BY SEAN HEALY
This week, Green Left Weekly celebrates its 10th birthday. Through a decade of tumult, of wars, revolutions and counter-revolutions, we've lived long and prospered.
Our first issue actually appeared on February 28, 1991 but, such was the urgency of the time, the first thing published under the Green Left masthead hit the streets six weeks earlier. It was a four-page broadsheet, entitled "Gulf War: myths and realities", which denounced the US's murderous war on Iraq and aimed to inform and build the movement against it.
That urgent desire to leap straight into the trenches, on the side of those struggling against injustice and for democracy and socialism, has stayed with this newspaper ever since.
Our advocacy of the heroic struggle of the East Timorese people was passionate, early and often. As was our backing of the Indonesian people's fight against dictatorship, of Aborigines' rejection of cynical government offers of "reconciliation" even as Canberra snuffed out native title, of refugees' bitter battles for freedom from the detention centres they'd been consigned to and of many other causes.
The editorial policy from the very beginning was summed up, rather typically, in a fighting fund promotion slogan in our first issue: "Green Left Weekly won't toe the line".
Refusal to follow the rules
Our refusal to toe the line was what was supposed to consign this newspaper to an early grave — after all, how many independent publications successfully stand up to the giant bludgeons of the corporate media for very long? But this refusal to follow the rules has proved the very secret of our success.
The rules for establishing an "alternative" newspaper go something like this: employ a large and well-paid staff preferably all with "respectable" mainstream credentials; sprinkle your editorial board with famous intellectuals and print their names on the inside front cover; start out with a war-chest of hundreds of thousands of dollars; fund yourself with advertising revenue from corporate clients (big or small); rely on distribution and publicity through commercial channels; always maintain journalistic detachment and "objectivity".
In short, follow as closely as possible the model of the corporate media.
This is what a host of independent publications over the 1990s did: the Independent Weekly, Broadside, Modern Times, Australian Left Review, The Eye. All have now folded.
We've done exactly the opposite: our articles are written by activists who volunteer them, rather than observers paid for them; we're not backed by big names or big bank accounts; we only accept advertising from progressive community organisations; our distribution is done the traditional left-wing way, through subscriptions and face-to-face sales on the street; our revenue, similarly, comes from fund-raising, donations from supporters and money made at various political events we host; and our journalism takes sides (and still does a better job of presenting the truth than the "objective" corporate media).
We've defied the model, the structure, the atmosphere of the corporate media just as much as we've defied its propaganda.
Our defiance of the usual mold began before even that first broadsheet appeared, in the very purpose the newspaper's founders set for it.
Yes, it would seek to inform its broad left and green constituency, but it would also seek to build it into a movement. Yes, it would seek to house debates and discussions within the left, but it would also seek to nudge them along the path towards a reanimated, revitalised and resurgent revolutionary, democratic and socialist left.
What I'm saying is that Green Left Weekly was always a lot more than an alternative newspaper; it is a cause.
This is what has allowed us to get over all the considerable hurdles in our way: newspapers promote informed discussion and, if they're good, a loyal readership; causes inspire dedication and commitment.
What's made the difference between our success and failure is you. It's your support which has kept us going.
What we've lacked in advertising revenue, for example, we've made up through our supporters making large donations from their own pockets and organising constant rounds of fund-raising dinners, barbecues and film screenings. What we've lacked in wide-scale distribution through newsagents, we've made up through our supporters getting out onto the streets to sell direct.
In particular, Green Left Weekly's nature as a cause, and not just a newspaper, has solidified the commitment to it shown by its two major organisational backers, the socialist youth organisation Resistance and the Democratic Socialist Party.
The two organisations have backed the project since the very beginning, even folding their newspaper Direct Action at the end of 1990 in order to fully throw their support behind Green Left Weekly. Since then, DSP and Resistance members have taken on the lion's share of keeping this newspaper on track: writing many of the articles and features, raising most of the funds, selling it.
Their backing for Green Left Weekly has been crucial and is now even acknowledged in our introductory blurb on page 2, as it should be.
The same, but different
So it's been 10 years and the world around us is, well, the same, but different.
In the year after we first appeared in January 1991, then US President George Bush (senior) was to declare that a "New World Order" would arise from the ashes of Iraq; the Soviet Union was to dissolve and the IMF, the mafia and Boris Yeltsin were to take over Russia; and Paul Keating was to become prime minister.
Ten years later, US President George Bush (junior) will try to start a new arms race with his National Missile Defense plan; the IMF, the mafia and Yeltsin-like "strong men" will try to take over more countries; and John Howard will seek a third term as prime minister.
So much is the same: the tentacles of injustice still grow ever longer. We still have powerful enemies.
The thing that's different is our side of the struggle.
In 1991, there were signs of new hope, it's true: the collapse of the Soviet Union was forcing many on the left to return to its democratic and humanist origins; revolutionary Cuba had declared it would do whatever it took to maintain its socialist choice; an upsurge of interest in environmental issues was leading to new questioning and new struggles; and a young generation was coming into political action, unbowed by the defeats of the past.
But the left faced a bitter choice: to give it up or to keep it up. Too many, unfortunately, chose the former and oblivion — the Communist Party of Australia, for example, dissolved in 1991. But many others, us included, chose the harder way, of struggle, believing that, with our help, those signs of new hope could become much greater.
As a result of that choice, and as a reward for all of us who made it, the signs of new hope are now far greater than they were ten years ago: whole peoples have gained a taste for struggle, in Indonesia, in East Timor, in Latin America; Cuba has weathered the storm and, somehow, through it all, grown stronger; a new anti-corporate movement is on the rise in the first world, in Seattle, Prague and Melbourne, connecting together all the disparate resistances to all the disparate oppressions and challenging the foundations of global capitalism; and the numbers of rebellious youth have grown enormously.
Capitalism no longer seems invincible and socialism no longer seems impossible.
The revolutionary, democratic and socialist left, and Green Left Weekly, comes out of this past decade, and faces the new one, firmer and more confident in the path it took, the choice it made. From here, our self-belief can only grow every day.
And the changes we will all bring in the next decade will remake the world.