Emma Clancy
On July 8-10, young activists from around Australia will be attending the national conference of the socialist youth organisation Resistance, at Glebe Town Hall in Sydney. 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly spoke to Resistance members about being an activist, changing the world and their hopes for the group's conference, which will take place under the optimistic and irreverent theme "Unfuck the world: Fight for socialism in the 21st century".
Emma Murphy is a Resistance member from Adelaide who helped organise the June 1 student walkouts against the federal government's "Work Choices" legislation. Murphy, who has been invited to address a June 28 Adelaide union rally about the fight for young workers' rights, told GLW that the Resistance conference "will provide the chance for young people to discuss our plans and strategies for how to fight back against Howard in 2006".
"This government is launching a major offensive on the rights of working people, and we urgently need to resist. The Work Choices legislation, attacks on our civil rights, plans for more uranium mining, attacks on welfare — the list goes on. At the same time, the government's foreign policy is aimed at exploiting the Third World and giving political support to the US."
Resistance "is committed to fighting against the Howard government", she explained, "however we are also committed to fighting for radical, revolutionary change: for a democratic socialist society based on meeting human needs, not corporate profiteering".
The conferences theme makes reference to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's call to build a new "socialism for the 21st century", in opposition to both the discredited, bureaucratic Soviet model of "socialism" and the barbarism of the capitalist system. The Bolivarian revolution led by Chavez, which is challenging US domination of Latin America and is developing a people-centred alternative to capitalism, is a major inspiration for Resistance members, Murphy said.
Jess Moore, the president of Wollongong Undergraduate Students Association, said that the Resistance conference "provides an opportunity to witness that each of us are not alone in thinking that things are fucked".
Moore said the conference is about "engaging with and questioning why things are the way they are and realising that they don't have to be that way. People nationally and internationally are thinking the same way and this conference is a way for us to collectively fight for change.
"I think students have a vital role to play in fighting for social justice, and activists at the Resistance conference will be discussing how we can most effectively organise political struggles on campus and how to rebuild the student movement."
Palestine solidarity activist James Crafti, a member of Resistance in Canberra, explained that he'd recently returned from the occupied West Bank. While there, he worked with the International Solidarity Movement, which "organises political and practical support for the Palestinian people suffering under the Israeli occupation", Crafti said.
"Palestine is an intense and often depressing place to be an activist. The reality of the occupation is horrific, but if we want to change the way things are, if we want to fight for justice for the people of Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, all of which are suffering under imperialist occupation, we need to understand the global political situation."
The conference will be attended by several international guests — Maria Rosa Jimenez, a young revolutionary leader from Venezuela's Frente Francisco de Miranda; Joe Carolan from New Zealand's Unite union; and Hendrik Ervan Baldus from the National Front of Papuan Students.
According to Crafti, the international guests "will contribute to the discussion about the impact and dynamics of imperialism, and how to resist it around the world".
[For more information visit , email <nationaloffice@resistance.org.au> or phone (02) 9690 1230.]
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, June 28, 2006.
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