Category: What a just world looks like

This Changes Everything

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“If opposition movements are to do more than burn bright and then burn out, they will need a comprehensive vision for what should emerge in the place of our failing system, as well as serious political strategies for how to achieve those goals.” Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything, page 10.

Read this book. Read it now. Our economic system requires constant growth for its survival and its stability. And just like cancer, capitalism if left untreated, will end up killing its host. In this case it is the thin atmospheric layer that separates us from the vacuum of space. The time for surgical intervention is now.

The beautiful thing about This Changes Everything is that it not only honestly confronts the truth we all feel yet suppress but it goes further. It provides a glimpse of the civilisation that can emerge from our failing system, and the strategies that can get us there. No longer is climate change the ugly truth we are too fearful to confront. It is the challenger which poses a question to us all, a question that can no longer be postponed, do we stay on this road to barbarism or do we make the leap to deep democracy?

History has come to knock on our generation’s door. Will we answer?

#OccupyOz because Wall St is everywhere

Change might be constant but there will always be haters. And with the growing #occupywallstreet movement, it’s no different. There are those who criticise the Wall St Occupation because there is no clear demand, or that the occupiers are somehow hypocrites for using the goods and services of corporations. Both criticisms miss the point. Attacking an occupier because they are taking photos with a digitial camera or talking on a smartphone would be like attacking a Parisian revolutionary in 1789 for eating produce that was grown on the land of an aristocrat. Like fish we can only swim in the system we live in, but unlike fish we can change it. Continue reading “#OccupyOz because Wall St is everywhere” →

Imagining something better

Thomas Friedman wrote, in The Lexus and the Olive Tree, that there’s “free market vanilla and North Korea”. Personally, I thought we were taught as children that our imaginations are our limits. I guess there are really only two choices about economic systems for as long as we think there are only two. You know what that means? It’s time to get our brain boxes on and start imaginifying something better. Otherwise we’re screwed.

Continue reading “Imagining something better” →

Since when did the 8 hour day become irrelevant?

Did anyone notice that Jeff Lawrence, ACTU Secretary, pronounced the eight-hour day practically dead last year? He claimed, “…I don’t see us returning to – the eight-hour day, overtime, all those things.”1 Despite the fact I’m not totally sure what Jeff means by “all those things”, I’m pretty sure he’s consigning the eight-hour day movement into the annals of history. I would argue though, it’s not the eight-hour working day which is past its used by date but rather Jeff’s attitude. The idea that workers must fit themselves into longer working hours to suit the economic machine is so 90s (and a little bit disgusting as well). Correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t that whole little experiment end in tears recently, although last I heard everything was back to normal apparently… Continue reading “Since when did the 8 hour day become irrelevant?” →

First Post, are we already past it?

I’m 26, and I’m part of a special generation.

First, our generation was told we had to pay for our education.

Then we were told we had to fork out for higher rents or pay vastly more to own a home.

Then they told us we would have to work for less money and for longer hours. Continue reading “First Post, are we already past it?” →