A-Infos No organised anarchists in Brisbane?

[Ilan Shalif <gshalif@netvision.net.il>]

Approved: slow
Subject: (en) organised anarchists in Brisbane Australia.
From: KARASIN ANARCHIST <karasin@netscape.net>
To: a-asia@tao.ca

A friend of mine from Turkey sent me this strange message,
in which you say you are working for the DSP (ASIET is a DSP
front, as you know), claim in apparent ignorance (or
hostility?) that there is no organised anarchist groups in
Brisbane, and at the same time call yourself
anarchist-communist.  I find this a bit suspicious, or
confusing, or both.

Actually I know of at least one other anarchist group in
Brisbane apart from us (the Institute for Social Ecology)
who would be quite disturbed by your comments.  The IWW
chapter in Brisbane, more or less hanging around the 4ZZZ
scene (where there is a weekly "anarchist show", which I was
a founder of), is pretty small, and not anarchist-communist
- and probably more lifestyler oriented than
anarcho-syndicalist, but quite serious from what I've seen.

Since I've never heard of you, I wonder to begin with how
long you've been in town - if all you know of anarchism in
Brisbane is what you've learned from your leninist mates
then all is understood.  They would certainly like to
pretend we don't exist, even though they buy adds in the
community paper we publish, and have debated us in the
streets and at our own events many times.

The Institute for Social Ecology is an anarchist-communist
organisation that has gone for nearly fifteen years.  It is
a direct descendent of the Libertarian Socialist
Organisation (LSO), which is in turn the descendent of the
Self-Management Group, which was a highly organised
organisation of over three hundred people, which led
Brisbane's marches against Vietnam, Joe Bjelke-Peterson's
repressive anti-march policies and the Springbock tour. 
(Read almost any political history of Queensland - left or
right - to confirm this -Brian Laver was its main
spokesperson, and remains possibly the foremost anarchist
intellectual and activist in the country).  From this
succession of organisations came Joe Toscano, now the main
spokesperson of Libertarian Workers for a Self-Managed
Society in Melbourne (the only other organised
anarchist-communist group in Australia that I know of -
there are none in Sydney (just syndicalists and
lifestylers)).  Also the Queensland chapter of the Green
Party split from this tradition, when a group of them led by
Drew Hutton decided to pursue state power (instead of
maintaining their anarchism).  Gary Pearce, also from the
LSO come ISE, has recently started a social ecology group in
Melbourne as well.

It's true that we attract a lot of hostility from the
general mass of punk and lifestyle anarchists that flotsam
up and down the country, because we are actually organised
around a body of political ideas and a program to bring them
to fruition.  I might note that Nestor Makhno was faced with
this same hostility - because he believed in a program -
from the Parisian anarchists (largely individualists at that
time) after he had led the fight against the Whites and the
Reds in the Ukraine non-stop for nearly a decade.  There are
many people today who believe in direct democracy at the
level of the commune who have ceased to call themselves
anarchist at all due to this post-70s crap, but we still
proudly call ourselves anarchist-communist, because this is
still what it means to us.

Anyway, to introduce our organisation:
- We run one of the largest anarchist / leftist / peace /
ecology / feminist / race issues librarys in the country,
with over 60 members and hundreds of fellow travellers.  It
is located upstairs from Emma's Bookshop (named after Emma
Goldman) on the corner of Vulture and Boundary Streets, West
End.
-  We publish two community newspapers, with an explicit
anarchist-communist editorial policy (albeit including a
range of leftist viewpoints, from left-liberalism and social
democracy to libertarian-marxist, as well as
anarchist-communist).  West End Neighbourhood News and
Newfarm Neighbourhood News.
-  We run reading groups and study groups about
revolutionary anarchist-communist theory.  The next one, if
you are interested, will be based on Orwell's Homage to
Catalonia.  Call 3844 4973 for details, or read about it in
our papers.
-  We are affiliated directly with the international
conference process around the political program called
Libertarian Municipalism.  I was the delegate of our
organisation to Portugal last year.
-  We operate in a united front of Leftists, through the
Newspaper and other events, which, strangely enough, does
not include the leninists you associate with and work for,
as their praxis is antipathetic to united fronts.  This
front includes people from the socialist-left of the ALP,
radical union delegates, and radical rank-and-file
unionists, workers clubs, libertarian Marxists,
ex-communists, serious social democrats and a variety of
independent thinkers.  All of these various people recognise
us, respect us, and often debate us, as the
anarchist-communist wing of this front.  It is true that
even combined we are a very small Left, but we exist, are
organised, and all are rooted in the various Leftist
traditions that Brisbane has included for many many decades.
-  We have facilitated in our own area the Kurilpa Community
Protection Society, a coalition of various action groups in
West End, which to us is the beginnings of the assembly of
our local commune.  It was this organisation which stopped
the bridge from West End to St Lucia last year, and which
Tim Quinn and the council are scared shitless of.
-  We run the largest Street Festival in Brisbane, the
Boundary Street Festival.
-  Members of our organisation founded the Brisbane
Zapatista Front and the Griffith University Anarchist Club,
as well as Makhno's Political Books and Videos, an anarchist
market stall.  "The anarchist pages" in Griffith Uni's
"Gravity" are compiled by us.
-  We publish "The Libertarian Ecologist" as well as a
variety of propaganda under our own name.

Notable recent actions, which have attracted considerable
attention are:
-  We acted as consultants to the MUA leadership re: direct
action techniques during the recent MUA / Pattricks scrap,
and a group of anarchists from or around our organisation
led a mass chain-on and sit in on the railway line which
resulted in 120 arrests.  It is true that we were used in
this action in a fairly cynical way by the union leaders,
but there was no question in anyone's mind that it was
anarchists that were being used.  It was our chains and
locks, it was our consultation (unfortunately only used
selectively), and our bodies that did the job.  We ourselves
took 6 arrests, including myself.
-  When a few years ago a group of punks calling themselves
Angry People organised Lorenzo Ervine to tour the East of
Australia, we were only interested in debating him about
certain issues, until Howard tried to throw him out of the
country and the hall at which he was to speak in Brisbane
cancelled under political pressure.  Then suddenly these
punks, known to be hostile to us because we're organised
with a program, suddenly had to lick our bums because we had
a space he could use, we had propaganda outlets, we had a
lawyer and we had money.  (ie we are organised).  If there
were no organised anarchist-communists in the town at that
moment, Lorenzo would have been fucked.
        These are just two notable examples of activities which
organised anarchist-communists carried out in the past few
years.  It is hard to fathom that we don't exist.  Many more
examples would just take up pages here.
        Obviously, with a nearly forty year history in this town,
my answer to the notion that there are no organised
anarchists in this town could fill a reasonable sized book. 
However, I've made my point and I shall conclude.
        If you want to work for Leninists, from which anarchists
have taken more casualties than from capitalists, fascists
and social democrats put together, go for it.  But if you
are in fact, as you say, an anarcho-communist, do look us up
sometime, and please don't make such ignorant comments as
the below on international listserves.

Yours Truly,
Hamish Alcorn
Institute for Social Ecology
PO Box 5208 West End 4101 AUSTRALIA
(07) 3846 4358
(07) 3846 5899 (fax)

PS  The DSP, as is the want of leninists, are basically
social democrats in practice, participating in elections as
a reformist political party, which hardly makes them
particularly "Left" in any traditional sense.

---

From Dainishi & Hamish <dainishi@thehub.com.au>
Date Sat, 10 Apr 1999 14:33:23 +1000
Organization Institute for Social Ecology

Dear Dani,

A friend of mine from Turkey sent me this strange message,
in which you say you are working for the DSP (ASIET is a DSP
front, as you know), claim in apparent ignorance (or
hostility?) that there is no organised anarchist groups in
Brisbane, and at the same time call yourself
anarchist-communist.  I find this a bit suspicious, or
confusing, or both.

Actually I know of at least one other anarchist group in
Brisbane apart from us (the Institute for Social Ecology)
who would be quite disturbed by your comments.  The IWW
chapter in Brisbane, more or less hanging around the 4ZZZ
scene (where there is a weekly "anarchist show", which I was
a founder of), is pretty small, and not anarchist-communist
- and probably more lifestyler oriented than
anarcho-syndicalist, but quite serious from what I've seen.

Since I've never heard of you, I wonder to begin with how
long you've been in town - if all you know of anarchism in
Brisbane is what you've learned from your leninist mates
then all is understood.  They would certainly like to
pretend we don't exist, even though they buy adds in the
community paper we publish, and have debated us in the
streets and at our own events many times.

The Institute for Social Ecology is an anarchist-communist
organisation that has gone for nearly fifteen years.  It is
a direct descendent of the Libertarian Socialist
Organisation (LSO), which is in turn the descendent of the
Self-Management Group, which was a highly organised
organisation of over three hundred people, which led
Brisbane's marches against Vietnam, Joe Bjelke-Peterson's
repressive anti-march policies and the Springbock tour. 
(Read almost any political history of Queensland - left or
right - to confirm this -Brian Laver was its main
spokesperson, and remains possibly the foremost anarchist
intellectual and activist in the country).  From this
succession of organisations came Joe Toscano, now the main
spokesperson of Libertarian Workers for a Self-Managed
Society in Melbourne (the only other organised
anarchist-communist group in Australia that I know of -
there are none in Sydney (just syndicalists and
lifestylers)).  Also the Queensland chapter of the Green
Party split from this tradition, when a group of them led by
Drew Hutton decided to pursue state power (instead of
maintaining their anarchism).  Gary Pearce, also from the
LSO come ISE, has recently started a social ecology group in
Melbourne as well.

It's true that we attract a lot of hostility from the
general mass of punk and lifestyle anarchists that flotsam
up and down the country, because we are actually organised
around a body of political ideas and a program to bring them
to fruition.  I might note that Nestor Makhno was faced with
this same hostility - because he believed in a program -
from the Parisian anarchists (largely individualists at that
time) after he had led the fight against the Whites and the
Reds in the Ukraine non-stop for nearly a decade.  There are
many people today who believe in direct democracy at the
level of the commune who have ceased to call themselves
anarchist at all due to this post-70s crap, but we still
proudly call ourselves anarchist-communist, because this is
still what it means to us.

Anyway, to introduce our organisation:
- We run one of the largest anarchist / leftist / peace /
ecology / feminist / race issues librarys in the country,
with over 60 members and hundreds of fellow travellers.  It
is located upstairs from Emma's Bookshop (named after Emma
Goldman) on the corner of Vulture and Boundary Streets, West
End.
-  We publish two community newspapers, with an explicit
anarchist-communist editorial policy (albeit including a
range of leftist viewpoints, from left-liberalism and social
democracy to libertarian-marxist, as well as
anarchist-communist).  West End Neighbourhood News and
Newfarm Neighbourhood News.
-  We run reading groups and study groups about
revolutionary anarchist-communist theory.  The next one, if
you are interested, will be based on Orwell's Homage to
Catalonia.  Call 3844 4973 for details, or read about it in
our papers.
-  We are affiliated directly with the international
conference process around the political program called
Libertarian Municipalism.  I was the delegate of our
organisation to Portugal last year.
-  We operate in a united front of Leftists, through the
Newspaper and other events, which, strangely enough, does
not include the leninists you associate with and work for,
as their praxis is antipathetic to united fronts.  This
front includes people from the socialist-left of the ALP,
radical union delegates, and radical rank-and-file
unionists, workers clubs, libertarian Marxists,
ex-communists, serious social democrats and a variety of
independent thinkers.  All of these various people recognise
us, respect us, and often debate us, as the
anarchist-communist wing of this front.  It is true that
even combined we are a very small Left, but we exist, are
organised, and all are rooted in the various Leftist
traditions that Brisbane has included for many many decades.
-  We have facilitated in our own area the Kurilpa Community
Protection Society, a coalition of various action groups in
West End, which to us is the beginnings of the assembly of
our local commune.  It was this organisation which stopped
the bridge from West End to St Lucia last year, and which
Tim Quinn and the council are scared shitless of.
-  We run the largest Street Festival in Brisbane, the
Boundary Street Festival.
-  Members of our organisation founded the Brisbane
Zapatista Front and the Griffith University Anarchist Club,
as well as Makhno's Political Books and Videos, an anarchist
market stall.  "The anarchist pages" in Griffith Uni's
"Gravity" are compiled by us.
-  We publish "The Libertarian Ecologist" as well as a
variety of propaganda under our own name.

Notable recent actions, which have attracted considerable
attention are:
-  We acted as consultants to the MUA leadership re: direct
action techniques during the recent MUA / Pattricks scrap,
and a group of anarchists from or around our organisation
led a mass chain-on and sit in on the railway line which
resulted in 120 arrests.  It is true that we were used in
this action in a fairly cynical way by the union leaders,
but there was no question in anyone's mind that it was
anarchists that were being used.  It was our chains and
locks, it was our consultation (unfortunately only used
selectively), and our bodies that did the job.  We ourselves
took 6 arrests, including myself.
-  When a few years ago a group of punks calling themselves
Angry People organised Lorenzo Ervine to tour the East of
Australia, we were only interested in debating him about
certain issues, until Howard tried to throw him out of the
country and the hall at which he was to speak in Brisbane
cancelled under political pressure.  Then suddenly these
punks, known to be hostile to us because we're organised
with a program, suddenly had to lick our bums because we had
a space he could use, we had propaganda outlets, we had a
lawyer and we had money.  (ie we are organised).  If there
were no organised anarchist-communists in the town at that
moment, Lorenzo would have been fucked.
	These are just two notable examples of activities which
organised anarchist-communists carried out in the past few
years.  It is hard to fathom that we don't exist.  Many more
examples would just take up pages here.
	Obviously, with a nearly forty year history in this town,
my answer to the notion that there are no organised
anarchists in this town could fill a reasonable sized book. 
However, I've made my point and I shall conclude.
	If you want to work for Leninists, from which anarchists
have taken more casualties than from capitalists, fascists
and social democrats put together, go for it.  But if you
are in fact, as you say, an anarcho-communist, do look us up
sometime, and please don't make such ignorant comments as
the below on international listserves.

Yours Truly,
Hamish Alcorn
Institute for Social Ecology
PO Box 5208 West End 4101 AUSTRALIA
(07) 3846 4358
(07) 3846 5899 (fax)

PS  The DSP, as is the want of leninists, are basically
social democrats in practice, participating in elections as
a reformist political party, which hardly makes them
particularly "Left" in any traditional sense.

> I am an Anarcho-Communist living in Brisbane, Australia. Among other things,
> I'm currently working with ASIET (Action in Solidarity with Indonesia
> and East Timor). I've been asked to organise the International Day of
> Solidary (May 22) here in Brisbane, so if anyone had any ideas,
> suggestions, or advice, I'd be happy to hear it as I've never done
> anything like this before.
> Just for a bit of background about where I live...Brisbane is the
> capital city of the state of Queensland and has about 1.5 million people
> (I think). The Left is rather small here and basically there is no
> anarchist movement at all. However there is a consistent movement of
> dedicated Left activists. The largest Left organisation in Australia
> right now is the Democratic Socialist Party, which is a Marxist-Leninist
> organisation. I hear that there are anarchist movements happening in
> Melbourne and Sydney. Hopefully I'll be going to Melbourne for a week or
> two during the middle of this year so I'll be able to see for myself
> then.
> 
> In solidarity,
> Dani

---

From Dani <hoek@geocities.com>
Date Mon, 05 Apr 1999 13:23:22 +1000
References <19990404145926.40965.qmail@hotmail.com>

Hi all,

I thought I would post to the list and just introduce myself a bit. I'm
an Anarcho-Communist living in Brisbane, Australia. Among other things,
I'm currently working with ASIET (Action in Solidarity with Indonesia
and East Timor). I've been asked to organise the International Day of
Solidary (May 22) here in Brisbane, so if anyone had any ideas,
suggestions, or advice, I'd be happy to hear it as I've never done
anything like this before. 
Just for a bit of background about where I live...Brisbane is the
capital city of the state of Queensland and has about 1.5 million people
(I think). The Left is rather small here and basically there is no
anarchist movement at all. However there is a consistent movement of
dedicated Left activists. The largest Left organisation in Australia
right now is the Democratic Socialist Party, which is a Marxist-Leninist
organisation. I hear that there are anarchist movements happening in
Melbourne and Sydney. Hopefully I'll be going to Melbourne for a week or
two during the middle of this year so I'll be able to see for myself
then. 

In solidarity,
Dani

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