protest

Isaac Nellist reports several hundred protesters marched down Oxford Street to celebrate the LGBTI community as well as protest the Religious Discrimination Bill and the corporatisation of Mardi Gras. 

Anti*Capitalist Resistance activists reflect on the police attack on a women’s vigil in South London.

Chris Slee reports on a rally in solidarity with a refugee activist charged with incitement. 

A poem for the times, by playwright and performer Jepke Goudsmit.

About 200 unionists, refugee activists and students rallying in Melbourne on April 8 outside a Liberal Party fundraiser to celebrate 20 years since the election of the Howard government, were attacked by police on horses and the indiscriminate use of pepper spray.
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”.
The Defence Department’s website says: “Exercise Talisman Sabre 2015 is a biennial combined Australian and US training activity, designed to … improve the combat readiness and interoperability between our respective forces. This exercise is a major undertaking that reflects the closeness of our alliance and the strength of the ongoing military-military relationship” and is “focused on the planning and conduct of mid-intensity ‘high end’ warfighting.”
Why would a 54 year-old woman make a decision to lock herself onto the train tracks of the world’s biggest coal port? Annette Schneider, an artist and farmer from Monaro in NSW, explained to Green Left Weekly that her action on March 31 was a direct result of her fear of catastrophic climate change.
Many residents have been involved in the campaign to stop the East West tunnel in Melbourne, an $8-15 billion tollway project of Denis Napthine’s Coalition government. One resident, Keith Fitzgerald, has lived in Collingwood for 70 years. Fitzgerald told Green Left Weekly his grandparents had come over from Richmond in 1898 and settled in Collingwood. His father was born in Collingwood in 1900. Fitzgerald has lived in the same house for 69 years but has received a letter saying it is likely to be requisitioned,

Socialist Alliance candidate for Wills, Margarita Windisch speaking at the Melbourne rally against PRISM on July 6, 2013.

Punk World Cup winners UK Subs.

Punk pioneers UK Subs released their 24th politically-charged album last month, to rave reviews. Appropriately titled XXIV, it nears the completion of their bid to release 26 albums whose titles begin with each letter of the alphabet, in order. Frontman Charlie Harper spoke to Green Left's Mat Ward.