BY RUTH RATCLIFFE
DARWIN — Imagine regular and cheap public transport networks; vibrant community centres offering meeting space and education programs; other centres run by, and for, young people; and community gardens with individual and collective plots.
Imagine community meetings where people can discuss and debate international and local politics — and decide where and how to build roads, shops and other council developments. Imagine a local community which empowers, rather than isolates, people.
These are just some of the "imaginings" that motivated Socialist Alliance activists to contest the Darwin mayoral elections.
We aim to take local politics away from its traditional focus on the location of parking meters and cleaning up dog poo. We want to build a participatory democracy — where people's involvement in, and control over, their local community provides the basis for participation in decision making at all levels.
Regular community meetings, and systematic distribution of information, could enable collective decisions on local development, environmental protection and the running of services.
Such a vision could only be realised as the result of struggle, but these elections give us an opportunity to put forward an alternative way of doing things. This participation and democratic control could make a huge difference to Darwin — it could help to overcome racism and prejudice.
The discrimination, social decay and alienation caused by capitalism is very visible in Darwin — particularly in the appalling harassment meted out to the Indigenous long-grass people. The Socialist Alliance proposes some immediate steps to alleviate this.
Police paddy wagons pull into the end of Smith St mall daily — the khaki uniformed police step out, pulling on their gloves and begin harassing the long-grassers. I've seen a mother, small child and baby bundled into the back of a paddy-wagon. I've seen the quasi-police "Night Patrol" vans chase people through back streets. Recently, there have been several vicious attacks on sleeping long-grass people by white assailants.
Instead of trying to solve the myriad of problems long-grass people face, successive NT local governments have further legalised police harassment. The Socialist Alliance has pledged to repeal Darwin City Council by-laws which make it a crime to sleep in public between dusk and dawn and to store goods in a public place.
This would stop the outrageous practice of council officers confiscating people's swags and demanding $50 for their return — or fining people $50 for sleeping out. When these fines can't be paid, people are imprisoned.
The money currently spent on harassing and imprisoning long-grass people could be redirected to an Indigenous-controlled community drop in and resource centre, which would help to redress the chronic social disadvantage Indigenous people face.
The Socialist Alliance also opposes a proposed youth curfew, and new drug house legislation (see article on page 6).
But local politics is not just about local issues. The Socialist Alliance would use the mayoral position to campaign against injustice at the state and federal level. We are already using the platform given to us by the election campaign to do this.
As the Australian and US governments wage war on the people of the Third World — through abusing refugees, and devastating military action — this election campaign provides us with an opportunity to convince people that this war is wrong.
We have used our election campaign to initiate a statement of opposition to the construction of new refugee detention centres and the mandatory detention of refugees. Socialist Alliance activists are also helping to organise a community speak out demanding "Stop the war on women!" to mark International Women's Day.
[Ruth Ratcliffe is the Socialist Alliance candidate for Darwin Lord Mayor.]
From Green Left Weekly, March 6, 2002.
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