Merri-Bek Meet the Candidates - Brunswick and Pascoe Vale

Naomi Farmer is the Victorian Socialists candidate for Brunswick. She grew up in the Latrobe Valley and has been an activist for over 20 years, involved in campaigns including Palestine solidarity, refugee rights, equal marriage, and student organising that helped defeat the 2014 Abbott/Hockey budget. She played a leading role in community resistance following the Hazelwood mine fire, an environmental and industrial disaster in her hometown, where she wrote the first news report, called the first protest and helped initiate an ongoing community campaign. Naomi currently works in disability support, where she sees daily the impact of cuts to public services and the cost-of-living crisis, alongside growing corporate wealth. She is standing to challenge inequality, war, racism and the climate crisis, and argues for socialist politics as a way to confront the power of the billionaire class and fight for working-class communities.

Yasemin Shamsili is the Victorian Socialists candidate for Pascoe Vale. She has been a socialist and community activist for 15 years and lives and works in Melbourne’s north. She works in education, a sector facing deep crisis due to chronic underfunding, low pay and pressure on public schools, and supports ongoing teacher struggles for better conditions. Yasemin has been active in anti-racist and anti-fascist organising in Melbourne for over a decade, including mobilisations that have brought thousands onto the streets against racism and the far right. She has also been involved in housing activism, opposing the privatisation and redevelopment of public housing and campaigning against displacement in the northern suburbs, as well as participating in campaigns for Palestine solidarity, defending local health services and community funding. She is standing to argue that working-class people need to organise collectively against austerity, racism and inequality, and to build a socialist alternative that puts people and communities first.

Come along to hear from both candidates, ask questions, and be part of the discussion about the campaign ahead.