En Passant

The problems are systemic and require systemic solutions, not band-aids. All capitalism can give us, given the importance of the police and religion to the system and the power they have, is band-aids and Royal Commissions.

Until the privileged position and power of the police and priests is overthrown there will be more deaths and injuries at the hands of police and ongoing abuse of children by priests and others.

In short, leftists who support strikes only if there are no picket lines to fight off the cops and keep out the scabs, who support Indigenous people only if they don’t offend, who support Muslims only if they have acceptable signs and let the police attack them, are not worthy of the name. To those who ask why we haven’t criticised the demonstration, we in turn ask: “Why have you lined up with the cops and the ruling class against an oppressed minority?”

As well as unleashing more Islamophobia and racism across the country, the police attack on Muslim demonstrators in Sydney will be used as cover for the further brutalisation by the O’Farrell Government of lives across New South Wales.

We need to build a political movement that fights against racism and the other forms of oppression, including religious repression, which flows from capitalism itself. That means building a fight against the economic exploitation at the heart of the system and joining with all those who resist capitalism in its many manifestations, economic, political and social.

To The Victorian Trades Hall Council: We are writing to object in the strongest terms to the arbitrary cancellation of our room booking for a public meeting on the issue of “racism and police violence” on Thursday 21 June. This meeting is in the best traditions of the Trades Hall Council and the Victorian labour movement, which has long been a defender, not a suppressor, of public debate. We urge you to continue that tradition.

John Howard, Mal Brough, Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Tony Abbot and Jenny Macklin should be sent to the Hague to face genocide charges or put on trial here.

The police are the front-line enforcers of the current system, and as such are implacable and dangerous opponents of any movement for justice and social change. We should treat them as such.

The reality is that police forces around the world help perpetuate the greatest crime possible: maintaining the murderous system of capitalism.

It was early morning, and the armed thugs of the State moved in to attack students demonstrating for basic rights. Tiananmen Square twenty years ago?  No. Melbourne’s Flinders Street Station intersection on the morning of 1 June.  Thousands of Indian students were protesting against racist attacks on them over the last few weeks. The response [...]