november (Patreon)

hey mates how's it going

as the vast majority of the supposed leaders of the union movement and the political class act like they're made of clag held together with sticky tape, its been amazing to see union *members* step up and attempt to do the lords work in support of Palestine. a friend told me about a very......... useful essay, about a wave of strikes, rallies and civil disobedience in australia in 1999 (pretty recent!) that reached such a fever pitch that "policymakers were worried that public support for the US alliance would be lost. In the US, the Clinton administration became aware of the Australian public's considerable bitterness and dismay. The Australian public's "questioning of the Australian-US alliance shook the administration." Confronted by this kind of anger, the Australian government was finally forced to abandon its defence of the Indonesian military." 🧐🧐🧐 the whole article is rly instructive i think, have a read if u like, thanks to Michael and Molly for telling me about this chapter of recent history, i had no idea

https://victoriansocialists.org.au/campaigns/palestine

https://overland.org.au/2023/11/meaa-members-in-solidarity-with-palestine/

there are about 15 massive banner artworks on display at the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History conference, which winds up today. If yr in Canberra the exhibition is on the ground floor of the ANU school of social sciences, finishes at 5pm today.

i've been in Canberra all month, researching the Pink Bans (the green bans gay cousin lol) at the National Library. the research will lead to a new body of work on the topic, not sure exactly what that'll look like just yet though. been good to do this deep research into a time when trade unions effectively supported a movement outside of their industrial purview, trying to draw some lessons on how the hell they pulled that off, since we're all banging our heads against the wall about how best to back ~~~certain things~~~ going on today.  I'm doing a public lecture about the research and some outcomes this coming Thursday afternoon 4:30pm- 5:30pm. come along if yr in that part of the world, we can go to the pub after. if yr not in Canberra u can watch online, the NLA are going to stream it, more info here https://www.nla.gov.au/whats-on/events/pink-and-green-bans-sam-wallman

drew this to thank the librarians and archivists for their help all month:

if u want to get as sick of me as i am, u can also check out this podcast interview i did with Dan and Zak from the International Longshoreman and Warehouse Union in North America, talking about "art" and "activism" -- https://thedockerpodcast.libsyn.com/sam-wallman-activism-through-art or search 'Docker podcast' on spotify or wherever.

drew the below in support of community radio station RRR's staff and volunteers efforts to democratise their radio station. see also "you don't have to hate your job to want a union".

i drew it in the style of this shirt design i did for the station yeeeears ago, partly to show that the unionisation efforts are not some hostile alien force, we all love the station and want it to be better etc

and this 1 for my fav queer bar (in the world?????) the bearded tit, think they will be selling some shirts and wotnot with the design on it soon:

finally got around to drawing something about my other fav pub, the Semaphore Workers Club, for overland. so that the piece is more legible on screens, i designed it so it cld be pulled apart and broken into smaller panels, which i will also drop in below. i think the design kinda suffers cos of having to work out how to do this, also it's alotttt of text so i dunno if i pulled it off but everything is an experiment eh

i fiiiiinally finished mailing out packages to all u fine ppl - if anyone didnt receive anything in the post in the last 6 months or so plz let me know !!

and pls consider signing up for the free new 'Disputes Report', that the brilliant ♡ Sarah Missen ♡ is putting together each week. The substack is plugging a real gap, it's an accessible, independent and critical round-up of industrial disputes and worker going-ons from around the country: https://disputesreport.substack.com/

n yeh reminder about the Pink Bans lecture Thursday afternoon 4:30pm- 5:30pm at the National Library, or via the NLA's facebook page https://www.nla.gov.au/whats-on/events/pink-and-green-bans-sam-wallman 

talk to u next month, thankyou for the support!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!