boycott

palestine protest in melbourne

For the 37th consecutive week protesters took to the streets around the country to protest Labor’s complicity in Israel being able to continue its genocide in Gaza for nine months.

people protesting

Salim Vally began his activism as a student leader fighting against his country’s apartheid regime. Today, he heads up the South African BDS coalition. 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳’s Federico Fuentes spoke to Vally — who will be a guest speaker at Ecosocialism 2024 — about the global campaign against Israeli apartheid.

Paul Gregoire spoke to Cathy Peters, a former Greens councillor in Marrickville, who successfully moved a boycott, divestment and sanctions motion and who co-founded BDS Australia about prospects for the campaign against apartheid Israel.

Stop Israel's genocide, Naarm/Melbourne, June 2

Thousands rallied around the country on the 35th weekend of continuous protests against Israel's genocide. Alex Bainbridge reports.

University of Melbourne student encampment

The inspirational Gaza solidarity encampments, initiated by university students across the world, pose a sharp challenge to Western governments complicit in Israel’s genocide, argues Jacob Andrewartha.

Despite widespread community opposition and the Senate's repeated rejection of a plebiscite the Malcolm Turnbull government is persisting with a non-binding postal survey on the question of removing the current definition of marriage from the Marriage Act and replacing it with an unspecified definition that will provide for marriage equality in some unspecified form.

In the past fortnight, many of us thought we were right on the edge of FINALLY winning marriage equality in Australia as dissent within the ranks of Malcolm Turnbull’s Coalition government came to a head.

Liberal MP Dean Smith and others put up the Marriage Amendment (Definition and Religious Freedoms) Bill and called for a free vote. Even Turnbull, a self-declared supporter of marriage equality even as he called for a plebiscite, said he supported the right of Liberal MPs to cross the floor to vote for the bill.

A conference on the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign for Palestinian justice will be held at the University of Sydney over July 28–29.

Free and open to the public, the conference will be the largest ever held on BDS in Australia, with three keynote lectures, four discussion panels and more than 30 separate talks on a wide array of topics.

It has been 125 days since the Carlton & United Breweries (CUB) plant in Abbotsford sacked 55 electricians and fitters, who have a combined history of 906 years of service at CUB, and a protest was begun at the brewery gates.

Since then, the ownership and labour contractor of CUB have changed and thousands of Australians have joined a boycott of CUB products.

In a big development in industrial dispute involving Carlton and United Breweries (CUB) and the 55 maintenance workers it has sacked in Melbourne, the contractor at the centre of the dispute, Programmed Skilled, has broken its contract with the brewery. The 55 workers were sacked in June — then offered their jobs back with a 65% pay cut. The company brought in unskilled scab labour, with the sacked workers, backed by the Electrical Trades Union (ETU) and the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU), picketing the Abbotsford factory.
Carlton and United Brewery (CUB) is trying to impose a 65% pay cut on its maintenance workforce. The 54 electricians and fitters were called to a meeting in a pub on June 10 and told their jobs were terminated. They were then told they could reapply for their jobs with a company called Catalyst Recruitment which is part of the Programmed/Skilled Group. Five apprentices have been left in limbo with no jobs and no trade qualifications.
Disengagement from mainstream politics is so widespread that when the marginalised and poor start getting engaged the establishment, and its media, hits back. This explains the corporate media's sexist-tinged blitzkrieg against Sue Bolton and Roz Ward, both Melbourne-based activists. Both women have come to prominence recently for their determination to stand up for the most marginalised and dispossessed sectors of society and involve others in the process.