Strategy & Tactics – The Word From Struggle Street

Living The Dream in the Trade Union Movement

shorter working week — May Day in Wollongong circa 2000 photo by Sharon Pusell

In this episode of Living the Dream Dave (@withsobersenses) chats with Godfrey Moase (@gemoase) the General Branch Assistant Secretary of the National Union of Workers. Godfrey had a number of criticisms of our last show . We talk about these and Godfrey also addresses the broader strategic and tactical possibilities for anticapitalist struggle and how they relate to trade unions.

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You can find some of Godfrey’s writings here:

Maintain the wage rage (with Carina Garland)
Defending Australian Labor
The case for a 30-hour working week
Absorbing Corbyn

Other things we mention include:

Music by The Sweatshop Union

(This podcast was recorded as ex-Tropical Cyclone Debbie drenched Queensland)

Living The Dream in 2017

In this episode of Living The Dream Jon (@jonpiccini) and Dave (@withsobersenses) go through the entrails with an inverted periscope to try to see what we should expect for 2017. We chat about Invasion Day and the rising tide of Indigenous struggles, the Centrelink debacle, anti-Road protests and more. We are pretty optimistic about the year ahead and look forward to hearing your thoughts.

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Articles, people and groups we mentioned or are relevant:

Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance –WAR

Celeste Liddle

Amy McQuire

Police Clash With Flag-Burning Protesters At Invasion Day March In Sydney

The Sydney Invasion Day rally just turned violent. pic.twitter.com/F66rQIJ292

— Allan Clarke (@AllanJClarke) January 26, 2017

White Purity

The Safety Pin and the Swastika

How the Centrelink debt debacle failure rate is much worse than we all thought

Adani coalmine activists gear up to fight: ‘This will dwarf the Franklin blockade’

‘Leave our land alone’: Queensland traditional owners vow to fight Adani’s Carmichael coalmine – video

Cottle, A. (2011), ‘The Colour-line and the Third Period: A Comparative Analysis of American and Australian Communism and the Question of Race, 1928-1934’, American Communist History, vol 10, no 2 , pp 119 – 131.

Working for the Class: The Praxis of the Wollongong Out of Workers’ Union

Anti Poverty Network SA

unite

We play music from A.B. Original and DISPOSSESSED They are rad – support them.

Living The Dream has an #altright time in Melbourne

altright-melbourne — #altright type displays famous political irony

In this episode of Living the Dream Dave (@withsobersenses) chats with Kieran (@Kieran Bennett) about a recent Melbourne counter-rally to a Trump celebration rally ostensibly organised by #altright types and attended by local fascists and neo-Nazis. From here Kieran lets us know who is who in the fascist zoo in Australia, the social phenomena behind the far-right and we discuss what a relevant anti-capitalist practice might be that can defeat the fascists and offer a genuine emancipatory alternative to the issues that we all face.

Kieran blogs at Kieran’s Review and is a member (of the perhaps soon to be rebranded) Anarchist Affinity

Articles and things we refer to include:

Angry Workers of the World

Ghassan Hage – Recalling Anti-racism

Ben Hillier – ‘All that is holy was profaned’: the year that was, and the politics we need (Ben recommends you also read ‘Post-truth politics’ isn’t peak populism, it’s peak liberal capitalism and suggests that my read of his argument is wrong.)

Campaign Against Racism and Fascism

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Do We Need To Talk About Donald? Living the Dream on the US Election

trump-kids

In this episode of Living The Dream Jon (@jonpiccini) and Dave (@withsobersenses) talk about the US Election and the phenomenon of Donald Trump. We aren’t interest so much is speculations about what is going on in the US but rather what the different ways Trump and Clinton are talked about in Australia tells us about what is going on in Australia.

Articles we refer to include:

Debating Deplorables: How the Left Can (and Cannot) Win Trump Voters

Sympathy for the Devil?

Theses on the New European Fascism

Time to hail Hillary Clinton – and face down the testosterone left

How the working class became white

Sweet ’16: Notes on the US Election

Music from Deadmoon and the Immortal Mice Men

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#SandersofSthBrisbane ? Council elections, social movements & the #RighttotheCity

#SandersofSthBrisbane ? Council elections, social movements & #theRighttotheCity

In this episode of Living the Dream Jon (@JonPiccini ) and Dave (@withsobersenses) chat with Anna – all-round good egg and comrade pivotal to Radio Reversal and Brisbane Free University – about the successful Brisbane City Council election campaign of Jonathan Sri , the opposition to the West Village development and the emergence of struggles around the Right to the City. What’s going on, how do all these pieces fit together and what do they tell us about struggles within-against-and-beyond capitalism for lives of dignity?

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The Institute of Public Affairs really isn’t the problem…

1404147600000 — Tim Wilson former IPA policy director, former Australian Human Rights Commissioner and possibly the next Member for Goldstein

On the 7^th of April Elizabeth Farrelly (2016), writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, launched a stinging attack on the right-wing think tank the Institute for Public Affairs (IPA). Judging from the response on social media her column has been well-received by much of the Left: from left-liberals and social democrats to anti-capitalists. However whilst I have no sympathy for the IPA the argument that Farrelly makes is both deeply wrong and also a fine example of the common-sense of the Australian Left: that the state we are in is due to the nefarious influence of bad people and bad ideas.

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