If you have a full-time job, you are probably working more than full-time. Maybe someone expects you to chalk up a certain number of billable hours each week. Maybe there’s an implicit pressure when you look around and see your coworkers chained to their desks: it can feel strange being the last to arrive and […]
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Activism and Financial Sustainability
May 12, 2013 
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I wrote this post earlier this year when I was about to start full-time well-paid work. Since writing it, I have left that employment to volunteer full-time. So, this post is a snapshot of how I was feeling and thinking then. My deliberate change in circumstance also reveals to me a point I only allude […]
Read more “In the Tiger’s Mouth”, Katrina Shields: Activism, Self-Awareness, Self Care
May 3, 2013 1 Comment
Katrina Shield’s In The Tiger’s mouth is a book I had been waiting for an opportunity to read. That opportunity came one Friday when I lunched with Holly Hammond, facilitator and director of Plan to Win (and the recently-launched blog ‘Plan to Thrive’). Appropriately, she had two copies and was able to lend (understandably, she […]
Read more Police Brutality at the 2013 Sydney Mardi Gras
March 9, 2013 0 Comments
The video is deeply confronting. Even before your intelligence begins to make sense of it, there’s something instinctive that is repulsed by what you see: gross violence by one human against another. For me, as it went on, shockwaves rippled through my mind…this is not only upsetting, it’s disturbing. The footage challenges how we think […]
Read more On the ANZ Hoax: Jonathan Moylan, the Rebel
January 15, 2013 0 Comments
Following Jonathan Moylan’s ANZ hoax I wrote some days ago about whether his actions were justified. I was interested in critiquing some of the fatuous arguments against his act of civil disobedience and looking at the action through the lens of grassroots political activism. Now I’d like to consider the role Moylan has played, examined […]
Read more “Rules for Radicals”, Saul Alinsky: Organising and Power
January 13, 2013 0 Comments
I read Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals for the wrong reason: to get a job. I had an upcoming interview for a position as an Organiser and figured it’d be good to familiarise myself with the fundamentals, to seek the blessing of the Godfather, so to speak. I’d somehow missed out on Rules for Radicals […]
Read more On Jonathan Moylan’s ANZ Hoax
January 13, 2013 0 Comments
On 7 January Jonathan Moylan, an Australian pro-life (or ‘anti-coal’) campaigner, published a hoax press release purporting to originate from ANZ bank. The hoax press release stated that ANZ had “withdrawn its $1.2 billion loan facility to Whitehaven Coal, which was primarily intended to develop the Maules Creek Coal Project.” The media and the markets […]
Read more Chris Rose’s “How to Win Campaigns”: Motivational Values
November 20, 2012 0 Comments
Chris Rose’s How to Win Campaigns is an asset for campaigners, particularly its chapter on Motivational Values. The chapter explains how society is composed of three distinct values-based groupings of citizens, and how messages and actions can be tailored to fit the values of each group. I explore motivational values and their implications below. I’ve […]
Read more Why is the Climate Movement Celebrating Obama’s Re-election?
November 7, 2012 2 Comments
Today Barack Obama was elected to a second term as President of the United States. Also today, as a consequence of global warming, our climate system gained an amount of energy equivalent to exploding 400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs. In the giddy celebrations following Obama’s success, climate activists jostled over a cursory mention given in his […]
Read more On Penny Wong and today’s Australian Labor Party
October 27, 2012 1 Comment
The decision at today’s South Australian Labor Party state convention to list Senator Don Farrell ahead of Senator Penny Wong on the party’s senate ticket represents everything that is wrong with the ALP today. Well, maybe not everything. But most of the things. It seems that Labor has learnt nothing from its mistakes. Despite the […]
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