Young Labour

It took awhile, and despite my best efforts only includes my thoughts, but here is my three minute “IUSY World Festival Report 2011″ followed by a bunch of cool video shot by Socialist Youth Austria.
– Andreas

Andreas here again for the final daily post We awoke Satuday morning to a pile of mud. The weather by Saturday had certainly turned and what was once a very sunny camp site was rather wet. So after dragging myself out of bed, some breakie and email checking, and the head of delegations meeting, I went to another morning session on (once again) US politics.

I learned about fusion voting which I had never heard of before. It used to be the system all over the US but is now only in five states. It works by a candidate being able to be elected under to different labels, in most cases both “Democrat” and “Working Families Party”. This allows the Working Families Party – which is a Left Wing minor party in the US – to operate much like a youth wing of the Democrats and push the Democrats to put forward better candidates and for their candidates to enact some Working Families Party policy if they want to continue getting the extra votes they get under the Working Families Party label. (more…)

Hey everyone, Andreas here yet again. In the morning we all attended Tim’s (see yesterday’s post) session on “Equal rights to all: Fight HIV/AIDS and not people with HIV/AIDS”. Tim was one of a number of panellists who all agreed it was a very complicated subject and had some interesting points. Some points included: (more…)

A vote on one of the many Council resolutions

Chelsea "representing" with some of our friends

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One of the morning discussion sessions I popped into before sorting out our travel reimbursement

Hello again! Andreas here I went to a few different sessions today. The first I went to was on multiple forms of discrimination. As one speaker noted on immigration, migration to Western countries since the Global Financial Crisis has actually decreased by 16% yet fear mongering about immigrants has intensified. It was suggested that the Right have used people’s fears of financial insecurity and channelled it away from the real causes – the capitalist and greatly unequal economic system – and towards minority groups such as immigrants and beneficiaries. The most moving part of the session was a story of a young guy who left Turkey to escape his conservative parents and persecution for being gay, only to come to Austria (which can be quite racist towards the Turkish) and be too afraid to be upfront about his nationally, telling even a youth group at first that he was from Greece only to later admit to one of the leaders that “technically” that wasn’t true. (more…)

Sorting out what we will do for the day over breakfast

Hey all, Andreas here So we woke to a bright sunny morning today and after a very ice cold shower (the generators weren’t working) we had breakfast. After a quick head of delegations meeting which I attended with James, it was on to Asia-Pacific Committee meeting, which I attended with Chelsea. (more…)

Chelsea in a shoe store

We woke to a bright Monday morning in Vienna. Having gone to bed early, we were up early and ready again to try and do some shopping and sightseeing, having found the shops closed the day before. First however, we had to sort our ride to the IUSY camp and while we fretted that that James’s email might never come, it did, and after some quick breakfast we once again navigated our way to the main, and very long, shopping street.

We found some cool products, meet some cool people, and had some nice pizza for lunch. As we walked around we went over some of the things we had noticed over the last day and a half. They included that: (more…)

Chelsea in front of the Austrian Parlament

So we awoke Sunday morning not fully over our jetlag and lack of sleep but nonetheless keen to take to the streets of Vienna and do some serious shopping and sightseeing. With only one day to do our own exploring and adjust to the local surroundings before heading out to the IUSY Word Fesitival Camp ground, and with James not showing up our planned meeting, we eagerly headed outside.

Outside, the streets were filled with big beautiful old buildings – neither a towering skyscraper nor out-of-place mini-building to be seen. After some nifty navigation from Chelsea and her iPad, we found the main shopping street and eagerly looked around for shops to explore, only to find it they were all closed. Everything. Even the cafes. (more…)

Golden Gaytime iceblocks at Melbourne Airport

4 planes, 1 shuttle, 1 train, 1 taxi, 31 hours flying time, 14 hours worth of stop overs, 3 continents, 5 countries, 1 broken TV, 1 forgotten meal, 1 Stephen Fry biography, at least 15 awful attempts at pretending to be Julia Gillard, an insurmountable amount of awkward moments squishing past people to get to the bathroom and way too much money spent on food later and we’re in, you guessed it, AUSTRIA!

Right now we’re chillin’ at our hostel, waiting jor James Sleep to come rescue us and show us around/ find a good breakfast joint. We’re hoping me meet some people from Australia and UK Young Labour today too. (more…)