“The beauty and significance of this solar power project is that it shows in life how we have to move from protest and building awareness and into power,” LeBlanc says. “Power in the sense of standing in our spirituality and our values, but also generating power that is an alternative to fossil fuels.”
On this day, 17 June 1971, construction workers in New South Wales initiated a “green ban”, refusing to build luxury houses over Kelly’s Bush, the last open space in a suburb. Local women had been campaigning to save the park.
Despite a management threat to use scabs, the builders and residents won, and Kelly’s Bush remains an open public reserve today.
A wave of green bans subsequently began which stopped billions of dollars of harmful development over the next four years.
This is a short history of these events: https://libcom.org/history/articles/kellys-bush-green-ban
We are working on a podcast episode about the green bans. Find us and subscribe today on your favourite podcast that by searching “working class history” to ensure you don’t miss it. https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1453027558215723/?type=3
