Autonomism

At a meeting on 14th June 2015 at Jura Books, delegates from four anarchist groups agreed to form a provisional Anarchist Federation Australia. The four founding groups were Jura Books, the Melbourne Anarchist Club, the Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group and Perth Libertarians. At the meeting a number of individual observers were also present as well as an observer from Black Rose and Black Flag. The provisional Federation is based on this constitution. However the constitution is still being discussed, and changes may be made at the first Congress of the Federation - tentatively scheduled for December 2015 in Melbourne. As well as being geographically diverse, the groups making up the federation have a range of political differences, but we hope to work together cooperatively to spread anarchist ideas in Australia. Other anarchist groups are welcome to join us.

The Redfern Aboriginal Tent Embassy was established 10 months ago to oppose the removal of Aboriginal people from Redfern. Jura supports the Embassy their campaign for affordable housing for Aboriginal people in the area. We support justice and self-determination for Aboriginal people; being pushed out of inner city areas to make way for wealthy non-Aboriginal people is not justice.

Today marks the 3 year anniversary of the initial massive, violent dawn police eviction of Occupy Sydney on 23 October 2011. Up to Monday, 11 people still faced criminal charges ranging from ‘camping’ to assault police primarily from this eviction. The hearing of these matters was continuously adjourned due to an Occupy Sydney constitutional challenge to the ‘camping’ charges i.e. that the implied right to the freedom of political communication in the Australian Constitution should have protected the political occupation that occurred at Martin Place as part of the global Occupy movement. Sadly this case reached the end of its road last Friday when it was considered by the High Court of Australia in regards to whether special leave should be granted for the case to be heard in the High Court. Leave was refused.