could make the payments.”
Becker made his career out of putting a price on everything from women’s rights to organs, claiming that the free market could help solve the problem of a scarcity of organ transplants. His dreams are alive in the gruesome international organ harvesting racket. It is an abomination that he is the considered an authority by the Productivity Commission.
This is the logic of capitalism – everything and everyone has a price and is subject to economic evaluation.
As neoliberalism shapes new markets the world over, it leaves dispossession and displacement in its wake. The rich can rely on networks throughout the world to bypass easily restrictions put on those who are economically powerless. A vast pool of cheap exploitable labour is vital to modern capitalism.
Business groups have therefore opposed the scheme. Australian Industry Group chief executive Innes Willox said in a 4 May report in the Sydney Morning Herald, “skilled migrants should remain the primary source of new entrants”. Any immigration that did not primarily focus on a steady, flexible supply of labour would undermine business’s capacity to manipulate the labour market, and therefore wages.
So the scheme is unlikely to get up – not because business is opposed to the government making money, but because business thinks it can make more for itself by putting poor people to work.
In the depraved spirit of capitalism, the considerations are always economic rather than human need.

What’s a life worth?

The campaign against the Western Australian government’s plans to close remote Aboriginal communities in the state’s north continues.
Aboriginal people and supporters once again rallied in Perth on 23 April to protest the closures. Hundreds gathered in the CBD and marched to Parliament House. Masses of Aboriginal flags were carried, as well as banners bearing “Black Lives Matter” and anti-Liberal slogans.
Addressing the rally, Sydney activist Uncle Albert Hartnett said: “This is a continuation of the genocidal practices of the invaders and what they brought when they colonised this country 227 years ago … To all the brothers and sisters in the north, to the Kimberley mob, to the people in the Pilbara, to the people in the goldfields and the wheat belt – this is a declaration of war.”
Coonana, 170km from Kalgoorlie-Boulder, is a testament to the years of neglect. Several months ago, the community had its power and water shut off by the state government without warning. In a 15 November ABC article, the minister for mining and housing, Bill Marmion, blamed the “anti-social behaviours of residents and visitors” for the poor standard of housing and social problems leading to its demise.
However, pastor Geoffrey Stokes, who is currently involved in the campaign against the closures, said: “I think they’ve been moved out quietly and quickly, the government has come in and taken over.
“The funds for the shop stopped, the water and electricity, and the other thing they took out was the health services, and that’s the most important service that they had out there.”
Similar reports of power and water being shut off without warning have also come from the towns of Yandeyarra, Jigalong and Cotton Creek in the Pilbara.
The Overcoming Indigenous disadvantage, key indicators 2014 report shows that the number of people with access to clean water and functioning sewerage and electricity services is declining. The proportion of Indigenous people living in houses with “adequate” services fell from 83 percent in 2008 to 78 percent in 2012-13.
The government’s current expenditure of $45 million per year was stretched over 270 communities. It is an insulting slap in the face for those who are in desperate need of help. Successive governments have systematically defunded these communities, watched them struggle, and then destroyed them.
Contrast this with the hundreds of billions of dollars mining companies make digging up Aboriginal land and the tens of billions of dollars that the government has reaped in revenues.
Activists, however, are defiant. Hartnett says, “It has come to a time now where the world is starting to recognise the genocide and the apartheid that exists in this country. And we will stand together to beat these barriers down.”

Why is society so racist?

‘Enough is enough’: resisting the criminalisation of poverty

Yindjibarndis vs. Twiggy: ‘We will make you pay dearly’

Work for the dole: punitive, dehumanising and racist

Another life lost in WA’s criminal injustice system

Still waiting for answers on death in custody

Prison death highlights overcrowding shame

Anti-racists win in Perth, but fight continues

What’s a life worth?

‘This is a declaration of war’ – campaign against closures continues

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