Martha Ansara
Martha Ansara was born in Boston in 1942. Ansara grew up in a bohemian family with links to the Communist Party USA. After emigrating to Australia in 1969 she became active in the women's movement, joined the Communist Party of Australia and studied directing and cinematography at the Australian Film and Television School. Her films, chiefly documentaries, have won numerous awards.
"After the Referendum"
SEARCH Foundation Voice Truth Treaty Working Group (2024) published "After the Referendum: Learning from the fight for justice for Australia’s First Nations people" in December 2024.
Editorial Collective of the SEARCH Foundation Voice Truth Treaty Working Group: Jane Durie, Chris Elenor, Geoff Evans, Frank Panucci, Stephen Rix, Greg Strickland, Edward Tilton.
Other contributors to the publication:
Sam Altman, Martha Ansara, Ben Bartlett, Jim Crosthwaite, Deborah Durnan, Adam Farrar, Adrian Graves, Deborah Hartman, Paul Kaplan, Bob Makinson, Penny Sara, Rebecca Thompson, plus other activists and First Nations people who prefer not to be named.[1]
Search Foundation
Those who lodged proxies to the SEARCH Foundation 2014 AGM included Martha Ansara .
Proxies: The list of valid proxies received at the SEARCH office by 11am Eastern Summer Time on November 27, 2009 was read out:
Leonie Ebert, Pat Healy, Carmel Shute, Grahame McCulloch, Mark Aarons, Robyn Ravlich, John Varley, Martha Ansara, Gillian Workman, John Kaye, Lee Rhiannon, Carmen Blanco, Ray Harrison, Joe Palmada, Margaret Kirkby, Paula Rix, Kevin Cook, Janice Workman, George Zangalis, Russ Hermann, Chris Ray, Tristan Ewins, Brendan O'Kane, Pat Toms, Rod Noble, Peg Hewett, Cathy Crawley, Maurie Mulheron, Dave Ferguson, Judy Ferguson.
In 2003 Martha Ansara was involved in the SEARCH Foundation.[2]
Walk Against the War Coalition split
After trying for months to split the Walk Against the War Coalition (WAWC), the ALP finally managed to get its way on August 18. 2003 At a special meeting of the coalition, attended by close to 100 people, the ALP mustered the numbers to force it to wind up.
The vote was 56 in favour of closing down the WAWC and dispersing its funds, with 31 voting for it to continue. The NSW Greens and the Australia-East Timor Association abstained.
The special general meeting was called after WAWC co-convener Nick Everett alerted the 70 WAWC affiliates of the move by the two other co-convenors, Bruce Childs (former ALP senator) and Hannah Middleton (leader of the Communist Party of Australia), to dissolve the WAWC without consultation.
Childs and Middleton, with others, had formed a new organisation — the Sydney Peace and Justice Coalition (SPJC) — in secret. They believed that this gave them grounds to disband the WAWC. As Childs put it at the August 18 meeting: "We [the ALP] run the show".
Everett, local peace groups and a number of other WAWC affiliates were neither notified of, nor invited to SPJC meetings. They made it clear they had no argument with the right of affiliates to set up whatever organisation they wished, but that this did not make the WAWC redundant, especially given the ongoing war of occupation in Iraq.
Childs argued there was a need for "a change in the arrangements", and that Everett had been offered a "principled settlement" to close WAWC down.
In July, Everett and Luke Deer from the International Socialist Organisation and the Sydney Network for Peace, had refused a third of WAWC's funds offered by Peter Murphy of the SEARCH Foundation. They argued that neither he, nor anyone else, had the right to disperse funds collected from the movement for the coalition.
Childs and others made out that the WAWC had been racked with insoluble divisions. Yet, as others pointed out, it was the most successful anti-war coalition in the history of the movement, mobilising the biggest numbers ever in Sydney before a war had even started.
Middleton seconded the motion to disperse two-thirds of WAWC's funds to SPJC. "We're now in a different stage", she said, later arguing that the movement had to refocus from the occupation of Iraq to the US threat to other countries, and domestic issues.
Everett's unity motion, seconded by Deer, received strong support from unionists and activists from local peace and solidarity groups. They argued the need to campaign against Australia's role in the occupation, and to build support for Iraqi self-determination.
"If we're to win, we need more unity", Everett said, adding that the three groups that originally came together to form WAWC were "only a small nucleus" of the movement. He said that the coalition's funds should not be dispersed, and that the "Socialist Alliance -No War group", which had been nominated by Childs and Middleton to receive a third of the funds, did not exist.
Deer reminded people that the unity established in 2002 between the different peace groups — the Palm Sunday Committee, the Sydney Network for Peace and NoWar — had resulted in a diversity that had become its strength. Splitting the coalition would damage the movement, he said.
In the ensuing discussion, in which nine spoke for the split and nine against, some revealing comments were made.
Martha Ansara, for the SEARCH Foundation, spoke of a secret meeting of a handful of people at the Wayside Chapel in 2001, discussing reviving the Palm Sunday Committee. She said that the group "just couldn't work with the NoWar group". (The Palm Sunday committee refused to allow a number of radicals to join, including Nick Everett and Pip Hinman, who were twice ejected.) Ansara said the decision last year to work with the other peace groups was made under sufferance. "It just hasn't worked", she claimed.
Tim Ayres, president of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, criticised the WAWC for its reliance on "sloganeering" and "peace haiku". He also accused "Socialist Alliance-No War" members of "attacking our delegates on the job".
Anna York from the National Union of Students blamed Books not Bombs for demoralising the student anti-war networks on campus which, she said, were getting smaller and smaller.
Peter Murphy of the SEARCH Foundation , said that "to oppose motion [to close down WAWC] was to slow down the movement". He said the debate was "not about left versus right, but about how to work with the ALP and the labour movement". "We will have to co-operate", he conceded, "but at arm's length".
Lindy Nolan, representing the NSW Teachers Federation, said those calling for unity were not "self-critical". Bruce Cornwall, representing the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist), said that the split would allow the SPJC "to get on with the job of building the peace movement".[3]
NOW WE THE PEOPLE
In July 2001, endorsers of the SEARCH Foundation's NOW WE THE PEOPLE conference in Sydney included Martha Ansara.
South African Women's Liberation appeal fund
In 1994 sponsors of the SEARCH Foundation's South African Women's Liberation appeal fund to sponsor a female organizer for the South African Communist Party were Sydney Martha Ansara, Margaret Kirkby, Peter Murphy, Gerry Phelan, Vic Slater, Bev Symons, Jacqueline Widin Newcastle Greg Giles, Cathie Murray Wollongong Sally Bowen, Lia Ricci, Barbara Quantrell Canberra Brian Aarons, Romaine Rutnam, Melbourne Rob Durbridge, Linda Gale, Richard Walsham Adelaide Irene Gale, Judy Gillett, Dave Ferguson, Adrian Shackley.
"It's time to act"
"It's time to act" was a 1991 statement calling for the formation of the New Left Party.
Perth sponsors were : Martha Ansara, Keith Bostock, Florence Edwards, Sylvia Edwards, Bill Ethell, John Gandini, Claire Howell, Jan Jermalinski, Keith Peckham.