The nationwide civil disobedience actions by animal rights activists on April 8 caused a media furore. 麻豆传媒 Weekly鈥檚 Mary Merkenich spoke to Vegan Rising campaign director Kristin Leigh, who helped organised the action in Melbourne, about their protest tactics and aims.
Mary Merkenich
Director Benedikt Erlingsson鈥檚 latest film, Woman at War is delightful, offbeat and uplifting. The main character is Halla, a choir director in her early 50s, who lives a secret double-life as a lone saboteur of heavy industry threatening her Icelandic environment.
It is not unusual to hear someone blame the crisis in affordable housing and healthcare or the very expensive tertiary education system on Baby Boomers, the generation born between 1946-64. Gayle Burmeister and Mary Merkenich take aim at this mistaken argument.
Humans experience the brutality of capitalism in wars, harsh working conditions and widespread poverty caused by a class-based society. Every minute a child dies a preventable death.
Capitalism has also been waging a war on animals.
Teachers, education support staff and even some principals walked off government and private schools across Victoria and assembled at the State Library on November 20, in support of refugees currently being detained on Manus Island and Nauru. A similar protest was held in Brisbane that same day.
Faced with a handful of climate activists marching on his Bulleen electorate office on November 7, state Liberal opposition leader Matthew Guy decided to lock the door and pull the shutters down.
The Department of Education and Training Victoria today advised school principals聽to oppose leave for teachers who wish to participate in the Walk Off for Refugees on November 20. Teachers For Refugees (TFR) has called on teachers and education support staff to walk off the job on Universal Children鈥檚 Day and demand that the federal government remove all children and adults from offshore camps and resettle them in the community.
The Australian Education Union (AEU) Victorian Branch Council has endorsed a planned Walk Off by teachers and education support staff in support of refugees on November 20, Universal Children鈥檚 Day.
Under the slogan 鈥淎ustralia needs a pay rise鈥, an estimated 170,000 trade union members and their supporters filled Melbourne鈥檚 CBD on October 23 for the Australian Council of Trade Unions-initiated Change the Rules rally.
In September, the federal Coalition government announced it would provide an extra $4.5 billion directly to fee-charging Catholic and independent schools, to be spent any way they choose.
NSW Minister for Education Rob Stokes commented that his government will not sign up to a needs-based, sector-blind funding scheme, but it is neither of those things.
There are very few workers in Australia today who feel confident that they have a job for life, are well paid or have the safest working conditions possible.
That鈥檚 why we all welcomed the Australian Council of Trade Union鈥檚 (ACTU) Change the Rules campaign.聽
It is definitely time to stop the attacks on workers and build a fight back that can win. We need to get rid of legislation that stops unions from organising effectively for their members.
More than 1700 delegates from 40 unions attended a mass meeting at the Melbourne Convention Centre on September 25, where they voted to hold an all-unions march and rally next month. Present at the mass delegates meeting were unions covering workers in the health, construction, education, public, transport and manufacturing sectors, among others.
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