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GSG held its annual task-setting meeting at Annandale Neighbourhood Centre on Sunday 9 February. We have again decided to put out occasional newsletters for our friends.

The next four GSG meetings will be held on Thursdays:

We discussed how we can organise our work in 1986. We are hoping to establish a regular meeting venue. There are many advantages of meeting in members’ homes, as we have done for some time now. We decided to seek a comfortable and more public meeting place, which will be more accessible. We are interested in co-operating with other gay and radical groups in finding a small office/meeting place to share.

We also looked at how we could improve the meetings. Most of us appreciate the amount of information exchanged formally and informally at the fortnightly meetings, but hope to cut down time spent on routine matters, and find ways to prioritize key decision making agenda items. As well as the minutes taker, a convenor will be chosen each meeting to ring people one week later to remind them of the tasks they committed themselves to carry out.

GSG is thinking of putting out a booklet towards the end of 1986, with an exposition of gay liberation ideas as relevant to the mid eighties, a charter of gay freedom demands, and perhaps also a chronology of the lesbian and gay movement in Sydney.

One of our projects over the next year is to hold a set of four forums to discuss major topics of interest for radical gay liberationists. These will initially focus on international issues.

GSG has over the years accumulated vast quantities of archival material: dozens of banners, posters, t-shirts; extensive organizational, leaflet, news clipping and magazine files. We need to spend time re-organizing their storage to make these files more accessible and useful. For example, we hope to begin binding our files of Boston Gay Community News. There is a plan to mount a historical display, drawing on our existing holdings, for the National Conference in April.

Of course, we didn’t only dwell on internal/organizational matters. GSG meetings over the last year have looked at a range of issues: censorship, lesbians and gay men in prison, the Alison Thorne campaign, anti-racist work, Anti-Discrimination Board consultations, the International Gay Association, the witch-hunt against paedophiles, the fight for law repeal in New Zealand, solidarity with anti-imperialist struggles – Kanaky, El Salvador, South Africa, Philippines …. We set some perspectives on currently important areas of work:

A full scale mobilization of helpers is needed if the Eleventh National Conference of Lesbians and Gay Men is to be a success. The conference is to be held at the Western Campus, University of NSW, on the Anzac Day weekend, 25-27 April. It will be preceded by a one-day national AIDS workers seminar. We need help in organizing fundraising, help in planning and programming, ideas for workshops, suggestions for a theme/logo, people to paint banners, write promotional articles, distribute leaflets, to do paste-ups and mailouts, volunteers to co-ordinate the conference catering, billeting and social functions – the list fo tasks is increasingly daunting for the few who are currently involved. Meetings of the collective are held at 46 Durham Village, Hutchinson St. Surry Hills, at 8pm on the following Tuesdays:

The Gay Immigration Task Force is going very well at the moment, with around fifty people at the monthly meetings: 7pm at Humanist House, 10 Sheperd St. Chippendale on the second Monday of the month. The lobbying in September has resulted in 35 couples being able to stay together, but there is still a problem with officials trying to whittle away the gains by re-interpreting some aspects of the agreement. A second major fund-raising Cabaret is being prepared; it’s on Saturday 5 April at Leichardt Town Hall, $10/$5 concession. As has been noted by many people the GITF has run a magnificent national campaign, which has not only been unexpectedly successful, but has relied almost entirely on the energies, competence, and talents of the couples themselves.

Police harassment of lesbians and gay men has long been a key concern of GSG. Recently we found ourselves in the centre of a dispute about the composition of the Police Gay Liaison Group, and despite various undemocratic and red-baiting manoeuvres, one of our members is working on the new committee. We will review the work of the PGLG and our contribution to it in late April.

Other Events Coming Up Some GSG people will be participating in the Broad Left Conference at Easter at Sydney University. This is an attempt to regroup socialist forces in Australia, which have been in disarray for some time. At the same time, and also at Sydney Uni, the Getting Together conference hopes to unite green, social change and peace activists.

Enola Gay will be convening another lively contingent in the Palm Sunday Peace March on 23 March.

Stonewall Week in 1986 will be a rather modest offering, but GSG hopes to have a large commemorative fundraising dinner on Saturday 28 June.

Although our agitation against the religious right has waned slightly of late, allowing the Sydney Anglican Diocese, the FOL, the Sydney City Mission Lifeline, and the Salvation Army to rest a little easier in their hatred of queers, we are keen to give the Holy Father the welcome he so richly deserves when he comes to see Mother Inferior in November.

AIDS is of course a key concern of everyone in the gay communities. Many GSG people are members of the AIDS Council of NSW and are active in several of its working parties. AIDS is always one of the main reports at our meetings. All GSG supporters are reminded that ACON has a general meeting on 4 March at 8.15pm at the Surry Hills Neighbourhood Centre.

A happy Mardi Gras to all our friends!

CURRENT NEWSLETTER AND ARCHIVE OF PREVIOUS NEWSLETTERS

Mannie has a personal web site: RED JOS: HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISM

Mannie's blogs may be accessed by clicking on to the following links:

MannieBlog (from 1 August 2003 to 31 December 2005)

Activist Kicks Backs - Blognow archive re-housed - 2005-2009

RED JOS BLOGSPOT (from January 2009 onwards)

This page created 11 SEPTEMBER 2013 and updated on 26 APRIL 2017

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