Boycott, Divest, Disrupt: Strategies to End Mandatory Detention : Sydney, May 10

[In Sydney on Saturday, May 10 at UTS: University of Technology, Sydney, CB06.06.103, a panel discussion on strategies to end mandatory detention (Facebook).]

On March 7, the Sydney Biennale and Transfield announced that they would go their separate ways. This was the result of a boycott launched in response to Transfield having signed a $1.2 billion deal to expand its involvement into the internment camps on Manus Island and Nauru.

The boycott was launched by way of xBorder Operational Matters, and supported by groups such as Beyond Borders, RISE: Refugees, Survivors and Ex-detainees, Students Thinking Outside Borders, and many other individuals and autonomous groups. Importantly, the result could not have been achieved without the ongoing struggles for freedom from those held inside Australia’s internment camps, and the determination of several Biennale artists and staff who withdrew their work from the festival and their value from the Transfield brand.

This was the first success of a campaign to expose the detention industry supply chains that rely on our acquiescence, our money and our labour for the camps to exist. The most effective way to end mandatory detention, therefore, is to make the system inoperable.

This panel is being held to discuss the future direction of this campaign. Specifically, we would like to address the following:

1. Expand upon the success of the Biennale boycott to a wider divestment campaign, including the divestment of superannuation funds, banks, universities, charities from the internment industry

2. Explore the links between the various components of Australia’s racial confinement and control industry (mandatory detention, Aboriginal incarceration, the Intervention, Code of Conduct)

3. Discuss the connections between the Far Right and the militarisation of the border

4. Address how the border of Australia’s colonial state, and divisions of labour along racialised and gendered lines, limits activism and effective action around the border.

[See also : A Few Words About Amigdaleza [Anarchist Prisoners’ Network, August 2013] (April 19, 2014).]

About @ndy

I live in Melbourne, Australia. I like anarchy. I don't like nazis. I enjoy eating pizza and drinking beer. I barrack for the greatest football team on Earth: Collingwood Magpies. The 2024 premiership's a cakewalk for the good old Collingwood.
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