On re-thinking law school curriculum and the power of community political education: with Anna Carlson

The JATL Law and Social Movement series will be a series of conversations with Queensland law graduates who have gone on to do incredible work in the social movement organising space. It can be difficult to navigate how to use your legal education towards truly progressive social change, so this series will grapple with how to do so, and also provide ideas of different pathways people have taken since leaving law school.

For our third conversation, Pandora’s Blog editor Samantha Haran sat down with PhD candidate and community organizer Anna Carlson (she/they). Anna co-founded the incredible free community education project Brisbane Free University, and is a current co-producer of Radio Reversal, a feminist community radio show on 4zzz. She is undertaking her PhD at the School of Political Science at the University of Queensland (UQ), studying the continuing settler-colonial project in this country, specifically looking at the relationship between colonial surveillance and liberal reforms in Queensland.

In this interview, Anna and I dived into the dangerous problems with ‘blackletter’ legal education, the need to think critically about law as a system of political power, and how law school curriculum can better attempt to reflect that. We also touched on their incredible PhD research and amazing community work with grassroots education initiatives like Brisbane Free University (BFU) and Radio Reversal, exploring what these different projects have taught her about education, political power and what it means to be a part of a movement. I have had the pleasure of working with and sharing time, laughs and friendship with Anna for some time now, and they have taught me so much of what it means to work from a place of unwavering joy, love for one another, and commitment to the principles that matter. As she puts it at the end of this interview, the ultimate goal for anyone in movement work should be "to figure out ways to be of service to community, and to do that joyfully."

Interview with Anna

Tell me a little bit about yourself, the work you’re doing at the moment, and your journey here since law school.

My name is Anna Carlson, I am a PhD candidate in the School of Political Science at UQ, and working in and around the intersections of politics and law, particularly in relation to continuing colonisation and reckoning with that from my own location as someone who is here at a white settler directly implicated in the colonial project. Studying law and having the opportunity to engage a bit more deeply with some of the most significant systems of power has really shaped all of the stuff I’ve done since, which, in a very abridged form, has included: working in the community sector, working for community legal centres (I worked at RAILS as a community educator), and clinical legal education work. I have also been involved with broader political education work, both in a formal sense of professional jobs, but also informally in grassroots community organisations such as Brisbane Free University (a free education project) and Radio Reversal (a community radio show), amongst others. 

That’s awesome! I really admire the work that you do so much. Obviously, you’ve got into a really different field compared to most law graduates, so I wanted to ask you: what was your actual law school experience like, and how did it maybe lead you to not take that traditional path?

It's a great question! So, I studied Law & Arts at UQ straight out of high school. I think I realised fairly early in my formal legal training that I probably wouldn't become a lawyer. That being said, I really value the capacity my formal legal training has given me to engage deeply and critically with law - i.e. a part of the political apparatus that is really intentionally opaque. And it has been really interesting to me working in community and realising the privilege that comes from being able at least loosely understand how legal structures function, and to be able to do something with that understanding. And so, I think perhaps the realisation that I had during law school was that the thing that I was going to do with my understanding of law was maybe not working within the legal system itself, but was instead more anchored in a desire for a political education around legal structures. 

And so that's the kind of work that ended up calling to me, in both the more practical sense of clinical legal education work (so running community education classes about legal rights and entitlements, trying to build resources so folks have a clearer sense of what their rights are with police, etc), and also in the deeper sense of political education work—about what it means to have a deeper understanding of the law, the histories that animate it, the ways that these structures have been formed and reformed for very specific reasons over a very long time. And what it means to be able to fracture some of the sustaining myths of those legal systems. That’s the kind of work I find myself doing now: work that goes a little beyond the classical legal education work of making sure people know what their rights are, and goes towards the sort-of fracturing the skeleton of the legal system itself.

I love that, and completely agree! Moving towards that ‘fracturing of the legal system’ - the horizon of abolition, of a better (and completely different) world - is absolutely the goal.  I completely agree that part of the work of getting there necessarily requires helping people see the current legal system clearly for what it is  - to be able to see through the cultural and political myths that are propagated about it (namely that law as it stands is neutral, objective, just and generally ‘good’). And so, relatedly, I wanted to ask you - what do you think was missing from the law school curriculum at the moment? 

That's an absolutely critical question. I think there's 2 things I want to say. First, I think it's a mistake to think the current legal education system is not by design, right? Like there has been a whittling away of radical content from the legal curriculum and a sidelining of diverse perspectives. As result, what you're taught is not just that this is the law and this is how you should use it, but also that there is something fundamentally rational about the legal system, that it is not a politically constituted and endlessly redesigned structure - that it just is.

I came to understand the UQ program’s problem most acutely when I briefly studied law elsewhere. I was lucky enough to go on exchange to the University of Vienna, and there I was amazed by the dearth of critical engagements with law and the flow on impacts of that that meant for, for example, critical race theory, intersectionality, etc. It helped me realise that the deeply political process behind law is obscured when the law is taught in a technical or mechanical way, as a set of blackletter rules that you just learn, as it's done at UQ. So for me, I’d love to see abolition taught as part of the criminal law at UQ, I would love to see deeper engagements with poverty law, with critical race theory and critical legal studies perspectives.

That’s a segway into my second point which is that I think there are real problems with the Priestley 11. Because of that model, even when those other things are taught, they are taught as electives; they're not taught as things that are fundamental to understanding the law itself. To me that feels like the space we could really improve legal education; to say, no you actually can’t understand the law without understanding race. And you actually can't understand the law without understanding European imperialism or racial capitalism, it doesn't make sense. Those things aren’t interventions in the legal understanding, they're the foundation of the legal system and so you actually have to begin with those.

I absolutely agree! Critical perspectives are something I’ve rarely encountered in my formal legal education, and you’r right, when it comes up, it is always as an ‘add on’ or in a later year elective subject. Relatedly, on the topic of critical academia, I would also love to ask you: what is your PhD research about? And what influence did your experience in law school have on you choosing this particular topic?

Of course! So my PhD research looks at the relationship between colonial surveillance and liberal reforms in Queensland over the course of predominantly the 20th century. It's a kind of historical-political project that aims to map the intersection of the expansions of colonial surveillance of varied forms with the construction of discourses of political progress, transition and reform. And I think that has been really heavily shaped by my experiences of studying the law, but perhaps also of the kinds of cruel optimism (as Lauren Berlant describes it) that comes from believing in the promise of progress that is offered both by legal education and practice, which is that if you just work hard enough to make yourself legible to the system, to force the system to recognise you, than justice will come from that process. 

I think that having a background in the law definitely made big parts of the project more possible in a practical sense (I spent a bit of time digging through legislation). But, perhaps more importantly, I think the biggest influence of law on my PhD was that my experiences engaging with the law and spending time around social justice lawyering, meant I really believed in the promise of liberal reform and progress through legal reform for a while. It’s a really seductive promise and one that is really hard to let go of,  because it is the kind of theory of change that has animated so much of our understanding of the world. I think part of what my PhD project tries to reckon with is the violence of that seductive myth. The project looks at colonial histories of surveillance, at the violence of continuing colonisation from my location as implicated in that violence as a white person. It was increasingly difficult to hold onto to or rehabilitate that myth of liberal reform when I was also looking both historically and materially at everyday life, seeing the violence that myth allowed. 

That sounds like such an important project, and I can’t wait to read it. I think a lot of what you’ve said about having to fight against the seductive myths of liberalism are also seen in the incredible community education projects and organising you do as well. I would love it if you could speak a little bit about Radio Reversal, the radio show you co-produce on 4zzz! What is the show about, how did you get into community radio, and what do you think the value of it is?

Oh, I mean I love community radio! I love a bunch of things about it. I think something that's really valuable about it that's different from most other contemporary mediums, including things like podcasts, is that it's free and anyone can listen to it. There is a kind of accessibility to radio that also means you have to think really deeply about the possibility that literally anyone could tune in to  this content at any moment during your show. It’s very different from any kind of opt in media and so that has been a really wonderful pedagogical exercise, actually. It is certainly not something that I'm an expert at, but I think the constant practice of trying to work on developing ways to talk about complex important and violent and harmful systems, in ways that are accessible and useful is so valuable. And doing it through community radio has been a way to work from joy, as well - this is something my wonderful PhD supervisor Professor Chelsea Watego talks about a lot, what it means to acknowledge that struggles are ongoing, there is no end in sight - but we struggle from joy, we struggle from a place of shared and collective joy. The radio show that I produce was started by 2 of my dearest friends 10 years ago now, and we’ve continued it off the strength of love, you know? And being collectively embroiled in this project of wanting to think deeply about the world, wanting to do that with one another, and also the people who listen in, who call us, who send in messages… it's been an absolutely radical education for me.

I love that! And it is something I’m really honoured and grateful that I got to participate in as well. Another one of your fantastic projects I’ve had the chance to be a part of is Brisbane Free University (BFU), an awesome free education project you’ve been running for a decade now. I’d love it if you could share what it's about, how it began and what your intention was with it!

Yes! So BFU is a free education project that we started at the end of 2012. I was in undergrad when we started it, and it has a similar kind of origin story and collective behind it as Radio Reversal. My co-collaborators Fern Thompson and Briohny Walker - we became friends and we started talking about our experiences of education and the university. This included both the absolutely transformative experience of education in our own lives, the ways that we loved coming together to think and the moments at which that had been possible in our experiences of formal education, but also our deep concerns that that seemed very limited in the university. So BFU grew out a community-based desire to have spaces where we could come together to think. We wanted to open up the positive experiences of university to more people, to take that to a different space and put it to service in a different way. 

In terms of the specifics of what we do, it has been really wonderfully malleable - over the years it has taken a number of forms. At the moment, the majority of our week-to-week activity is a radical reading group which we’ve been facilitating for 6 years now. I think the presence of radical reading groups is a signifier that there is a deep desire amongst a lot of people for spaces of critical engagement. People want spaces to come together and think deeply about the world. We often frame the radical reading group as not being so much about being able to understand the texts on their own terms but trying to understand what they mean for the world, and what it means to use these texts strategically when we’re thinking about building movements, about how we engage in strategic acts of refusal in our workplaces for example, how we build unions, how come together as communities to build mutual aid and co support. BFU definitely seems to be something engaged in learning for the joy of learning, but also maybe more so learning for the joy of collective struggle.

I love that so much. I also think that the high engagement with projects such as BFU really shows that there is something that they are doing that universities and other traditional educational institutions aren’t offering, both substantively and in terms of access. In your opinion, what is that difference? Between community political education projects, such as BFU and Radio Reversal, and institutional education? 

Such a good question, and I have a bunch of sort of vaguely connected answers to that. The first one is that I don't think free education projects are necessarily trying to replace traditional universities. They function very differently; the purpose is not really to ‘authorise’ people; there’s no certificates, you're not being asked or assessed at the end on how well you understood the text. Instead, the marker of a good reading group is a really interesting conversation, which I think is a very different project. I also don't think any of these free education spaces are perfect, and they are certainly not free of the tensions that exist in universities… power relations still exist in those spaces and they are still organised around hierarchies that are often unnamed, that are sometimes hard to identify, that are very hard to rupture. 

But I think perhaps the thing that feels exciting, the space of possibility that I see in these community-based education projects, is that we come together to do this and at best we can take mutual responsibility for these spaces. In that sense we get to learn not just ideas, but we also get to learn what it means to learn together. And that's probably the thing I’ve learnt the most from free education projects; not so much learning ‘things’ but learning what it means to come together to think together, to come to a point where I think with a chorus. I think with all of these people I’ve now spent 10 years thinking the world with and alongside. And I think there's something very powerful about being able to engage in learning collectively, not least because it gives us access to sites beyond our own lived experience - it means that we are constantly cross checking our experiences of particular political structures against other peoples and realising those generative gaps, the ways that our experiences don't tell us everything about the world, they tell us some really partial things. When we bring those experiences together with other people, and we read deeply and we learn in the pursuit of collective knowledge, rather than individual knowledge, we get a little bit closer to find a liberatory pedagogy, a practice that's not about personal authority or becoming an expert, but is about how we use this, how we do something material with the stuff we learn.

I couldn’t agree more. Being a part of community education has been such a transformational experience for me personally as well - as you said, getting to a point of ‘thinking in a chorus’ with the people you love is such an incredible feeling! Before we finish up, I just have 2 final questions! First, what general advice would you give to law students (or graduates) looking to do social movement work? Or more so, how can you use a legal education in a positive way in the movement space?

I think there's some absolutely fantastic examples of folks already who are engaging and developing really radical possibilities for law students. I know you've spoken in the past to Clare Scrine from Action Ready which I think is a really tangible example of what folks with legal training have been able to do. There is also a huge space at the moment for radical lawyering… having lawyers that work for the movement would be incredibly valuable. But it is a challenging thing to do. I think one of the reasons it becomes hard to get lawyers in the struggle is because lawyering is hard work, and it's really hard for lawyers to stay engaged in community when they are busy and tired and overworked. But I think those relationships with community are everything. They are the thing that will form your politics, the way you’ll understand how to use the law in service of community and movements. So, I think as much as it's hard, trying to be grounded in political community, knowing who you are accountable to, can really help. Particularly when you're going through what often feels like a conveyor belt right? Like the early years of being a lawyer, much like the legal education project, I think does feel like you're inexorably moving in a particular direction… having people who will hold you through that process is so important!

The other thing I would say is that wherever you are lawyering, also engage your labour rights! Lots of lawyers are really exploited in their workplaces as I just said. Varied forms of exploitation are considered acceptable in the industry and are held in place by this mythic vision of the law as a brotherhood. So if you're going to be a lawyer, work in your workplace… unionize! Try to rupture to logics of overworking. And importantly, remember who you're working for, right? Like if you're willing to work 50 hours a week, work 40 of them for pay and 10 of them for free, for the cause. There's an element of being able to kind of model the kinds of transformations you want. Figure out who you want to be of service to, and work towards that!

Absolutely. I think staying rooted in your values and principles is so important when you’re working in a necessarily conservative, status-quo enforcing industry. And community is absolutely the way to do it! Having people who can remind you what really matters to you. Which I think leads perfectly to our final question… what is your ultimate goal with the work you are doing at the moment?

I’ve been thinking a lot about this, because I’m coming to the end of my PhD thesis, and I’ve been thinking a lot about how the thesis itself does not feel like the work. The thesis has been an incredible experience, to have the privilege of having this long to write a piece of work, and there are certainly things that can only come clear through a deep writing process. But for me the marker of what this work means is what happens next; whether it is taken up by community, whether it means something to other people, the things I can do with this work next. And I think for me the main goal of my work in general is to work in and for community and particularly in and for the communities I’m accountable to. In the context of my current project, I’m working directly on histories of colonization, so the work is primarily accountable to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, is accountable to the broader political communities I'm part of. And I think for me that is the goal. To figure out ways to be of service to community, and to do that joyfully.

To learn more about the awesome projects Anna is involved with, you can check out Brisbane Free University’s website here and Radio Reversal’s website here. To get involved, Brisbane Free University’s Radical Reading Group has a Facebook group which you can join here, and Radio Reversal is live on 4zzz every Thursday at 9am, and you can stream on-demand online here. To keep up with Anna, you can follow them on twitter here and instagram here!

Australian and International Immigration Policy for Refugees: A Comparison between Afghani and Ukrainian Asylum Seekers

By Pandora’s Blog Editor, Stella Dziov

The recent Afghanistan and Ukrainian conflicts respectively have revived discussion in attitudes towards refugees and international immigration policy. The principal controversy has been the different treatment Ukraine received globally. Reporters were quick to note the more positive language describing Ukrainian refugees, as well as the sudden welcoming shift from previously anti-immigration countries. However, while the Afghanistan and Ukrainian refugees have been treated differently socially, the support for both from the Australian government is still lacking. The Australian government have advocated themselves as a harbour of safety to Ukrainian refugees in a performative move of humanitarian relief that they are hesitant to actually deliver on. Parliament have the opportunity to finally deliver with the introduction by MP Andrew Wilkie of the Ending Indefinite and Arbitrary Immigration Detention Bill. New policy that reforms our immigration system to better manage refugees is necessary for compliance with our international obligations and to more effectively help asylum seekers.

Afghani refugee crisis in 2021-2022

Over the span of a few months in mid 2021, the Taliban took control of the entirety of Afghanistan, resulting in devastating numbers of civilian casualties and a return to extreme violations of human rights. This coincided with the US’s withdrawal from the Afghanistan conflict. Iran and Pakistan prepared themselves for the inevitable influx of refugees by establishing additional temporary accommodation and increasing border patrols. As neighbouring countries of Afghanistan, their immediate proximity made them an attractive option for people seeking immediate asylum. Subsequently, the two nations have cumulatively taken in over two million Afghani refugees.[1] Further afield, Canada announced it would double the spots available in its refugee program to 40,000. The UK has also pledged to take up to 20,000 Afghani refugees fleeing the conflict in the coming years.

In Australia, the Refugee and Humanitarian program has dedicated an additional 4125 visas to Afghani refugees.  Despite these positive policy initiatives to assist Afghans, many European countries were still reluctant to take Afghani refugees, with some outright refusing. Turkey is one of these countries. Many Afghans have reported racism from Turkish citizens, with political leaders being publicly vocal that they ‘want them to leave’. On July 26th of 2021, Austria’s chancellor stated that Turkey was ‘a more suitable place’ for Afghani refugees than his own country. This shifting of responsibility to house refugees is rooted in racial discrimination and offensive stereotypes. Whilst there is some constructive legislation being implemented to target Afghani refugees, the racial bias from some countries remains strong. This social bias has been exemplified by the Ukraine-Russia conflict and the subsequent treatment of Ukrainian refugees.

Ukrainian refugee crisis in 2022

Russia began their invasion of Ukraine in late February this year. This has led to roughly 7 million people fleeing Ukraine, the largest European refugee crisis since World War II. In early March, the council of the EU unanimously agreed to enact the Temporary Protection Directive (TPD) for the first time in the EU’s history. The TPD allows Ukrainian refugees to bypass standard EU procedures for asylum seekers within EU member states and enjoy benefits such as access to healthcare, education for children, and housing. Neighbouring countries of Ukraine have taken in the largest percentages of refugees thus far. Poland has recorded more than 1.2 million refugees and is providing free food, accommodation, and healthcare to all Ukrainian asylum seekers. Turkey’s interior minister has emphasised that Ukrainians are ‘welcome’ in Turkey and has taken in close to 100,000 Ukrainians. Austria also announced that they were willing to take in refugees. Further abroad, Canada has pledged to allow an unlimited number of Ukrainians to apply to temporarily stay in Canada and have so far approved over 200,000 Ukrainian visas. Australia announced that Ukrainian visas would be given top priority and they would grant Ukrainian refugees humanitarian visas to allows them to work and access healthcare. Whilst there was support for Afghani refugees also from some of these countries, the call to arms to support Ukrainians was met with much more support in comparison to initiatives to assist Middle Eastern and African refugees.

Poland had just months prior been firing tear gas at asylum seekers from the Middle East and Africa. As already discussed, Turkey and Austria have been against intake of refugees however have been encouraging Ukrainian asylum seekers to take refuge in their countries. Most of Eastern Europe has been historically anti-immigrant and this sudden welcoming attitude highlights the preference for “ideal”, “white” refugees. Though the charity of these countries is commendable and has assisted millions of innocent people to flee war zones, it has clearly demonstrated a racial prejudice within Europe towards white, European refugees. Various news outlets have been quick to point out the disparity in the treatment of Middle Eastern and African refugees versus Ukrainian refugees. That is not to say that the assistance to Ukrainian refugees should be dialled back but rather that support for Middle Eastern and African refugees needs to be vastly improved.

There have also been gaps noted in Australia’s support for the Ukrainian refugees. Critics have accused Australia of offering performative support to Ukraine which they consequently fail to deliver on. Having previously promised to grant humanitarian visas to refugees so that they receive work rights and healthcare, many Ukrainians received only visitor visas which limits their access to healthcare and does not afford them a work right. Furthermore, responsibility to arrange of food, clothing, and accommodation has “fallen to community organisations” without support from the government. Morrison’s sweeping statements of Australia being eager to help have not been backed up upon the arrival of Ukrainian refugees. The immigration system needs reform in terms of policies that ease the transition for refugees more effectively.

Australian immigration reform

In early August, MP Andrew Wilkie reintroduced the Ending Indefinite and Arbitrary Immigration Detention Bill to the federal parliament. The name of the bill clearly indicates its focus: bringing an end to unjustified detention of refugees and asylum seekers by bringing them into the community “in preference to being behind bars”.[2] In his appeals to parliament, Wilkie calls the treatment of asylum seekers “immoral and unlawful”, insisting that change needs to happen. Wilkie argues that Australia does not uphold their obligations as a signatory to the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees on account of our “detention first” approach to managing asylum seekers. In February 2022, the average length of immigration detention in Australia was 689 days, with Canada and the United States having an average detention period of 14 and 55 days respectively. The processing times have become unjustifiable and points to an active refusal from the immigration department to free refugees from their government-imposed purgatory. Wilkie also purports that it is cheaper to house refugees in the community versus in detention by hundreds of thousands of dollars. As this bill is still in its infancy, it’s unclear what processes will replace our current detention model. When first introduced in 2021, this bill received bipartisan disapproval from Labour and Liberal, indicating it’s unlikely this bill will be passed. Nevertheless, the introduction of such progressive legislation liberalising the immigration refugee system is a positive indication of change. Wilkie notes in his first reading speech the overwhelming support he received from individuals and refugee community organisations within Australia which indicated a cultural shift within Australia towards pro-immigration. Advertisement of this bill is noticeably lacking considering the immense effect it may have on the Australian immigration system.

Concluding statements

Wilkie’s bill has the potential to innovate the Australian immigration model by ending indefinite detention. This would allow refugees to have more assurance as their wait times would not extend for years. Refugees deserve to be treated fairly and there should not be a racially based preference for certain refugees. European elitism has been clearly displayed through Europe’s charitable efforts for Ukrainians whilst actively driving away Afghani refugees. This preferential treatment of white refugees exhibits an undercurrent of colourism within the West that manifests as passive (and, in certain countries, active) discrimination against minority refugees. During these traumatic periods of political unrest, nations should rally together to support all refugees, regardless of their racial or religious identity.

[1] This is only the registered number of refugees. The actual number is much higher considering many illegally crossed the border to seek refuge: https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/10/21/policy-responses-support-afghans-fleeing-taliban-controlled-afghanistan.

[2] Andrew Wilkie, ‘Immoral and unlawful treatment of asylum seekers must end’ (Press Release, 1 August 2022).

On rethinking the relationship between law and progressive social change - with Clare Scrine

The JATL Law and Social Movement series will be a series of conversations with Queensland law graduates who have gone on to do incredible work in the social movement organising space. It can be difficult to navigate how to use your legal education towards truly progressive social change, so this series will grapple with how to do so, and also provide ideas of different pathways people have taken since leaving law school.

For our second conversation, Pandora’s Blog editor Samantha Haran sat down with Action Ready co-founder Clare Scrine. Action Ready is a grassroots collective focused on providing legal information and support for activists in Meanjin, particularly in their confrontations with police at protests and actions. Action Ready believe that educating the community in the law can help ordinary people subvert the system in new and creative ways while making informed, strategic decisions. Clare also currently works in Greens' MP Max Chandler-Mather's office, as Director of Community Organising and Campaigns. She is also a self-taught cook and author of the cookbook 'The Shared Table.' 

In this interview, Clare and I spoke about everything from navigating UQ law school whilst feeling alone in your values, to the 2019 climate movement that formed that backdrop to the founding of Action Ready, and the different privileges people bring with them when they come to activism work, particularly to protests.  We also spoke about the law’s relationship to social movements and change; specifically about how it is designed to preserve the status quo, and thus is typically a weapon wielded by the powerful to oppress the powerless, and thus is the antagonist in all stories about positive, progressive social change. 

Interview with Clare

Tell me a little bit about your journey here since law school.

I went to law school at UQ straight after high school, and graduated with Arts/Law degrees in 2017. I knew I probably didn’t want to pursue law, at least at that time. Everyone was going into grad jobs and had done clerkships and all of that stuff and I just… didn’t get it. I just never  felt that pull. Which was honestly quite isolating. I felt very alone in that decision and people would be like, that’s weird, why have you done law if you’re not wanting to jump straight into “using” it? 

So I graduated with no real plans. I was involved in various activist projects at the time and I knew that was where my heart was. I ended up getting a job at Michael Berkman’s office, MP for the Greens. I worked there for 3.5 years, running his re-election campaign and got quite embedded in doing community organising work and advocacy work out of an electorate office, which I really loved. I learnt an enormous amount working with Michael and navigating that process of being Queensland’s first Greens’ State rep. I was also working there part-time, so I had time to do other things. I was able to start the work with Action Ready, write a cookbook, along with a lot of other random things… I loved it, because I never really accepted this notion that you should pick a career and that’s your whole life. That your whole life is working, and then recovering from working. I had all these volunteer things I wanted to do, all these community building projects, and passion projects, and of course, fun things as well. So yeah, that ended up being a perfect role for me at that time. 

About a year ago, I decided to leave my Greens job to go do my PLT, and ended up working at a community legal centre (CLC) for a bit. But, recently, with the announcement of the election results, I quit my job and went back to working with the Greens. I’m really excited to get stuck into this work now, doing community organizing for one of the new federal MP offices. 

I love that! And that's so good to hear that you were able to find a job that was rewarding but also gave you enough time to pour into your community, into things you are passionate about and just like… live your life. Because that is definitely something that worries me about graduating university - being funneled into full time work that doesn’t allow time for other things. The things that, honestly, bring my life the most joy and meaning.

Exactly.. And I think the thing I realised very late in law school was that the thing that gave me the most meaning in my life was… it wasn’t necessarily feeling like ‘oh, I’m making change’ or whatever… it was finding solidarity. It was that feeling of being with people who just fundamentally understand that sense of “we’re all fucked, every part of this system is rotten- so now what? How can we do some good things anyway?”  

It wasn’t until I found friends who felt like my people, very late in the law school game, who got that, who were with me on that. is what it feels like to be… happy. Or to find meaning.

Exactly, I couldn’t agree more. I feel like you’ve already started to touch on this a bit, but I wanted to ask: what was your law school experience like at UQ?

Honestly the first word that comes to my head is lonely. I had a couple of great friends but I really didn’t feel like I found a community there. I realised later that so much of what was making me unhappy was that I didn’t… I just didn't feel like I had people that shared my values. That being said, there were some good bits too, like going on exchange.  

I remember there was a turning point though, right towards the end of the degree. I’d held off from doing much activism up until that point, mostly because I was so busy throughout uni, working 30-40 hours a week in a kitchen to save money. But at the start of my final year, I just made the decision to myself that I was going to try to get a bit more involved with activism and volunteering.

So I started doing a bunch of pro bono placements in CLCs, and also got involved with Fossil Free UQ, which at the time was the group on campus doing the coolest direct action work sticking it UQ (which, to this day invests in fossil fuel projects)… It sounds corny, but getting involved with that group really changed my life. For the first time, I met people I really loved and this leftie group was really serious about the work they were doing. It wasn't just let’s protest sometimes… It was, every semester, coming in and saying ok what's our goal in this work, what is our strategy, let's have a planning day, let's do trainings, workshops. Seeing how seriously people were taking that work, and their place in the climate movement, just really was a real eye opener for me. I absolutely loved it. I felt such a distinct sense of this is what I’ve been missing. And so my last year of uni ended up being really wonderful! I met more people in that final year doing that work, than the 5 years beforehand and that ended up directing what I did afterwards.

Speaking of what you did afterwards, I’d love to hear more about Action Ready, which you co-founded a few years after graduating - tell us what it's about, how it began and your involvement with it!

So, basically I started it in 2019, with Bri and Anna, two friends who work at the Environmental Defenders Office (both utterly brilliant people doing incredible work with their legal training). We’d all been involved in the climate movement in Brisbane in some capacity. At that time, the climate movement was particularly focused around trying to stop the Adani coal mine. We’d all been up north to the blockade camp and been involved with solidarity actions here. One of the things I love most about activism is how there is always a role for everyone in an action or campaign. Given my law degree, the role of “legal observer” appealed. It’s a role whose primary job is to monitor the police and their interactions with protestors to try to make the space safer for everyone. Throughout that year, 2019, there was a real escalation of climate activism in Brisbane… it felt like a very exciting time, there were a lot of protests, a lot of disruption and a lot of media attention on the climate crisis. 

However, we also really felt there was this very stark gap, in that there was no legal information for protesters. So much of the theory, history and background you learn about in direct action movements is how important it is for people to feel empowered and actually have knowledge before getting involved with those spaces. And how important it is to recognise that those spaces aren’t the same for everyone. There's a lot of privilege white people in particular have, who will run into those spaces, not realising they are potentially putting the Bla(c)k and brown people on either side of them at much greater risk, than necessarily themselves. The police are an inherently racist institution, and it's very important at protests and in direct action to understand de-escalation and the importance of informed decision making where possible. We also felt there were some kind of concerning ideas floating around about putting this idea of ‘getting arrested’ on a pedestal, which is very tied up in people’s privilege… the idea that being arrested and put in a watchouse is some minor act that everyone should do if they care about climate change.  So I guess part of our Action Ready project was about trying to shift that dialogue a bit. 

Initially, we said there just needed to be information - there was no Queensland-specific place where activists could get accurate information about their rights 

I should say too, the other part of the reason we started this is because we believe civil disobedience is a core part of protests and movements, so in creating our project, we were not at all intending to say ‘don't break the law’; rather, we wanted to support people to engage in those things in a way that felt safe and empowered to do because they had information. 

So that's how it started really, as a website, and we created flyers and documents which we distributed to various protest groups. After that stage, we had all this energy, so we were like - what are we going to grow this project to? So we started running trainings, legal briefings and fielding legal observers at all these protests. And then, quite soon after, we ended up coordinating a campaign fighting theQueensland government’s newbullshit anti-protest laws to target theprotesting that was happening against the Adani mine. And we ended up finding ourselves in this position where we were the natural group at the time to be coordinating and leading that fight against those orders. So Action Ready turned into a bit of a campaigning operation for a while. 

From there, over the last few years, as a project it's really ebbed and flowed based capacity. Brilliant new activists have come in and done an enormous amount of the work, and we’ve had months at a time of intensity, and many months of quiet as capacity wanes- as seems to be the case with all grassroots projects. I think the most consistent work we’ve tried to do is legal observing actions and protests… there's a lot of value in having similar people legal observe in a city because they are able to observe trends and report on them, and be somewhat of a knowledgeable voice on how things are changing over time. 

That’s incredible, I’m genuinely so inspired by the work you have done and are doing in this space. I think the point around different peoples’ safety levels when it comes to interactions with the State and the police is such an important conversation to be had in activist circles, and it is not a conversation that is being had or understood enough.

Absolutely! It's the kind of consideration that a lot of white activists don't do enough of and it's a problem. I guess making that more visible and having those conversations is really hard. Because sometimes there’s this attitude of well its all so urgent and we all just need to do all the things and it doesnt matter and throw anything and fuck the police and all of this, and of course… yeah, fuck the police, and yes, it is unbelievably urgent. But we still need to care for our communities. Because if we’re not doing that, then what’s the point?

Absolutely. I love the way you phrased that. At the end of the day, our work has to prioritize that - caring for one another whilst we’re building people power.  And it is so important that we don’t forget that. 

I also wanted to ask you - I feel that the law is sometimes (mis)understood as a potential tool for radical social change, rather than an active enemy of it. Would you agree with this? How do you understand the relationship between the law and movement work? For example, in what ways does the legal system have a vested interest in suppressing social movements? How does it do this? And, perhaps most importantly, what advice do you have for other law students and grads who are trying to navigate their place in movement work, knowing that we have been trained in a discipline that does not at all equip us to be agitators nor agents of social change? 

The law definitely does serve to suppress social movements, and it is important to remember this. Firstly, in a meta way, the law basically exists to uphold the status quo. That’s the whole way the law works and was designed… to build on precedent and largely only enable slow, incremental change… it's also designed to enforce and protect capitalism and neoliberalism and uphold systemic racism and oppression. 

I don't particularly see the law itself as a tool for change, you're right, that's a really misleading way to think of it. We can use legal knowledge to help support movement building, but in doing so, in a way we’re actually subverting the law or actively manipulating it. But I think ultimately the legal system we live under is fundamentally built on  the economic system that has caused the planet to be now facing mass extinction. 

I 100% agree. Before we wrap up, I have one last question: what is your ultimate goal with the work you are doing at the moment?

To be honest, I don't feel like I have an ultimate goal. I think the thing that gets me the most motivated at the moment is feeling really excited about building mass mutual aid projects and strong community networks. Building those tangible connections in communities based on solidarity. I don't quite know what that looks like over the next few years, as we face down the barrel of climate collapse and quite likely the end of the world as we know it. But I guess I do know that we are going to need strong communities supporting each other and organisers as well, facilitating those connections… I think that's something else I realised recently. I did all this legal training but… I’m an organiser at heart. I want to organise big shared meals for people, organise and facilitate networks through which neighbours can help each other, and  organise events and protests and big volunteer events that make people feel tangibly a part of something that matters. I suppose prioritising that is my ultimate goal for now.

To learn more about the incredible work Action Ready is doing, you can check out their website site here. They always need more volunteers to act as legal observers and report on policing in Meanjin. To keep up with Clare and her incredible vegetarian cooking (and stay tuned for her next cookbook!), you can follow her on instagram and check out her website.

Understanding Roe v Wade

By Stella Dziov, Blog Editor

The decision in Roe v Wade has been fundamental in the American justice system for protecting the right to an abortion. It has saved countless lives in conservative states that would not have otherwise had access to safe abortion facilities. Its legal standing is being threatened, however, as a draft decision has been leaked from the Supreme Court suggesting that it will be overturned. The consequences of this for future abortion regulation in America cannot be understated. It also sets a dangerous example for other nations regarding the revocability of abortion rights. Queensland’s progressive abortion policy offers a point of comparison.

What is Roe v Wade?

Roe v Wade was a landmark case for abortion in the early 1970s. Under the alias of Jane Roe, a woman from Dallas County, Texas, brought a federal action against the District Attorney of the county on the basis that the Texas criminal abortion statutes were unconstitutional. Roe sought an injunction restraining the defendant from enforcing the statutes. She wished to terminate her pregnancy but was unable to as her ‘life did not appear to be threatened’ by the pregnancy. She argued that the Texas abortion statutes were vague and violated her constitutional right to personal privacy, protected by the Ninth and Fourteenth amendment. Though there is no explicit guarantee of personal privacy within the constitution, it has been interpreted that personal privacy falls into this category but only if the personal rights are deemed ‘fundamental’ (paragraph 76).

What was the outcome?

The court held that the constitutional right to personal privacy could encompass a woman’s decision to terminate her pregnancy; however, they acknowledged that some state regulation of abortion is necessary. The court stresses that there must be a ‘compelling state interest’ for abortion legislation to be valid (paragraph 83). But regardless, policy that prevents access to abortion before the first trimester (approximately 24 weeks) is unconstitutional. The first trimester was chosen as the court relied on widely held medical opinion that this was the point of foetal viability, in that it is capable (with medical equipment) of surviving outside the womb. Prior to this case, there had been a trend towards liberalisation of abortion statutes. However, the vast majority of states had continued to have stringent laws requiring the mother’s life to be threatened for abortion to be permitted. Following this decision, cases such as Planned Parthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v Casey have narrowed the scope of, but not overturned, Roe v Wade. Roe v Wade has been used to strike down multiple abortion laws in a range of states that would have greatly limited women’s accessibility to abortion.

Why is its decision being overturned and what are the consequences if it is?

This case has seen a resurgence of interest as in May 2021, the Supreme Court decided to review a decision from 2018 in their October term. This decision struck down a Mississippi state law that had banned most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, despite the Roe v Wade minimum period of 24 weeks. Mississippi lawmakers hoped that an inevitable legal challenge would go to the Supreme Court where it had a greater chance of narrowing the scope of or potentially overturning Roe v Wade, considering the conservative majority of justices. It would be beneficial at this point to briefly explain how the Supreme Court operates in America. Australia’s highest court is the High Court whilst America’s is the Supreme Court. When a place becomes available, judges are appointed by the acting President with the guidance of the Senate. Justices have historically been chosen based in large part on how their political ideals align with the party in power. Due to various factors, this has resulted in a conservative majority in the Supreme Court of America. This has left the future of abortion law in America uncertain.  If overturned, it is likely that many conservative states will introduce harsh restrictions, if not outright bans, on abortion.

Reflecting on the current state of abortion legislation in Queensland.

Prior to 2018, there were extremely limited circumstances in Queensland where a woman was able to legally attain an abortion. Section 282 of the Queensland Criminal Code dictated an exemption for surgical operations to terminate unborn children if it is to preserve the mother’s life. The Termination of Pregnancy Act 2018 (Qld) (TPA) went into effect on the 3rd of December, 2018 and was a drastic improvement from the previous protections afforded to women. A medical practitioner was able to perform a termination on a woman if it had not been more than 22 weeks, regardless of the woman’s reasons for termination (s 5 TPA). A medical practitioner may still terminate a pregnancy after 22 weeks if they have consulted with another medical practitioner and considered the surrounding circumstances such as the woman’s ‘physical, psychological and social’ health (s 6 TPA). A health practitioner may object to provide an abortion however, they must refer the women to another health practitioner who they believe would not object to providing one (s 8 TPA). The Act also prohibits protestors from standing outside abortion provider facilities to deter people from terminating a pregnancy (s 15 TPA). Although legalisation occurred significantly later than it should have, it does an incredible job at protecting women by ensuring they are able to access the medical attention they need. Comparative to America, termination of pregnancy has never been identified in the Constitution as a ‘fundamental’ personal right. As such, legislation legalising abortion cannot be constitutionally imposed upon all the states. This is why Queensland was able to have such harsh restrictions for so long. However, the Supreme Court has demonstrated that whilst precedent founded on the Constitution seems solid, nothing is entirely certain. This Queensland legislation has been fought for by progressive parliamentary representatives but also in the broader context of Australia. In 2021, South Australia was the last state to decriminalise abortion, demonstrating a cultural shift towards pro-choice. America appears to be much more divided on this topic, which is what makes Roe v Wade so tenuous in comparison to Queensland’s abortion legislation. The nation’s lack of majority on this topic means a change in power is able to threaten previously established women’s rights.

Concluding thoughts.

Roe v Wade has prevented strict abortion regulation in America for half a century and if overturned, will threaten the constitutional rights of countless women. The inevitable increase in regulation will only impact the health and safety of women seeking. Regulation does not prevent women from accessing abortions; it prevents them from accessing abortion safely. Queensland is very fortunate to have such progressive abortion legislation. Though its arrival was well overdue, it represents a cultural shift towards pro-choice that cements the legislation better. America’s divided views on abortion threaten the few protections women have been afforded.