[Publisher’s Note: G20 needs people like Ciaron O’Reilly to draw focus to their decisions … to their sideshow. G20 relies on the rallies and marches as well to show that the ladder of the law has a top and a bottom.
The question yet to be answered: where is the organisation that is going to resist these free market swindlers? What form should it take? As a marxist I say it should be democratic and it should be at the centre not a network on the fringe.
Capitalism
It should engage workers because what do we bring to the table of capitalism? Our labour! How do we pay for our housing? Our labour! How do we raise our kids and give them a start? Our labour! How do we provide child care when we have to go to work? Through our labour! How do we organise to protect our wages and conditions? Through workers organisations, unions.
On the Fringe
Organisations like Catholic Worker (from which Ciaron O’Reilly comes) have focused on unjust war, and so they should. But what connection do such organisations have with workers? I suppose the same could be asked of former president of the ACTU, Sharan Burrows, who spoke at the People’s Summit about an alternative economic agenda. About bringing workers in developing countries up on the economic ladder.
Institutions
How do we build solidarity? The Aboriginal people do this through the sacred fire, it may surprise some whitefellas but the fire is an institution of decision making. How do workers have a say? We see plenty of organisations of the Left come and go, but have they addressed this problem directly. I think not. Left organisations do not participate, they abstain from organising with workers when it is not directly in their own interest (recruitment). This prevents democratic decision making and that is what we need to build a better world without exploitation of our labour..
Organisation
Just as our labour is central to our struggle against capitalism that exploits us, our organisation must be central to resistance against capitalism.
I post this article (below) from the Brisbane Times below to highlight the legal fiction of G20 exclusions. Ciaron O’Reilly said he was going to ‘shirt-front’ Obama about the war. As a result he is excluded from G20 and First Nations events in Musgrave Park and BrisCan meetings and the rally and march today beginning at 9am and going till noon at Roma Street Forum today Saturday 15 Nov 2014.
Ian Curr
15 Nov 2014
Workers of all countries unite!]
Well-known political activist Ciaron O’Reilly was surrounded by police while sitting on Boundary Street in West End about 3pm.
Mr O’Reilly, who was previously jailed in the United States for breaking into a military base, was issued with an exclusion notice barring him from G20 restricted areas including South Brisbane.
He was holding a posters that read “Free Julian Assange” and “Obama, O-Bomber, O-Bummer” when police approached him.
“In less than two minutes, an unmarked car pulled up and two plain clothes detectives came out and had this standing order,” Mr O’Reilly told ABC News.
“They said I’m the third person banned and they decided this morning and they haven’t given me an explanation.
“I think it is an outrageous infringement of my civil rights.”
One witness, who requested not to be named, said a number of police officers surrounded Mr O’Reily while two plain-clothes officials handed him the exclusion notice.
It is understood Mr O’Reilly, who describes himself as a non-violent anti-war protester, was the third person to be barred from the G20 restricted zones.
Mr O’Reilly was sentenced to 13 months’ jail after he was involved in disarming a B52 Bomber at a New York military base during the 1991 Gulf War.
A passerby who photographed Mr Riley speaking with police was taken for questioning and asked to provide identification.
Police Commissioner Ian Stewart has the authority to prohibit people from the G20 security zones under the G20 (Safety and Security) Act.
Deputy Commissioner Ross Barnett said, in total, four people have been declared prohibited persons, two of whom were notified today.
“One of them has already been served and the other will be shortly,” he said.
Eleven people have been barred from re-entering the declared zones, including Brisbane’s CBD, after run-ins with police.
Assistant Commissioner Katarina Carroll said there was “extensive reasoning” behind the decision to declare the four people as prohibited, such as evidence of past violence or disruption of events.
“In some cases there may have been (evidence they planned disrupting the G20) but, as the Deputy Commissioner indicated, we won’t be divulging further operational security information,” she said.
– with additional reporting by Cameron Atfield
Read more: http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/brisbane-g20/activist-ciaron-o8217reilly-prohibited-from-g20-banned-man-arrested-20141113-11mabg.html#ixzz3J4P5fSqY
– with additional reporting by Cameron Atfield
https://scontent-a-lax.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xap1/t31.0-8/10482084_10152871226954328_4128587872406332879_o.jpg
The Lizards have broken their silence on the G20 and have sent this EXCLUSIVE statement to 4ZZZ:
The Brisbane Lizard Liberation Front have broken their silence on the G20 Safety and Security Act which has condemned the reptile to the status of prohibited item.
A spokesperson for the BLLF said that they intend to resist the laws.
Reptiles are one of many things on the list of prohibited items in the G20 laws that have come into effect this week.
The lizard said:
There are reports that blue tongues, skinks and bearded dragons have been hassled repeatedly by the police, being handed exclusion notices and locked up in temporary watch houses.
The BLLF said:
[thnx A.]
Meeting this morning, 8am at Musgrave Park regarding potential peaceful “welcoming/farewell committee” actions. Byo ideas, placards, friends. Please share.
For updates throughout the day call 0475419739
——————————————————————————–
Ordinary citizens organising for social justice in response to the G20. Brisbane, Australia.
List members are private, only list members can view posts or archives. Mind you, this may not stop them.
Simple or simplistic?
Tony Abbot agrees with you, he sees disabled and aged pensioners as unemployed workers too, just as Julia Gillard saw single parents as unemployed workers.
I am not unemployed, I gave up work to become a carer. Pensioners are pensioners because they cannot work.
Carers do work but our circumstance cannot be compared to a “job” that has OHS standards, compo, superannuation, sick days, holidays and most importantly – a wage. Whatever job, no matter how inadequate the wages and conditions, it is literally in a different “class” to the work-life of a carer.
Disabled pensioners cannot “work” (at least not more than fifteen hours a week by definition). Their contribution to society, sense of their own social worth and indeed path to social liberation does not lie in the workplace but in the community. Many work for very low wages, down to even a dollar an hour in sheltered workshops or supported workplaces or do volunteer work so that they can identify as a “worker”, which for many people is very important in a society that denies identity to non-workers. However even these workers are, by any standard you choose to measure, in a different economic class to even an unskilled casual worker. The most successful and fair model of “work” for disability pensioners has been cottage industries and self managed small businesses, making them somewhere between the bourgeoisie and peasantry, but not workers.
It is cruel to expect old people to work, they are not unemployed workers. For those who have retired or been laid off, the workplace no longer has any agency for them. Elders power is in the family and community.
What is common amongst carers, the disabled and single parents is institutionalised poverty. This is primarily what defines them as a different class from workers. It is not like temporary unemployment or sickness that can be recovered from after returning to work, pensioners are permanently parked in poverty.
Claiming the underclass to be part of the working class is like Pauline Hanson saying we are all Australians – it ignores the economic differential and denies the hierarchy. The truth is not so simplistic.
The underclass is real, its big and its growing. It is not just a dormant adjunct to the working class, it has its own class consciousness and experience. Revolutions are always motivated by poverty and never motivated by affluence. If you (or anyone else) dismiss the class reality of several million Australians or try to ideologically subsume it into the agency of a more privileged class, then you will be just as detached from the engine of real social change as you suggest the Catholic Workers are.
http://unlearningtheproblem.wordpress.com/
I think you are right, John. My statement (in blue) was too simplistic. Thank you.
It is true, people’s worth does lie in the community … a community the Left in Brisbane has failed to build 🙁
Contrast this to what blackfellas in Brisbane have been able to achieve! They have built community.
Similarly in Cuba.
in solidarity,
Ian
Published on Nov 13, 2014
Today in Brisbane, Ciaron O’Reilly – a long term non-violent anti-war protester – was served a notice declaring he has been added to a ”prohibited persons list” and banned from entering the G20 Security Zone.
TOTT News spoke to O’Reilly immediately following his banning from the event, to get his thoughts on what has just happened, the G20, the situation in Iraq and much more!
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I am not disagreeing with you but my immediate response to this is it doesn’t include me.
I am one of about four million Australian pensioners – aged, disability, carer and parenting. There are also two hundred thousand long term unemployed.
What can I or the legions of my underclass comrades make of a statement like “our labour is central to our struggle against capitalism”?
And perhaps even more alienating – “it should be democratic and it should be at the centre not a network on the fringe.”
My comrades and I can only be found on the fringe, we are excluded from the centre.
As I look at the working class, the class above me in the ladder, I see they are entangled and addicted to mortgages, superannuation funds and consumerism. Their personal individual and family interests are chained to the success of capitalism. I am not sure I would trust what they might come up with in their democratic process.
http://unlearningtheproblem.wordpress.com/
You are an unemployed worker john, it is that simple.