BY JANO GIBSON
SYDNEY — Despite allegations by NSW police minister Michael Costa that it would be used to promote violent behaviour against police, organisers of a civil disobedience forum held at Parliament House on November 8 asserted that their key message to activists was to behave peacefully at protests.
"It's absolutely vital for people who get out on the streets: take your costume rig, take your musical instrument, take your attitude of fun and light heartedness, but don't mix it in a way that the police state would really desire, and that is to allow a cycle of violence to generate into a situation where the police are given a legitimacy to go in and break heads", said Greens MLC Ian Cohen.
Dr James Goodman, who chaired the discussion, lambasted the police minister for misrepresenting the objectives of the meeting. "This forum is about civil disobedience. It's not about violent protest. All that Michael Costa needed to do was pick up a dictionary", the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) lecturer said.
Organised by a UTS think-tank known as the Research Initiative on International Activism, and hosted by Greens MLC Lee Rhiannon, the low-key forum received extensive publicity after the Daily Telegraph ran a front page story titled: "Parliament House used to plan anarchy". Dr Goodman said that he had submitted a complaint of wilful misrepresentation to the Press Council about the article, and that an investigation was underway.
Academics and activists at the forum spent three hours exploring contemporary issues and traditions of the civil disobedience movement. Dr Sergio Fiedler, a UTS politics lecturer, emphasised that the right to disobey laws was a vital mechanism in democratic society.
"The right to rebel is not simply another human right, but the most important human right we have", he said. He listed the War on Terror, neo-liberalism and multinational economic organisations as instruments for suppressing democracy.
Kanhti Lewis, co-convenor of the National Union of Students' Queer Network, cited the Woomera 2002 protests as an example of the justifiable utilisation of civil disobedience.
"Often racial injustice will require civil disobedience simply because marginalised groups have been restricted or excluded from the normal channels of politics", she said. "In the event that injustice is occurring under the law, then surely the laws are redundant and not serving their purpose, and other action is required."
Civil disobedience activists predicted that, should violence erupt at the November 14-15 World Trade Organisation meeting in Sydney, it would be the result of aggressive police tactics.
"In my experience everyone organising these things across Australia endorses non-violence", said anti-globalisation activist Jesse Wynhausen. "The only group which doesn't endorse non-violence, which comes to the protest, is the police."
"Ordinary legal protest actions such as street marches are just not newsworthy any more", argued UTS journalism lecturer, Penny O'Donnell, pointing to the difficulties faced by activists. "Mainstream TV news will give airtime to violent or disruptive protests but such coverage is more likely to damage rather than promote the cause."
From Green Left Weekly, November 20, 2002.
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