If we are to start winning battles we must fight back with the politics of solidarity and collective struggle.
Hi I’m Stephanie. I’m running as the Victorian Socialists’ candidate for Pakenham in the state election. I’m a local graphic designer and queer, disabled activist, and I believe that we can radically transform society to put people before profit.
As a member of the Public Housing Defence Network, I helped organise resistance to the government’s public housing privatisation plans. I’ve also been involved in campaigns against racism, for action on climate change, Palestine solidarity and LGBTIQA+ rights.
A class war is being waged and it's the billionaires, big business and their pocket politicians that are winning, as the system becomes meaner and nastier year upon year. A pattern or deliberate neglect has seen the health system, schools and childcare crumble under unrelenting strain.
Across Pakenham, working-class households are struggling to keep housed and food on the table as wages remain stagnant while the costs spiral higher month after month. I have witnessed my community struggle with supports being defunded, and worrying about the effects of future cuts on their quality of life.
This cost of living crisis is the direct result of putting profits before the needs of working-class people. It is totally obscene that in one of the richest countries on the planet, anyone is struggling to make ends meet.
Practical measures that could offer immediate relief include rent freezes, subsidised groceries, and free school lunches; and can be followed by establishing a public builder to construct more public housing, reversing the privatisation of public services, and a massive funding injection into education and health care.
If we are to start winning battles we must fight back with the politics of solidarity and collective struggle.
If I am elected I pledge to only take an average worker's wage and use the remaining money to fund community programs. I will fight against the politics of the far right as embodied by figures like Donald Trump and Pauline Hanson, and against centrist governments that have crumbled in appeasement. I will fight for an end to the cost of living crisis, against endless war, for fair wages and well funded services to make our communities strong.