°hai hai
The Australian student movement is dead! Long live the global undercommons, may its defiances proliferate! (Read more, download the pdf of an article by Mickie Skelton)
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Oh, absolutely! Thanks for the pdf.
Lyn Kosky: “I know it’s been very disruptive for the Melbourne community and our hope that this evening’s peak will actually return to normal.'’
I love it as bare life meme, too…
ana [May 1, 2008 @ 5:06 am]
Also good, from Wednesday:
Kosky: “They’re not an organised group, which is actually very difficult”. And: “Wally Hunt from the Taxi Drivers’ Association thinks the blockade has gone on long enough and is advising drivers to go back to work.” [via]
As for the bare body meme, I took the title of the post from the track below, which has the line, “Hit boiling point, it’s time to undress”.
Panjabi Hit Squad ft Miss Scandalous - Hai Hai
Happy MayDay!
s0metim3s [May 1, 2008 @ 11:01 am]
this is the second time the Punjabi drivers have taken the corner outside Flinders St station. Last time they stayed out for about 8 hours after the murder of Rajneesh Joga in August 2006. there was also stop works out at the airport in solidarity - predominantly Somali drivers were involved in the airport solidarity stuff.
This time they were out all night. After the last outbreak of action in 2006, some of the drivers started up an association - it was quickly pounced upon by various owner-drivers desperate to control what was a movement of bailee drivers. This group are still attempting to maintain control over this stuff.
The drivers may be going to a mass meeting on 15th May - though the association has been making noises about making it an invite only for their reps to meet with government. The problem they will have of course is that all of those outside the station voted yesterday afternoon for a mass meeting at Flemington Station. Will be pretty interesting to see what happens.
Last time, the Transport Workers Union totally ignored the protests, only sending one organiser with his business cards to the protests. This time, the TWU made sure they muscled in on the meetings with Lynn Kosky and made sure they did some of the media as well.
Liz [May 1, 2008 @ 1:57 pm]
by Flemington station i mean flemington racecourse - whoops….
Flemington station would certainly be an interesting location for a mass meeting…
Liz [May 1, 2008 @ 2:00 pm]
Hey Liz - thanks, and do keep us posted.
I remember both prior actions, esp the panic which ensued when drivers switched off their engines at Melbourne Airport and refused to take passengers. Hilarious to watch a sense of entitlement at mobility confronted with inertia.
There’s a remark by Kennett (no, he ain’t dead yet) in some article talking about the lack of training of drivers - and, reading between the lines, it occurs to me that Melbourne, unlike London, but more like NY, has no formalised system of racially segregating drivers. Here, black cabs (ironic, really) and mini-cabs, ‘the knowledge’ … I wouldn’t be surprised if there was renewed pressure to install something similar in Melbourne. I’ve yet to see any non-anglos driving black cabs, though there seems to be a preponderance of chauffeurs from Nigeria …
Might be a good time to raise money to bring someone over there from the NY Taxi Workers’ Alliance, or something similar - likely someone has already been thinking of this.
It would also be a good time to see if it’s possible to cut across and through the organisational forms of student/worker.
s0metim3s [May 2, 2008 @ 11:26 am]
yes yes yes!
Was good to see some of the crew from RMIT and Melbourne uni student crews out to the wee hours at the strike. hoping to see some of the student crews to come down to the 15th may meeting.
Didn’t know about the NY Taxi alliance - thanks and will pass on to the drivers I know. I think that is exactly the kind of thing that surviving student unions should think of financing….
Liz [May 3, 2008 @ 4:08 am]
hiya - i wrote that pdf which you’ve got as a download - i didn’t have space to credit it on the actual sheet, but i was wondering if you could perhaps credit it somewhere to Mickie Skelton? That would be ace - i’m assuming/hoping you picked it up off one of us on the corners. We did over 600 handouts which was really awesome - lots of people getting a direct insight into strike, rather than indirect media wrangling.
MS
mickie skelton [May 4, 2008 @ 10:05 am]
Hey Mickie - of course. And it was much appreciated. Also, I picked it up from my inbox from a friend who likely picked it up off that corner - I’m a long ways away from any Melbourne street corner.
I could redo the pdf if you send me the text as a .doc file (the current pdf won’t cutnpaste because I think it was scanned). In the meantime, I’ll amend the link, but this won’t change the pdf.
s0metim3s [May 4, 2008 @ 10:39 am]
[This comment has been moved to here - a.]
Liz [May 4, 2008 @ 11:42 am]