Australian politics – 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)

#WTF2016 ? Living The Dream takes the down bound Trump Train out of here

clinton-archepelego

In this episode of Living the Dream Jon (@jonpiccini) and Dave (@withsobersenses) talk about the weird as hell political environment of the Age of Trump. Was 2016 the worst year ever? Are we caught in the midst of a rising reactionary wave? And why do the failures of the liberal establishment feel to so many people to be failures of the Left? (And what is the Left? Are we the Left?) What’s with the amateur sociology about voting demographics that is everywhere now? Do we really have to choose between identity politics and Left economic populism? Where can we draw hope from and what about the historical experience of working class anti-racism? All this and more!

Articles/organisations we refer to include:

Behind the News with Doug Henwood

Hard Crackers From A Small New England Town As Told To Noel Ignatiev

The Weimar Analogy

KING: There’s a huge education level drop-off with the Trump cabinet picks

Tsiolkas – The Second Coming The Politics Of Rage Won’t Let Us Listen To One Another

Many in Milwaukee Neighborhood Didn’t Vote — and Don’t Regret It

It Was My Primal Scream

Revolutionary Hillbilly: An Interview With Hy Thurman of the Young Patriots Organization

Ghassan Hage – Recalling anti-racism

Knives out for Hanson staffer Ashby, accused of profiting off candidates

redneckrevolt

The great student swindle: how young people are being ripped off

Music by Sharon Jones and Dap-kings and Joe Pug

And watch this footage of this amazing meeting between the Black Panthers and the Young Patriots.

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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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Living the Dream – Last Drinks in (the workers) Paradise?

qld pic — State Of Queensland (Department of Infrastructure, Local Government and Planning)

In this episode of Living the Dream Jon (@JonPiccini) and Dave (@withsobersenses) talk about the meltdown of politics in Queensland and the failure of the ALP government to carry out a coherent plan to address the decline in capital accumulation and facilitate social reproduction. Rob Pyne resigning from Labor(#corbynofcairns ?), candidates sending dicks pics and the shared anti-political language of both sides of the referendum campaign show a political class in freefall and deeply out of touch with the concerns of everyday people.

Should we care? Or just point and laugh? What is the relationship of the political to capitalism on a whole and to our struggle against it? How much of this is this a broader and global phenomenon and what can it tell us about life in Queensland?

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Articles we refer to include:

The State Infrastructure Plan

Humphrey McQueen – Queensland: a state of mind

Kathleen McLeod – “I Will Protect You With My Body” The Case For A Radical Sanctuary Movement To Protect Asylum Seekers In Australia

Andy Paine – Rewriting the political script

Chris O’Kane – State Violence, State Control: Marxist State Theory and the Critique of Political Economy

Mario Tronti – The Political (1979)

Left Flank and An Integral State

Mike Beggs – The Void Stares Back

#LetThemStay Fieldnotes 3: What happened? What were the different elements of the event and how did they fit together?

Recently I posed twelve questions to help myself understand the events of recent weeks and help think through what has happened and where we are all going. This is my first attempt to answer them. I doubt I will answer – in writing – all twelve.

The answers I provide are necessarily subjective and partial. I only attended the vigil twice. I welcome disagreement and corrections. However I think that subjective and qualitative reflections on collective experience are a vital part of how we understand them.

I think there were three separate elements: the decision by staff at the Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital to not discharge Asha on the basis that Nauru didn’t qualify as somewhere safe to return to; the vigil which became a blockade of sorts faced with the possibility of Border Force taking Asha; and the wave of symbolic actions and stunts where people proclaimed #LetTheStay with the aim of generating and circulating imagery in the media (social and otherwise).

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#LetThemStay Fieldnotes 1

The decision by the Lady Cilentro Children’s Hospital to not discharge the infant Nepalese refugee Asha back to Nauru and the emergence of a vigil in solidarity was an important and inspiring event. The experience of it was radically different from the protest-politics-as-usual that typify the activist repertoire in Brisbane. Now that Asha has been discharged into community detention, and is facing a very uncertain and probably deeply unpleasant future, there is a desire to make sense of what has happened, what is going on and what does it mean?

Continue reading “#LetThemStay Fieldnotes 1” →