Anyone who reads Green Left Weekly would probably know Bernie Rosen was an inexhaustible letter writer and so it seems fitting to compose one in his honour.
Although it should be said that Bernie’s emphasis on letters later in his life was no doubt in part because his other favoured forms of political campaigning, such as door-to-door canvassing, newspaper distribution and public oration, were less and less physically possible for him. Letters were his way of engaging in the class struggle until the very end of his 88 years.
His lifetime commitment to a socialist future was nothing short of herculean and in his Concord Hospital bed just days before his passing he speculated what had ignited such dedication. And it was with tears in his eyes — as though reliving afresh scenes from his childhood the way those at the end of their life often seem to do — that he spoke of the brutal anti-Semitic abuse he faced as a young Jewish boy entering an Australian Catholic school.
The abhorrence of racism and injustice that began then, led him to feel deeply for the rights of Palestinians to return to their homeland and live free of occupation. “The problem of the Jews cannot be solved at the expense of the Palestine Arab” was like a mantra for Bernie who may well have been Australia’s longest serving defender of Palestine and was appropriately cremated with a red black and green keffiyeh [scarf] on his coffin.
Bernie would often lament the rose coloured glasses in which the international communist movement had viewed the Soviet Union as well as the left’s legacy of sectarianism, yet he never gave up on socialism because, as he’d often say: “All that doesn’t mean I like capitalism any bloody better, mate.”
Bernie was a link to the left history in Australia and always tried to impart on today’s socialists the lessons he saw as most important from the experiences of the early and mid-20th century, often through ample employment of repetition.
This combined with his penchant for brown suits with braces (regardless of the weather), his intensely formal language born of a prolific reading capacity and phenomenal memory — both of which stayed with him until the end — in addition to the naturalness with which he used the word comrade in any and every public intervention might have made him sometimes come across as antiquated.
But who would say Bernie didn’t have a point when he insisted it’s not much good talking about revolutions on the other side of the planet if we’re not effectively taking up the demands of ordinary people in this country?
And who has stressed more the need to make bank nationalisation — a key focus of Socialist Alliance’s 2013 election campaign — a central theme for the left in Australia?
Bernie Rosen died in the same month as Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and while it’d be hollow to compare the two there was consonance in the sense of loss felt, by comrades that knew Bernie, on both these men’s passing. That could be because both represented an ideal to strive for rather than something most of us will ever match. Both had a generosity and determination that was deeply human and yet in its sheer scale almost unhuman — superhuman.
I’ll always remember Bernie, cane in hand, struggling one step at a time up two flights of stairs to attended public meetings in the Bankstown Socialist Alliance office and, when his asthma finally made this impossible, the regular money donations he insisted, without a second thought, on giving Green Left Weekly.
In fact, just days before he died Bernie, unable to leave or even sit up in his hospital bed, insisted I take $20 from the wallet in his jacket pocket and buy a seat for him at the Granville Green Left fundraising dinner. “Tell the comrades I’m there in spirit.”
And, at the risk of cliche, that is probably the way to remember Bernie — as there in spirit, at every event and action of the working class and oppressed.
Aaron B.
Sydney
Council-developer talks leave tenants out in the cold
One of Balmain's few remaining block of flats available to low-to-moderate income tenants is to be redeveloped and gentrified, following talks between developers and representatives of the Leichhardt Council.
All current residents of the block have been given 90 days notice to leave — two months less than the 155 days notice which the developers said would be given in a letter to the Council last September.
The block, at 428 Darling St, contains 18 residential units as well as two small businesses: a doctor and a Chinese herbalist.
Most of the units are currently occupied. Some residents have been there for only a few months, but at least five of the units have longer term tenants — people who have been there for periods ranging from about six years to over 20 years.
Last November, the Council refused a development application on the property, for reasons including loss of affordable rental dwellings if redevelopment and strata titling went ahead.
The council assessors' report, accepted by the Council at a building and development meeting, argued that a payment to a housing fund would not be appropriate compensation for the loss of affordable housing, given the current low level of similar housing in the area.
After the refusal, the developers appealed to the Land and Environment Court, and representatives of the Council began negotiations towards a settlement. Last week the residents were told they had 90 days to leave.
One of the long-term residents, Colin Robinson, said he was aware that talks were going on, but the notice letters were a nasty surprise all the same.
"I was particularly struck by the fact that the letters said nothing about things the developers told Council last year they would do if the application went through: five months (155 days) notice from the date of approval, plus assistance in finding somewhere else to live. The developers seem to have forgotten they undertook to do these things, and the Council people don't seem to have reminded them."
Residents at 428 Darling St,
Balmain, NSW 2041
Don’t ignore suffering that goes unreported
Since April 15, the mainstream media has been even more American-centric, with a massive blanket coverage of the bombings in Boston and its aftermath ever since. I have a very deep sympathy for those innocent people who died and those who were injured and their grief-stricken families and share the sense of outrage at this attack.
Deplorable as the deaths of three people and the wounding of 144 others are, I just find it disgraceful and distressing that it can relegate the rest of the world news to almost oblivion.
On that same day, 75 people died and 356 others were injured in bombings in Iraq, this got scant media coverage. More people have been killed and others wounded since then.
On April 14, in response to a Human Rights Watch report, Israel announced it wouldn’t investigate the dropping of a large bomb by an Israeli aircraft on the home of the Dalou family in Gaza in November 2012. The strike demolished their home and killed ten family members, including four children and five women, as well as two neighbours.
Human Rights Watch concluded the attack was, “a clear violation of the laws of war.” Israel dismissed the case and called the deaths of these civilians, “collateral damage.”
I saw only one small news piece on this. On April 20, a severe earthquake hit Sichuan in China where 179 people were killed and more than 6,700 were injured. Thousands were left homeless. This disaster got negligible news coverage compared to the Boston situation.
Apart from these events, hundreds more people have died in the conflict in Syria with minimal news exposure. The brutal ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya people in Burma continues unabated and largely unreported, with over 125,000 forced from their homes. And the cruel repression, torture and killings go on in West Papua veiled in media silence.
It seems to me that sadly; the blatant message of this selective reporting is that some people’s lives are much more worthy and important than others. It is simply unjust and shameful that the lives, suffering and deaths of people living outside Western countries get so little media attention.
Their experiences and situations at least deserve some greater publicity and focus. And those cases of human rights abuses, those who oppress people shouldn’t be able to do so hidden from scrutiny and the spotlight.
Surely this is a vital role of news media. And perhaps through our awareness and anguish of their dire circumstances, we can maybe do something to make a difference. At the very least we can recognise the existence of these people and their problems and not ignore them by the selective coverage of events.
Steven Katsineris,
Hurstbridge, Vic 3099