Ruben

United Struggle Project

March 7, 2014

Palestine, refugees, Social Justice, Sovereignty, United Struggle Project, workshops

United Struggle CD & DVD features global hip-hop reggae and experimental beat fusion, music videos and mini documentaries addressing issues faced by artists in affected areas, displaced by war, colonisation, development, poverty and environmental issues. With phat beats, big talent and amazing stories of survival we attempt to target racism in the broader community with music.

Talent for the project has been recorded on location by project creator Izzy Brown (Melbourne hip-hop band Combat Wombat) It gives displaced artists in Palestine, Afghanistan, Africa, Cambodia, and Australia a platform to express themselves & their community’s situation.

The project has been about five years in the making. It was financed by local underground fundraising concerts, internet crowd funding & Izzy Browns personal finances (single parent pension). The recording process was truly an epic adventure with numerous arrests, evictions, electricity cuts, check points and problematic border crossings, travel and weather conditions giving the album an authentic sound.

Producers from around the world delved deep into their hard drives to donate beats to host unheard voices of displaced peoples. I then took the donated beats to those artists in places with little access to beat making technology to collaborate on. From slums to refugee camps, prisons, detention centres and remote communities in Australia such as Palm Island

Beats were donated to the project by numerous world renowned and local producers, such as Monkeymarc, DJ Wasabi, Biscotti, Oliver Butterfield, Darkside and many more

Izzy Brown – I was first inspired to do this project while in Kenya filming the documentary Ghettomoto (screened at London International Documentery Film Festival) – about the journey of hip-hop spoken word poet Timothy Mwaura, following the post election violence in 2008.

During the filming I was approached daily by artists from the slums in Nairobi to produce music videos of their songs. I noticed the huge demand but lack of accessible equipment and skills in video production for people in these poverty stricken areas.

The song ‘Bow Down No Way’, a collaborative track between Shoeshine Boy from Mukurru slum and Adel from Star Studios in Nairobi, with Monkeymarc (Combat Wombat) and myself is an example of what the Unites Struggle Project can achieve on a much larger scale. The video clip was shot in Nairobi, Melbourne and Alice Springs and the song draws parallels between the poverty of indigenous people in Australia and Africa.

My main motivation is my love of music and belief in social and environmental justice. Music can be used as a tool for change and education to break down walls, create common ground and unite common struggles.

Download the digital album by donation atunitedstruggleproject.bandcamp.com

Lizards Revenge and Lizard Bites Back

May 25, 2012

Desert Workshops

THE LIZARDS REVENGE
DLF – Desert Liberation Front

Beneath the Roxby Downs Uranium mine, there is an old Sleepy Lizard. BHP’s Olympic Dam mine is digging right into its guts to extract the worlds most poisonous ore. That Lizard ain’t so sleepy no more.

Lizards Bites Back is a non-violent protest festival, opposing any further expansion of the nuclear industry in South Australia and showcasing renewable alternatives. We stand in solidarity with Aboriginal custodians in opposing the expansion of the nuclear industry in South Australia.

The nuclear industry has and continues to disproportionately affect Aboriginal people in Australia. Traditional owners and Native Title holders have no right in law to veto mining projects and every nuclear waste dump proposal, from Woomera to the current proposal for Wallerberdina Station in the Flinders Ranges, has sought to impose a waste dump on Aboriginal communities without consultation and without the consent of Aboriginal communities that would be most directly affected.

This is a human rights issue. Article 29 (2) of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which Australia has signed on to states that:

“States shall take effective measures to ensure that no storage or disposal of hazardous materials shall take place in the lands or territories of indigenous peoples without their free, prior and informed consent.”

Similar issues arise for the Olympic Dam mine. Under the Indenture Act, BHP Billiton is completely exempt from the Aboriginal Heritage Act 1988, which is the key piece of legislation protecting Aboriginal Heritage in SA. Instead the company recognises the 1979 version of the Act, which was never made law in SA and provides much weaker protections for Aboriginal heritage. Additionally, BHP is exempt from certain parts of this Act. The effect of these exemptions is that BHP has absolute discretion on what Aboriginal sites are recognised and protected. It is a clear conflict of interest to have a corporation with a commercial interest in a piece of land also making decisions regarding whether this same land has competing non-commercial values

However, the health and environmental impacts of the nuclear industry do not know skin colour. They affect all Australians and will continue to do so for generations.

A Royal Commission has recently recommended that South Australia host an international high level nuclear waste dump, and the Federal government has shortlisted only Wallerberdina Station for further consideration for a national nuclear waste dump. The Olympic Dam mine itself will also eventually become a dump – in the sense that once it is closed, it will leave millions of tonnes of radioactive tailings on the surface of the land forever.

The Lizard Bites Back has attracted over 300 people from around the country, converging near the mine gates for a weekend of direct action, workshops on nuclear issues, and music. After two days of workshops and marches to the gates of the mine, the last day of the convergence saw nearly one hundred activists block the main road to the mine for eighteen hours. Riot police were sent in at midnight. On their way, riot police approached base camp, in what appeared to be a simulated raid.Response to the governments decision to expand the Olympic Dam mine.

Party in a Dangerous Planet with Theatre, Cabaret and Art installations. Over 20 musical acts. Solar Powered sound system extravaganza and wind powered cinema.