Veteran Brisbane activist Gary McLennan spoke at an Occupy Brisbane rally on November 5. An abridged version of his speech is below.
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Friends, I want to thank you sincerely for the invitation to speak to you today. It remains for me a badge of honour, a great honour, that I鈥檝e been asked twice to speak to the Occupy Brisbane movement.
I said when I first spoke to you that your movement represented the best hope for the kind of world that I wanted my grandchildren to grow up in.
I believed that then and I still believe it now.
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When my wife and I were in the supermarket the other day, we got chatting to a kindly white stranger. After a few seconds, the woman asked my wife, "And how long have you been here?"
The global Occupy movement has focused the spotlight on the 1% versus the 99%. Who are the 1%? In the United States, the 400 richest individuals have as much wealth as the bottom 150 million. A similar picture applies in all the large capitalist countries.
Economy owned by the 1%
Socialist Alliance (SA) stallholders at today鈥檚 Newtown Festival were told today by a festival organiser that NSW Police had urged them to ban SA and Occupy Sydney from the festival.
The SA has paid for and run a stall every year at the festival. But this year police threatened organisers 鈥 the Newtown Neighbourhood Centre 鈥 with a $16,000 bill if they did not carry out the ban, saying that the presence of SA and/or Occupy Sydney might incite trouble.
Nurses in Victoria are being threatened with an Alan Joyce-style lockout because they have campaigned for a modest 3.5% pay rise (just to keep up with the rising cost of living), superannuation and overtime improvements, and keeping patient-to-nurse ratios. Australia鈥檚 four big banks, meanwhile, have a combined annual profit of $24.4 billion, up 12% from $21.7 billion a year ago. This speaks volumes about the grossly distorted priorities in our society.
Just four days after about 10,000 people circled the White House to protest a proposed 2700-kilometre tar sands oil pipeline from Canada to Texas, the Obama government announced it will postpone a decision on whether it will go ahead until 2013. Radical author and activist Naomi Klein addressed an October 10 public meeting at New York鈥檚 New School University, where she spoke about the Keystone XL pipeline.
鈥淎 map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth glancing at鈥, Oscar Wilde, 鈥渇or it leaves out the one country at which humanity is always landing. And when humanity lands there, it looks out, and seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.鈥
The strengthening links between unions and the US Occupy movement will be expressed in mobilisations across the US on November 17.
Despite Fair Work Australia putting in place an injunction banning National Union of Workers (NUW) officials from taking part in the Baiada poultry workers鈥 picket line, workers and community supporters were able to hold off an attempt by riot police to break the picket late on November 11.
On November 4, Israeli warships in international waters attacked and boarded the two vessels and Saoirse that were trying to deliver medical aid the besieged territory of Gaza.
Sydney lord mayor Clover Moore made clear at a Sydney City Council meeting on November 6 that she supported the 鈥減rinciples鈥 of the Occupy movement but did not support Occupy Sydney.
Greens councillor Irene Doutney put a motion to investigate the dawn police raid on the group in Martin Place and help find Occupy a site for the protest.
But Moore replied that she had to 鈥渂alance the rights of residents, visitors, workers and others to have access to the public domain鈥.
Over October 19-20 there was a general strike in Greece. The overwhelming majority of Greek workers took part in the strike with dynamic demonstrations and other forms of action. In that way, Greek people expressed their anger and despair over the devastating measures carried out in Greece in the past year and a half.
The relentless, vicious austerity measures have been imposed by the PASOK (Panhellenic Socialist Movement) government and the 鈥渢roika鈥 of the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the European Union.
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