keywords: Activism

  • ENVIRONMENT

    No time to be polite about climate

    • Jeff Sparrow
    • 08 October 2019
    18 Comments

    No-one should be fooled: the politicians and commentators who condemn civil disobedience are the same politicians and commentators who attack the UN for passing resolutions on carbon; who tell scientists to get back to the lab when they speak out on politics; who do everything they can to keep climate out of the parliament.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Reframing aspiration as a collective force

    • John Falzon
    • 26 September 2019
    13 Comments

    We're taught to think that aspiration means what you do alone, what sets you apart. As such it is a concept that is both lauded and loaded. Aspiration, neoliberal style, is a secular version of the gospel of prosperity so loved by the prime minister. God, or the Market, smiles on those who aspire to greater things.

    READ MORE
  • ENVIRONMENT

    Existential lessons from road kill

    • Cristy Clark
    • 26 September 2019
    6 Comments

    In The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert explains that we have placed animals in a lethal double bind: they have to move due to the effects of climate change and habitat destruction, but their pathways are blocked by roads or occupied by humans. Some might ask why this mass extinction should matter to us, but we ignore it at our peril.

    READ MORE
  • ENVIRONMENT

    A rogues gallery of casual climate denial

    • Vivienne Cowburn
    • 16 September 2019
    7 Comments

    From overly sheltered baby boomers to millennials too fatigued with the state of the world to care, the reality of climate change can be a lot to handle. Here's a snapshot of the people living with their heads in the sand, employing tactics including pessimism, cognitive dissonance and deflections to stay where they are.

    READ MORE
  • MEDIA

    Don't look away from climate change

    • Neve Mahoney
    • 16 September 2019
    4 Comments

    Every time I need to read an article that deals with climate change, I can feel a tightness in my body. It’s a physical response, the churning in my stomach and my shoulders hunching over, as though I’m trying to protect myself from the information.

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    Australian unis failing Hong Kong students

    • Sangeetha Thanapal
    • 14 September 2019
    5 Comments

    The students might not have many rights back home, but they do in the western democracies in which they live. The violence against peaceful protestors not just in Hong Kong but in countries where Hong Kong students are exercising their basic rights is unsettling. Yet the response by unis all over Australia has been taciturn at best.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Day inquest highlights threat of police profiling

    • Celeste Liddle
    • 07 September 2019
    3 Comments

    As an Aboriginal woman walking the streets at night, I am significantly more concerned about being brutalised by those charged to keep our streets safe — the police — than I am about any fellow lone wanderer on the streets. The case of Tanya Day and the response to it reinforced to me that my fears were well-founded.

    READ MORE
  • ENVIRONMENT

    Building equity into 20-minute city plans

    • Cristy Clark
    • 29 August 2019
    9 Comments

    People living in the outer suburbs would benefit just as much (if not more) from having access to attractive public space and to being able to meet their daily needs on foot. The social and environmental benefits would also flow to all of us in building healthier, more resilient communities and significantly reducing pollution.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Myths about quiet and shouty Australians

    • John Warhurst
    • 26 August 2019
    14 Comments

    Regional and rural Australians possess many powerful voices. As well as having a political party of their own, the Nationals, they are represented by many powerful lobby groups. Language which seeks to privilege quiet over loud citizens has the effect of advantaging the strong over the weak and insiders over outsiders in our political life.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    The tweet smell of APS authoritarianism

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 12 August 2019
    5 Comments

    Should a public service have people with political, disagreeable opinions? No, according to the guidelines of employment in the Australian Public Service. The decision of the Australian High Court in the case of Comcare v Banerji is a salient warning to employees in the APS. Obedience, it seems, must be unquestionable and total.

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    The politics and ethics of the moon landing

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 23 July 2019
    4 Comments

    In 1964, sociologist Amitai Etzioni noted the misgivings of the scientific fraternity to the space program. The effort risked losing perspective. An 'extrovert activism' had taken old, obsessed with gadgets, 'rocket-powered jumps' and escapism. In terms of budgetary expenditure, this showed, with NASA spending $28 billion between 1960-73.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Modesty does not become her

    • Neve Mahoney
    • 19 July 2019
    6 Comments

    The so-called 'confidence gap', where women don't feel as confident in their own abilities as men, is supposed to be a contributing factor to the gender pay gap. The world of sport, where a little self-assurance and showboating has never gone astray, provides some case studies on why that reasoning rarely works.

    READ MORE

x

Subscribe for more stories like this.

Free sign-up