Universities need more public funding
Qld students ready to defend free speech rights on campus
Police arrested and handcuffed two Brisbane-based activists, Rebecca Barrigos and Sid Zaoichi, after they set up a stall and petition against the state government’s budget cuts at a Brisbane university campus on September 21. Brisbane Resistance member Liam Flenady spoke to Barrigos about the arrests and the campaigns against austerity and for free speech in Queensland.
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What were you and fellow activist Sid Zaoichi campaigning for on campus and why was security called to evict you?
Sid and I were at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) [Kelvin Grove campus] to petition against the Liberal National Party’s (LNP) budget cuts, which have seen 14,000 jobs lost in the public sector.
Tassie equal marriage bill goes down, but campaign vows to fight on
Tasmania's upper house voted against equal marriage on September 26. The bill, co-sponsored by Labor Premier Lara Giddings and Greens deputy Nick McKim, passed the lower house on August 30.
But after a two-day debate, eight of the upper house's 15 MLCs voted against the bill, mostly fearing a High Court challenge and claiming that it was a federal and not a state issue.
The Student Movement and Student Unions
University
students have begun to organise on campus, in many cases alongside
tutors and lecturers, on a scale not seen for many years. With both
governments and university managements pushing to run universities as
profit based degree factories, this organisation of students and
staff has been a positive step forward in defending the right to a
quality affordable education. While students have been organising it
is important to note the role that the traditional student unions
have played in this process.
Liberalism, Ultraleftism and Mass Action
Liberalism, Ultraleftism and Mass Action: Essential revolutionary coordinates
This talk was delivered by Resistance Brisbane member Liam Flenady at a branch meeting of the Socialist Alliance on August 7.
Preamble
Liberalism, ultraleftism and mass action. For someone interested in radical social change, this trio is potentially the most fundamental set of concepts to study - and to restudy, since you don’t just ‘get’ these ideas in the abstract; you have to learn them over and over in each new situation, and so we have to all keep coming back to them in the abstract to clarify our daily work, just as our daily work clarifies the concepts. Really they should set the coordinates of our revolutionary work.
But while this talk is about three different strategies and three different concepts, it is essentially about two different fundamental perspectives: on the one hand, raising the political consciousness of the entire population, involving them in the struggle, and helping lead them to revolution; on the other, ignoring the working class and the majority and appealing to the upper class or classes or politicians to make changes.
