Red Ant will hold its second national conference in Melbourne from September 9^th to 11^{th –} Building Anti-Imperialism in a Polarised World. Two days are public conference, followed by a membership and strategy meeting. Since announcing the agenda important new speakers have been confirmed:

Sasha Gillies-Lekakis and David Deutschmann: The struggle for socialism in Cuba

Gillies-Lekakis is a PhD researcher at the University of Melbourne, focussing on Cuba-Pacific Islands cooperation in education and healthcare. He has visited Cuba four times and lived there twice, studying within Cuba’s socialist education system and conducting fieldwork. Recently he visited Fiji and Solomon Islands investigating Cuba’s impact on healthcare. Gillies-Lekakis is best known for being thrown out of the audience – live – on the ABC’s QandA by show anchor Stan Grant. He was attacked for supporting Russia because he protested the absence of any discussion of Ukrainian atrocities in the Donbas – something obviously taboo on Australian television.

David Deutschmann is an editor at Ocean Press / Oceansur Books based in Havana and Melbourne. He is a long-term Cuba solidarity activist and Cuba expert.

Rjurik Davidson: Neoliberal identity politics: a Marxist critique

Red Ant has also secured Rjurik Davidson to speak. Davidson is a novelist, editor and literary and film critic. His two acclaimed novels are Unwrapped Sky and the Stars Askew. He is winner of the Ditmar Award as Best New Talent and the Aurealis Award for his short fiction. See rjurik.com

Max Lane: World politics today and our internationalist tasks in Australia

The conference also features Dr. Max Lane, author of several books on Indonesia and the Philippines and translations of Indonesian revolutionary writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s novels. His latest book is Indonesia Out of Exile: How Pramoedya’s Buru Quartet Killed a Dictatorship (2023). He was a member of the National Executive of the Democratic Socialist Party from the mid- 1990s and into the early 2000s, being also editor of Green Left Weekly for a short period. He was National Coordinator of the activist solidarity organisation, Action in Solidarity with Indonesia and East Timor (ASIET) throughout the 1990s and was the Convenor of both the big international 1996 East Timor: Its Future in the Asia Pacific Conference and the 1998 Asia Pacific Solidarity Conference. Check red-ant.org for more recent political writings.

Other speakers include Sam King, author of the crucial contemporary Marxist theoretical work Imperialism and the development myth: How rich countries dominate in the twenty-first century (2021) and Pipin Jamson, a leader of Socialist Union (Perserikatan Sosialis) in Indonesia. Jamson is also a highly accomplished musician with a hypnotic voice. She is a vocalist for the Jawa Pitu band and will perform a set of revolutionary songs at the conference’s Saturday night event.

Don’t miss out – register today.