I think it’s important to start with the global picture, especially when you live in one of the few countries where the desperation of neoliberalism’s decline is yet to fully hit home. But as far away as Iran may seem, it is now around the corner at every petrol station, deepening and broadening the impact of the cost of living crisis on the majority of the population. Just as importantly, it’s making obvious the current reaction against the environmental reform initiated some three decades ago.
As the world approaches key tipping points, monopoly-finance capital has abandoned the ‘energy transition’, capitalism’s answer to climate change. While this lauded transition was nothing like the fundamental transformation in productive systems required to avert catastrophic climate change, it did manifest an important battle line. A line now pushed back by the growing dominance of economic forces based in high tech, the fossil fuel industry and monopoly finance. These kings of kings have put their immediate energy needs at the heart of the accumulation of capital. Data centres and AI, authoritarian states, and the mobilisation of reactionary forces, are the more obvious reflections of the global politics of reaction.
Of course, these attempts to roll back the most basic rights of liberal democracy are everywhere being met with resistance. Nothing embodies this more than the continued global support and mobilisations for Palestine. Some recent developments also suggest this resistance may start to be reflected in ballot boxes.
Coming back to our tiny corner on earth, Borderland’s has been busy leading the People’s Plan for Footscray. Our little contribution is part of a bigger effort, with a range of important projects in the western suburbs of Melbourne, supported by the Greater Melbourne Foundation.
We hope the People’s Plan for Footscray can be something of an example of how people power can be mobilised, supported and have impact.
As part of our work, we recently hosted a walking tour of Footscray for Jon Alexander, author of Citizens – Why the Key to Fixing Everything is All of Us. The tour was organised by regen.melbourne …
On a brightly-lit Melbourne morning, Jon, Regen Melbourne’s Dheepa Jayapalan and I join Jorge Jorquera, Coordinator at Borderlands Co-Operative, and Mehak Sheikh to walk the streets of Melbourne’s vibrant inner west and learn about the extraordinary community-driven work that is happening in Footscray and beyond. How is Melbourne citizening? A street tour with Jon Alexander
Footscray People’s Plan Mapping Session and more …
Forty community workers, advocates and activists participated in the first People’s Plan for Footscray Community Mapping Exercise. This included people from some twenty different community organisations working in Footscray.
Participants spent almost three hours in small table groups discussing:
- What’s changed in Footscray over the last 5 and more years?
- What worries you most about the future for Footscray?
- What excites you most about the future for Footscray?
- What community assets and social infrastructure do we have and value in Footscray?
- What are the equity and environmental issues, and social needs in the area?
- What are the potential opportunities for community action?
- Are there clusters of issues? Are there obvious campaign ‘sites’?
- How do we engage community members who don’t normally engage to develop a ‘People’s Plan’?
- What practical tasks can we work on together to bring people into the process?
Read about some of the deliberations and upcoming events for the People’s Plan for Footscray …
The People’s Plan for Footscray was also at the recent Language in Community Festival (March 14), jointly organised by ViệtSpeak and Angliss Neighbourhood House. Angliss Neighbourhood House is one of the supporting organisations involved with the People’s Plan. The Festival provided an opportunity for the People’s Plan to chat to locals, asking them three questions about their community:
- what they love about Footscray;
- what worries them about the future of Footscray;
- and how they think Footscray could be made better.
All the video vox pops from these conversations can be viewed here …
A special invitation to a special event
The books launch event is now fully subscribed. Still-interested people are invited to email ARIA expressing interest in case a place becomes available (some cancellations are expected). Please email: Co-ordinator <Action.Research.Centre@gmail.com>
Dear friends, colleagues, and all with an interest in this,
Over a period of twenty-five years Yoland Wadsworth wrote three books that turned into surprise best-sellers. A new international publisher commissioned revisions in 2021 and at last they are ready as new editions.
Attached is a personal invitation to you as someone with a connection to this body of work*, who might like to participate in this launch event (or just know that the books are available).
They were not ‘ordinary’ books and this is not really an ‘ordinary book launch’!
It is part thank you; part ‘gathering of the clans’ of all those who have been working towards ‘human good’ for many years; part convivial chewing over together what we make of the last 50+ years of all our endeavours (everyone invited qualifies here), and part looking to the future in the light of it all.
Hope you can come !
Please RSVP to the invitation by email to the Action Research Issues Association at this email address: ARIAssociation <aria.inc@gmail.com> with the subject line Invitation – to convivial event to launch books trilogy – at last! (so we don’t lose track of your responses, thanks). Please also confirm you are able to come from 10am to 3pm (the focus is on full day participants). We can let you know closer to the day if wanting to drop in for part of the day.
Marie Brennan, Lucinda Aberdeen and Yoland Wadsworth for the hosts –
ARIA Inc. & the Living Systems Inquiry Foundation (LSIF) support group
And event co-sponsors ALARA Inc & Borderlands Co-operative
Table groups of six are possible …
*This invitation has gone out to those who contributed to, are cited, acknowledged or otherwise thanked in the three books, including participants, book committees, those who checked the exemplars, and those associated with the people to whom the books are variously dedicated; plus the host and co-sponsoring organisations: ARIA, LSIF, ALARA and BL Cooperative; QR group members, Regenerative Community Development (CD) conference attenders who expressed interest, Footscray Gardening & Learning Place propagators, members of the international CD Vic network, NEAR, U&I and others involved in participatory and community inquiry efforts in public health, community health, health promotion, consumer MH, neighbourhood houses, Knox ECDC, the AES systems SIG, TASA Applied Sociology SIG, plus other interested researchers, evaluators and systems-thinkers. Finally, some friends and family from the earliest days in post WW1 outer suburbia – they were there at the beginning! – from experiencing the introduction of the Web of Life and ecological thinking in biology in Australian schools in the 1960s – to seeing the author’s first systems diagram on the cover of the local high school magazine in 1968!
Welcome all!
The books launch event is now fully subscribed. Still-interested people are invited to email ARIA expressing interest in case a place becomes available (some cancellations are expected). Please email: Co-ordinator <Action.Research.Centre@gmail.com>
Finally, but not least, a farewell to David Legge, a friend and fellow agitator to many who worked with Borderlands throughout the years …
The People’s Health Movement says farewell to David Legge, a founding member who dedicated his life to the global struggle for health justice and equity.
David Legge was remarkable. I don’t say this lightly. What he brought to the People’s Health Movement (PHM) was beyond any expectations of one person. He was a founder and guiding light, and a comrade with a completely unwavering commitment to PHM. David served as Co-Chair of PHM’s Global Steering Council and was a crucial intellectual powerhouse behind the International People’s Health University (IPHU), WHO Watch, and Democratizing Global Health Governance programs. He was also a global champion for comprehensive primary health care.
Farewell to David Legge, a PHM giant, February 17, 2026 by Fran Baum