Welcome to Eureka Street

back to site
Forgot your password?
Subscribe

Author: Ann Deslandes

  • INTERNATIONAL

    Scenes from the Mexican border

    • Ann Deslandes
    • 17 January 2019
    4 Comments

    There are others here on the beach, standing and staring at the border wall as the ocean tides crash and spray. I've met so many now who have been separated from their partners, parents, and children, those physical bonds forcibly torn with little possibility of reconnection.

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    The migrant caravan was born of calamity

    • Ann Deslandes
    • 03 December 2018
    5 Comments

    When government corruption is chronic and the streets are ruled by armed gangs, there are no collective funds for quality health care or education. The thousands of migrants at the US border are fleeing the effects of climate change, wide-scale government corruption, brutal state violence, and flourishing non-state gang rule.

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    Redrawing the lines of Nicaragua solidarity

    • Ann Deslandes
    • 25 July 2018
    6 Comments

    In the 1980s, the international solidarity movement for Nicaragua had thousands of supporters, including many in Australia. The nation was undergoing severe repression at the hands of dictator Anastasio Somoza. Fast-forward 30 years and a Nicaraguan rebel movement is again calling for international solidarity.

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    Do pro-life Australians need a new approach?

    • Ann Deslandes
    • 04 June 2018
    56 Comments

    The result in Ireland is a timely reminder to political and/or church leaders in Australia who like to use Irish Catholic heritage as a way to defend their conservative views. On nearly all issues that have been debated by Australian Catholics against their religious obligations, the motherland is, clearly, no longer the source of moral legitimacy.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Bursting Australia's monolingual bubble

    • Ann Deslandes
    • 15 January 2018
    6 Comments

    Over 250 languages were spoken across Australia at the time that English arrived with British colonisation. Since then, English has been a strict marker of the contours of Australianness. Were it reframed as a lingua franca rather than the mandatory language, the linguistic diversity in this nation would have more room to breathe.

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    Refugee rift piques PNG's anti Australian sentiment

    • Ann Deslandes
    • 22 September 2017
    8 Comments

    One senior development consultant, an Australian with decades of experience in the region, told me they've never seen such significant anti-Australia sentiment in PNG public discourse. This makes sense. A former colony of Australia, PNG grapples with social problems on a scale unknown to our prosperous country. Why should they now have to also absorb the costs of resettling refugees who sought asylum in Australia?

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    The cruelty at Manus Island

    • Ann Deslandes
    • 09 August 2017
    4 Comments

    As I write, staff of the Australian immigration authority and their security contractors are working hard to close the detention centre on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea, where Australia has held over 900 refugees for the last four years.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Building social justice through shareholder advocacy

    • Ann Deslandes
    • 26 May 2017
    4 Comments

    Wealth inequality in Australia is flourishing. The top one per cent of household wealth in Australia is moving toward being 20 per cent of total wealth, and the country is a preferred destination for millionaires. With a government that prefers to impoverish and vilify the disadvantaged and spend big on coal mines, this does not look likely to shift. But there are always other paths to social justice, and in Australia one may be through the millionaires - or at least the companies on which their fortunes are built.

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    Mexican journalists say no to silence and yes to death

    • Ann Deslandes
    • 22 May 2017
    2 Comments

    Last Tuesday night in Mexico City I headed to a bar with some press colleagues. It was late and the bar was lit with candles for mood lighting. As we sat down to order drinks my friend Joan took the candle in front of her and said, 'I'll hold onto this for the next journalist to be murdered.' We had been at a vigil to mourn the murder of journalist Javier Valdez and to protest the ever-escalating number of journalist murders in the country in a legal and political climate of almost total impunity.

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    Religious literacy routs Islamophobia

    • Ann Deslandes
    • 07 April 2017
    24 Comments

    A person with religious literacy has an understanding and appreciation of the teachings of religions in the world, is knowledgeable about the various applications and manifestations of those teachings, and understands how religious faith forms, informs and enriches contemporary human society. In a world where Islamophobia and anti-Semitism are on the rise, endangering and taking the lives of so many innocent people of faith, it is difficult to overstate the importance of religious literacy.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Tackling wealth inequality through justice reinvestment

    • Ann Deslandes
    • 31 March 2017
    10 Comments

    Australia was rated as the top destination for millionaire migrants in 2016 for the second year in a row. Meanwhile the latest Australian Institute of Health and Welfare reveal high correlations between prison entrance and indicators of entrenched poverty and discrimination. If we want our system for justice to amount to something more than a mirror of our inability to distribute wealth and opportunity evenly, we need to address the undeniable role wealth inequality has in putting people in prison.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Nazi punch is a non-violence red herring

    • Ann Deslandes
    • 06 February 2017
    7 Comments

    The recent viral footage of 'alt-right' spokesperson Richard Spencer taking a punch to the chops caused considerable debate. There is no doubting the moral clarity that non-violent resistance achieved in the civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King and the Indian independence movement led by Mahatma Gandhi, and the real result of justice for African American and Indian people. When it comes to the odd individual act of public pushing and shoving, though, asking 'Is it okay?' is a red herring.

    READ MORE