Socialist Alliance National Conference, Jan 2-5, 2010, Sydney

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Fighting for socialism in the 21st Century:Towards Sustainability, Justice and People’s Power


Socialist Alliance 7th National Conference (http://socialist-alliance.wikispaces.com/Seventh+National+Conference)

Sydney, January 2-5, 2010
Women’s College, University of Sydney


SATURDAY, JANUARY 2
7.30-9.30pm Their Crises, Our Solutions. Public meeting with Sivaranjani Manickam, Richard Downs, Bea Bleile, Dave Kerin and Peter Boyle


SUNDAY, JANUARY 3
9.00-9.30am Welcome to country and the conference

9.30-10.30am The Socialist Alliance's perspectives for struggle in 2010.Presenters: Dick Nichols and Jess Moore

10.30-11.00am Socialist election strategy and tactics: preparing for the next federal election. Presenters: Justine Kamprad, Soubhi Iskander and Laura Ealing

11.00-11.30am Morning tea

11.30am-12.15pm Socialist election strategy and tactics continued.

12.15-1.00pm Building the climate action movement. Presenters: John Rice and Mel Barnes

1.00-2.00pm Lunch

2.00-2.45pm Building the climate action movement continued.

2.45-3.45pm The struggle for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander rights.Presenters: Sam Watson, Emma Murphy and Tasha Moore

3.45-4.15pm Afternoon tea

4.00-6.00pm Campaigning workshops: 1. Climate change. 2. Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander rights. 3. Anti-war. 4. LGBTI rights. 5. Latin American solidarity.

6.00-7.00pm Dinner

6.30-8.00pm Workshop 1: The Ampilatwatja walk-off: campaigning against the NT Intervention. Presenter: Richard Downs

Workshop 2: Climate Emergency and worker ownership in Australia. Presenter: Dave Kerin

8.00-10.00pm Green Left Weekly Fighting Fund rally. An evening of speakers, theatre, music and multi-media presentations to launch the 2010 Green Left Weekly Fighting Fund


MONDAY, JANUARY 4
9.00-10.15am Rebuilding our unions for the fights ahead. Presenters: Susan Price and Tim Gooden

10.15-11.00am Building the socialist movement among young people.Presenters: Ben Peterson, Tim Dobson and Sivaranjani Manickam

11.00-11.30am Morning tea

11.30am-12.15pm Refugee rights and internationalism. Presenters: Brian Senewiratne and Sue Bolton

12.15-1.00pm The Latin American revolutions, left unity and solidarity. Presenters: Stuart Munckton and Jim McIlroy

1.00-2.00pm Lunch. Screening of The Deregistration of the BLF, the Victorian story from 1986-1992

2.00-2.45pm Resolutions on the environment

2.45-3.45pm Getting Australia out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Freedom for Palestine! Presenters: Pip Hinman and Aaron Benedek

2.00-3.45pm Concurrent educational: A history of communism in Australia. Presenter: Sue Bull

3.45-4.00pm Afternoon tea

4.00-6.00pm Building the Socialist Alliance workshops: 1. Election campaigning. 2. Green Left Weekly content and distribution. 3. Publications. 4. Finances and fundraising. 5. Using the internet

Concurrent educational: Understanding the financial and economic crisis. Presenter: Karl Miller

6.00-7.00pm Dinner

6.30-8.00pm Feature workshop: Malaysia and the struggle for socialism. Presenter: Sivaranjani Manickam

8.00-10.00pm International solidarity and cultural night: Performances and greetings from many lands and peoples


TUESDAY, JANUARY 5
9.00-10.00am Campaigning for women's and queer rights today. Presenters: Naomi Rodgers-Falk and Rachel Evans

10.00-11.00am Constitutional changes and other policy session 1

11.00-11.30am Morning tea

11..30am-1.00pm Preparing for action - voting on resolutions: Socialist Alliance perspectives for 2010, election strategy and tactics, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander rights, youth work and trade union work

Concurrent educational: Ecology, socialism and human survival. Presenter: Hans Baer

1.00-2.00pm Lunch

2.00-3.30pm Preparing for action - voting on resolutions: The climate movement, Latin America solidarity, anti-war, women's rights and LGBTI rights, and building the Socialist Alliance

Concurrent educational: Building the Left-Indigenous alliance for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander rights. Presenters: Pat Eatock and Terry Townsend

3.30-4.00pm Constitutional changes/other policy session 2

4.00-5.00pm Socialist Alliance elections

3.30-5.00pm Concurrent educational: The NSW "socialisation units" of the 1930s: a vehicle for socialism? Presenter: Margarita Windisch

5.00-5.15pm Conference close


www.socialist-alliance.org (http://www.socialist-alliance.org/)

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New era of left unity as DSP votes to merge with the Socialist Alliance http://links.org.au/node/1444

Australia: New era of left unity as DSP votes to merge with the Socialist Alliance


Made with Slideshow Embed Tool (http://www.tools4noobs.com/picasa/) [The following speech, to the opening rally of the seventh national conference of the Socialist Alliance (http://www.socialist-alliance.org/) on January 2, 2010, was delivered by Peter Boyle, former national secretary of the Democratic Socialist Perspective (http://www.dsp.org.au/).]
Comrades,
My job tonight is to make the unusual – if not unexpected – announcement that the Democratic Socialist Perspective (DSP) decided today at its 24th congress to effectively dissolve into the Socialist Alliance and to transfer all that it has built up, over some four decades of its existence, to the Socialist Alliance.
Sadly, it is an unusual and rare thing for socialist groups, like the DSP, to break from the idea that they are the “true” party of socialism, with the sole correct political program, and seriously embrace left unity.
I say this not to boast but more by way of an apology and excuse for the DSP taking so long to take this step. After all, the Socialist Alliance was launched in 2001 and now it is 2010! I want to thank Comrades Bea Bleile, Dave Kerin, Sam Watson, Pat Eatock, and our many other partners in the Socialist Alliance for their patience and encouragement.
We may have taken a long time to take this step, but at least we can say that when the decision was taken by the DSP today, it had overwhelming support from the DSP members. And this support was also so enthusiastic that we can anticipate that this enthusiasm will be felt in the seventh national conference of the Socialist Alliance over the next three days.
Energy
There's a lot of energy unleashed by this historic decision of the DSP – energy that will give the Socialist Alliance a big boost in the year ahead.
This was the right thing for the DSP to do.
The Socialist Alliance presents an historic opening for the left in Australia because it is an opportunity to unite in a new socialist party socialists from different political traditions, some from pre-existing socialist groups and others who are not members of those groups. And, among those proud members of the Socialist Alliance are some important leaders of the working class and other oppressed groups: people like Comrade Craig Johnston, who went to jail for fighting for workers' rights; and veteran Indigenous activists like Comrade Sam Watson and Pat Eatock ...
Indeed, in the Socialist Alliance today, thanks to our Indigenous comrades, we have an historic opportunity to restore the powerful collaboration between the socialist and the Aboriginal movement, a collaboration that made its mark on the history of Australia, through epic struggles like the Pilbara Aboriginal stock workers strike in the 1940s and the Gurindji walk-offs in the 1960s.
Campaign to link up with working-class leaders
If socialism is not just to be a good idea then it has to become a movement of the working class and other oppressed groups. And it flows from this that to build the socialist movement we have to wage a permanent campaign to link up with the activists and leaders of the working class and oppressed groups who are fighting capitalist oppression.
Of course socialist groups can and do link up with other activists in movement campaigns, in various “united fronts” around specific issues, such as the campaigns against “Work Choices” or Work Choices Lite, or for Aboriginal people's rights. But when the activists and leaders of such movements want to join us in the broader and ongoing struggle against the capitalist system itself then what is our duty? Surely it is to unite with them in a party to wage such a struggle, a socialist party.
To build such a socialist party we must be prepared to look for agreement before disagreement. That's just commonsense. And if we find – as we have in the Socialist Alliance – that we have 80-90% political agreement, then, it is a “no-brainer”: we need to be in a common political party!
But what about those outstanding differences among socialists? What about the 10% (or perhaps even less) that we don't agree on? Surely, the sensible thing is to not let this stand in the way of us working in a common party for real change. Surely, we have a better chance of resolving the differences that need to be resolved after we have gone through a period of collective struggle to advance what we agree on. Surely, in the process of that struggle we'll draw some lessons collectively that will deepen our political unity.
Blind Freddy can see that there is still a lot of work ahead of us before we unite the notoriously fractious left. If you roll up to any protest action in any major city, you will still be confronted with a smorgasbord of socialist groups, each harbouring the illusion that it is the true party of socialism with the correct socialist political program. What a sad sight!
DSP decision to merge
However, we've made a start in uniting more of the left in the Socialist Alliance. And today, another significant step towards unifying the left has been made with the decision of the DSP to merge into the Socialist Alliance.
In the wake of this decision, we can anticipate that more more people will join the Socialist Alliance or step up their commitment to the project. As Comrade Dave Kerin said tonight, the DSP's decision opens the way for others like him to take a further step in commitment to the Socialist Alliance.
Earlier today, the members of the DSP ended a stage in our political organisation and embarked on a new stage. This was both a break from our past as well as a change that grew out of our collective political experience. We said good bye to a party to which we have devoted a tremendous amount of loyalty, energy, sacrifice and indeed the life-long commitment of many comrades over many years. However, we are not mourning this end. Rather we are celebrating. We are celebrating our transfer of that same commitment and energy to the Socialist Alliance.
In his greetings to the DSP congress, Comrade Abelardo Cueda, the ambassador of revolutionary Cuba to Australia, summed up the broad political situation today in one poetic sentence: “Today the capitalists cannot sleep and they cannot dream ...” But we, he added, have a dream of a radically different world.
We embrace that profound reality. We have a dream of a radically different world, a world based on solidarity and sustainability. And at this seventh national conference of the Socialist Alliance, we have greater means to plan and organise the struggle to advance the transformation of that dream into a reality.
Long live the Socialist Alliance! Long live left unity! Long live the power of the people!