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Keywords: Activist

  • AUSTRALIA

    Now more than ever, the personal is political

    • Neve Mahoney
    • 28 November 2018
    7 Comments

    Witnessing the sense of relief from Australian-African activists at the outcome of the Victorian state election, I was not sure why I had a sense of déjà vu. Then I realised this collective exhale reminded me vividly of the sentiment from the LGBTQ community after the marriage equality survey results were announced.

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  • MEDIA

    Media complicit in normalising fascism

    • Celeste Liddle
    • 13 August 2018
    6 Comments

    For too long, the media has been complicit in maintaining the conditions which allow the likes of Cottrell and Hanson to become 'figures'. They fuel history wars, demonise migrants, target Aboriginal activists, objectify and ridicule women while ensuring at the end of the day, the Murdochs and Packers of the world still have hefty pay cheques.

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  • MEDIA

    Trickle-down white feminism doesn't cut it

    • Laura La Rosa
    • 27 June 2018
    16 Comments

    #MeToo, a movement founded and nurtured by Tarana Burke (a civil rights activist and a woman of colour), was intended to be collective and accessible. By contrast, in Australia we are seeing a mainstream picture of women's liberation that ignores a longstanding struggle for diversity, genuine inclusiveness and radicalism.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Palm Sunday protests demand a better way

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 21 March 2018
    15 Comments

    Critics are right to say the marches are ineffectual in the face of bipartisan and popular support for Australia's brutal behaviour. But the faces of those who take part - refugees and activists, older Australians and children, churchgoers and atheists - witness that the Australian community can wear a compassionate face.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Are Israel boycotts really anti-Semitic?

    • Na'ama Carlin
    • 14 February 2018
    12 Comments

    When New Zealand singer Lorde cancelled her 2018 concert in Israel, she joined the ranks of artists who boycott Israel to protest its occupation of Palestine. The Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement is contentious in Israel/Palestine activist or Jewish circles, with some calling it anti-Semitic.

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  • RELIGION

    Philippines needs pro-social justice church

    • Erin Cook
    • 17 January 2018
    4 Comments

    Though public health activists in the Philippines point to the church's influence in keeping sex education out of schools and contraceptive sales low as a major factor in the country's rising HIV rate, when it comes to taking on Duterte the church is the country's strongest progressive force. But that may be set to change.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The inconvenience of being doomed

    • Megan Graham
    • 10 August 2017
    5 Comments

    'The evening news has become like a nature hike through the Book Of Revelations,' says Al Gore, the politician-cum-climate activist who made waves with his Oscar-winning 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Tolkien's inspiration for climate advocates

    • Tim Beshara
    • 29 June 2017
    14 Comments

    To Tolkien, 'the long defeat' described the idea that so often in the world you find yourself fighting for a cause where there is very little chance of success, but you fight for it anyway because it is the right thing to do and because you can't imagine doing anything else. He paired this with the concept of eucatastrophe, a sudden and unexpected change of fortune for the better. Despondent climate activists do well to remember that the latter doesn't come without the former.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Swedish politicians' veiled let-down of Iranian feminists

    • Azadeh Davachi
    • 16 February 2017
    4 Comments

    Sweden's feminist Trade Minister Ann Linde has come under sharp criticism from some Iranian women's rights activists after she and her female colleagues wore hijab and long coats in their meetings with the Iranian president and other delegations in Tehran. Later Linde maintained she did not want to violate the law in Iran where it has been mandatory for women to wear headdress since 1979. This flies in the face of the Swedish government's position on women's rights.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Men's rights activists need to take a chill pill

    • Neve Mahoney
    • 27 October 2016
    24 Comments

    The 'men's rights' documentary The Red Pill has been pulled from Melbourne's Palace Kino cinema, sparking debate over censorship and what constitutes partisan reporting. The men's rights movement holds that 'feminism has gone too far', to the point that men are discriminated against. Since the internet and the third wave of feminism, the majority of MRA groups seem to be little more than a veil for misogynists to legitimise their sexism. It's a shame, because there are some MRA groups who raise real issues.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Reconciling with president-elect Duterte

    • Fatima Measham
    • 13 May 2016
    5 Comments

    The campaign left me bewildered. The things Duterte represents - vigilantism, unilateralism and violence - aren't these the same things that Filipino human rights activists had fought against? Is this now the preferred template for imposing order? I parsed post after post on social media, trying to working out what I was missing. For months I asked myself, what the hell went wrong? It is only lately that I'm beginning to accept that I got the wrong end of the question. What went wrong? Everything.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    System must work for victims, not against them

    • Fatima Measham
    • 01 April 2016

    For victims and survivors, the royal commission report into family violence comes as catharsis. For activists and advocates, it is vindication. Perpetrators thrive on impunity. Impunity is built on uncertainty of punishment, cultures of silence, victim-blaming and perceived collusion with figures of authority. Dismantling this is central to violence prevention and ensuring the safety of women and children in the home. The royal commission addresses this goal across 227 recommendations.

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