YOU ARE INVITED to the Melbourne Social Forum’s first fundraiser of the year,
FILM: Hope Will Win Over Fear: The World Social Forums
Alfred Hernandez combines interviews and analysis with popular Brazilian
music and event footage in documenting the World Social Forum
movement
VENUE: Glitch Bar & Cinema
318 St. Georges Rd, N. Fitzroy
DATE: Sunday, August 7th
TIME: 6pm sharp!!
ENTRY: $5 ($3 concession)
Please come – it will be ACE!!
i highly recommend going over to Exxpose Exxon and letting these corporate bully boys know you’re not happy.
Below is a press release the Centre put out last night. It also marks the launch of our first campaign: Take Back Public Space. You can find out all about the campaign here. More importantly, take the time to have a look at our “Take Back Public Space” document.
Take Back Public Space
The Australian Centre for Democracy and Justice is calling on people to take back their public spaces and use artistic impulses to combat the over-branding, and crass commercialism of these areas of public use.The Melbourne-based social and environmental justice organisation have put together a step-by-step guide to stencilling called ‘Take Back Public Space’ and is urging people to make their own stencils. The aim is to encourage people to reclaim their public spaces in the name of democracy.
“Multinational companies have completely branded our public spaces. The community is rarely, if ever, consulted about these eyesores and there is a growing unrest about this,” Australian Centre for Democracy and Justice director Hammy Goonan said. “All we’ve done is provide an outlet for people’s frustration with this branding and an opportunity to take this space back.”
A stencil is a shape or image that is cut-out (usually using paper or cardboard), placed on a wall and coloured over using spray paint, leaving the image on the underlying surface. ACDJ is asking members of the public to use the medium to subvert those companies who use stencil art and advertising in general as a means of promoting their, often, unnecessary and unsustainable products and services.
“These are companies that quite often use messages that are harmful to society. It encourages irresponsible behaviour and ensures people remain image conscious and addicted to products that are made in unethical, unsustainable ways. People are being led to believe that the only way to happiness is through consuming. We all know that’s not the case but it is really having a subconscious effect.
“In addition, this appropriation of public space is highly undemocratic. It’s the commons, the people’s space that we want back. You can’t turn your head anymore without having things we don’t need being forced upon us.”
To view the “Take Back Public Space” document Click Here.
For more details on the campaign go to: www.democracyandjustice.org.
If you’ve got some examples of your own stencils, or would like to get involved in the campaign the please email us at centre@democracyandjustice.org.
For comment, contact Hammy Goonan on 0402 072 653
Below is our first eBulletin:
Dear Friends,
Hello and welcome to the first Australian Centre for Democracy and Justice eBulletin.
We’ll keep these brief and only send them out when we’ve something to tell you. If you don’t want to be on this email list please simply reply with “unsubscribe” in the subject. Feel free to circulate this eBulletin as widely as you see fit and if you’re not on the mailing but would like to be please simply email centre@democracyandjustice.org and let us know.
In this eBulletin:
1. Launch Party Success
2. Membership and Donations
3. Next Event – What would ACDJ do?
4. First Campaign – Take Back Public Space
5. Other events1.Launch Party Success
Firstly we’d like to thank all those that joined us at the Australian Centre for Democracy and Justice launch party a few weeks ago. It was a great success with about 80 people in attendance and helped us raise some money to cover our start up costs.
Everyone seemed to have a great time and we look forward to a few drinks with you all sometime in the future.
To see the photos and read the speech please go to: http://democracyandjustice.org/content/category/8/20/43/
2.Membership and Donations
We now have online facilities for both donations and membership. We desperately need your support in order to maintain our independence and to be as effective as we possibly can be.
Our Membership scheme is three tiered, with students/concessions being $20, full price/waged $40, solidarity/household/organisation $100.
OurCommunity.com.au kindly processes our memberships for us and you can sign up at their site at: http://www.ourcommunity.com.au/membership/membership_details.form?membershipId=715.
Alternatively you can print out a membership form at: http://www.democracyandjustice.org/images/Membership%20form.pdf and send it back to us.
Donations can also be made through the OurCommunity.com.au site at: http://www.ourcommunity.com.au/acdj
3.Next Event – ‘What would the Australian Centre for Democracy and Justice do?’ forum
Our next event will be held at Trades Hall (cnr Victoria St and Lygon St, Carlton) from 6:30 on Tuesday 16th August.
It will be a forum with Hammy Goonan, and Nicole Drever attempting to tease out the ideas in the Australian Centre for Democracy and Justice’s ‘What we Believe In’ statement (to be found here: http://democracyandjustice.org/content/view/29/44/). This is your opportunity to really find out what we’re about.
Entry $5.
4.First Campaign – Take Back Public Space
Please take the time to have a look at our first campaign: ‘Take Back Public Space’ where we take back the streets using art!
We are dieing for your input and involvement on this one so let us know if you’ve got any great ideas and take the time to read our Spread the Word document online today at: http://www.democracyandjustice.org/images/takeback.pdf
If you’ve got any good ideas about this campaign or would like to be involved please email us at: centre@democracyandjustice.org
5.Other events
The following is a list of non-ACDJ events. If you’d like your event included in this list please email us at centre@democracyandjustice.org with “eBulletin” in the subject.
– Melbourne Social Forum (www.melbournesocialforum.org). 19th and 20 November, CERES Environmental Park.
This eBulletin can be found at: http://democracyandjustice.org/content/category/8/25/43/
Hello all. The Australian Centre for Democracy and Justice’s web page has a new (albeit temporary) look.
We’ve instigated a content management system to cope with the growing content on the site. All feedback welcome.
Keep your eyes on it and stay tuned for a few announcements to be made later today or tomorrow.
Yesterday, The Age reported that:
Former TV gardening guru Don Burke has taken a dig at Australia’s mainstream green movement after becoming head of a new environment group linked to a conservative Melbourne think tank [Institute of Public Affairs].
Now chairman of the Australian Environment Foundation, the horticulturist and former Landcare Australia board member declared, “The greatest threat to the world’s environment is the conservation movement.”
(SourceWatch has a file on them here.)
A couple of things are noteworthy here. Firstly I think he has a point. Personally, I’ve always been concerned with environmental issues but until a year or two ago I never really took on the issues. When I first did take on ecological issues (in a more engaged manner than in the past) I was deeply frustrated by the conservatism of the environment movement. Some argue that this is inherent, that’s why they are called ‘conservationists.’ However I disagree and I believe that there is some really exciting and really cutting edge stuff coming out of the environment movement but unfortunately this is the exception rather than the rule. Actually, I should clarify that, I’m referring to the coverage that these various organisations get rather than the number of organisations that are conservative or otherwise.
I’m not sure if Burke has been very careful with his language here by saying ‘conservation movement’ instead of environment movement – some do make the distinction that the ‘conservation movement’ is a part of the broader environment movement. It’s quite possible – he’s a pretty switched on guy.
Of course being attached to the IPA does ring alarm bells for me. They are extremely conservative so it seems unlikely that they would take a radical position on the environment. However I suspect that they aren’t really sure what they’re getting themselves into. Could it be that they start taking radical positions on ecological issues? Or is Burke having a go and the environment movement as a whole. I’ll be keeping a close eye on this one.
One final thought on a broader topic. Environmental issues don’t get much of a go in the blogsphere (at least that I’m aware of – please prove me wrong). Certainly many blogs do cover environmental issues from time to time, particularly Kyoto and climate change issues. Water also seems to get a pretty good run. However there aren’t any dedicated to environmental issues and those that deal with environmental issues do so sporadically.
Thanks to Puck for pointing out in the comments that it was “Judith Miller did not name the CIA operative. She did not write any article on the matter at all, she was merely researching the issue.” Obviously I missed this latest development in the case and had confused the two people but fortunately I was pulled up on this. It’s also nice to see a few comments starting to float in.
So after taking Puck’s advice I read this CNN report (which for some reason I find very hard to read, something about the way it is written won’t allow me to absorb the details, plus the noise in my office is making it very hard to think).
Firstly, the less complicated issue of Novak. It would appear that my comments below should have been directed towards his actions. Why he isn’t in gaol is hard to say and I’m not going to speculate here. That’s for the courts to decide and I can only hope that this is an appropriate decision in the circumstances.
As for Miller, the CNN article does not make clear why she was researching the case. Again, the motivation is the key issue here. If she was researching it to expose Rove as the “leak” and thereby exposing a great abuse of power and an injustice then she is being a good investigative journalist and therefore should not be going to gaol. However, this can’t have been her motivation for this “research”. That is if we assume that Rove, or someone close to him in the administration, which is a safe bet according to Palast’s article, is her “source”. If this was not the case then surely she’d reveal that he is the source and blow the case wide open hopefully ending in the resignation of Rove.
As Greg Palast says:
Part of her oddball defense is that The Times never ran the story about Wilson’s wife. They get no points for that. The Times should have run the story with the headline: BUSH OPERATIVE COMMITS FELONY TO PUNISH WHISTLEBLOWER. The lead paragraph should have been, “Today, Mr. K— R— [or other slime ball as appropriate] attempted to plant sensitive intelligence information on The New York Times, a felony offense, in an attempt to harm former Ambassador Joseph Wilson who challenged the President’s claim regarding Iraq’s nuclear program.
So my position is largely unchanged, albeit dependent on some assumptions. For the sake of an open, accountable democracy it is important that journalists can protect their sources in order to break news that the public has an interest in. However, if they are just acting as the mouth piece of a government (or other) and actually doing more harm than good, then this is irresponsible and should have been stopped.
(I hope I’ve got my facts straight now!)
I suggest that everyone in Melbourne pops along to the Now We the People forum this weekend – the line up looks quite interesting.
I replied to Puck over at Australian Idyll only his comments seem to be down so I thought I’d post my reply here. I should also point out that I’m a little shady on the details of the Miller/Rove case so I hope I haven’t lead anyone astray here. I don’t have time to properly look into it and I have a great faith in the abilities of our wonderful readers to pick me up on any inaccuracies in the comments field.
I think Puck and I agree on about 90% of the issue here. I just thought I’d tease out our point of departure a little more.
Firstly, Miller’s actions were grossly irresponsible. She publicly named a CIA agent. This is illegal and potentially puts that person’s life at risk. That is not journalistic integrity, that is irresponsible, poor journalism. Moreover, that CIA agent had nothing to do with anything. The only connection was that they were a whistle blower’s partner who this whole thing was set out to harm. What was gained by this smear campaign? Nothing. It was simply an act of revenge. Moreover, it was done to further silence whistle blowers – an equally important part of a democracy and in many ways, inseparable from journalism. The message from Rove and the Bush administration, by using Miller as a mouth piece, was clear: “fuck with us and you will regret it”. Hence journalism, and the integrity of the press suffers because of the gross negligence on behalf of Miller.
Our second key point of departure is a related, but slightly more philosophical point: the issue of motivation. Motivation is the difference between Murder and Man Slaughter. In short you can objectively judge motivation (if you can objectively judge anything) and this is precisely the issue here. If Miller’s motivation was an informed public where the public “had a right to know” and this information was beneficial to debate in the public sphere then it would be fine. But it wasn’t. The only people that gained from this information being public is the Bush administration itself.
Incompetent and dangerous journalism should not be allowed to be published and you’d hope that any decent editor would simply not run the story. But let’s face it, journalistic integrity isn’t what sells papers, it’s scandal that sells papers. That’s why the story ran.
So to defend journalism in a case of gross negligence, I believe, only works against a free press.
Finally, I’d like to add that if this was someone on the Left I’d be equally outraged. I can’t help but feel that it’s a little unfair when people say “but what if they were on your side”. Not a personal dig Puck – just a common tactic of both the Right and Left that is quite unfortunate, especially when there isn’t any supporting evidence.
As I touched on in my previous post, civil liberties are central to a well functioning democracy. Individual freedom encourages a wider diversity of opinion and, more importantly, an impetus to act on these opinions (hopefully for the good of the wider community). Without civil liberties much of the participation is lost.
I actually find myself getting really anxious about this sometimes. It’s at least a couple of years before these things will be overturned if they are at all. Governments like power, so when they get powers they tend to hold on to them.
At the moment there are at least four significant issues on the agenda where the Howard government seeks to restrict these civil liberties (please feel free to add your own in the comments field):
Is the world better or safer because of these things?
While I’m at it, could someone answer this question for me which has been bugging me for a little while. If, as Andrew Bartlett points out, the Howard government’s $20 million add campaign, which Robert Corr estimates could balloon to over three times this, is illegal, then who is going to press charges?
Labor won’t, they do it themselves when they are in government (remember those days?). Why isn’t the Liberal party being fined and made to pay that $20 million back, if for no other reason than to make an example of them?
I don’t know what the process is here, but I might write a letter to the Australian Electoral Commission. Any other suggestions about who I should contact?
