Vigil for refugees
MELBOURNE — The Refugee Action Alliance is to begin a weekly vigil at Maribyrnong detention centre from February 25, in the hope it will give people to an opportunity to see for themselves the situation of detained refugees.
The Maribyrnong centre has become the centre of much scandal, following the death in custody of Viliami Tanginoa in December and a protest by activists who scaled onto the centre's roof.
Actors, musicians, churches and migrant and community organisations are being approached to back the vigil and the Victorian Trades Hall Council has tentatively agreed to back a March rally for the refugees.
Support for Indonesian workers
SYDNEY — Fifty unionists and solidarity activists held a lively picket outside the World Bank offices in Martin Place, Sydney on February 9, in support of the locked-out workers of the luxury Jakarta Shangri-La Hotel.
The hotel was funded by a 1992 joint World Bank-private sector loan of US$86 million to an Indonesian consortium. The hotel charges $95 for an overnight stay but pays its workers only $35 a month. This rate of pay is below Indonesia's legal minimum wage.
Following two months of stalled negotiations over a new collective agreement, the company suspended the workers' elected union president in December. This provoked protest action from the workers, who were then locked out on December 22.
The Sydney protest was addressed by ACTU president Sharan Burrow who told the crowd, "Today is our first stand in defence of the workers at the Shangri-La, we will continue to stand [with them] until justice is done".
Concert for Turkish prisoners
Two hundred people attended a concert at Granville Town Hall on February 3 to hear songs and poems of hope and protest in solidarity with Turkish and Kurdish political prisoners still being held in Turkish jails.
In December, Turkish authorities cracked down on protesters inside the country's prisons, killing 31 of them.
The protests were a response to government plans to bring back the "coffin prisons" which isolate prisoners from the outside world and from one another by placing them in solitary confinement.
ABC head office occupied
SYDNEY — Two hundred supporters of the ABC marched into the Ultimo offices of the ABC on February 9 demanding an end to ABC chief Jonathan Shier's regime of cutbacks.
The spontaneous decision to occupy the ABC followed an enormous turnout at the weekly Politics in the Pub, which discussed the cuts to the ABC and the importance of an independent public broadcaster.
Radical filmmaker David Bradbury drew on his experiences of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua to encourage the meeting to turn their passion into action.
Security were surprised, but seemed unwilling to prevent the chanting crowd from making a statement.