In this episode Dave (@withsobersenses) chats with Andrew(@fernandre3000) and Feargal(@feargal89) from the Anti-Poverty Network Qld. We talk about what they have been up to, what their strategy is and how this has gone. APN Qld are one of the most exciting developments going on in Queensland right now with friends and comrades leaving old and stale forms of activism behind to experiment with organising based on where people are at and in ways that directly speak to lived conditions. It is exciting stuff.
APN have a conference coming up We Deserve A Living – Anti-Poverty Week Conference 2018
We talk about:
‘We had Marx, they had Pauline’: left organising in poor communities by Joanna Horton
Working for the class: The praxis of the Wollongong Out of Workers’ Unionby Nick Southall
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Music by Gang of Four
Just got around to listening to this, interesting stuff. One thing I’d be interested to hear more on is what the APN’s relationship with Centrelink staff is? There’s obviously some common interests between claimants and welfare staff – and they’re likely to be unionised, and their unions actually have money, which claimants’ groups tend not to, but a lot of potential for confrontation as well, with them being the human face of a system that’s becoming more and more openly punitive.
On a tangentially related note, have you encountered Phil Neel’s stuff about the hinterland? Not read the book but it sounds good, and I think probably relevant to the kind of places APN operate as well: https://brooklynrail.org/2018/04/field-notes/PHIL-NEEL-with-Paul-Mattick
Hey. I just read it. Thinking about it a lot and may write a review. In some ways it is really applicable to Australia – in others not so much.
The Australian experience of ‘neoliberalism’ was very unique.
Cool, would be good to read your review. I think the left/liberal imagination of “One Nation territory” is probably very similar to that of “Brexitland” or “Trump country”, but of course that doesn’t actually tell you too much about the places themselves.