Saturday, March 10, 2012

A telling quote in the film KONY 2012 says: “Who are you to stop a war? — the question is, who are you not to?”

I think the question that the people behind KONY 2012, which went viral on the internet on March 7, need to be asked is: “Who are you to start one?”

Liam Flenady is a Resistance member and Socialist Alliance candidate for the March 24 state election. He spoke with Green Left Weekly’s Patrick Harrison about his campaign priorities and issues facing young people today.

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Why are you running in the election? What does it mean to be a youth candidate?

I want people to see that there is an alternative to [Premier Anna] Bligh and [opposition leader Campbell] Newman.

The ALP and Liberal National Party are almost indistinguishable. Both support privatising everything, coal seam gas mining ruining our farmland and environment, all forms of unsustainable and badly planned development, ripping off ordinary people, the list goes on.

This kind of governing is showing itself all around the world to be totally devastating and unsustainable. We need to move fast towards a human-centred and ecologically sound form of society.

Activists from Western Australia’s Refugee Rights Action Network traveled more than 800 kilometres from Perth to the remote Leonora detention centre over January 27-29. The journey sought to draw attention to the 160 unaccompanied minors locked up in the detention centre.

Immigration minister Chris Bowen had previously promised that all children would be moved out of detention centres by June last year.
 
When the activists arrived and started a protest outside the gates, they were greeted with excited waves from the children inside. It was obvious the young refugees were overjoyed to see the protesters and wanted visits, even though the guards employed by prison operator Serco said the refugees had told them they did not want any visitors at all.

Recent national figures published by the Sydney Morning Herald show the rate of youth unemployment in Australia is well above the national average, hitting 17.3%.

The figure is more than triple national unemployment, which stood at 5.2% in December. Almost one in five people aged 15 to 19 and not studying are out of work.

The pace of job creation “slowed to a crawl” last year, the SMH said, and was the worst since 1992. But 63% of all jobs lost in December were worked by young people. This clearly indicates the disproportionate hardship young people experience in the workforce.

Historically, racism has given rise to the belief that different human populations possess different capacities, some superior and some inferior, based on aspects such as cultural traits and genetic makeup.

At its crudest, racist views often hold that genetic makeup can imply specific traits and
characteristics, and has been used as a tool to separate people in our society.

This kind of view became widespread across the world, justifying crimes such as the mass enslavement of Africans, the genocide committed by the Nazis, and the “white Australia” policy, initiated in 1901.

Social Darwinism and fascism have been used to try to justify a hierarchy of superiority based on aspects such as skin colour, nationality and culture.

In reality, there is no link between physical difference in appearance and social or cultural characteristics, but rather racial categorisations are socially constructed.