Karl Marx understood the individual “as the ensemble of social relations”. Farrell “Pharoah” Sanders’ music reflects such a sentiment perfectly. It is the circumstances of social upheaval which allowed the innovative jazz saxophonist to play a revolutionary role in jazz like few others.
“Jack Charles is Up and Fighting” is the title of one of Uncle Jack Charles’ early shows for the Indigenous Theatre Group, Nindethana, and it sums up his life. An actor, musician, potter, activist, proud gay man, this Boon Wurrung, Dja Dja Wurrung, Woiwurrung, Palawa and Yorta Yorta elder was, as actor and director Rachel Maza put it, “a shining, vibrant celebration of life”.
In a political landscape in which rising costs of living and attacks on work conditions confront a union movement hamstrung by spineless leaders and bureaucracy, it’s easy to forget what it looks like to really fight. In Australia today, despite the best efforts of rank-and-file activists, mass working-class struggle is on the ebb. For a generation of young workers, this means that it is not a matter of forgetting what real, militant unionism looks like, so much as never having experienced it to begin with.
'Pravda', the newspaper indelibly associated with the Bolshevik Party and the Russian Revolution, means 'truth'. It’s an appropriate name for a publication that set out to relate and generalise the experiences and struggles of the Russian working class, which was numerically small and scattered over a vast area in the early twentieth century.
The sculptural silver exterior of the Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim Bilbao Museum is notable for its monumentality and architectural significance. For one hour last December it was also notable for the 12 members of museum cleaning staff standing silently at the top of the enormous staircase in front of the Museum’s entrance. Wearing t-shirts with the question “Is everyone’s work equally important?” printed on them, the workers were collaborating with artist Lorenzo Bussi and the Aboriginal rapper Barkaa announced before Christmas that, in solidarity with Palestine, she was pulling out of the Sydney Festival. The Malyangapa and Barkindji artist announced her decision on Instagram, saying: “I stand with Palestine always and I’m pulling out of all events associated with [Sydney Festival]”.