Resistance is a Revolutionary Socialist youth organisation with its national headquarters in Sydney. Resistance is an independent affiliate of the Socialist Alliance with a strong historical relationship with the Democratic Socialist Perspective, which dissolved into the Socialist Alliance in 2010.
Membership is open to everyone under 26 who is living in Australia and broadly agrees with the aims of Resistance. As a youth organisation, Resistance campaigns as a group of young people within the social movements rather than only focusing on issues relating to youth.
There are Resistance branches in Adelaide, Brisbane, Geelong, Hobart, Melbourne, Newcastle, Perth, Sydney and Wollongong which operate out of the activist centre in each city.
Resistance held their 39th national conference in Wollongong, 24-26 April 2010.[1]
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Resistance campaigns on many social justice and environmental issues. Current national campaigns include: action on climate change,[2] equal marriage rights,[3] stopping internet censorship by the Australian government,[4] rolling back the Northern Territory Intervention,[5] ending mandatory detention for asylum seekers,[6] and equal rights for women.[7]
Resistance also campaigns around international issues such as ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,[8] ending the occupation of Palestine [9], support for the Venezuelan and Cuban governments,[10], support for Tamil self-determination in Sri Lanka.[11]
Resistance members help to write for and produce Green Left Weekly, and each edition includes one page dedicated to articles written by Resistance members about youth issues.
Resistance was formed in 1967 out of the Sydney University Socialist Club and the Vietnam Action Campaign. This was a time when students were being radicalised by the Vietnam war. The original name for the organisation was SCREW, said either to stand for Society for the Cultivation of Rebellion Every Where, or Sydney Committee for Revolution and Emancipation of the Working Class. After a few months the name was changed to Resistance, and at the founding national conference in 1970 the name was changed to Socialist Youth Alliance, to be changed back to Resistance 10 years later.
Recent campaigns that Resistance has helped organise and lead include high school walkouts against Pauline Hanson in 1998,[12] Books not Bombs anti-war protests in 2003,[13] the APEC protests against George Bush in 2007[14] and Students Against the Pulp Mill in 2008.
When the DSP and several other groups formed the Socialist Alliance in early 2001, Resistance gave its solidarity but did not affiliate to the Alliance until late 2003.