ChangeMakers

One of the biggest hurdles to powerful climate action is changing our economy so it is no longer reliant on fossil fuels. Too often plans hatched by experts or environmentalists far removed from coal mining communities fail, because they are unable to bring affected communities and workers with them.  This episode comes from Collie Western Australia and talks about how the Australian Manufacturing...

Terri Janke is an Aboriginal and Torrest Strait Islander Lawyer who uses the law to protect and advance Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property. As a Meriam and Wuthathi woman who grew up in Cairns in northern Queensland, for over 20 years she has crafted a set of legal instruments that allow for the protection of Indigenous Culture. From an Indigenous perspective, Culture is the embodiment...

In the US midterm elections, one of the extraordinary outcomes was how many young people turned their back on some of the more extreme candidates that denied the 2020 election result. Yet should it have been so surprising? Young people have been organising like their lives depended on it for a while - including through the March for Our Lives movement against gun violence.  This episode is a re-re...

The city of Barcelona has lived with an unprecedented housing crisis, and in its wake the city created a new kind of radical and successful political party. Former housing activist Ada Colou was elected as the city’s Mayor in 2015, and again in 2019. What led to her success? This story, a re-release of our very first episode back in 2017, shares the story and its lessons from the streets of Barcel...

Jane McAlevey is a fierce advocate for winning social change through organising. Her organising method, grounded in decades of experience, mentorship and the battles of many movements across US history, is that workers and people need to lead their own change. She specialises in teaching how you can support people to do this.  For unionists, her work is well known - and this episode is a joyous jo...

One of the biggest challenges facing any change maker is how to enlist help from the state, especially when it comes to the fight for economic justice. Australian Labor Party Member of Parliament, Daniel Mulino, has written about the history and future of the welfare state, and in his recent book Safety Net proposes new (and old) ways for imagining the welfare state as a vehicle for managing perso...

In too many wealthy countries - political leaders are choosing harsher and harsher policies when it comes to refugees. But there is one country that has decided to treat refugees with basic human decency. Uganda doesn’t lock up its refugees. Instead they live in settlements with freedom of movement, access to land and education. What can the rest of the world learn from Uganda? We recorded this st...

In this ChangeMaker Chat the tables are turned and the person being interviewed is our host Amanda Tattersall. This is an interview previously recorded as part of the On Purpose Podcast, produced by the Muslim Womens’ Association. Interview host Feda Abdo canvases Amanda’s experience as an organiser, some of her research work on people power in cities around the world as well as her more personal...

Could there be a single lever in the global marketplace that could transform the stakes for climate change? Yes - the insurance industry. Over the past 5 years insurance has been turned upside down by a nimble network of climate campaigners that have set new rules to end insurance for fossil fuel projects. We are re-releasing this 2021 story of the Sunrise Project, the Insure our Future coalition,...

How on earth did all those community independents win seats in the May 2022 Election?  This ChangeMaker Chat talks to Katerina Gaita the Field Organiser and Volunteer Coordinator for Zoe Daniel’s campaign in Goldstein. She unpacks the long march of the independents, starting with Cathy McGowan winning in Indi to the ‘Wave of Teal’ in 2022. As a community organiser and community builder she explain...

While the world is striving to stop catastrophic climate change, there is plenty of conflict over how climate campaign goals are chosen and the language that is used to express them. A key fault line is between the Global North and Global South and whether campaigns about energy transition are imposed onto communities, or connected to solutions that create broader economic, social and cultural jus...

Lots of people say they co-design research and policy with communities, but how do you know when co-design is being done well (and when it isn’t)? We talk to one of the world’s leading autistic participatory researchers, Professor Liz Pellicano from University College London. She shares the elements of good co-design, such as the process of interdependence, the role of relationships and power in t...

This week we interview one of the world’s leading climate action warriors, Bill McKibben. Bill began as a writer, where his passion for the story and his love of nature drew him to write the first popular global book about climate change - The End of Nature. In the 2000s, dismayed at the lack of grassroots action to stop climate change he founded 350.org . Still fighting - his latest mission is to...

Australian party politics can seriously lack diversity. This conversation is about how that can be changed. Osmond Chiu has been pushing to increase cultural diversity in the Australian Labor Party for a while. Today he shares some of the triumphs, tribulations, and lessons about how change is possible - including some reflections on the highs and lows of the 2022 Australian Election. Osmond is a...

The 2022 Australian Election is all about the Independent ‘Teal' Candidates - but where did this Independent movement come from? Today we talk with Nick Haines, Voices for Indi activist, and son of Helen Haines, Member for Indi, about how it all began. He shares his family's story and how he helped support Cathy McGowan, the first of the Independent Candidates, to win the seat of Indi from S...

This is the first of two episodes about people power in election campaigns. Today we feature a campaign by the Australian digital campaign group GetUp. This independent community movement worked to change the electoral outcome in the Tasmanian seat of Bass in 2016. The story shares lessons about how people can work in elections to have their needs and issues heard, and the role that local relation...

Across the world statues and symbols dedicated to slave owners and colonialists are being removed. But before that movement started in the United States and the United Kingdom, it began in Cape Town. The is the story of #RhodesMust Fall and the South African #FeesMustFall movement that sought to not only remove the symbols of colonialism but demanded that the education system be changed in substan...

What would it take for the goodies of the world to have a growing, exponential set of resources to finance how we make change? Josh Ross explores the idea of venture philanthropy and his not-for-profit ticketing organisation Humanitix. His company is disrupting event ticketing while also raising an exponential sum for charitable causes. Seed funding created a different kind of charity, where the b...

Resistance to the war in Ukraine is strong, in Ukraine and also in Russia. This episode is about a housing campaign by Russian dissidents recorded in 2017. These families came together to defend urban forests - large parklands that serve as backyards for tens of thousands of Mosovites. This story documents the political pressure they faced as they sought to defend their homes from the over-develop...

The Disability Movement famously argues ‘nothing about us without us.' Wenn Lawson lives this creed as a world leading autistic advocate and researcher who has helped change how we understand autism and neurodivergence. He shares his journey, including how he shook the house of academia so it would listen to the lives of autistic people. He reflects on the power of co-produced research, iden...

Australia locks up asylum seekers if they attempt to get here by boat. But the refugees that have been subject to indefinite detention on Manus Island and in Australian hotels have resisted. Mostafa Azimitabar, Moz, has led refugee resistance from the inside using the change-making skills that he developed as a Kurdish freedom fighter. Here he shares his story and his approach to change-making, an...

Examining the tough relationships between mainstream progressive parties and movements in Australia, host Amanda Tattersall looks back at her own experience. She tells the story of the 2001-2004 refugee movement's attempt to shift the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and examines what worked, and what was learnt. Lessons are drawn for the climate movement today. This piece was also published by Fabian...

Need a dose of inspiration - we have plenty of stories and interviews ready for you in 2022. Ready for release once a fortnight on Tuesday See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Four years ago on Invasion Day 2018 Tarneen Onus-Williams was relentlessly and violently trolled on Twitter for a speech she gave at a protest. Social media abuse tries to shut people down. It is frighteningly common for women, for Indigenous women and women of colour. This is the story of how Amnesty crowdsourced thousands of volunteers to patrol Twitter and see if they could stop it.  For m...

The Hong Kong 2019 protests were some of the largest protests ever seen in the world, and they didn't come from nowhere. This episode explains some of the history behind the social movements in Hong Kong - from Tiananmen Square to local democracy struggles - Hong Kongers have long used and developed powerful protest strategies.  For more on ChangeMakers check us out:  Via our Website - h...