Joe Toscano is running for Lord Mayor of Melbourne. Toscano is highly educated in political history and economic systems. He is one of the few doctors in Australia who still makes home visits. His ideas and values empower people at local level first and look at quality of life and democracy. Whilst it is true that a Mayor of Melbourne cannot create a peoples' bank, nonetheless, they can raise the idea seriously in some big forums. Listen to Joe on 3CR where he broadcasts weekly. Joe is also publicising a Meeting at 11am near the 8 hour monument, where Australian Anarchists will begin a walk to Human Rights Square, corner of Collins and Swanston (formerly City Square), to reclaim it as public space (because it has been corporatised). From MIDDAY THIS SATURDAY 20th October, as part of a world event known as "Global Noise" there will also be public banging of pots and pans in Human Rights Square.

Note that current Mayoral incumbent, Robert Doyle, is poorly perceived internationally for his decision to call the police on Australian activists when they occupied Melbourne's City Square, which is public space that has been corporatised. Joe Toscano is all about giving power back to people on a local level and has led the popular renaming of City Square as Human Rights Square. Doyle is also the only one of nine Melbourne Mayoral candidates who has not disclosed the amount or source of his funds. A developer who remains unnamed was described by the Age as perceiving that donations to Doyle's campaign could be rewarded with access by developers to the town hall.

Here is what Joe Toscano has to say about a Peoples' Bank

I, like many other Australians, am becoming sick and tired of hearing the Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan telling Australians to change banks every time the privately owned banking cartel refuses to pass on the Reserve Bank’s interest rate cuts. There is nothing more pathetic than one of the most powerful people in government telling Australians he and the government can't do anything in the face of the privately owned banks’ unconscionable behaviour.

Over 100 years ago, in 1911, a Labor government, faced with the predatory behaviour of privately owned banks who acted as if their only responsibility was to their major shareholders, set up the Commonwealth Bank to ensure Australians had the option of banking with a government owned bank as well as privately owned banks. In the 1980’s the Hawke/Keating Labor government, seduced by the privatisation, deregulation, corporatisation, globalisation juggernaut, privatised the Commonwealth Bank removing the only effective brake on preventing the privately owned banks forming a self-serving cartel.

The solution to the privately owned banks unconscionable behaviour is simple. The Gillard led Labor government needs to take a leaf out of the book of the 1911 Labor government and set up a new government owned bank. Faced with some real competition in the market place by a bank that is government guaranteed, it wouldn’t take long for the privately owned banking cartel that currently dominates the financial sector in Australia to disintegrate. This time, unlike in 1911, the people of Australia should be given the opportunity to incorporate the ownership of the new government owned bank in the Australian Constitution so next time the government of the day decides to privatise the people’s bank, it would have to hold a referendum to decide if the owners – the Australian people – want to sell their bank. Considering the palpable anger among the Australian people about the banks’ predatory behaviour, if the Gillard led Labor government had the courage to set up a new people’s bank, it’s re-election in 2013 would be assured.

Local government is the building block of a democratic society

Anarchism is all about relocalisation and face to face democracy. It is not about disorder and competition.

Toscano writes:

In Australia local government is a creature of state government. Local government has no constitutional protections. State governments can dismiss and do dismiss local governments on a whim. In this country power is being increasingly concentrated in the hands of a Federal government that derives its power from its ability to tax. In an anarchist society local government at both the community and workplace level is the sole level of government.

Community councils based on geographical boundaries and workplace councils based on the type of work done, not specific trades, exercise power in an anarchist society. Community and workplace councils form federations to co-ordinate activities at a local, regional and national level. Community and workplace councils make decisions through direct democratic processes. The people involved in a decision make that decision and appoint or elect delegates to co-ordinate decisions at a local, regional and national level.

The ability to freely participate in the decision making process is at the heart of anarchist decision making processes. Whether people choose to participate or leave the work to “somebody” else will ultimately determine the success or failure of a system based on direct democratic principles. We don’t need several layers of government to rule us. We don’t need to hand over power to
representatives. In order to create a secure, stable, viable society we need processes in place that harness the collective wisdom of the people and use the common wealth for the common good.

The violent removal of Occupy Melbourne protestors by Victoria Police on Friday 21st October 2011 from Melbourne’s City Square after being given the green light by the Melbourne Mayor, Robert Doyle, and the Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu highlights how important it is to reclaim open public space for political activity in the City of Melbourne, a city that only gives lip service to the right to protest.

The 11th November has played an important role in radical Australian history. On the 11th November 2011 the Melbourne based Anarchist Media Institute encourages the people of Melbourne to reclaim Melbourne’s City Square to commemorate:

The 11th November 1854, the day 157 years ago when the Ballarat Reform League, the organisation behind the Eureka Rebellion, was formed on the Ballarat goldfields.

The 11th November 1880, the day 131 years ago when Ned Kelly one of Australia's most well known rebels was executed in the Old Melbourne Gaol.

The 11th November 1918, the day 93 years ago that marked the end of World War One, a war fought by workers at either end of a bayonet fo the glory of God, King and Country that resulted in the death of ove
60,000 young Australian men from a population of only five million people.

The 11th November 1975, the day 36 years ago when the Governor General dismissed the Whitlam Labor government, a government that introduced more reforms in four years than every post war Australian government put together has been able to achieve.

Join us - Midday Friday 11th November Melbourne City Square Reclaim the Past to Understand the Present and Change the Future.

Australian Radical History the Eureka Series 2011 No. 10 - Think about it!!

The media reports about the violent dispersal by the Victoria Police of peaceful Occupy Melbourne protestors on the 21st October 2011 is full of justifications for the outrageous actions of the Lord Mayo Robert Doyle and the Premier Ted Baillieu. One hundred and fifty-seven years ago, despite the authorities best effort, the people of Victoria rallied behind the Eureka rebels, not Governor Hotham and Queen Victoria.

Within four months of the rebellion the 13 men charged with High Treason for their participation in the rebellion had been acquitted in the Victorian Supreme Court by a jury of their peers. Within six months a General Amnesty was declared for all those miners and esidents connected with the Eureka Stockade. Within six months a new Electoral Act gave miners the right to vote. Within seven months the notorious gold license was replaced with an export duty on gold and the hated Gold Commission was abolished.

Within eight months Raffaello Carboni, one of the leaders of the Eureka Rebellion, was elected to the Local Court at Ballarat to adjudicate mining disputes. Within eleven months both Peter Lalor, the elected leader of the Eureka rebels and John Humffray, the leade of the passive resistance group within the Ballarat Reform League, were elected to the Legislative Council of Victoria.

The difference between 1854 and 2011 is a free diverse vibrant media that reflects the will of the people not the will of the corporate sector and the government. The Eureka Rebellion did not end on the 3rd December 1854, the Occupy Melbourne protests will not end on the 21st October 2011, they will continue while that small section of society that owns the means of production, distribution and exchange dominates every aspect of our lives.

You can hear Joe Toscano's wonderful weekly radio show on 3CR by podcast. Catch the latest here

First published 2011-10-10 10:02:39 +1000. Republished on 21-October 2011 at 11:37: There is a new protest movement for democratic occupation of cities all over the world, demonstrating against the financial system and its insults to most of us. We support the principles the movement espouses and urge others to do so. Days later we have unanswered questions about this movement in Melbourne, which we are hoping to elucidate. Please join in with comments.

Statement on Occupy Melbourne website from candobetter.net

This statement was posted on October 9, 2011 at 11:38 pm and was in moderation at time of this article:

"http://candobetter.net writers cover these concerns and candobetter.net supports your platform in solidarity. We will be there on Saturday. We criticise the growth lobby http://candobetter.net/GrowthLobby and show how it subverts Australia’s remaining democracy. We consider the amount of money that goes on land and rent costs ruins small business, causes homelessness, enslaves most of us and creates a tiny layer of profiteers that runs this country. That’s not an economic success.The assault on wages in this country is shameful. See this cartoon: http://candobetter.net/node/2601

We are gathering a political movement of radical community candidates for the next federal election. Please keep watching our pages too.

I personally would support the adoption of the roman law and civil code in Australia. The British, US, Oz and NZ system is a democratic sham."

signed Sheila Newman

Vigilance needed against forces that will try to take over and destroy this movement in Australia

Please put principles before personalities. To this effect, please watch out for efforts to intimidate people who try to talk about the problems we have with overpopulation and the growth lobby in this country.

Often occupying positions in the Socialist Alliance - but not real socialists - the people subverting movements for democracy are identifiable because they try to stop you from expressing your opposition to undemocratic development and population growth in Australia. They have long been interfering in the Green Movement, the Climate Change movement, have taken over NGOs and have succeeded to date in fragmenting protest, to the advantage of the ruling cliques here. Sometimes they pretend to be anarchists and that anarchism supports violence. They are not anarchists. As Joe Toscano says at Anarchist Weekly, which is a very solid democratic forum, beware of anyone who talks up violence, they are almost certainly working for the authorities.

We urge our readers to be positive forces in this movement.

Original Occupy Wall Street statement

OCCUPY WALL ST FIRST DECLARATION

On Thursday night, Occupy Wall Street participants voted on and approved the first official “Declaration of the Occupation of New York City.” It it reprinted in its entirety below.

As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.

They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.

They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.

They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.

They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless nonhuman animals, and actively hide these practices.

They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.

They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.

They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.

They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.

They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.

They have sold our privacy as a commodity.

They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.

They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.

They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.

They have donated large sums of money to politicians supposed to be regulating them.

They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.

They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantive profit.

They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.

They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.

They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.

They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.

They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.

They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.*

To the people of the world,

We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.

Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.

To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.

Join us and make your voices heard!

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