Melbourne 2022 Activities Archive
Thursday, 8 September, 6.30 pm
Online planning meeting
Help build a movement for abortion and reproductive justice
Let’s start building an intersectional, militant, feminist offensive against assaults by the right wing on the bodily autonomy and reproductive rights of women, LGBTIQA+, gender diverse and non-binary people. Start by helping organise a reproductive justice contingent for the counteraction against the “March for the Babies.”
Register at tinyurl.com/RJMelb
For more information about the contingent or the planning hookup, contact RW: rw.aus@radicalwomen.org or call 03-9388-0062
Sunday, 26 June, 4.00 pm
In-person event
Stonewall Celebration:
Resistance to homophobia and transphobia is blossoming across the African sub-continent. This panel discussion will spotlight these contemporary struggles, discuss colonialism's legacy, and explore pre-private property societies where sexuality was free, matriarchal communism was the natural order, and rigid gender binaries were unheard of. We'll discuss the relevance of this history for organising in the 21st century.
Panellists Nita Okoko, a socialist feminist and internationalist from Kenya. Nita is a public health worker and a member of the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU). Alison Thorne, a veteran queer liberationist, managing editor of the Freedom Socialist Organiser and workplace delegate with the CPSU.
Chair Georgie Hoadley, a member of Radical Women and the Retail and Fast Food Workers Union
This event will support the Freedom Socialist newspaper and Freedom Socialist Organiser fund drive, so please bring a donation.
African style buffet dinner will follow the program for a $10 donation. Vegetarians, vegans and gluten-free will be catered for.
Solidarity Salon, 580 Sydney Road, Brunswick
Close to Anstey station on the Upfield train line and Blyth or Stewart St stops on Tram #19.
Cohosted by Radical Women and Freedom Socialist Party
To RSVP or for more information, contact rw.aus@radicalwomen.org or call 9388 0062. All genders are welcome.
Wednesday, 25 May, 7.00 pm
Online event
Disability Justice: Opportunities and Opportunists
This special online event features the emerging movement for Disability Justice (DJ) and the prominence of multiracial women leaders. A dynamic presentation, recently hosted by the New York Freedom Socialist Party, will highlight the 10 Principles of Disability Justice and its anti-capitalist, intersectional perspective, which recognises the leadership of those most impacted. Sharing examples of liberals’ attempts to co-opt DJ, speaker Kendra Scalia talks about the organised pushback against these opportunists. Kendra is a disabled queer woman, healthcare policy analyst and disability justice organiser. She is currently involved in a coalition with agency providers and unions, which is leading a fight to raise home care workers’ wages.
After hearing from Kendra, we’ll discuss how DJ principles can energise the movement in Australia and explore the many similarities.
The event, which is co-hosted by Radical Women and Freedom Socialist Party, is a benefit for the Freedom Socialist and Freedom Socialist Organiser fund drive. Donations will be requested.
Register in advance here.
For more information contact rw.aus@radicalwomen.org
Starting Wednesday, 23 March, 7.00 pm, then alternate Wednesdays through 4 May
Online study cirle
The far right then and now: Applying the lessons of history to stop the “freedom” movement
Once again, the far right is using a genuine crisis to promote its toxic agenda. This time, it’s in the form of a violent far-right “freedom movement,” which taps into working people’s justified rage against the clumsy, authoritarian responses of government to the COVID pandemic and genuine worries about its long term effects. What exactly is this agenda? Where does it come from? And how can it be crushed?
This discussion series will examine how populist movements emerge. We’ll look at the ways in which the far right intervenes to steer such movements towards outright fascism. Finally, we’ll look to history to see how the far right can be defeated.
Registration is required:
· Session #1, 23 March, 7.00 pm
The “freedom” movement in Australia: Its connections and real agenda
Register here.
· Session #2, 6 April, 7.00 pm
Far-right populism and fascism: Not the same, but related
Register here.
· Session #3, 20 April, 7.00 pm
What history teaches about far-right movements and resistance against them
Register here.
· Session #4, 4 May, 7.00 pm
Bring it down: How the working class and oppressed can crush the “freedom” movement
Register here.
Hosted by Radical Women & Freedom Socialist Party
For the study guide or more info, email rw.aus@radicalwomen.org
Sunday, 3 April, 1.00 pm
In-person organising meeting
From global to local, feminists take on the system!
Fresh from Radical Women’s splendiferous cross-continental International Women’s Day celebration, “Still We Rise: Women Rebel against All Odds,” this organising meeting will channel inspiration into action!
Join in discussion about British transgender writer Shon Faye’s The Transgender Issue as we commemorate Transgender Day of Visibility. Share your ideas and experiences to help plan an event honouring the 1969 Stonewall “riot,” which ignited the LGBTIQ+ movement.
Also on the agenda is an evaluation of the first session of “The far right then and now: Applying the lessons of history to stop the ‘freedom” movement,’ a study circle co-hosted by RW and our sister organisation, Freedom Socialist Party. Bring your thoughts about ways to build on this study in future feminist mobilisations against the dangerous threat.
Socialise with like-minded activists over a delicious lunch (for a $10 donation). The meeting starts at 1.30 pm.
Everyone is welcome!
Solidarity Salon, 580 Sydney Road, Brunswick
For more info: rw.aus@radicalwomen.org, 03-9388-0062
Saturday, 19 March, 12.00 pm
Rally to
Fight for Public Health and Workplace Safety
Federal and state governments’ pro-business, law-and-order response to the COVID pandemic has caused intolerable misery for workers and marginalised people. “Living with COVID” is making us sick. Expanded police powers are stripping away our civil liberties, such as the right to protest, while police have more license to abuse First Nations, immigrants of color and other communities.These conditions have nurtured a far-right “freedom” movement feeding on people’s isolation, fear and righteous anger. Its intention is not to provide solutions but to pursue its anti-woman, anti-worker and anti-downtrodden agenda, bankrolled by the likes of multi-billionaire tycoon, Clive Palmer.
Radical Women and our sister organisation, Freedom Socialist Party, are part of a coalition of unionists, women, First Nations justice campaigners and leftists, which is organising this rally. Its aim is to bring together working and oppressed communities around real solutions and start a fightback.
These are the rally demands. Come join us!
1. A living income for everyone – end casualisation; paid pandemic income support for everyone
2. Free healthcare for everyone – free RAT tests, more nurses, fully fund hospitals, full access to PPE
3. Secure housing for everyone: massively expand public housing; stop the selloffs; moratorium on evictions
4. Right to organise:
•• Right to organise and strike any time
•• Repeal secondary boycott laws
5. Roll back police powers, drop the COVID fines
6. COVID health and safety for all workers in all industries, especially in frontline healthcare
7. A global solution to the pandemic – remove patents from COVID vaccines and provide free to all countries
State Library, corner of Swanston & LaTrobe Streets, Melbourne
For information, email RW.Aus@radicalwomen.org
Check the facebook event here.
Sunday, 13 March, 11.00am
International Women’s Day Celebration
Still We Rise: Women Rebel Against All Odds
An uplifting appraisal of the courageous resistance of sisters in struggle at home and abroad, punctuated by poetry and song.
Speaker Maudie Osborne filmmaker, radio presenter, and Radical Women member in Retail and Fast Food Workers Union, Melbourne.
Maya Angelou’s poem “Still I Rise” read by Merri Ann Osborne, Seattle-based actor and director of the Mahogany Project
“Women of the World,” read by the author, renowned San Francisco poet-activist Nellie Wong
Zoom event • Register in advance at tinyurl.com/IWD-22
Remote audience participation is encouraged! Be prepared with a picture of someone you want to honor or an important object signifying women's struggle, or simply be ready to raise your hands to salute humanity's unquenchable fight for freedom.
Sponsored by Radical Women Australia and U.S.
For more information: RW.Aus@radicalwomen.org
Tuesday, 8 March, 5.15 pm
Rally and march
Step out with Radical Women on International Women’s Day!
We’re told to “live with COVID,” knowing what that means for women. We’re facing a far-right movement, whose agenda we saw in the recently shelved Religious Discrimination Bill.
Women have a lot to march for! Equal pay and secure employment; an end to misogynist violence; reproductive justice for all; trans and non-binary liberation; First Nations justice; public housing; well-funded, free public health, childcare, education; climate stability and a safe environment, and so much more. We'll march in solidarity with the millions of women rising up across the world!
So come rally and march with Radical Women’s multi-issue contingent. We’ll have placards, or bring your own. Please contact RW to let us know you‘re joining us or for more info: rw.aus@radicalwomen.org
The rally assembles at 5.30 pm outside the Old Treasury Building, Spring St. We’ll meet up at 5.15 pm, corner of Spring & Collins Sts — Look for the RW placards. Bring your mask and sanitiser.
Also RSVP to We Are Union Women, the IWD March organiser: https://www.weareunion.org.au/iwd22
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