Bob MacMahon

Bob MacMahon

InspirActivism goes to Launceston

InspirActivism was held in Launceston for the first time, on the weekend of May 7-8, 2011, on the initiative of SEARCH Committee member Tim Thorne. Five participants from a range of groups including the Oaktree Foundation, Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre and The Wilderness Society attended the information-packed weekend.

Aboriginal activist Nala Mansell-McKenna gave a welcome to her country in Palawa language and English. Participants said they wanted to know more about how campaigns run.

Prof Verity Burgmann from Melbourne presented an exploration of Political Ideas, to help the newer activists to see where their own values came from, and how campaigns blend different ideologies. She opened up Liberalism and the freedom of the individual which took hold during the Enlightenment, the different types of Socialism – utopian, libertarian, Fabian, Marx, Hegel and the dialectic, Leninism, Stalinism, Trotksyism, and Maoism. And she also explored Anarchism from George Woodcock to the Wobblies, Noam Chomsky and Naomi Klein. She looked at the similarities and differences between US Conservatives, “Neo-Cons”, and Liberals in European and Australian democracies and the rise of Fascism.

Prof Burgmann also explained the different feminisms – Liberal, Radical, Marxist and Socialist; Green theory and the eco-centric / anthropocentric spectrum, Deep Ecology, Eco socialist, Eco Anarchism, eco feminist and liberal ecologists. Then we looked at postmodernism (identity politics) and new social movements, and that neo-liberalism’s success depends on increasing inequality.

Nala Mansell-McKenna showed us a DVD made by a member of the Stop Brighton Bypass Campaign which highlighted some of the history and struggles of the Mumimirina people.

The first veteran activist to convey a campaign story was Rodney Croome who took us through the campaign to decriminalize male homosexuality in Tasmania in the 1980s and ‘90s. He said Tasmania felt like a police state. While law reform was tabled in 1991, Parliament did nothing until the campaign won a UN human rights decision in 1994, which launched the issue into national debate. By 1997 Tasmania had gone from having Australia’s worst laws on same-sex relationships to the most progressive. It was a combination of community education, having a media profile, lobbying and litigation and strategic direct action tactics over a sustained period which led to widespread reform. The change in the law on homsexuality had enabled a deeper progressive shift, creating a broader metaphor for change in Tasmania. See Equality Tasmania for more information.

The program includes an exercise in campaign planning with a brainstorm of the key aspects required to map out a campaign plan. We took up the issue of bullying in schools and unpacked the issues to create a campaign plan.

Day two started with the second campaign story – Bob MacMahon told how he became involved in the campaign to stop the Gunns pulp mill in the Tamar Valley. A local environmental concern soon became an issue of social justice. Because government support for the mill was already locked in, and the public deliberately excluded, bigger themes emerged concerning the betrayal of democracy and the corruption of public institutions. Read more on the campaign.

The next session was a guided process on planning our Anti Bullying campaign for Tasmanian high schools. We carefully decided on our specific goal, our targets, allies, barriers and tactics.

The third campaign story came from social worker Mara Schneiders. She took us through her experience of community development in Cambodia. Beginning with the question of what is our role as activists in a global context, Mara described the community development model which includes capacity building, a human rights framework and anti-oppression principles. We also looked at how the ‘developed’ countries like Australia view the ‘developing’ world. However, while the lived experience of poverty differs from country to country, the issues such as health, housing, work, isolation are the same. Mara’s experience as a volunteer in Cambodia gave us a more direct connection to the possibilities of activism in a development context.

InspirActivism co-ordinator Leila Barreto, Mark Hodgson, and Marcus Chick also attended.