Senator Scott Ludlam will speak on Despair and Defiance. In his first speech in the Senate, Scott gave tribute to peace, nuclear free, climate justice movements and Aboriginal survivors of the cruelest forms of dispossession. He noted that many of the people working for justice are tired of fighting against poorly conceived megaproposals, toxic developments and wars, one after another. “It is exhausting work and, even when you win, often all you have to show for your efforts is the absence of something awful.” His work in the Senate to support economic and social justice is often in defiance of a Government that has given up, however, it is also inspired by the tireless efforts of people who band together and fight back, who teach us all what compassionate resistance and defiance to callous government policy actually looks like.

Julian Assange, Editor-in-Chief of WikiLeaks will join us on his 1216th day inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and soon after the 9th anniversary of the founding of WikiLeaks. He will discuss the definitive new book on the State Department cables, The WikiLeaks Files: The World According to US Empire.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Scott Ludlam is an Australian Greens Senator for Western Australia and co-Deputy Leader of the Australian Greens. Elected in November 2007, he is one of eleven Australian Greens in the current Parliament and is the spokesperson for Foreign Affairs, Communications, Housing, Nuclear Issues, Infrastructure and Sustainable Cities. A former film maker, artist and graphic designer by trade, Scott has employed innovative communications tools to help with campaigns. He blogs at www.fieldnotes.org.au and can be found on twitter as @senatorludlam.

Julian Assange was born in Queensland and is the editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, which he co-founded in 2006. WikiLeaks has published more than 10 million documents, achieving particular prominence since 2010 when it published more than 250,000 U.S. military and diplomatic documents that exposed human rights violations and covert operations. For his work he has received the Amnesty International UK Media Award, the Sydney Peace Prize Gold Medal for Peace with Justice, the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism and the Walkley Award for Most Outstanding Contribution to Journalism. In 2012, facing extradition to Sweden, he sought refuge at the Embassy of Ecuador in London and was granted political asylum by Ecuador.

