Accent of Women

Palestinian Australian New Zealand Medical Association (PANZMA) was established in 2020 by a group of healthcare professionals across Australia and New Zealand, who care about fulfilling the unmet need of providing comprehensive health care in Palestine. My guest today is Dr. Bushra Othman, an Australian Palestinian surgeon who has just recently returned from a PANZMA medical mission in Gaza.PANZMA desperately needs donations to survive and to continue supporting people devastated by war in Gaza. Go to their website and donate today: PANZMA.org

With France’s political system making it to mainstream international media, owing to the near success of Le Pen’s fascist party, National Rally, this week’s Accent of Women focuses on fascism and islamophobia in France.Author, political activist and writer of French-Algerian origin HOURIA BOUTELDJA presents her critique of contemporary leftist thought and activism, undertaken from an anti-colonial perspective. She draws on her direct political experience as the founder and former leader of the Parti des Indigènes de la République movement in France, as well as her longstanding interest in the study of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, summarized in her most recent book, “Whites, Jews and Us: Toward a Politics of Revolutionary Love”.This speech is called Why White Antifascism Is not Enough to Fight Islamophobia?

On today’s Accent of Women, a different perspective on the War on Gaza and the October 7 attacks. Combatants for Peace is a grassroots movement of Israelis and Palestinians, working together to end the occupation and bring peace, equality and freedom to the are we call Palestine but others call Israel. Committed to joint nonviolence since their inception, Combatants for Peace uses civil resistance, education and other creative means of activism to transform systems of oppression and build a free and peaceful future from the ground up.  Launched in 2006, Combatants for Peace is the only movement worldwide that was founded by former fighters on both sides of an active conflict. As a result, they were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 and 2018.Iris Gur is an activist from Combatants for Peace. She is Israeli, and she starts here by discussing how she was first politicised, and how she came to join the peace movement.

Two years on from the Supreme Court’s ruling in the United States that overturned the historic decision on abortion rights in the famous case called Roe v Wade, and abortions are predictably the most inaccessible they’ve been. The National Mobilzation for Reproductive Justice has been spearheading a campaign to get unions behind the fight for reproductive justice against the far right's relentless onslaught. To mark the 2nd anniversary of the Supreme Court decision on June 24, National Mobilzation for Reproductive Justice will hold a press conference in Washington DC, outside AFL-CIO headquarters, to deliver an open letter signed by 600 unions, union groups and members to the AFL-CIO, which calls on the AFL-CIO to convene a national union conference to strategise for a national fightback for reproductive rights. Today's guest is Nancy Reiko Kato, Japanese American feminist, socialist and organiser with National Mobilzation for Reproductive Justice.

On today’s show, we feature Maiy Aziz from Everybody’s Home, a national campaign to fix the housing crisis. Everybody’s Home was launched in 2018 by a coalition of housing, homelessness and welfare organisations to achieve the change needed so everybody has a safe and decent place to live.But first up, a reminder that there’s still a Genocide in Gaza. Rihab Charida - a Palestinian Film Maker speaking at a recent Belmore Park, Sydney event for Palestine.

On today’s show, we head down to one of the Stop the Ports Rallies held across Australia by Trade Unionists for Palestine to highlight the need for Australia to cease aiding and abetting the war on Palestine. In Melbourne, Victoria, trade unionists and community members gathered first at station pier then marched along the foreshore to Sandridge Beach, with the cranes of webb dock clearly in sight. The purpose of the co-ordinated nationwide action was to highlight again that maritime trade is strategic in the war on Gaza, and that workers everywhere, do indeed have the power to grind everything to a halt.Today’s guests are Reem Yunis and Mai Saif.

On the 29 April this year, our comrades in Bangladesh organised an international meeting called From Local to Global: Struggle and Solidarity. The purpose of the meeting was to talk about international organising and solidarity, in the context of major international workers events such as International Workers Memorial Day, International Working Women’s Day and of course May Day.The speakers today are Dina Siddiqi,  Linda Gomaa, Nafisa Nipun Tanjeem.

Today’s Accent of Women commemorates May Day – International Workers Day on 1 May every year. The Second International designated International Workers’ Day be 1 May every year, in 1889. The date was chosen to commemorate the Haymarket Affair, a violent confrontation between police and labour protesters in Chicago on May 4, 1886, that became a symbol of the international struggle for workers’ rights. The strike at Haymarket in 1886 was about a national campaign to secure an eight-hour workday. May Day is a day of protest and action, right across the world, and this year Palestine was a major theme everywhere. On today’s Accent of Women, I bring you four speeches delivered at the May Day rally in Melbourne, Victoria – on a very frosty autumn evening.

It’s 11 years since the collapse of Rana Plaza, a building in Dhaka, Bangladesh that housed some 5 garment factories. More than 1100 workers died on 24 April 2013 but this was no accident. Workers and in fact, just about every body, knew that the building was unstable. It was built on a pond, without the correct construction permits, extra floors were added to the building illegally, and the heavy equipment associated with the garment industry all meant that the building couldn’t hold the weight of its contents.But also, on the day of the collapse, cracks had appeared in the walls of the building, and the other tenants  – banks, small shops, they all closed for the day. But the garment workers were not afforded this basic safety measure. They were forced to work that day on threat of losing an entire months wages. They staged massive protests outside the building, but were eventually forced inside because of the unrelenting poverty that they are subjected to.So Rana Plaza was no accident – it was, it is, Industrial murder. 11 years on, these workers are fighting for an across the board wage increase. Their year long campaign has had some gains. Joining me today to discuss the wage case and the anniversary of Rana Plaza, I am joined by Taslima Akhter.

On this week’s show, we return take a closer look at a number of campaigns that have emerged in Australia in the wake of the genocide in Gaza. Specifically, anti-weapons manufacturing campaigns and demilitarisation campaigns.My guests today are Palestinian/Syrian woman Nathalie Farrah from Disrupt Wars and the Get Elbit Industries out of Australia campaign. And Palestinian activist, Dana Alshaer from Melbourne University Students for Palestine Action Group.