Date: Wed, 05 Jun 1996 11:37:47 -1000
From: Steve Wright <sjwright-AT-vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au>
Subject: Newtown Political Collective


Here's the home page of an interesting-looking circle of comrades in Sydney . . .

http://www.usyd.edu.au/~sfraser/cat/npc/index.html

>                     Newtown Political Collective
> 
> The Newtown Political Collective is a group of activists that
> started in Sydney in March 1996. We're mostly anarchists and pissed
> off ex-members of groups like the ISO. We started because we thought
> that the different left wing groups weren't interested in working
> together, or even working by themselves. It seemed to us that there
> was a lot of theoretical hair splitting, a lot of little dictators,
> and not a lot of activity.
> 
> The response from the socialists is pretty much what you might
> expect. Basically the ordinary members quite like us and the
> leadership hates us. Socialist Alternative has a policy of expelling
> any of their members who come to our meetings. Still, we've managed
> to do quite a lot on our own.
> 
> We held our own May Day march, which was on the actual day rather
> than the nearest weekend. We marched to a Liberal Party office,
> spraypainted the building, and occupied it for a while. It was a
> really good event, except we had a pretty small turnout. We've been
> distributing copies of the Rabelais 'How to Shoplift' article to
> shoppers and high school kids. We've given away 700 so far.
> 
> We've been doing a lot of postering and graffiting, particularly
> against the yuppification of the Newtown area. We held an illegal
> street party about this, which got hundreds of people turning out.
> The ISO and Socialist Alternative boycotted it because we wouldn't
> let them sell papers. You can imagine how crushed we were.
> 
> At the moment we're also working on trying to revive public speaking
> at the Domain, and holding public forums on things like
> discrimination against young people. If you're in Sydney, we meet
> every Tuesday at 8:30 at the Newtown Neighbourhood Centre, opposite
> Newtown station. If you can't come to meetings, you can still get
> involved and we'd really like to hear your ideas. You can write to
> us at PO Box 1, Newtown NSW 2040.
> 
> Articles we've written that have appeared around the place on:
> 
>    * The Urban Environment
>    * Racism
>    * The Sydney 2000 Olympics
> 
> Newtown Political Collective:npc-AT-lyst.apana.org.au





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