Urban nightmare: The restructuring of Melbourne

[Green Left Weekly, #189, May 31, 1995; based on a paper presented to the Marxist educational conference Campaigning for Democratic Socialism, held in Melbourne at Easter 1995.]

The view of a modern city from the window of a plane as it descends is often breathtakingly impressive. The panorama is truly a miracle of social and technical organisation. Taking in the endless pattern of roads, houses, buildings and the night-time latticework of street lights can be a moving experience. The spectacle seems to say: this amazingly complex artificial environment we have created, all this is what human beings are capable of.

Interview: The movement against the Vietnam war

 [Green Left Weekly, May 24, 1995]

DAVE HOLMES, a founding member of the Democratic Socialist Party, first became an activist In Melbourne during the campaign to end the Vietnam war. KARL MILLER asks him about his experiences of that campaign.

What were your first experiences of the movement to end the war in Vietnam?

I got interested in politics in the later '60s, and by the time of the first Moratorium in May 1970 I had considered myself a socialist for several years. But this was the first demonstration I'd been on, and certainly it had a massive impression on me. I think it did on all those who went on it, and a great many other people.