No Business in Abuse is launching a massive community campaign aimed at the corporations like Broadspectrum (formerly Transfield Services), who are paid billions to do the government’s dirty work in running Australia’s offshore and onshore detention centres.
We wanted to reach out today to tell you about this new effort, and offer you the chance to use your expertise to lead a local campaign. You can check out the campaign here: http://bit.ly/councils-nbia
The starting point for the campaign is the fact the corporations that provide services essential to Australia’s detention regime (like Broadspectrum and Wilson Security) don’t just do detention. To run a profitable business, they also rely on contracts with institutions - like councils, hospitals and schools.
As a community, we have the power to call on these institutions to take a principled stance in defence of human rights by refusing to contract with Broadspectrum and others while they continue their business in abuse. This way, the choice of corporations to be complicit in human rights abuses has immediate consequences right where it hurts - their bottom line.
Where do we start? With local councils
For our first step NBIA is targeting local councils across Australia - asking each council to take a principled stance in defence of the human rights of people seeking asylum, and declare that they will not engage with corporations who profit from abuse. Everybody has a local council, and everybody can join in with this campaign.
How will the campaign be run? As a community campaign driven by activists with support from NBIA
The best campaigns support activists to do what they do best - make change in their communities. To this end, we are launching this campaign on a digital platform called Community Run (powered by GetUp), which is specifically designed to support decentralised, individual campaigns in each council area, and contains all the information activists might need to get started. NBIA will support and amplify all the community campaigns.
Tomorrow, we will be emailing the tens of thousands of people who support NBIA and invite them to either lead, or join a community campaign in their local council area.
What can you do? Lead a campaign
As longstanding activists for the rights of people seeking asylum in Australia, we need your skills and experience in community campaigning to make this a success. Before we go public tomorrow we are asking for your help first – will you sign up to lead a campaign in your local council area?
What does leading a campaign require? Doing what you probably do already - being an activist.
Leading a No (local council) Business in Abuse campaign means:
- Taking charge of a local campaign that's part of a bigger effort
- Reaching out to local media and government representatives
- Gathering petition signatures through online networks and on the streets
- Emailing your supporters to keep them updated and asking them to get involved in other ways, like the delivery of the petition to your local government target
As experienced activists, you probably have many more ideas about how to run a local campaign too, and please feel free to lead a local campaign in a way that makes sense to you and your community.
What if you just aren’t up for leading anything right now?
If there’s already a leader in your council area, or you don’t feel up to leading a local campaign, feel free to just sign on to the existing petition – you can always email your leader if you’d like to further involved in some way.
We also acknowledge that some of you work for organisations that may not be able to be seen to be actively involved in a campaign, and that's fine. We'll let you decide whether you want to support the campaigns in your personal capacity .
Feel free to pass this email to anyone in your network that you think will be interested, but if you want to lead, make sure you register in the next 24 hours as we’ll be going out to the wider list of supporters Thursday midday!
Thanks for your ongoing interest and support in the No Business in Abuse campaign.
We have a dedicated team of staff and volunteers who will be on hand to provide support, trouble shoot and deliver trainings. If you have any queries or concerns, please email us on nbia.community@getup.org.au
For more information about the No Business in Abuse campaign, visit our website, www.nobusinessinabuse.org
For more our leaders’ toolkit, check out https://www.nobusinessinabuse.
For anything else, please get in touch!
Kind Regards,
Matt and Aurora
PPS: If you'd like to be taken off the list of people and organisations we contact about campaign developments, feel free to send me an email saying so and I'll remove you from our database.
Matt Phillips
Community Campaigner | No Business in Abuse | GetUp!
W getup.org.au A 48 Easey Street, Collingwood, VIC 3066
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