The Australian Student Environment Network (ASEN) is the network of environment collectives at universities, TAFEs and high schools across Australia. Every year ASEN organises the Students of Sustainability Conference (SoS), Australia’s largest and longest running environment conference. Other key initiatives of ASEN include the annual Summer Training Camp, the campus renewable energy campaign, nuclear-free campaign, and organic food co-operatives. Every day ASEN is engaging and empowering the next generation of environmental and social justice campaigners.
Please come and watch a free outdoor movie about environmental and social issues at the UNSW walkway most Thursdays. Salvaged food will be communally cooked at 6pm. Check facebook event for more information.
solar powered film screening
Greetings fellow earth dwellers!
Your favourite enviro publication editorial team here with a quick Germinate update.
As we retreat from the beating sun to convene beneath shady expanses of surrounding gumtrees, attention once again turns to the persistent question of entertaining reading material for those long afternoons on the sand, picnic rug or hammock.
In anticipation of this seasonal dilemma, we are calling out for submissions to the Germinate zine. Collectives big and small, supporters active and interested, newcomers to the enviro network, we want your insightful input! Write about anything going on around you, something for which you feel passionate, be it local, national, transnational, transportational or topical! Collaborate with a friend (s), old or new, take a metaphorical or literal walk through bush, familiar or foreign.
Perhaps a successful campaign you have been involved in, an environmental initiative that has caught your interest, a persistent and problematic inequality you have witnessed. Below are some questions posed in a previous edition of Germinate. Perhaps you might write one and send it back to us?
Germinate is distributed around the country during January, principally at the ASEN training camp (of which you can find further details on this site) and the submission deadline is November 11, 2011! So hop to it! Our recommended article length is between 600 – 1000 words, but we will happily accept any length.
Contact us with any question or comment at germinate [at] asen.org.au
We look forward to hearing from you soon!
Cheers,
Your Germinate team
“An overwhelming majority of ASEN members are privileged university students. We have access to education, resources and power that most people do not. We also talk a lot about ‘inclusivity’ and ‘anti-oppression’. But what do those terms really mean in our context? Should we be trying to make ASEN more ‘diverse’ in itself or should we be honest about who we are and where we organise and attempt to form better alliances between ASEN and other groups less structurally privileged?.”
“ASEN will simply fail to attract people if we view what we do as ‘work’. Activism can and should be fun, playful and dynamic. We do not have to copy the methods of work we learn from bourgeois society, but unlearning them can be difficult” – What is your view of work and play in activism and life?
“We have been asking if our current actions are the equivalent of trying to stop a tank coming to destroy our house by throwing styrofoam at it and asking it nicely to stop. Do we need more effective tactics, or will more of the same do?”
“Safe(r) Spaces may be impossible to achieve through workshops, formal discussions and written agreements alone as these can create a culture of fear for ‘fucking up’. The only thing that will create real safer spaces is a commitment to community building in the long term.” – Discuss, drawing on your experience of activists and radicals trying to create safer spaces.
“Breaking down oppression is both the responsibility of the oppressed and oppressor(s).” What are the implications of this statement? Draw on personal experience.
