Why is the outbreak in Victoria striking the public housing towers, the meatworks, the aged care centres, and the poorest suburbs? Because the disease thrives wherever inequality is high and workers' rights are restricted.
In 2017, I helped organise an anti-racist protest in Flemington. Public housing residents joined in. The police were completely out of control. Sending them in to besiege residents during a public health crisis is unnecessary, punitive and wrong.
Is abolishing the same as defunding? Does either one mean the police have been defeated? What does it mean when liberals start saying abolishing the police isn't all that scary? A socialist take on an exciting set of slogans.
Journalists and policy researchers daydream about a new, more ethical and sustainable post-coronavirus world. But powerful forces will fight to stop a better world emerging, as they always have.
