Visions Of Freedom anarchist conference and festival, Sydney, Australia. 
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january 21st and 22nd, 1995.
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Somewhere between three and four hundred people attended the 
conference/festival over this weekend. Anarchists and other 
interested people came from all round australia and a few from 
overseas.

Because it was only on for two days, there was a very crowded 
program of workshops and other events. During the times where the 
conference was organized into workshops, there were 5 different ones 
running at the same time. This covered about half the time the main 
conference part ran for.

The workshops that were organized beforehand were as follows.

Anarchy and feminism. 
Self-determination and anti-imperialism. 
Anarchy and ecology. 
Anarchism or barbarism. 
Anarcho-syndicalism and privatisation. 
Policing, crime and social control. 
Providing tools and training for self-reliance. 
Gay, lesbian and trans-gender politics. 
Militarism and social defence. 
Bookshops stalls and information distribution. 
Anarchist organization. 
Anarcho-syndicalism strategy and organization. 
Critique of recent sydney anarchist practice. 
Anarchist media. 
Class post the berlin wall. 
HEMP campaign. 
Confederation and building common campaigns. 
Victorian tramway dispute. 

As well as these, the following workshops happened spontaneously.

Country anarchists. 
Men's movement. 

There were three book launches: <<Bomber grounded, runway closed>> 
by Ciaron O'Reilly, <<Hemp and the marijuana conspiracy>> by Jack 
Herer, two books by Graham Purchase: <<My journey with aristotle to 
anarchist utopia>> and <<Anarchism and environmental survival>>. 
Also, my book <Message sticks in cyberspace>> was quietly put on 
sale for the first time and a new booklet in spanish and english of 
a letter from Marcos (mexican zapatista revolutionary) was available.

During the whole of the daytime part of the conf/fest, there was a 
small computer centre set up and running, with internet connections 
intermittently available and the entire Spunk press archive 
available for people to obtain either disk or paper copies of some
or all of the material. There were several people there to answer 
questions and pass on information about the anarchist computer 
network and other issues related to computer comunications.

Alfalfa House, a local food co-op provided good cheap vegan food 
during the two days.

On friday night there was a free dance party which most of the people 
at the gathering went to.

There was also a video festival happening during the two days which 
i didn't manage to get to at all, as it was in a different building.

Black Rose and Jura, sydney's anarchist bookshops had bookstalls. 
A special conference edition of the Brisbane quarterly paper <<the 
anarchist>> was available too.

I didn't get to any workshops (except the <<country anarchists>> 
one) because i was mainly tied up around the computer stuff, but 
there should be reports happening from other people who did. But i 
did go to the so-called <<plenary>> session at the end, where the 
conference was more or less summed up by delegates from each 
workshop.

The most striking impression i got from the plenary session was 
that, sadly, the anarcist movement in australia still hasn't come to 
terms with women's issues and sexuality issues. No matter what 
complacent self-back-patting goes on, the male heterosexual 
elements of our mob still dominates everything with it's old 
pervasive self-obsessed patriarchal arrogance.

The anarchy and feminism workshop was probably the best attended of 
the whole event, with about a hundred people. This shows it's a very 
important subject in the minds of a large proportion of anarchists. 
But still the men couldn't keep their big mouths shut and listen for 
a change. Sadly and disgustingly, the discussion on anarcha-feminst 
issues was dominated, just like everything else, by heterosexual 
male fear of losing their place in the pecking order. Hopefully in 
future, these fools will be thrown out of such workshops as soon as 
they open their mouths. If they support feminist politics, they 
should be there to listen and learn - if they don't they shouldn't 
be there at all. 

The gay, lesbian and trans-gender politics workshop was also fucked 
up by the pathetic closet-scared bullshit of this same type of 
'anarchist' heterosexual males. The patronising attitude shown by 
a certain old fool towards the subject of s&m, illustrated this 
problem very well. He was attempting to preach some wanky 
psychological crap to people who spend a large part of their lives 
thinking seriously about this stuff - from the perspective of 
experience and in relation to their totally valid anarchist politics.

The end of the conference was an unfortunate come-down after a 
succesful couple of days. But it reminded us of probably the most 
important thing we have to deal with if we're ever going to take our 
politics to a point where they can *really* change the world - the 
thoughtless, fearful, arrogant domination of the movement by white 
heterosexual males (of which, i hate to admit, i'm one!)


will


