Abandoning and demonising our most vulnerable children must end. Western Australia can lead the way by reforming its child bail laws and ensuring children can remain with their families where possible, argues Gerry Georgatos.
prison
The nomination of Bulgarian Prisoners Rights Association (BPRA) founder Jock Palfreeman, an Australian anti-fascist imprisoned in Bulgaria, for the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee's Human of the Year award has faced a backlash from the media, right-wing politicians and neo-Nazi gangs that has forced his nomination to be withdrawn.
Remand prison riot over smoking ban
First Nations Liberation organised an action on June 30 in solidarity with the inmates, at the Metropolitan Assessment Prison, colloquially known as Metropolitan Aboriginal Prison because so many of the inmates are Aboriginal, following the riot that took place there in response to smoking bans due to commence on July 1.
The action included a smoking ceremony.
The ABC reported that about 300 prisoners were involved in the disturbance, which included breaching a “secure inner perimeter”.
US bars UN torture investigator from jails and Guantanamo
The United Nations special investigator on the use of torture criticised the US on March 11 for stalling for over two years in granting the international human rights body access to inmates at Guantanamo Bay and other federal US prisons.
When Glen Anderson was playing sport with his schoolfriends, he was suddenly surrounded by police who ordered him to lay flat on the ground.
US rapper AWKWORD has teamed up with more than 100 artists worldwide to put out his charity album World View.
Mau Power's new album takes listeners through the big changes in his life - and the first of those came when he was jailed. "In 2001, I got incarcerated," the Torres Strait Islands rapper tells Green Left Weekly.
Multi-lingual multi-instrumentalist Pat Marks fronts the multi-faceted Melbourne band Pataphysics. As the critically-acclaimed "guerilla hip-hop" outfit prepare to launch their new EP, Green Left Weekly's Mat Ward spoke to Marks about his multifarious pursuits, from refugee rights to juvenile justice.
“I’m in Villawood!” Jock Palfreeman exclaimed, with the cheerful exuberance he displayed throughout an interview conducted through glass and wire-mesh partitions in the gloomy surroundings of the visiting room of Sofia central prison.
He told Green Left Weekly that it was the plight of refugees detained in Sydney's Villawood detention centre that first radicalised him. His first protest, as a high school student in Sydney, was a blockade of the offices of Villawood’s then operator Australasian Correctional Management on May Day in 2002.
"Every time you see in the media someone's been killed by police it always just happens to be an Aboriginal," says radical rapper Provocalz. It's 9.30 on a Saturday morning and the south-west Sydney spitter is telling Green Left why he made his hard-hitting horrorcore track, "Cop Shot".
Rapper JPoint is building up a strong body of work - and not just in the music world. The Indigenous emcee runs his own record label, produces music for other artists and has a string of releases under his belt. But he is also competing above the belt - by entering his first body-building contest. For JPoint, it's been a transformation.