Twenty years since the Cronulla riot: Lessons for fighting racism today

Speakers:

Paula Abood

Anti-racist cultural worker, educator, writer and creative producer who has worked with refugee and immigrant communities for over three decades. She is the chair of the Arab Theatre Studio and in 2013 received Creative Australia's Ros Bower Award for lifetime achievement in community arts and cultural development, and a Creative Australia Fellowship in 2018.

Scott Poynting

Scott Poynting is a sociologist and criminologist who has written extensively on the criminalisation of immigrants. He is co-author of Bin Laden in the Suburbs, published just before the Cronulla riots, and 'What caused the Cronulla riot?', an essay in Race and Class published just after that event. His most recent book, co-authored with Ulrike Vieten, is The Normalization of the Global Far Right.

Fadi Alameddin

Shire resident, convenor Sutherland Greens and writer, director and actor of Take Your Laffeh and Here Come The Habibs.

About the event

The racist Cronulla riots of 11 December 2005 were fanned by the likes of radio shock-jock Alan Jones and tacitly supported by then PM John Howard, who refused to describe the violence as racist. The riots shocked and disgusted wide layers of Australian society.

Today groups like March for Australia, the National Socialist Network and Put Australia First will celebrate the anniversary, and use it to build upon their recent racist rallies. 

Join us to discuss how years of official racism and government policies helped cause the riots, the response at the time and the lessons for pushing back racism and the far right today.