Green Left Weekly Activist Calendar 2012-01-18

Coming events

Wednesday, January 18

Solidarity candelight vigil for hunger strikers at Broadmeadows. See display advertisement above. 7-10pm. Melbourne Immigration Transit Accomodation, 120-150 Camp Road, Broadmeadows (behind Maygar army Barracks). Bring a candle. Organised by Refugee Action Collective. For more info ph Daniella Olea 0404 189 272 or Sue Bolton 0413 377 978.

Friday, January 20

Rally: Honour freedom fighters Tunnerminnerwait & Maulboyheener. Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner were among five Tasmanian Aborigines who conducted a campaign of resistance to European settlement in 1841 around Western Port and South Gippsland near Melbourne. After three military expeditions they were finally captured and brought back to Melbourne for trial. They were not allowed to give evidence themselves. The two men were found guilty of murder, with the jury saying due to the circumstances mercy should be granted. No mercy was given and Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner were the first judicial executions to take place in Melbourne on January 20, 1842 before a crowd of 5000, a quarter of the population of Melbourne at the time. 12 noon. RMIT entrance, cnr Bowen & Franklin Sts, City.

Rally: Occupy Melbourne: Occupy Fridays! Contributors to Occupy Melbourne have organised a recurring occupation of City Square held every Friday. Occupy Fridays is our chance to reclaim our voice and our square! Organised events include Q & A sessions, debates, guest speakers, spoken word, bands/music, skills training sessions, discussion groups and Working Group meetings! The aim of this is to get people involved in their community, meet like-minded people, learn some new skills and feel empowered to take action for a better world today! 10am-10pm. City Square, cnr Collins & Swanston Sts, City. For more info visit Occupy Melbourne.

Saturday, January 21

Public meeting: The war on the internet. The response of governments and corporations to Wikileaks, Anonymous, the Occupy movement and the Arab Spring has been defensive and warlike. The internet and social media were declared tools of agitation. Behaviour that sought peaceful democratic reform was characterised as treasonous or even terrorist. Speakers: Jacob Applebaum (core member of the Tor project for online anonymity, based at the University of Washington, he has been repeatedly targeted by US law enforcement); Bernard Keane (Crikey journalist, author of War on the Internet); Scott Ludlam ( Australian Greens senator); Suelette Dreyfus (author & researcher on whistleblowing). A message from Julian Assange will kick off the event. Entry free. 3pm. New Council Chambers, Trades Hall, cnr Victoria & Lygon Sts, Carlton South. Organised by Electronic Frontiers Australia & the Greens.

Public meeting: Global day of solidarity with the ongoing Egyptian revolution. Speakers: Alaa Abdul-Fattah (activist), Said Sadek (academic), Fatima Naout (writer), Nawwara Negm (writer). 6:30pm. Brunswick Town Hall, 233 Sydney Rd, Brunswick. For more info ph Hani 0421 370 501 or Reham 0425 743 375.

Saturday, January 21-Sunday January 22

Festival: Wominjeka Festival. Footscray Community Arts Centre and Maribyrnong City Council present a celebration of Koorie culture featuring: The Black Arm Band Company performing Murundak. Wominjeka means welcome in the language of the Kulin Nation and you are invited to welcome in 2012 with this free celebration of Koorie culture. Entry free. 6-10pm Saturday; 11am–4.30pm Sunday. River Lawn, Footscray Community Arts Centre, 45 Moreland St, Footscray.

Thursday, January 26

Canberra Rally: Stand up & be counted on Sovereignty Day. Invitation to the 40th anniversary of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy. For more info visit Sovereignty Day.

Festival: Share the Spirit Festival 2012. Celebrating Survival Day. Indigenous music, dance and culture as part of Melbourne’s official Survival Day celebrations. 1-7pm. Treasury Gardens.

Festival: 2012 Belgrave Survival Day. This event acknowledges the indigenous perspective on the 230 years of European occupation of Australia, and celebrates the survival of the oldest living culture on the globe through live music, storytelling, traditional dance and craft. Speakers will include in Elder Aunty Dot Peters from Healesville, Gary Presland and Rodney Augustine from the Save the Kimberley campaign. Featuring Yung Warriors and Lou Bennett; traditional stories by Gnarnayarrahe Waitairie and the Jindi Worobak Dance Troupe; Wurundjeri elders will be undertaking a smoking ceremony. 12 noon-4pm. Borthwick Park (next to the Belgrave Pool), Benson St, Belgrave.

Friday, January 27

Rally: Occupy Melbourne: Occupy Fridays! See January 20 entry. 10am-10pm. City Square, cnr Collins & Swanston Sts, City. For more info visit Occupy Melbourne.

Saturday, January 28

Public meeting: Melbourne Sexuality, Sex & Gender Collective campaign launch. MSSGC is a campaign collective which has specifically been set up as a broad, inclusive group with the goal of campaigning around issues that will target homophobia, transphobia & sexism among young people. 3pm. Resistance Centre, level 5, 407 Swanston St, City (opposite RMIT). For more info ph 9639 8622 or 0432 719 335.

Film screening: Backroads. Phillip Noyce's legendary first featurette, a gritty hybrid of B-noir, 1970s road movie and black-white race relations allegory, stars Bill Hunter and Aboriginal actor/activist Gary Foley as a pair of petty criminals on the run in a big yellow Pontiac along the dusty roads of western NSW. Presented in collaboration with the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia. 4pm. ACMI Cinemas, Federation Square, City. $8 (ACMI members $6).

Thursday, February 2

Public meeting: After 'Homosexual'. The legacies of gay liberation. Speakers: Dennis Altman; Alice Echols; Jeffrey Weeks; hosted by Helen Razer. 6pm. ACMI, Federation Square, City. Presented by La Trobe University & the Australian Lesbian & Gay Archives. $17/14. For more info visit Midsumma.

Friday, February 3

Rally: Occupy Melbourne: Occupy Fridays! See January 20 entry. 10am-10pm. City Square, cnr Collins & Swanston Sts, City. For more info visit Occupy Melbourne.

Booklaunch: Life Without Money. Building Fair and Sustainable Economies. This book engages with today's big economic, environmental, democratic and social challenges; edited by Anitra Nelson & Frans Timmerman. Speaker: Jeff Sparrow (editor Overland). Entry free. 6:30pm. Readings Bookshop, 309 Lygon St, Carlton.

Saturday, February 4

Booklaunch: Life Without Money. Building Fair and Sustainable Economies. Speakers: Moss Cass, (former Whitlam government minister) & Julia Dehm (Occupy Melbourne activist) in conversation with Anitra Nelson and Frans Timmerman (co-editors of Life Without Money). 3pm. New International Book Shop, Trades Hall, Carlton South.

Sunday, February 5

Rally: Pride march. Gather from 12 noon for march at 2pm Sharp. Cnr Lakeside Dr & Fitzroy St, St Kilda. For more info visit Pride march.

Tuesday, February 7

Film screening: The end of the line. Where have all the fish gone? The first major feature documentary film revealing the impact of overfishing on our oceans; we see firsthand the effects of our global love affair with fish as food. Talk with Sea Shepherd after the film. 7pm. Level 4, Ross House, 247 Flinders Lane, City. Entry by donation. The Big Picture at Ross House is a monthly film series showing films for the environment and social justice. This month we're supporting Sea Shepherd.

Friday, February 10

Rally: Israeli Apartheid Inc. Corporate criminals BDS tour. As part of the global Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions campaign, Students for Palestine is taking on corporations in Melbourne's CBD that support the theft of Palestinian land and the brutality of the Israeli military. 6pm. Bourke St, Mall. For more info visitStudents for Palestine or ph 0410 513 302.

Rally: Occupy Melbourne: Occupy Fridays! See January 20 entry. 10am-10pm. City Square, cnr Collins & Swanston Sts, City. For more info visit Occupy Melbourne.

Saturday, February 11

Rally: Stop Aboriginal deaths in custody. Death in custody of Terrance Briscoe, Alice Springs (January 5, 2012); 4th anniversary of the death of Mr Ward (January 27); 5th anniversary of Queensland Police officer, Chris Hurley, being forced to front the Supreme Court charged with manslaughter and assault (February 5); 8th anniversary of the death of TJ Hickey (February 14). Stop Aboriginal deaths in custody: implement all 339 recommendations of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. End privatisation of custodial services: cancel all contracts with G4S, SERCO and other profiteers from incarceration. 11am. Old GPO, cnr Bourke & Elizabeth Sts, City. Organised by Indigenous Social Justice Association. For more info ph 9388 0062.

Public meeting: Melbourne Climate Action Groups Meeting 2012. (Note change of date). 9am-5pm. South Melbourne Commons. Entry by donation. For more info email Brett.

Indigenous rights film festival. Featuring: The Coolbaroo Club (about racial apartheid in Perth in the late 1940s and fifties); The Tall Man (deals with the killing of Cameron Doomadgee on Palm Island in 2004); Ningla A-Na [Hungry for our land] (documentary about the establishment of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra in 1972). Starts 3pm. Further details TBA. Resistance Centre, level 5, 407 Swanston St, City (opposite RMIT). Organised by Green Left Weekly & Socialist Alliance. For more info ph 9639 8622.

Friday, February 17

Film screening: Our Generation. Outdoor screening of documentary made by Sinem Saban & Damien Curtis about the NT Intervention; and a short film about the Kimberley campaign opposing the proposed gas hub at James Price Point. The screening will be preceded by live music and speakers including Greens Senator Richard di Natale. The focus is on making connections between the issues affecting indigenous communities in northern Australia, and involving us all in finding solutions. Doors open 6pm, speakers 7pm, and live music until dark, feature starts at 9pm. $20/$16. Bookings CERES. CERES Village Green, cnr Roberts & Stewart Sts, Brunswick East. For more info ph 9389 0100.

Friday, February 17-Sunday, February 19

Festival: Sustainable Living Festival 2012. Federation Square & Birrarung Marr Event Park, near cnr Swanston & Flinders Sts, City. For more info visit SLF.

Sunday, February 19

The 'Please resist me' poetry slam tour Melbourne launch. Hosted by esteemed poet and rapper Omar Musa (Moneykat). 6:30pm. Performance Revolt, 12 Elizabeth St, Kensington. $18/$15. Organised by the Centre for Poetics and Justice. For more info visit CPJ.

Tuesday, February 28

Rally: India's general strike: Melbourne supports the world's largest ever strike. On February 28, over 100 million Indians will join together and walk off the job in what is likely to be the largest strike of workers the world has ever seen. The different labor unions have specific demands that they want to achieve with the strike. These include bringing contract workers up to the same level of employee protections as permanent workers, extending the minimum wage to cover the entire population, and countering the attacks on unions. Workers around the world will be standing in solidarity with those fighting for economic justice in India. 5:30pm. Federation Square, City. For more info visit Workers' Solidarity Network.

Thursday, March 8

Public meeting: The Occupy movement: An infantile disorder? Melbourne University Graduate House, 220 Leicester St, Carlton. For more info visit The Monthly Argument.

Sunday, March 11

Rally: Commemoration of Fukushima nuclear disaster. Part of international day of action. 1pm. State Library, cnr Swanston & Latrobe Sts, City. Organised by MAPW, ICAN, Japanese for Peace and others. For more info visit 11 March.

Friday, April 6

Canberra Rally: Easter convergence on Darwin 2012. Free the refugees, end mandatory detention. Marks 10 years since the refugee rights movement's first Easter convergence at Woomera 2002, when busloads of protesters from across the country met magnificent protests by detainees, many of whom leapt through the fence and literally into the arms of the movement. Darwin is rapidly becoming Australia's detention capital. Chronic levels of self-harm and protest have put the Northern Immigration Detention Centre (NIDC) in a state of perpetual crisis. 341 continue to languish at NIDC, with scores more at the Darwin Airport Lodge For more info visit RAC.

Campaign committees

Melbourne Anti-Intervention Collective (MAIC) meets meets on the first and third Monday of each month, 6.30pm on Level 4 of the rear building at Trades Hall, Lygon & Victoria Sts Carlton. For info, ph 0431 311 520 or visit MAI Collective.

Refugee Action Collective (RAC). For more info ph 0413 377 978 or visit RAC.

Stop HRL: No New Coal Power For Victoria meetings. Join the community campaign against HRL's proposed new coal-fired power station. For more info visit Stop HRL or call 0402 337 077.