Accent of Women

Robin Wonsley is a socialist and trade union activist involved in the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States. Concluding this week on Accent of Women, we look at the socio-economic dimensions of US society that results in the severe repression of Black people.

Robin Wonsley is socialist and trade union activist involved in the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States.  This week and next week on Accent of Women, we look at the socio-economic dimensions of US society that results in the severe repression of Black people.

In the aftermath of the recent Federal Elections, blatantly racist Pauline Hanson was elected to the Senate after 20 years dormant. We regularly see her in the media expressing her hatred to migrants and refugees and particularly to Muslims, constructing a populist speech that has found resonance in some conservative pockets of society.Long time socialist and activist Tess Lee Ack write for Marxist Left review an article entitled 'How we stopped Pauline Hanson last time', where she discusses the role of the Australian unions, students and people's organisations in stopping Hanson two decades ago, and how can we stop her and her racist politics now.

The Arab Film Festival is back on and this time, it's not only being held in Melbourne and Sydney, but in Canberra and Perth as well. In it's 13th year, The Arab Film Festival Australia is a community based and community driven film festival that brings together the best in contemporary Arab cinema to Australian audiences. The festival provides a unique opportunity for cross-cultural exchange, dialogue and relationship building between Australia and the Arab communities from around the world.

On the show this week we speak with the co-founders of bi-racial blog, The Pin. The Pin is a blog spot and website, dedicated to people that come from a mixture of different cultures, races and ethnicities. The term they use, is bi-racial and bi-cultural.The two co-founders are Nkechi Anele and Lucie Cutting, and in this panel discussion, they are joined by blog contributor, Katie Ho.

According to Human Rights Watch, 14 million girls are married, worldwide, each year - with some as young as eight or nine. While early and forced marriage appears most prevalent in countries of Africa, Asia and the Middle East, several recent cases have shown Australia is not immune to the practise.On March 8 th 2013, yup, that's international women's day, Federal legislation passed to specifically outlaw the practice. The amendment created new offences relating to slavery and slave-like practices including forced marriage. Under the Act, a marriage is a forced marriage if – because of the use of coercion, threat or deception – one party to the marriage entered into the marriage without freely and fully consenting.But it's not as feminist as it sounds. These laws have come at a time when Australia's anti-immigration policies are actively preventing Australian refugees from war-torn countries to sponsor and assist other family members from getting here. Forcing people in communities to marry their relatives overseas, sometimes seems like the only option.

We celebrate ethnic programming and many different languages and communities having access to the airwaves. But do women and young people within those ethnic communities have the same access to their voices being heard in the airwaves?We discussed with a great panel that includes Areej Nur, a young broadcaster currently producing at 3CR and Namila Benson, who began as a young producer in community radio two decades ago.This discussion was originally broadcasted on April 8 from Gertrude Contemporary as part of a panel celebrating the history of Ethic Programming in community Radio. This show was part of the 40th birthday celebration of 3CR community Radio.Listen to the section dedicated to Women in Community Language programming.

For two years and eight months, indigenous community leader Nestora Salgado was unjustly kept in prison. For over a year she had no access to speak with her attorney and was in solitary confinment. After over two years without a trial and bogus charges, and thanks to great international solidarity accions, Nestora is now free. She was released in March this years.Nestora is an activists and activist of Olinala’s Community police, a community elected and sanctioned organisation in charge of safety and peace-keeping. Once released, Nestora has embarked in a campaign for the liberation of the remaining political prisoners in Mexican prisons, and in supporting social movements opposing the brutal neoliberal measures that are being implemented in Mexico by blood and fire.I spoke via Skype with Miriam Padilla, a Mexican-American activist based in Seattle. She is a member of the Freedom Socialist Party in Washington and she has been and active member of the Free Nestora Campaign, an international campaign that was instrumental in the liberation of Nestora. Miriam speaks on the case of Nestora, on International solidarity and the importance of making connections between tye different issies in Mexico and across the continent.This show also included an excerpt of an interview I recorded with Gris Rodriguez, Nestora Salgado's daughter, on the fist anniversary of her imrpisonment. You can find the full interview on this link:  Accent of Women 19.08.2014

Prestigious Chilean journalist, writer and commentator Martha Harnecker talks about social change in Latin America and the recent challenges that social movements and progressive governments are facing today. Discussing corporate and independent media, social organisation, revolutionary strategies, the role of the workers and more.Marta was a student of Louis Althusser in Paris and returned to Chile in 1968. After the bloody coup against the Allende government in Chile in 1973, she moved to Cuba where she became Director of the research centre “Memoria Popular Lationoamericana” (MEPLA) in Havana. Between 2004 and 2011, Marta lived in Venezuela, based at the Centro International Miranda research institute, and served as an advisor to President Chávez and to various Venezuelan institutions. She now lives in Vancouver.She is the author of over 80 books and monographs, some of which have been translated into English. Her book A World to Build won the “Literatador Prize for Critical Thinking” in 2013 and was published by Monthly Review Press in 2015. Her latest book Planning from Below: A proposal of decentralized participatory planning, was published in 2015 in Cuba and Spain, and now is in the process of translation into English.These talk was recorded at Victoria University in a meeting hosted by VU's Community Identity Displacement Research Network.

In the context of 3CR's 40th birthday special broadcast, Jiselle Hanna and Lourdes Garcia-Larque were joined by a panell of Community languages broadcasters Vicky Ferrada (Spanish language programming) and Melba Marginson (Tagalog programming) to discuss the history of the participation of CALD women in community radio over the last four decades. We talked about the challengesfemale programmers faced within their communities broadcasting in their languages, and the importance of raising issues such as family violence and feminism in Ethnic Radio.The audio for this show was recorded from the live broacasting "Community Language Programmingh" on April 8, for the 3CRs 40th birthday, broadcasted from Gertrude Studios in Fitzroy.