En Passant

Ben Hillier has written an excellent and informative article on West Papua in the latest Red Flag. He says for example: The number of dead has mounted during Indonesia’s 50-year occupation. Sydney University researchers John Wing and Peter King estimate that at least 100,000 have been killed. Exiled independence leader Benny Wenda claims that the number is half a million. They are victims of what has been called slow-burn genocide.

It’s a lockout, a sit in, a picket writes Jerome Small in Red Flag. It’s a rolling conversation. It’s woodsmoke, and chairs that fall apart. It’s the most ordinary thing that could happen, on an ordinary street, in an industrial suburb, in any city you care to name. In an ordinary, everyday way, it has paralysed the Australian operations of one of the biggest corporations on the planet.

It’s a lesson that I never get tired of learning. When workers stop working, it’s the most powerful thing on Earth.

The lockout, sit in and picket continues at International Flavours and Fragrances, 310 Frankston-Dandenong Road, Dandenong South. See Red Flag and the National Union of Workers facebook page for updates.