This post was first published at Overland Journal earlier this week. In high school my English teacher gave advanced reading to students who were keen, and the first novel was To Kill A Mockingbird. Harper Lee’s book is a story of racism in the American South, as everyone knows, but it also included a salutary lesson [...]
20 Mar
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Here’s my latest for ABC’s The Drum website, published yesterday. Australian politics has a strange ‘centre’ at the moment, and the dial seems increasingly to fall at the feet of Malcolm Turnbull. His presence on shows like Q&A results in both calls for him to reassume the Liberal Party leadership, and the suggestion he is an ALP member in disguise. Analogies [...]
30 Jan
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Overland Journal has produced a special online edition, discussing the Occupy movement. Elizabeth has an article on the antecedents to Occupy in the Global Justice Movement and the Zapatista uprising.
26 Jan
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A number of myths have shaped Australia’s national identity in profound ways. The possibility of a vast inland sea saw many early settlers search the interior of the country unfruitfully, often meeting an untimely death. The kernel of this myth was a 1798 report to the Colonial Office by First Fleet botanist Joseph Banks: It [...]
25 Jan
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Here is a link to my article on feminism, published yesterday at the ABC’s The Drum website. I don’t call myself a feminist. But some of my best friends are feminists.
31 Dec
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Happy New Year to all our readers. Thank you for you thoughts and comments on Left Flank, in what was a year of revolutions and a return to politics from below in many corners of the world. Of course we’re not all politics here, just mostly, so here are other parts of our last 12 months [...]
21 Dec
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Photo of Cairo street art by Hossam el-Hamalawy. A new issue of the journal Interface was released last week, announcement below. Volume 3/2 (November 2011): Feminism, women’s movements and women in movement Issue editors: Sara Motta, Cristina Flesher Fominaya, Catherine Eschle, Laurence Cox Volume three, issue two of Interface, a peer-reviewed e-journal produced and refereed by social movement practitioners [...]
17 Dec
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Whatever criticism one may have of the Occupy Everywhere movement, its central idea that ‘We Are the 99%’ speaks to the many people who sense a deep injustice in the current socio-economic system. People do not feel they have it ‘better than ever’, even in Australia, and many point to the diminished freedom they feel [...]
07 Nov
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Tad and Elizabeth are both presenting conference papers at this year’s Historical Materialism conference, held in Central London later this week. UK readers can register for the conference here.
04 Nov
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Occupy Sydney: photo by Kate Ausburn This week ABC’s The Drum published an article by Tad on the Occupy Movement and the demand from many that it list its ‘demands’. Below is the article in full. Tad was also interviewed on ABC Brisbane about this question. It’s been remarkable to see the sheer number of public lectures and admonishments – delivered [...]
13 Apr
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