Linkage

The economic and cultural case is strong enough, but the significance of grassroots music venues doesn’t end there.

These creative spaces also offer a vital escape from an occasionally harsh and misunderstanding reality faced by too many in our society.

The Music For The Many campaign has sought to champion these spaces as an absolute essential to building solidarity networks and battling underrepresentation of marginalised groups. Walk into any grassroots music venue in any town or city and, amongst promotions for upcoming shows and memorabilia from past concerts, you will see posters for LGBTQ+ advocacy, opportunities for BAME creators and vital mental health support for people of all ages.

These creative spaces allow for so much more than simply expression.

Following a pattern of jury acquittals of environmental defenders and anti-genocide activists, which exposes the media fiction that the British government’s ‘crackdown on protest’ is in any way democratic, the Court of Appeal has today backed the Attorney General’s call to remove what was for many their last remaining line of legal defence.

It has ruled that mass loss of life from climate breakdown and the government’s failure to act on the science are irrelevant to the circumstances of an action, for the purposes of the defence of consent to damage to property (Criminal Damage Act 1971, s.5(2)(a)). That is – protesters deeply-held and factual beliefs are no defence.

[…]

In the absence of any defence, some judges, such as Judge Silas Reid at Inner London Crown Court, have taken to banning activists from explaining their motivations to the jury and banning them from using words such as ‘climate change’ and ‘fuel poverty’ in their courtroom. Judge Reid has sent 3 people to prison just for using those words in court.

Such measures prompted an extraordinary intervention by the UN Special Rapporteur, Michel Forst, earlier this year:

 "I was … alarmed to learn that, in some recent cases, presiding judges have forbidden environmental defenders from explaining to the jury their motivation for participating in a given protest or from mentioning climate change at all.

 "It is very difficult to understand what could justify denying the jury the opportunity to hear the reason for the defendant’s action, and how a jury could reach a properly informed decision without hearing it, in particular at the time of environmental defenders’ peaceful but ever more urgent calls for the government to take pressing action for the climate."

In the one hundred fifty days after October 7, Israel killed thirty-one thousand Palestinians, injured seventy-two thousand, displaced 1.7 million, and razed or damaged more than half of Gaza’s buildings. Joe Biden sent over one hundred weapons shipments to Israel during the same stretch. In a recent classified briefing, US officials told members of Congress that the Biden administration approved and delivered more than one hundred separate weapons sales to Israel in the one hundred fifty days after October 7, “amounting to thousands of precision-guided munitions, small diameter bombs, bunker busters, small arms and other lethal aid,” the Washington Post reported on Wednesday. That works out to one new arms deal every thirty-six hours, on average.

These transfers are classified as sales, but very few of them meet that definition in the conventional sense. The vast majority are funded through State Department grants. Biden made just two of these publicly funded sales to Israel public, and the only reason he did is because he had to. Section 36 of the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) requires the president to notify Congress when a proposed arms sale exceeds a certain value. The notification threshold depends on the type of matériel (for “significant military equipment” it’s $14 million; for other military articles and services, $50 million; for military construction services, $200 million), but also the recipient. For NATO countries and South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Israel, the notification thresholds for these three categories are considerably higher ($25 million, $100 million, and $300 million, respectively).

While Biden is loud and proud about arming Ukraine, he prefers to arm Israel in secret. The quantity of sales since October 7 is case in point. By spreading his military support for Israel across more than one hundred sales, Biden kept pretty much all of them “under threshold” per the AECA, thereby avoiding congressional and public scrutiny.

Predictably, not everyone has been happy about it. Critics have included local planners, politicians and, especially, residents of Kitsilano Point, a rarified beachfront neighbourhood bordering the reserve. And there’s been an extra edge to their critiques that’s gone beyond standard-issue NIMBYism about too-tall buildings and preserving neighbourhood character. There’s also been a persistent sense of disbelief that Indigenous people could be responsible for this futuristic version of urban living. In 2022, Gordon Price, a prominent Vancouver urban planner and a former city councillor, told Gitxsan reporter Angela Sterritt, “When you’re building 30, 40-storey high rises out of concrete, there’s a big gap between that and an Indigenous way of building.” 

The subtext is as unmissable as a skyscraper: Indigenous culture and urban life—let alone urban development—don’t mix. That response isn’t confined to Sen̓áḵw, either. On Vancouver’s west side, the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations—through a joint partnership called MST Development Corp.—are planning a 12-tower development called the Heather Lands. In 2022, city councillor Colleen Hardwick said of that project, “How do you reconcile Indigenous ways of being with 18-storey high-rises?” (Hardwick, it goes without saying, is not Indigenous.) MST is also planning an even bigger development, called Iy̓álmexw in the Squamish language and ʔəy̓alməxʷ in Halkomelem. Better known as Jericho Lands, it will include 13,000 new homes on a 90-acre site. At a city council meeting this January, a stream of non-Indigenous residents turned up to oppose it. One woman speculated that the late Tsleil-Waututh Chief Dan George would be outraged at the “monstrous development on sacred land.”

To Indigenous people themselves, though, these developments mark a decisive moment in the evolution of our sovereignty in this country. The fact is, Canadians aren’t used to seeing Indigenous people occupy places that are socially, economically or geographically valuable, like Sen̓áḵw. After decades of marginalization, our absence seems natural, our presence somehow unnatural. Something like Sen̓áḵw is remarkable not just in terms of its scale and economic value (expected to generate billions in revenue for the Squamish Nation). It’s remarkable because it’s a restoration of our authority and presence in the heart of a Canadian city.

The Beatles’ first LP, “Please Please Me,” had been released the previous March, and the single “She Loves You” had come out in August. That summer, the four of them had moved from Liverpool to a hotel in London’s upscale Bloomsbury neighborhood. Screaming girls were fainting at their performances. “I Want to Hold Your Hand” would be released in November, and by December, the Beatles would have released four singles and two albums, all while appearing regularly on the BBC and playing almost 200 concerts in 1963 alone. For the first time in their young lives, the four working-class boys who’d grown up in a bombed-out city had money, and demands on their time were piling up. Needing a break from touring and recording, in September Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr visited Greece. John Lennon and his wife went to Paris. George chose to visit his sister, in Benton, Illinois (pop. 7,000).

His two weeks there, starting on September 16, might have been the last carefree moments of an increasingly hectic, difficult and arguably tragic life. In America, no one knew who George was or cared. He was just Louise Caldwell’s skinny little brother, a 20-year-old with a weird haircut, who said he played the guitar and sang a little, and was gaga for American cars, especially ones with tail fins.

I was at the recording of this, and quite awestruck by Stephanie's skill as a communicator.

When governments say they can't afford to fix climate change or lift kids out of poverty are they speaking the truth? American economist Stephanie Kelton challenges economic orthodoxy in her book The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People's Economy. She joins Natasha Mitchell in conversation.

The ramifications of this rule could be far-reaching. All transgender individuals in the state with Florida driver's licenses not aligning with their “biological sex” might immediately be in possession of a fraudulent license. The state could seek to suspend or revoke the licenses of transgender individuals under this policy. Moreover, during traffic stops involving transgender individuals, they could face legal challenges with police officers if the officers believe the driver's license “misrepresents” their “biological sex.” 

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Under this policy, transgender individuals in Florida could face considerable challenges in daily life. Many have already left the state, and of those remaining, 80% reportedly wish to leave. This policy could instantly criminalize transgender individuals who drive in the state with updated gender markers. It would compel transgender people to disclose their identity in any situation requiring a driver's license. Additionally, it would provide Florida a means to enforce its bathroom laws, which criminalize transgender individuals for using bathrooms that align with their gender identity in many public spaces.

Formed in 2011, REDcycle was a national soft plastics collection and recycling program. It operated across 2,000 Coles and Woolworths supermarkets and some Aldi stores, with customers able to drop off used soft plastics for processing.

Before its collapse in November 2022, the program claimed to collect 5m items a day. Prior to 2018, most of those were sent to China. After that, some were mechanically recycled into road surfacing, bollards, benches and paths in Australia. But a mid-2022 fire at Close the Loop’s Melbourne plant – where soft plastics were turned into an asphalt additive – took away a key recycling pathway. The fire was largely blamed for REDcycle’s suspension along with a “downturn in market demand” exacerbated by the Covid pandemic.

Coles and Woolworths said in April 2023 that REDcycle had been stockpiling soft plastics without their knowledge while the scheme itself claimed it had been holding on to the waste while trying to ride out problems.

The discovery of 11,000 tonnes of stockpiled soft plastic at 44 storage locations across the country led to the establishment of the Soft Plastics Taskforce under the aegis of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and chaired by the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water. Its members – Coles, Woolworths and Aldi – were tasked with ensuring the rubbish would not reach landfill.

In March 2023, the taskforce released a plan titled the roadmap to restart, which detailed a phased restart of soft plastic collections in stores from the end of the year. That deadline was not met. The taskforce has, however, “consolidated and safeguarded” REDcycle’s stockpiles and will run a small-scale soft plastics trial collection in the coming months. Just 120 tonnes have been recycled.

Olga (who asked to remain anonymous to protect her identity) is a 26-year-old chemical engineer from Russia and a trans woman. Last November, she fled her home country to the Netherlands and has since been staying at the Ter Apel asylum seekers’ centre in the north of the country. “I had no other choice,” she says. 

Olga’s escape was motivated by a Russian Supreme Court decision to ban the “international LGBTQ+ movement” and label it as an “extremist group”, on a legal par with organisations like Al-Qaeda, ISIS and Alexei Navalny's anti-corruption movement. The proceedings were held behind closed doors and the verdict was vague, allowing the authorities to interpret it how they want.

The result is that violence against queer people in Russia is now fair game. If you “participate in LGBTQ+ activities” – which essentially means if you’re suspected of not being cisgender or heterosexual, or if you speak out about queer rights – you can now face criminal prosecution and receive a two to six year prison sentence.

[…]

In response, many queer people are trying to leave Russia. This isn’t easy, thanks to the international sanctions imposed due to the war in Ukraine. Reachable countries where Russians are still allowed – like the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Georgia – aren’t safe for LGBTQ+ individuals, either. The international LGBTQ+ advocacy organisation ILGA has urged European countries to protect this group, but so far no country has made concrete commitments.

“All the forms of protection you are normally entitled to as a citizen are gone because of this verdict,” Olga says. “You are seen as a criminal. When you face violence, you can call the police, but there's a good chance you'll be arrested too.”

The 2023 attack on LGBTQ+ rights also included a law banning transgender healthcare that was passed in July. According to information Olga found in a Telegram group, Russian security services now have access to the medical data of people who have undergone transition. One specific hate group has also put together a list of queer activists and journalists who have fled Russia. They have demanded that they return to Russia and threatened a “clean-up operation” to assassinate them in the countries where they now reside.