Sudeep Lingamneni Presents G20 photo story
This photo story created by Sudeep depicts images from ‘G20′ protest that took place in November 2006. Sudeep makes this contribution to the 2009 Melbourne Social Forum In the Hot-House festival.
Sudeep Lingamneni Presents Army of Gods
This photo story created by Sudeep depicts ‘Army of Gods’, images from Indian religious festivals. Sudeep makes this contribution to the 2009 Melbourne Social Forum In the Hot-House festival.
The following is a detailed schedule of the event and important information for the G20 Alternative – Creating Community Forum.
Map of the event
The location for the event is Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT). For a map of the event, please go to:
http://actionforesight.net/lists/dl.php?id=7
Volunteers
Free Lunch on the day for any volunteer…
Any volunteer who can give a few hours of their time on the day will get a free lunch at the Lentil as Anything G20 Alternative Bistro!
Email volunteers@melbournesocialforum.org or info@melbournesocialforum.org
Stalls by Creating Community
An impressive gathering of stall holders will showcase many of the local organisations that create the alternatives that make our lives better everyday, in big and small ways.
Schedule of the day
10:45-11:00 AM
Welcome to country
Casey Plaza
11:00-12:00 Noon
MUSIC for AWAKENING by: Tr1be (world beat)
Casey Plaza
WORKSHOPS: 11AM-12AM
Real Aid or Regional Thuggery – Australia’s role in the Pacific?
What’s really going on with the RAMSI intervention in the Solomons? Why is Australia’s billions of dollars spent in the Pacific making our neighbours so cranky? Come and discuss how the vision of ‘Aid effectiveness’ that is shared by the Australian government and the G20 perpetuates a flawed model of development and explore why Australia’s aid to the Pacific is a textbook case of global aid priorities gone wrong.
Kate Wheen
AID/WATCH
Ph. 02 9557 8944
www.aidwatch.org.au
Lentil as Anything G20 Alt Bistro / RMIT Union Function Room
Iraq – America’s Achilles heel
After three and a half years, over 2,000 dead US troops, 650,000 dead Iraqi people, things aren’t looking so good for the Empire. With the anti-war movement growing, their army looking shaky and the Coalition governments getting nervous, this is the perfect time for the Anti-War movement in Australia to start upping the anti. Come to participate in a forum on how we can help get the troops out of Iraq, with discussions of upcoming anti-war mobilisations such as the 4th anniversary protests in march next year and Bush coming to Australia for APEC.
Presented by Resistance
Building 8, Level 6, Room 47
Queer Activist Network (QAN)
Join members of the newly formed Queer Activist Network (QAN) to discuss the campaign for free HIV/AIDS care in developing countries. We will also talk about the future of QAN and other QAN campaigns such as repealing homophobic laws, queer refugees and the national queer space campaign.
see: http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/687/687p9b.htm
Building 8, Level 6, Room 48
Justice for Palestine!
International collaboration and skill-share workshop for Palestine solidarity activists.
Organised by Auckland University Students for Justice in Palestine, Aotearoa Jews for Justice and Melbourne Palestine Solidarity Network.
Phone 0406 402 401 Email: melbourne.palestine@gmailvisit http://ausjp.wordpress.com/ and www.melbourne-palestine.info
Building 8, Level 6, Room 46
12:00-1:00 PM
Dialogue on Addressing Debt-Poverty
Maria de Lourdes Vicente da Silva – Landless Workers Movement of Brazil (MST)
Mike Cebon – Global Trade Watch
Stephen Jolly – Socialist Party
Kate Wheen – AID/WATCH
Casey Plaza
1:00-2:00 PM
Voices of Local Alternatives
Creating Communities will give voice to the many local alternatives that exist all around us. Stall holders speak about the many different community based alternatives they embody.
Casey Plaza
WORKSHOPS 1:00-2:00PM
Climate Change – The Case for Zero Emissions
This presentation will briefly outline what is climate change and why today’s global warming is human forced. It will look at tipping points, feedback loops, lag effects and global dimming and why because of these we must immediately adopt a Zero Emissions goal. It will explore near Zero Emission solutions focusing on the stationary energy sector.
Matthew Wright is a campaigner with Beyond Zero Emissions, an independent Zero Emissions climate change campaign based in Melbourne.
@ Lentil as Anything G20 Alt Bistro / RMIT Union Function Room
Venezuela – Making poverty history TODAY
Special guest: Nelson Davila – Venezuelan Charge d’affairs to Australia
Since the election of the Chavez government in 1999, Venezuela has
pursued an economic path opposite to that prescribed by the G20, World
Bank and the IMF. Rejecting the profits first ethos of these
institutions Venezuela has used the nations wealth for the benefit of
workers and the poor.
Free education and medical care systems have been established.
Illiteracy has been eradicated. More housing for the poor has been
built in two years than in the previous 20 years. Workers
self-management of some major factories has been developed and
millions of hectares of unused, yet arable land has been taken from
large companies and re-distributed to landless poor people.
These achievements contrast to those countries in Latin American that
are yet to break from the IMF model. Venezuela has become an
inspiration to people all over the world. Nelson Davila, the
Venezuelan government representative in Australia, will explore the
achievements and challenges of the “Bolivarian Revolution”.
“The only way to defeat poverty is to give power to the people” – Hugo Chavez Frias – President of Venezuela
Ph 9639 8622 or 0425 887 078
Presented by the Australia Venezuela Solidarity Network
BLD 8, Level 6, Room 47
The IRON WALL – A film by Mohammed Alatar
“Zionist colonization must either stop, or else proceed regardless of the native population. Which means that it can proceed and develop only under the protection of a power that is independent of the native population – behind an IRON WALL, which the native population cannot breach.” – Zionist leader, Vladimir Jabotinsky, 1923
The Iron Wall exposes the aim of the settlement movement and the Apartheid Wall to create facts on the ground to make the creation of a Palestinian state impossible.
Organised by Melbourne Palestine Solidarity Network
Phone 0406 402 401
email melbourne.palestine@gmail
visit www.melbourne-palestine.info
BLD 8, Level 9, Rm46
Australian Corporate complicity in Iraq
AID/WATCH campaigner Kate Wheen and Newcastle University academic Chris Doran will specifically focus on Australia’s enthusiastic participation in the Neo-liberal wet dream that became Iraq’s economy as well as give a revealing analysis of where government aid money was really going at the time of this unnecessary war.
Kate Wheen
AID/WATCH
Ph. 02 9557 8944
www.aidwatch.org.au
BLD 8, Level 9, Room 43
Camp Sovereignty workshop
Robbie Thorpe will talk about past & present actions such as the
Stolenwealth Games. His aim is to raise the awareness of indigenous
reform concepts and get them into practice. Robbie has a list of key
reforms, starting with the sacred fire. The importance of these reforms
are paramount as they aim to rebuild indigenous culture from the ground
up. Along the way, non-indigenous can help and learn about the world’s
oldest known culture.
BLD 8, Level 9, Rm44
Creating a Future for People in Mexico
A workshop on the Zapatistas Community experiences or how the people in Atenco and or Oaxaca are organising against state repression, Multi National Corporations and Neo-liberalism.
Heriberto Salas – The other campaign, Mexico
BLD 8, Level 6, Room 46
2:00-3:00 PM
Dialogue on Addressing Climate Change
Cam Walker – Friends of the Earth
Geoff Davies – Australian National University
Donna Lorenz – EarthTech
Casey Plaza
3:00-4:00 PM
Yemanja: Jazz, Samba and Funk duo (www.yemanja.com.au)
Casey Plaza
Peoples Health Movement
The Peoples Health Movement, is a global coalition of grassroots and health activist organizations whose goal is to re-establish health and equitable development as top priorities in local, national and international policy-making.
Despite overall increases in life expectancy in the past century, economic prosperity and development is widening the gap between the healthy and wealthy on one hand, and the poor and unwell on the other. Economic disparities both within and between countries has grown. In about 100 countries incomes are lower in real terms than they were a decade ago. By 1995, the world’s richest 225 people had the combined wealth equivalent to the annual income of the poorest 225 billion people in the world (nearly half of the world’s population). At the same time the environment is being plundered and degraded, and the world is facing a growing scarcity of renewable resources.
Health is a social goal and a responsibility across our whole society. In both rich and poor countries, people’s health largely depends on the social conditions in which they work and live. By acting on social causes of ill health, governments can reduce health disparities, promote population health and create and sustain economically viable societies.
Web http://phmovement.org/
Email: chamberl [at} ihug.com.au
@ Lentil as Anything G20 Alternative Bistro / RMIT Union Function Room
DISMANTLING CORPORATE RULE
Corporations have become the dominant institution of our time. They have hijacked our government and economy – our very democracy. A movement is growing to claim our sovereign power to make corporations subordinate. This workshop teaches the history and context for corporate power and will help participants to take the “1st Steps” necessary to reclaim our democracy from corporations. It will address the history and root causes of the rise of corporate power, and corporate usurpation of our democratic authority to govern ourselves, particularly via the legal doctrine of corporate personhood.
Corporate personhood is the legal doctrine which recognises corporations and private firms as having the same legal entitlements as natural persons, which in turn ensures corporate access to the democratic process while simultaneously guaranteeing it many of the same protections as private citizens. Corporate personhood is what allows corporations to give donations to political parties; to lobby; to purchase other corporations and eliminate any restrictions to wealth and power, which in turn has allowed corporations an unnatural and hugely undemocratic influence over the political process.
The workshop will also address the origins of corporate personhood and the ascendancy of the corporate form. It will include an analysis of the role of the royal corporate charters as a motivation for the American Revolution, and the restrictions placed on the corporate form in both Britain and the United States until 1886, when the US Supreme Court recognised that corporations were protected under the US constitution’s Bill of Rights. This in turn gave rise to the modern corporation- in Australia and otherwise- as we know it today.It will also address how British law formed the legal context for the Australian colonies up until Federation, when the new constitution established for the first time a national context for administering and regulating the corporate form. Significantly, corporate personhood was firmly and clearly written into the 2001 Corporations Act: “A company has, both within and outside this jurisdiction, the legal capacity of a natural person” (Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) s. 161). The Corporations Act is the legal justification for the Howard government’s Industrial Relations laws.
Presented by Chris Doran
Building 8, Level 6, Room 47
REAL HOPE in Education and Governance
The aim of this workshop is to introduce participants to a new way of seeing the future and learning how to ‘be the change you wish the world to see’. The presenter, Susan Carew is a World Peace Clown and on her return from Russia with Dr. Patch Adams developed the REAL HOPE values based anti-bullying program which she teaches in primary schools. Susan has a degree in Economics and Marketing and completed Peace Studies at La Trobe University in 2002. Susan is currently combining her work in schools and research. She is working as a senior research analyst and believes social change comes from changing ourselves. To do this we need to educate new generation of children with universal values and the tools to govern democratically. Susan will
ntroduce participants to another way of seeing new possibilities through universal values, techniques and activities. Participants will learn:
So imagine the world you want to see happen and realize we have REAL HOPE for the future.
Check out the website on www.worldpeacefull.com or contact Susan at carews@iimetro.com.au
Building 8, Level 9, Room 43
Indigenous Visions,
The Mapuche vision after 500 years of foreign domination. Community organising to challenge Multinational incursions (logging, energy companies).
Carmen Curihuentro – The Mapuche Nation, Chile
Building 8, Level 6, Room 46
DREAMTANK: RAINBOW INDIGENOUS DREAMING: EARTH COUNCIL 2012
DREAMTANK PROMOTE THE FIRST WORLD REFERENDUM ON THE FORMATION OF EARTH COUNCIL. IN BILLIONS OF HEARTS THE DESIRE IS THERE. WE WILL PREVAIL OVER THE MULTI-NATIONAL CORPORATIONS, THE ELITES AND THEIR PUPPET GOVERNMENTS WHO ARE NOT EVIL JUST IGNORANT. THE EARTH IS EXPERIENCING GLOBAL ECOCATASTROPHE RIGHT NOW!
There will be no jobs on a dead planet! We must save our planetary home. Without a vision we are without hope yet there is a cohesive dreaming happening right now. A collaboration of persons and organizations from around the world seek a true planetary government based on the sovereignty of the individual, eco-villages/cities and biosphere regionalization.
The Earth Council ethos is based an interpretation of Australian Aboriginal ethos regarding the proper relationship between human and human, and humans and other life forms:
1. Balance: A system cannot be life enhancing if it is out of kilter, and each part shares in the responsibility of sustaining itself and balancing others.
2. Response: Communication is reciprocal. There is here a moral obligation; to learn, to understand, to pay attention, and to respond.
3. Symmetry: In opposing and balancing each other, parts must be equivalent because the purpose is not to “win” or dominate, but to block thereby producing further balance.
4. Autonomy: No species, no group, or country is “boss” for another; each adheres to its own Law. Authority and dependence are necessary within parts, but not between parts.
Dreamtank promotes the idea everyone is responsible for this awakening, there own awakening and encourage the practice of inner work. Dreamtank supports the The Earthcharter Initiative. Contact www.earthcharter.com
Building 8, Level 9, Room 44
Melbourne Social Forum News – SPECIAL G20 ISSUE
In This Issue
* G20 Alternative Meeting
* G20 Alternative Promotion
* G20 Alternative Volunteers
* G20 Discussion Blog
* G20 News, Actions, Websites and Events
* Next MSF Organising Meeting (November 30)
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Click HERE for the G20 Alternative Media Release or go to:
http://actionforesight.net/lists/dl.php?id=2
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G20 ALTERNATIVE FORUM
A Social Health Crisis is upon us…
Visit the Hospital for G20 Relief
The Melbourne Social Forum, with the help of RMIT’s Student Union and
Creating Community, will provide free disaster relief for addictive
money-centred social structures.
G20 Alternative Meeting
RMIT Swanston Street
Sunday, November 19th
11am – 4pm
Free Admission
The Melbourne Social Forum aims to create an open public space to
discuss, share and act on ideas for sustainable social and ecological
justice. Never has the Melbourne community needed this space more than
on the third weekend of November, when it will host meetings for the
exclusive ‘Group of 20′ to quietly discuss the future of our planet.
While the G20 meets behind closed doors to hatch economics-centred
plans for rapid globalisation, the doors of the Royal Melbourne
Institute of Technology will be open to the public as the Melbourne
Social Forum & Creating Community invite everyone in for a meeting on
two major concerns facing the global population in the 21st century:
World Poverty and Climate Change. This social health program will
include:
• Discussion Therapy (2 x I hour)
There will be two hour-long discussion panels at the G20 Alternative
meeting, held with the intention of fostering as much public
participation as possible. For each topic there will be three panel
participants and a mediator. The panel participants (include Geoff
Davies, Karen Iles, Mike Cebon, Cam Walker, and Steve Jolly) will have
20 minutes to discuss the question ‘What is your strategy for dealing
with the issue at hand?’. The audience will then have 20 minutes to
ask questions about the discussion, followed by another 20 minutes for
the audience to share their strategies for dealing with world poverty
and climate change. This discussion has already begun on-line at
http://melbournesocialforum.org/g20/ .
• Social Health Workshops (2 x 1 hour)
The G20 Alternative meeting, like the Melbourne Social Forum, will
provide space for those willing to self-organise small-group seminar
sessions. Organisations are invited to step forward and share their
expertise by running workshops from 11-12 and/or 1-2. You can sign up
for workshop space by writing to
**G20workshops@melbournesocialforum.org**
• Community Therapy Stalls (all day)
Creating community stallholders will be active between 11am-4pm, with
dialogue sessions between 1-2pm providing a wonderful opportunity to
hear about local initiatives. Contact Martin on
globalisation@foe.org.au or 0403 440 996 to sign up for a stall.
• Music Therapy (3 x 1 hour)
Performances by Yemanja (jazz, samba and funk) and Tr1be (worldbeat)
• Healthy, Ethical Nutrition
Available all day thanks to Lentil as Anything.
www.lentilasanything.com/
A full schedule for this event can be found on the attached media
release, and will be updated regularly on
www.melbournesocialforum.org.
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G20 ALTERNATIVE PROMOTION
The G20 Alternative Forum is a collaborative community event, and
requires your help for success. Please help get the word out about
this open public meeting by:
1.) Circulating the attached media release to any media outlets you
are in contact with. Click HERE for the Media Release
2.) Printing out the attached flier and posting it in businesses,
universities, and organizations. Click HERE for the G20 Alternative Flier
Please keep us updated on which media outlets you have contacted and
which areas of Melbourne you have postered by writing a quick note to
info@melbournesocialforum.org (please write ‘promotion’ in the subject
field).
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G20 ALTERNATIVE VOLUNTEERS
Volunteers are needed to help promote and expedite the G20 Alternative
Forum. Tasks required include:
* Promotion
- handing out fliers at various venues November 10-17
- handing out fliers around the G20 protest area November 18
* Expedition (November 19th)
- event set-up from 9:30-11am
- information/giving directions from 11am-4pm
- event clean-up from 4-5pm
If you can spare an hour or two on or before November 19th to help
make the G20 Alternative Forum a success, please write to
volunteers@melbournesocialforum.org or
info@melbournesocialforum.org (write ‘volunteer’ in the subject field)
or ring Maria on 0405359492.
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G20 DISCUSSION BLOG
For the past few weeks, the Melbourne Social Forum website has been
hosting an on-line discussion airing questions and insights into G20
policies, practices and procedures. To learn more about the G20, or
share your knowledge of global affairs, visit
www.melbournesocialforum.org/g20.
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G20 WEEK OF ACTIONS AND EVENTS
* Nov 12, 12pm-6:30pm – Media of Dissent @ Trades Hall – to organise alternative media for G20
* Nov 14-17: A Space Outside: Active Interventions Within – Conference on critiques and analyses of capitalism. For more details see http://www.aspaceoutside.org Venue: TBC.
* Nov 16, 10am-5.45pm – Public Forum: Creating a Fairer World: What should the G-20 do? – A forum presented by Make Poverty History, at Melbourne Town Hall, Swanston St, Melbourne
* http://makepovertyhistory.org.au/melbForum.html
* Nov 17: Corporate engagement day – Decentralised actions, for affinity groups to focus on their own issues concerning the corporate harm done to people and the planet. Venue: Various corporate offices around the CBD.
* Nov 17, evening – Generation2015 Make Poverty History concert – Hosted by Australia’s Make Poverty History coalition,: Sidney Myer music bowl, http://makepovertyhistory.org.au/melbConcert.html
* Nov 18, 12-6pm – Carnival Beyond Capitalism – Gathering in the city, for speakers, street theatre, etc, then rallying towards a Carnival Beyond Capitalism street party @ State Library in Swanson St in the city. Street Party venue TBC. see http://www.stopg20.org
* Nov 18 – Make Poverty History festival – Free all-ages daytime community education festival, featuring Bands, Fair Trade & Sustainable Living Stalls, Workshops, Global Beats Chill Zone, Speakers, Roving Performers, MPH info stalls, International Food, Children’s Activities.
* Nov 19 – Help the Police quarantine the Greed20 virus – Street theatre concerning the Greed20 virus and inoculating ourselves against capitalist-led globalisation Venue: As close to the Grand Hyatt as the Police Quarantine allows. More info: http://www.stopg20.org
* Nov 19 – G20 Alternative @ RMIT ….
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NEXT MSF ORGANISING MEETING
November 30 (Wed) 6:30pm
@ City Library, Room TBA
Flinders Lane
All are welcome!
Keep informed about future meetings by visiting
www.melbournesocialforum.org regularly.
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ATTACHMENTS
Click HERE for the G20 Alternative Media Release or go to:
http://actionforesight.net/lists/dl.php?id=2
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MSF Newsletter Policy
The Melbourne Social Forum invites all groups and individuals who have
participated in social forums in Melbourne to give us information
about upcoming protests / direct action, discussion / debates
forums,seminars, fundraisers, workshops, educational opportunities,
celebrations and other events. As well relevant news stories (links)
pertaining to the global justice / global democracy /
alter-globalisation movements are also welcome. We will then send this
information through our newsletter on a monthly basis.
While the Melbourne Social Forum (like most social forums) will not
endorse the activity and agenda of one group over another, we aim to
facilitate the interlinking of progressive activism, networking
between groups, and cross fertilisation of ideas among a diversity of
perspectives, in making another, better world, possible. In this
spirit we invite all to send us information that can be sent out to
our wider network, which promotes common cause / common ground issues,
as opposed to the promotion of a particular group, or a particular
group’s agenda.
For events:
Please provide a concise paragraph about the event, who it is being
organised by and contact information.
For news items:
Please provide a summary with author and source plus a link to the
story (not the whole story).
Information will be vetted based on the MSF charter of principles.
See:
http://melbournesocialforum.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=58&Itemid=55
Please try to submit your information to us at least 30 days in
advance of the event, as we will only send out one newsletter per
month.
Direct any questions or submissions for the newsletter to: