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A second Melbourne council has declared its support for the planned illegal blockade of the IMARC mining conference to be held at the Melbourne convention centre for three days between the 28th and 31st of October. Moreland council not only passed a resolution supporting the planned riot but also approved a motion offering the organisers council property in which to organise and free advertising space on council websites as well.

This planned illegal blockade has been organised primarily by the Socialist Alternative group, a violent revolutionary Marxist organisation in the Trotskyist tradition. Two spokeswomen for the event, Emma Black and Sarah Garnham (both also activists with Socialist Alternative), have declared that they intend the blockade to be a modern-day repetition of the S11 riot held in Melbourne in September 2000.

The S11 riot in 2000 saw the spectacle of thousands of leftists, led by members of the Socialist Party, the International Socialist Organisation, the Democratic Socialist Party and Socialist Alternative, surrounding Crown Casino and attacking police, paramedics and the Premier of Western Australia in an orgy of vandalism, thuggery and urine-filled balloons. Prominent amongst the rioters were members of Australia’s anarchist community dressed in the black clothes and masks that have become synonymous with political violence in Australia ever since. While Victoria’s new anti-mask laws mean that this time the black-clad privileged thugs will have to show their faces, there is little sign that the modern followers of this ideology are any less eager for mob violence than their predecessors.

Riot supporter sue bolton
Sue Bolton. Veteran of thirty six years of Marxist activism. Socialist Alliance activist.

The motion to support the planned riot was proposed by Councillor Sue Bolton, a Marxist organiser originally from Toowoomba who has been active in extremist circles since the early 1980s and is now the standard-bearer for the mostly defunct Socialist Alliance group. Bolton has made an electoral alliance with her group’s traditional rivals in the Socialist Alternative under the “Victorian Socialists” banner and it seems she intends to continue that association with the planned violent blockade in October.

With this motion, Moreland council joins the Victorian Greens state executive, Yarra city council and the University of Melbourne student union in their open support for an illegal violent blockade organised by Australia’s largest political extremist group which openly declares that it wants to recreate one of the largest riots in Melbourne’s modern history.

And yet again, nobody in the media seems to care. Funny that, hey?

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