Coming Out as a G20 Arrestee

Sina Brown-Davis, one of the G20 arrestees, will be holding a forum at the Melbourne Social Forum on indigenous resistance to globalisation in the Pacific. The issues presented in this forum are intricately related to resistance to the G20 last year, and to APEC in the coming months.


http://arushandapush.blogsome.com/

I was arrested and charged last year with offenses related to the G20 protests in Melbourne. I've found the best way(for me) to deal with whats going on is to be focused on my politic and the indignation I feel at exploitation and injustice in our own communities, Australia, our region and the world. Its not as if the wheels of Globalisation have stopped rolling or anything.

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PUBLIC MEETING

Jointly organised by the Ongoing G20 Solidarity Network and Civil Rights Defense.

Thursday 26 April

7pm

Fitzroy Town Hall Reading Room, cnr Napier and Moor St, entry off Napier St

Speakers include: Marcus Bankse from Austudy 5, Civil Rights Defense, Orgasn, and others.

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Melbourne Social Forum

WORKSHOP SCHEDULE - April 21st - 22nd

There are 52 workshops running at the Melbourne Social Forum this
weekend, a reflection of the breadth and depth of commitment of the
various community leaders and pioneers, groups and organisations in
Melbourne. We thank all the groups and people who have decided to
participate in this years social forum.

Workshops this year range across a diversity of themes, including:

- Responding to the climate crisis
- Creating sustainable and public transport
- Social and Political transformations in Latin America
- Australias role in the Pacific
- Indigenous rights, sovereignty and reconciliation
- Alternative education, thinking and learning
- Re-localisation, biodiversity and food
- Non-violent accompaniment and direct action
- Making corporations accountable
- Grassroots Online Video Distribution
- International Solidarity Campaigns

The program is online and it is really inspiring in its diversity and
substantiveness. Have a look at the program:
http://melbournesocialforum.org/images/MSF2007_Programme.pdf
This is only the short version, the long one will be available
tomorrow.

Or check the website for detailed descriptions for each workshop in
the following link
http://www.melbournesocialforum.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcatego\
ry&
id=28&Itemid=76

Change The Political Climate Turn up the Heat!

Kia ora tataou

I'll be doing a workshop at this years Melbourne Social Forum, hope to see and korero with you there.

The 3rd Melbourne Social Forum will be held Friday, Saturday and Sunday, the 20th, 21st and 22nd of April 2007. This year's theme is "CHANGE THE POLITICAL CLIMATE: TURN UP THE HEAT!"

The mission of the Melbourne Social Forum is to create open public spaces to discuss, share and act on ideas for sustainable social and ecological justice. To do this the MSF hosts events, in public and on-line, which bring together progressive individuals and groups from within civil society in the Melbourne area and beyond. The Melbourne Social Forum is a dynamic open space for addressing the 21st century's most pressing local and global challenges: fair trade, labour rights, environmental sustainability, global peace and human rights issues.

http://melbournesocialforum.org/index.php




Whenua, Fenua, Enua, Vanua: Indigenous resistance to Globalization in the Pacific

Organisation: S.I.S.I.S (Settlers in Support of Indigenous Sovereignty)
Facilitator(s): Sina Ana Brown-Davis (Te Roroa, Te Uri o Hau, Fale Ula, Vava’u)
Description: "Australia and NZ remained unrepentant for their brutal suppression of indigenous independence movements in the Pacific. They rationalized such behaviour as enhancing the welfare of the Islands and the human development of their people – just as they justified similar behaviour towards indigenous peoples in their own countries."

The settler gubbaments of OZ & NZ are forcing a neo-liberal economic agenda on the nations of the Pacific, for 21 years the settler gubbaments of OZ, NZ, Canada, & the US have blocked (and will continue to block) the passage of the DRIP (Declaration on the rights of Indigenous Peoples) though the UN. Things such as these and ancestral rights & treaties are meaningless in the face of economic and "security arrangements", which do nothing more than open up our region for the outflow of capital, (land, people, natural resources), evolutionary processes have run their course and the time for re- asserting a Nuclear free & independent Pacific has come.

http://melbournesocialforum.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=79&Itemid=76