PARTISAN!

Kirsten Hoffman laments the small, but increasing presence of communism at Rising Tide, and discusses how communist involvement is needed in the environmental movement.

The climate activist merry-go-round in Australia goes like this: disaster season (summer) destroys sections of Oceania in flood, fire, smoke and/or heatwaves, taking lives, creating internally displaced evacuees who join climate activism with a vengeance (or blame cloud-seeding); summer into autumn is spent in training; there are weeks of sustained Blockade Australia disruption, generally to the world’s largest coal port, in winter; followed by Rising Tide doing a mid-year coal train jump; followed by court battles to keep all climate and environmental activists as free from penalties and bail conditions as possible, which they should be; followed by Rising Tide’s court battles over their Notice of Intention (Form 1), a legal mechanism that in this context allows Rising Tide to block the shipping channel for a set period of time without arrest, combined with the Harbour Master shutting the port to coal ships and other large ships (these ships are too heavy to stop); followed by the anarchist Climate COPout in Sydney at the same time as the yearly United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of the Parties (UNFCCC COP); Climate COPout being a series of workshops, rallies and bike processions that do not lodge a Notice of Intention; Rising Tide wrestles with last-minute attempts by the NSW government to stop them, like a Marine Exclusion Zone this year that was overturned by the Supreme Court on the day it was set to begin; Rising Tide blocks the world’s largest coal port with a line of kayaks and at least a hundred activists are arrested; Rising Tide’s court dates are set for next year; Blockade Australia finishes their severity appeals in the Newcastle District Court; in summer we swelter; the disasters go again.

For this merry-go-round to be more fruitful, communists and anarcho-communists must join in the organising of Climate COPout and Rising Tide. There are local mini-groups of each group, and if you do not like organising with anarchists or reformists, form a red bloc with your buddy/s. My main critique isn’t of Rising Tide, but that I think communists and anarchists have been lazy. Thankfully I think comrades are good enough sports to accept this. Someone has to scrub the kitchen fireplace and that is where you make friends. Be ambitious and bring a sail dinghy: our networks are strong enough that someone has one.

Communism was more visible at Rising Tide this year, though unionism has taken a dive. One of the angriest and saddest demands against capitalism and the patriarchy, came at the nighttime beach vigil for murdered Naarm 19-year-old Isla Bell, whose uncle was on the way to Rising Tide when he received the call that her body had been found. Angry unionists stood on the windy beach on Saturday night and said ‘I don’t know where you all stand on this but CAPITALISM is to blame for this – and the PATRIARCHY’. I am furious at the death of Isla Bell and you should be too. Many at Rising Tide knew her or her uncle, and the leftwing community of Naarm searched for her. Femicide is constant in Australia and the coal ships should not be a distraction. Isla’s uncle’s friends say she would have supported Rising Tide.

Rising Tide’s spokes-council did not vote to support the CFMEU, and the reasons for that are more complex than ‘we are petty bourgeoisie who hate the unions’. Failing to support the unions does show a lack of long-term vision, but it is also bad politics for forestry workers to shoot at forest activists.

I spoke to an on-shift dock worker who agreed with Rising Tide’s climate protests. He was against the NSW anti-protest laws, and compared it to the police busting the dock strikes, though said his crew thought differently. (He seemed against immigrant workers, but a start’s a start.) A surly boy said on the phone nearby ‘it’s a protest about Palestine or some shit’ and was more annoyed by loud girls scaring away his fish. A child delightedly and angrily told us that a seagull ate the fish he released, while his dad was not a fan of anyone stopping ships, but could see why someone kept a look-out through binoculars.

What’s most important are the people on the outside of the protest. The dock worker complained that no one thought to notice them or ask if they supported. There were fewer hecklers than last year. It reminded me of how annoyed I am when street marches address their message at the people in suits, when the people who matter are painting the building walls, serving coffee and working in the chemist. The best flyering at Climate COPout was for those people. I am done with loudspeakers wasting words on the ruling class.

We must get rid of the irrelevant king and his family, plan our economy, and practise airships and solar-and-wind powered transport ships on the harbours. That’s a better vision than telling people to ‘degrow’.