Solidarity with the people of the Philippines fighting political repression and attacks against the progressive people's movement.

Urgent call for solidarity with the people of the Philippines to stop widespread political repression and attacks.  Sunday 10 November 4.30 pm Federation Square.

In the last few days, the US/Duterte government has escalated violent attacks and repression against the progressive people's movement in the Philippines.  More than 62 progressive activists have been arrested and their organisations raided.

Shirley Winton
co-convenor
Spirit of Eureka (Vic.)

See below for the recently released statement by the International League of People's Struggles (ILPS). Spirit of Eureka is an affiliate of ILPS.

Read more: Stop the political repressions in the Philippines! Stop the attacks!

by Humphrey McQueen

Posted with permission of the author

(First published in Arena Magazine, no. 161, September 2019, pp. 17-18.)

To headline Barry Morris’s comments (Arena, May 2019) on the Frontier-Wars contingent at the Canberra Anzac Day parades with the police sergeant’s ‘This is Not a Day for You’ is to silence the indigenous ex-serviceman who shot back: ‘When is our day?’

That omission is a microcosm of how becoming fixated on massacres can marginalise the ways by which first peoples continue to defend country. If the Right denies what the invaders did to them, segments of the Left do not care to hear what they did to the un-settlers. The map of massacre sites across Eastern Australia compiled by Lyndall Ryan’s group is one more weapon against depicting ‘settlement’ as sweetness and light. To present even more of the truth, the map needs to be overlain by one locating the multiplicity of actions undertaken by first peoples – from assaults on explorers to driving flocks over cliffs. James Scott reminds us why Weapons of the Weak (1987) are not necessarily weak in their impact on their oppressors.

Read more: ‘When is Our Day?’