Greens members harassed for expressing valid views on environment and population
Why has a Greens Population/Sustainability Working Group Member been vilified as racist and sexist and harassed with threats of expulsion for sticking up for our wildlife against needless rapid population growth? Read what Geoff Dowsett wrote and the response he got from candidate Tamara Ryan (included in the article).
This is what he wrote, asking Greens to circularise Greens candidates:
GEOFF:"As a candidate for John Kaye's Upper House seat how about a strong statement and policy improvement suggestion from you to address the desperate need to stabilise Australia`s population growth? The current "economic"---middle class so called skilled (non refugee) immigration rate of 500,000 per year including 457 Visa (a world record high intake) is not sustainable. Sydney's population is growing by 83,000 net pa under the Liberal Govt's Immigration scam. It is causing excessive impact on inadequate infrastructure-impact on natural eco-systems through urban growth and consumer demand. Increased traffic congestion in our major cities - sky rocketing housing prices. Of course the immigration rate is just what big business wants particularly the housing industry while our quality of life, natural environment and urban environment goes down the gurgler. The immigration rate is also closely linked with the insane growth economy which is addicted to continuing growth in consumption. It is HYPOCRISY of the Greens to have a policy of sustainable economy without a policy for a substantial reduction in immigration. Priority should be humanitarian i.e. for political and environmental refugees NOT wealthy middle class business migrants. When will the Greens members such as yourself bite the bullet on population ? I won't vote for you unless you make a statement indicating a clear commitment to reducing Turnbull's excessive Immigration and 457 Visa intake."(Geoff Dowsett. Member. Hornsby Kuringai Greens. Population/Sustainability Working Group Member. Statement above does not represent the views of all of the working group.)
What do you think of this response?
TAMARA: "Geoff. I understand your membership is being collectively reconsidered for your frequent racist and sexist comments like these Jeff. Your views on climate action via controlling immigration have no place in this party.represent the Environment
I don't care about your vote, but I do care fiercely about advocating for women's autonomy over their bodies, rejecting racism and opening borders. Capitalist structures that promote continuous growth and waste by corporations and governments are responsible for stifling efforts on climate change, not people seeking a place and way to live.
Read more here if you would like some more education on this :) Neoliberalism Poisoned Climate Action And Renewables Are The Antidote (2/8/2016) Mew Matilda
Tamara Ryan Candidate
The implied accusation of sexism seemed to be linked to some idea that Geoff was trying to interfere with women's rights to control their bodies. I cannot see anywhere where Geoff suggests this should happen. I also cannot see any reference to race in what Geoff wrote. Tamara makes gestures of support for the unemployed and working class, but for some reason, she doesn't seem to mind the super-rich being imported in hundreds of thousands to Australia as planned invited economic immigrants. Or does she have no idea of the actual numbers and how they are chosen? Does she think all immigrants are actually refugees? Tamara seems to be in favour of completely open borders, not just humane treatment of refugees: "Close the camps, open the borders, free all refugees." (https://www.facebook.com/RefugeesSurvivorsAndExdetainees/videos/1215228178517319/)
Is Open Borders official Greens policy now?
Ms Ryan's unpleasant response to Mr Dowsett seems sexist itself, with an unfounded slur of 'racism', and an implied threat about his membership of The Greens being 'collectively reconsidered'. This is not the only time I have heard of Greens members in population working groups being intimidated, for I have suffered by it personally.
Personal experience
As a committee member of Prosper Australia, around the time of the formation of its ‘green’ Earthsharing brand, I personally experienced, with another committee member, similar treatment from a cluster of new members, vocally hostile about our affiliation with Sustainable Population Australia (SPA). This hostility manifested as a very threatening warning from one of them following a small rally of oddly assorted pro- lifers and claimants to be refugee advocates outside a perfectly innocent but important public meeting on democracy in Australia which we as members of SPA were holding at the premises of Prosper with the blessing of the Prosper committee. As it transpired, our treatment was part of a hostile takeover by Socialist Alliance members of the comparatively wealthy NGO. We had to leave. Some of these people later have thrown their weight about in the Greens on population issues.
I later joined my local Greens, far away from Prosper, but at the mention of population, (myself and) another member (an immigrant from Cairo whom I had only met in that branch) and I were sent to Coventry by a then recent blow-in from the Labour Party, who took over the management of that branch of the Greens email list. No-one now would dare discuss the obvious problem of high immigration, with its huge contribution to high population growth, and the impact on wildlife and the green wedges of expanding suburbs.
Here is someone else’s experience
A few years ago I heard the following tale, which has now been written down for the record:
"This is my recollection of working with a team within the Greens on revising the Population Policy. At that time many of the Greens’ polices were being reviewed by working groups. About eight of us met several times in the city after work to focus on the policy and to improve it.
As I recall there was little or no friction or disagreement within the group on any of the points. We were all focused on sustainability and environment and did our best to reflect this in the alterations to the then policy. This work resulted in a document noting changes on which we all agreed. As I understand , this document was sent to Adelaide for a committee to consider it. As I understand, also, it was rejected completely as it had too many amendments from the original policy. That is what I was told.
Some time after this I was also told that at a large, possibly national Greens gathering or convention in Carlton, that when the issue of population came up, there were very loud intimidating aggressive voices raised to silence anyone who wanted to wade in on the topic. One of the people who had been part of the working group emailed the rest of us after attending this event, saying that he had no further wish to pursue this any further in view of the threatening tone of these people at the meeting. I never heard from this person again and the working group effectively dissolved at that point."
Greens Crucible
[New video version here since last one taken off-line.]
Such censorship and bullying control by people dominating in a group reminds me of Arthur Miller's The Crucible, a play about witch trials in 17th century America. It is a play which has often been studied by high school students with the glaring lesson that free speech can be snuffed out by irrational alliances within the dominant doctrine. It sometimes seems as though the Greens are increasingly defined by people who have taken the role of Puritans accusing anyone they disagree with of witchcraft, except they accuse them of sexism and racism, where none exists. But the implications are similarly terrible, in that they are designed to stigmatise, ostracise, and disempower those they target, thereby silencing their views. In Miller’s Crucible the accusers were themselves guilty of playing at sorcery. They became fearful of being denounced themselves as sinners, and defend themselves by accusing others of attempting to bewitch them.
If this is so then The Greens have gone down a blind alley and philosophically seem to have reached a dead end. What are they about if they cannot tackle the main threat to “green-ness”, environmental sustainability and conservation of nature and wildlife, which is human population numbers in situ?
What are the elders in the Greens doing about the stifling of discussion within the ranks of the party? What do they think of the association between their members, so-called socialist groups and the violent Antifa, who are paid to riot?[1] [No insult intended here to real socialists or anarchists.] They seem to be standing back or even approving while the intimidation grows. [2] Are they in fact also the product of unexamined ideology? Do they agree with its effects, which are to keep Australian political debate confused and unrepresentative, bogged down in imagined racism and sexism (while real racism and sexism continue) and overpopulation and overdevelopment turn our environment into concrete. Are they all globalists? Do they really agree with massive, developed, urbanized import-export economies which destroy the diversity of hunter-gatherers, herders, tribes and nations for this?
What can people who really are environmentalists do when the party that bears their flag provides cover for materialistic land-speculating nature-destroying neoliberalism for which population-dependent economic growth at all costs is God? What can they do about the growing violence and intimidation in the Greens?
NOTES
[1] Internationally: Wrong kind of green.
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