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Articles by Fernanda Dahlstrom
No one goes to jail for bouncing a cheque • Nina Porter
“Throughout the decade my mother had spent in and out of custody for a suite of dishonesty offences, she had maintained her innocence. It was a cliché to which I was oblivious. Even once I entered law school, I had still to be disabused of my belief in her. As Red tells Andy in The Shawshank Redemption: ‘Everyone in here’s innocent.’” So wrote Fernanda Dahlstrom, lawyer and refugee advocate, in a 2018 opinion piece in the Guardian.
The Uncondemned | Fernanda Dahlstrom on Andy West
In my most vivid memory of jail, I am standing near the pay phones in Fairlea Women’s Prison, which used to be located on Yarra Bend Road in Fairfield, where the Melbourne Polytechnic is now. I am with my mother, who is dressed in prison blues and sneakers. In my memory, I am eight, but she claims I was nine. I look up at the concrete wall that looms above and around us. I think: My mum’s in jail. My mother is a scholarship recipient, a former secondary school teacher, and a compulsive reader.
Should Australia Have a Bill of Rights?
Written by Fernanda Dahlstrom Fernanda Dahlstrom has a Bachelor of Laws, a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Arts. She also completed a Graduate Diploma in Legal Practice at the College of Law in Victoria. Fernanda practised law for eight years, working in criminal defence, child protection and domestic violence law in the Northern Territory. She also practised in family law after moving to Brisbane in 2016. A bill of rights is a list of the fundamental rights of citizens of a country.
I am vertical: living with a sitting disability
I am vertical But I would rather be horizontal (Sylvia Plath, ‘I am vertical’) Not long ago, a friend told me excitedly that she had met a woman who, like me, couldn’t sit down because of a medical condition. ‘I’d noticed her standing up at the back of the room during a workshop,’ she told me. ‘I went up to her and asked if the problem was her back. She said, “How did you know?” I told her I have a friend who can’t sit down either.
Civil Disobedience is the Only Rational Response to the Climate Emergency — Kill Your Darlings
Extinction Rebellion protesters block Flinders Street in Melbourne, October 2019. Image: Julian Meehan, Flickr (CC BY-2.0) I became aware of the threat posed by human-induced climate change when I was six. In 1989, concerns were focused on the ‘hole’ in the ozone layer, and the warming of the temperature was known as the Greenhouse Effect. In the years since, the Greenhouse Effect has given way to Global Warming and then to Climate Change.
Pipelined Into Prison - Kill Your Darlings
Image: Wim Hoppenbrouwers, Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) Shakira* sits comfortably in tracksuit pants in a small office in the Sisters Inside building. In the adjoining room, twelve other teenagers are painting at a long table, a weekly after-school art session, where young women who have been criminalised are encouraged to reflect on their experiences and support each other. The girl speaks in a low monotone, the words coming out faster than I can keep up.
Mothers Inside - Kill Your Darlings
In a lecture hall at the University of Queensland, a woman in acid-wash jeans and cowboy boots sits with her legs apart addressing a rapt audience. She speaks in gritty tones that tell of a working-class childhood and a late education. Debbie Kilroy is the founder of Sisters Inside, an advocacy group for incarcerated women. She pulls no punches. Prison is big business. We must shut down the prison industrial complex.
Politicising the playground
Greens Senator Jordan Steele-John announced in April that he would introduce a bill to lower the minimum age for voting to sixteen. He argued that many young people are working and paying tax, that they can join the army and get married, and should therefore have a voice in parliament. None of these were new arguments.
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