Published 22 September 200922 September 2009 · Main Posts archaeological traces of another world Jeff Sparrow I stumbled upon this on the back of a door at Victoria University the other day, one of the original stickers from the S11 blockade of the World Economic Forum back in 2000. With all that’s happened in the last nine years, the S11 protest seems, in retrospect, entirely fantastical. Not just the huge numbers that attended (though that too is a source of wonder) but the optimism that permeated the whole event, a sentiment encapsulated in the slogan ‘Another world is possible’. Compare with the zeitgeist of today, manifested most depressingly at the shenanigans at Copenhagen where, with the fate of the planet very possibly hanging in the balance, the statesman’s art consists of manufacturing bogus enthusiasm for various permutations of the status quo. The explosion of creativity that accompanied S11 has now been largely forgotten. The regular film screenings; the photo exhibitions; the new journals and publications; the various political groupings that, for a while, held huge meetings every week: the memory of all it has been effaced. Yet it all happened, and not so very long ago. Jeff Sparrow Jeff Sparrow is a Walkley Award-winning writer, broadcaster and former editor of Overland. More by Jeff Sparrow › Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places. If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate. Related articles & Essays 28 March 20249 April 2024 · Main Posts Why we should value not only lived experience, but also lived expertise Sukhmani Khorana In the wake of this year’s International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, I want to extend the central idea of El Gibbs’s 2022 essay on 'lived expertise' and argue that in media accounts of racism, analytical expertise and lived experience ought to be valued together and even in the same body. 5 March 2024 · Main Posts Andrew Charlton’s school assignment Alex McKinnon Australia's Pivot to India exists for three reasons: so that when Andrew Charlton is interviewed on the radio or introduced on Q+A, his bio includes the phrase "he has written a book about Indian-Australian relations"; to fend off accusations that he is another Kristina Keneally engaging in electoral colonialism in western Sydney; and to help the Albanese government strengthen economic and military ties with Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.