The Sound of Solidarity

Spurred by the latest round of COVID crisis in Malaysia, resistance is stirring against poverty and repression. Doctors walked off the job on 26 July and activists have rallied on the streets against the government of Prime Minister Mahiaddin Yassin. We talk to Aisyah Huzani, an activist based in Kuala Lumpur, and Jason Wong, a Malaysian student studying in Melbourne and a member of Solidarity, about the beginnings of a fightback.

The struggle for Palestinian liberation continues. We talk to Jamal Nabulsi, a diaspora Palestinian writer and researcher living in Meanjin/Brisbane, about the patterns of resistance, the prospect of a Palestinian state, and the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

The government is talking about economic recovery but there are still three million Australians living in poverty. We talk to former Centrelink worker and now university researcher Marcus Banks, and to Lachlan McGowan from the Australian Unemployed Workers Union, about poverty in Australia today and how we can abolish it.

We talk to Penny McCall-Howard about the myths behind Morrison's "gas-fuelled recovery". Penny, who is the national research officer with the Maritime Union of Australia and a member of Solidarity, discusses why we need to ditch gas, why the private energy sector cannot manage a transition to renewables, and what a just transition for workers would look like.

The pandemic has hit workers worst of all. In this episode we talk to Kosmos Samaras, a former Victorian ALP campaign director, and Chris Breen, a teacher union activist and Solidarity member, about the impact of the pandemic on workers in Melbourne. Kos grew up in the northern working class suburb of Broadmeadows and Chris works there.

We talk to Joe Carolan, a socialist and union organiser in Aotearoa / New Zealand about politics under the Ardern government, ranging across Maori and union struggles, the Christchurch massacre, and the problems facing migrants and refugees. 

We talk to longtime refugee activist Ian Rintoul about the situation for refugees and asylum-seekers, the power of protest and the way forward for the movement.

We talk to Veronica Koman, an Indonesia human rights lawyer exiled in Australia, about the struggle for liberation in West Papua and the rise of solidarity within Indonesia.