Webinar Series: The Missing Peace: Talking About Nonviolence

Webinar: 8pm AEDT, Thursday 5 December 2024

Nonviolent protest is central to democratic rights and change-making. As we have been exploring through The Missing Peace, we know it works to create real, lasting, significant change, even in the direst circumstances.

One of the reasons we know nonviolent protest works is because those in power work so hard to attack and suppress it! Governments, working hand-in-glove with extractive corporations and the corporate media, use their power to delegitimise peaceful protest, to criminalise it, and to lie about it, labelling it as terrorism, calling it violent.

Continuing to exercise the right to nonviolent protest, pushing back against its suppression, is crucial. And, in this final webinar for 2024, we will hear from three brilliant and courageous leaders in this space, using their bodies, their minds, and their creativity to defend nonviolent protest: David Mejia-Canales from the Human Rights Law Centre; Joana Partyka from Disrupt Burrup Hub; and Dr Lina Koleilat, a Lebanese-Palestinian activist-scholar at ANU.

David Mejia-Canales

David Mejia-Canales is a senior human rights lawyer at the Human Rights Law Centre, focusing on defending democratic freedoms like, the right to protest, the right to vote and the right to participate in public affairs.

Before this, David was a policy adviser in the Commonwealth Parliament working on legal system reform and on justice issues impacting First Nations people including ending deaths in custody, raising the age of criminal responsibility, protecting Country defenders and the implementation of the Optional Protocol Against Torture. In addition to his experience with legal policy and law reform, David has worked in community development and health promotion, including HIV prevention and sexual and reproductive health rights with LGBTIQ+ and First Nations communities, as well as research to better meet the needs of LGBTIQ+ refugees and people seeking asylum.

Joana Partyka

Joana Partyka (she/her) is an artist, writer and activist based in Boorloo/Perth, Western Australia. She is a founding member of Disrupt Burrup Hub, a direct action campaign that has experienced repressive policing and legal threats in response to its work targeting Woodside Energy. Joana has written for various outlets including the Saturday Paper and has exhibited her artwork in galleries around Australia. She identifies as neurodivergent.

Dr Lina Koleilat

Dr. Koleilat is an activist-scholar and an Academic Fellow at the Australian National University. She is a specialist in historical and ethnographic approaches to the study of protests, resistance, social movements and religion. She has been working with and learning from communities who resist war and government oppression, to understand the genealogy of activism within specific historical, cultural and political contexts. Lina comes to the questions which drive her work and activism as a Lebanese-Palestinian scholar born and raised in Beirut, and who directly experienced the horrors of war, dispossession and militarism.

Webinar: 8pm AEDT, Thursday 5 December 2024

Register below to join in the discussion. This webinar is the fifth in a series we’ve been hosting this year as part of our project The Missing Peace: Talking About Nonviolence. We look forward to having you along!

Full bursaries are available. Email event organiser (email listed below) with your request.

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