From bushfires to industrial fires: how corporate greed is destroying the planet and working class communities
Panel featuring:
Kate Doherty, Public Services Association member based in Sydney. Kate will speak about the politics and protests surrounding the deadly climate-change fuelled bushfires that destroyed millions of hectares of bushlands in NSW, thousands of homes, killed dozens of people and choked city residents in poisonous smoke for months. Kate’s father has been a volunteer firefighter on the south coast of NSW for the past 38 years.
Lavanya Thavaraja, from the Migrant Workers Centre, Victorian Trades Hall. Lavanya will be speaking about the industrial chemical fires at factories run by cowboy corporate operators and the dangerous conditions migrant workers endure in the chemical factories.
Naomi Farmer, socialist from the Latrobe Valley. Naomi helped to organise community protests in 2014 when a fire raged at the local coal mine and state government authorities did very little to protect locals.
Readings
Disaster in the Valley by Naomi Farmer
https://redflag.org.au/article/disaster-valley
Poisoned for Profit by Jerome Small
https://redflag.org.au/article/poisoned-profit
Workers speak out after factory fire in Melbourne’s north by Ryan Stanton and Viraj Dissanayake
https://redflag.org.au/index.php/node/6747
How the rich plan to rule a burning planet by James Plested
https://redflag.org.au/node/6974
Fuelled by coal: Piercing the mirage of a sustainable capitalist Australia by Catarina Da Silva