BY NICK EVERETT
SYDNEY When I first heard about the idea of the Socialist Alliance, these old bones straightened up a bit. I wanted to know more about it. I wanted to be able to participate with tens of thousands of others to change the society that we are currently forced to live in.
With these words, respected indigenous activist Ray Jackson captured the feeling of the 250 people who attended the public launch of the Socialist Alliance at Trades Hall here on April 10.
Jackson, also a member of the Freedom Socialist Party, told the crowd: There has never really been a party representing the battlers and the working class ... The Socialist Alliance is the way to go. We're not going to take over the country straight away, but we've got to take that first step.
The meeting, which opened with a rousing performance by Sydney's Solidarity Choir, was also addressed by assistant state secretary of the National Tertiary Education Union and International Socialist Organisation member Michael Thomson, who argued that the alliance will help build networks to resist economic rationalism, whoever wins the elections.
Referring to the recent large public protest meetings against the state government's plan to close a number of inner city schools, Thomson explained This is where the Socialist Alliance fits. We support the students, teachers and parents we're part of the fight.
Thomson called on trade unionists who've had enough of economic rationalism and companies getting massive profits while our wages and conditions get pushed down to get active in the Socialist Alliance.
Dae Keum Kim, coordinator of the Korean Resource Centre in Sydney, told the meeting: Most of our members are not socialists, but when I took out the [alliance's] platform they said, 'This is good. This is what we want'. The KRC endorses and supports the Socialist Alliance.
Speaking on behalf of the Socialist Alliance, Lisa Macdonald from the Democratic Socialist Party told the meeting: The organised left has never before come together in such unity on such a radical platform. It is a tremendously exciting project, and really the only one which could do justice to the exciting political landscape at the moment.
Macdonald pointed out that the specific-issue campaigns and multi-issue movement against corporate tyranny that are gathering momentum internationally show what socialists have always known: the only force that can bring about social change whether reforms or revolutions is the mass of working people.
That's the basic premise of the Socialist Alliance: that building strong extra-parliamentary movements and forming alliances between them is the only path forward, in the immediate and longer term.
The meeting's chairperson, Alison Stewart of the International Socialist Organisation, read out messages of support, including from former Builders Labourers Federation leader and green bans pioneer Jack Mundey, Workers Health Centre coordinator and union activist Peggy Trompf, Sydney University professor of political economy Frank Stilwell and shorter work week campaigner Wayne Sonter.
The meeting also passed by acclamation two Socialist Alliance statements in support of the campaigns against the NSW government's plans to close public schools and weaken workers' compensation legislation.