The JATL Law and Social Movement series will be a series of conversations with Queensland law graduates who have gone on to do incredible work in the social movement organising space. It can be difficult to navigate how to use your legal education towards truly progressive social change, so this series will grapple with how to do so, and also provide ideas of different pathways people have taken since leaving law school.
For our third conversation, Pandora’s Blog editor Samantha Haran sat down with PhD candidate and community organizer Anna Carlson (she/they). Anna co-founded the incredible free community education project Brisbane Free University, and is a current co-producer of Radio Reversal, a feminist community radio show on 4zzz. She is undertaking her PhD at the School of Political Science at the University of Queensland (UQ), studying the continuing settler-colonial project in this country, specifically looking at the relationship between colonial surveillance and liberal reforms in Queensland.
In this interview, Anna and I dived into the dangerous problems with ‘blackletter’ legal education, the need to think critically about law as a system of political power, and how law school curriculum can better attempt to reflect that. We also touched on their incredible PhD research and amazing community work with grassroots education initiatives like Brisbane Free University (BFU) and Radio Reversal, exploring what these different projects have taught her about education, political power and what it means to be a part of a movement. I have had the pleasure of working with and sharing time, laughs and friendship with Anna for some time now, and they have taught me so much of what it means to work from a place of unwavering joy, love for one another, and commitment to the principles that matter. As she puts it at the end of this interview, the ultimate goal for anyone in movement work should be "to figure out ways to be of service to community, and to do that joyfully."
Interview with Anna
Tell me a little bit about yourself, the work you’re doing at the moment, and your journey here since law school.
My name is Anna Carlson, I am a PhD candidate in the School of Political Science at UQ, and working in and around the intersections of politics and law, particularly in relation to continuing colonisation and reckoning with that from my own location as someone who is here at a white settler directly implicated in the colonial project. Studying law and having the opportunity to engage a bit more deeply with some of the most significant systems of power has really shaped all of the stuff I’ve done since, which, in a very abridged form, has included: working in the community sector, working for community legal centres (I worked at RAILS as a community educator), and clinical legal education work. I have also been involved with broader political education work, both in a formal sense of professional jobs, but also informally in grassroots community organisations such as Brisbane Free University (a free education project) and Radio Reversal (a community radio show), amongst others.
That’s awesome! I really admire the work that you do so much. Obviously, you’ve got into a really different field compared to most law graduates, so I wanted to ask you: what was your actual law school experience like, and how did it maybe lead you to not take that traditional path?
It's a great question! So, I studied Law & Arts at UQ straight out of high school. I think I realised fairly early in my formal legal training that I probably wouldn't become a lawyer. That being said, I really value the capacity my formal legal training has given me to engage deeply and critically with law - i.e. a part of the political apparatus that is really intentionally opaque. And it has been really interesting to me working in community and realising the privilege that comes from being able at least loosely understand how legal structures function, and to be able to do something with that understanding. And so, I think perhaps the realisation that I had during law school was that the thing that I was going to do with my understanding of law was maybe not working within the legal system itself, but was instead more anchored in a desire for a political education around legal structures.
And so that's the kind of work that ended up calling to me, in both the more practical sense of clinical legal education work (so running community education classes about legal rights and entitlements, trying to build resources so folks have a clearer sense of what their rights are with police, etc), and also in the deeper sense of political education work—about what it means to have a deeper understanding of the law, the histories that animate it, the ways that these structures have been formed and reformed for very specific reasons over a very long time. And what it means to be able to fracture some of the sustaining myths of those legal systems. That’s the kind of work I find myself doing now: work that goes a little beyond the classical legal education work of making sure people know what their rights are, and goes towards the sort-of fracturing the skeleton of the legal system itself.
I love that, and completely agree! Moving towards that ‘fracturing of the legal system’ - the horizon of abolition, of a better (and completely different) world - is absolutely the goal. I completely agree that part of the work of getting there necessarily requires helping people see the current legal system clearly for what it is - to be able to see through the cultural and political myths that are propagated about it (namely that law as it stands is neutral, objective, just and generally ‘good’). And so, relatedly, I wanted to ask you - what do you think was missing from the law school curriculum at the moment?
That's an absolutely critical question. I think there's 2 things I want to say. First, I think it's a mistake to think the current legal education system is not by design, right? Like there has been a whittling away of radical content from the legal curriculum and a sidelining of diverse perspectives. As result, what you're taught is not just that this is the law and this is how you should use it, but also that there is something fundamentally rational about the legal system, that it is not a politically constituted and endlessly redesigned structure - that it just is.
I came to understand the UQ program’s problem most acutely when I briefly studied law elsewhere. I was lucky enough to go on exchange to the University of Vienna, and there I was amazed by the dearth of critical engagements with law and the flow on impacts of that that meant for, for example, critical race theory, intersectionality, etc. It helped me realise that the deeply political process behind law is obscured when the law is taught in a technical or mechanical way, as a set of blackletter rules that you just learn, as it's done at UQ. So for me, I’d love to see abolition taught as part of the criminal law at UQ, I would love to see deeper engagements with poverty law, with critical race theory and critical legal studies perspectives.
That’s a segway into my second point which is that I think there are real problems with the Priestley 11. Because of that model, even when those other things are taught, they are taught as electives; they're not taught as things that are fundamental to understanding the law itself. To me that feels like the space we could really improve legal education; to say, no you actually can’t understand the law without understanding race. And you actually can't understand the law without understanding European imperialism or racial capitalism, it doesn't make sense. Those things aren’t interventions in the legal understanding, they're the foundation of the legal system and so you actually have to begin with those.
I absolutely agree! Critical perspectives are something I’ve rarely encountered in my formal legal education, and you’r right, when it comes up, it is always as an ‘add on’ or in a later year elective subject. Relatedly, on the topic of critical academia, I would also love to ask you: what is your PhD research about? And what influence did your experience in law school have on you choosing this particular topic?
Of course! So my PhD research looks at the relationship between colonial surveillance and liberal reforms in Queensland over the course of predominantly the 20th century. It's a kind of historical-political project that aims to map the intersection of the expansions of colonial surveillance of varied forms with the construction of discourses of political progress, transition and reform. And I think that has been really heavily shaped by my experiences of studying the law, but perhaps also of the kinds of cruel optimism (as Lauren Berlant describes it) that comes from believing in the promise of progress that is offered both by legal education and practice, which is that if you just work hard enough to make yourself legible to the system, to force the system to recognise you, than justice will come from that process.
I think that having a background in the law definitely made big parts of the project more possible in a practical sense (I spent a bit of time digging through legislation). But, perhaps more importantly, I think the biggest influence of law on my PhD was that my experiences engaging with the law and spending time around social justice lawyering, meant I really believed in the promise of liberal reform and progress through legal reform for a while. It’s a really seductive promise and one that is really hard to let go of, because it is the kind of theory of change that has animated so much of our understanding of the world. I think part of what my PhD project tries to reckon with is the violence of that seductive myth. The project looks at colonial histories of surveillance, at the violence of continuing colonisation from my location as implicated in that violence as a white person. It was increasingly difficult to hold onto to or rehabilitate that myth of liberal reform when I was also looking both historically and materially at everyday life, seeing the violence that myth allowed.
That sounds like such an important project, and I can’t wait to read it. I think a lot of what you’ve said about having to fight against the seductive myths of liberalism are also seen in the incredible community education projects and organising you do as well. I would love it if you could speak a little bit about Radio Reversal, the radio show you co-produce on 4zzz! What is the show about, how did you get into community radio, and what do you think the value of it is?
Oh, I mean I love community radio! I love a bunch of things about it. I think something that's really valuable about it that's different from most other contemporary mediums, including things like podcasts, is that it's free and anyone can listen to it. There is a kind of accessibility to radio that also means you have to think really deeply about the possibility that literally anyone could tune in to this content at any moment during your show. It’s very different from any kind of opt in media and so that has been a really wonderful pedagogical exercise, actually. It is certainly not something that I'm an expert at, but I think the constant practice of trying to work on developing ways to talk about complex important and violent and harmful systems, in ways that are accessible and useful is so valuable. And doing it through community radio has been a way to work from joy, as well - this is something my wonderful PhD supervisor Professor Chelsea Watego talks about a lot, what it means to acknowledge that struggles are ongoing, there is no end in sight - but we struggle from joy, we struggle from a place of shared and collective joy. The radio show that I produce was started by 2 of my dearest friends 10 years ago now, and we’ve continued it off the strength of love, you know? And being collectively embroiled in this project of wanting to think deeply about the world, wanting to do that with one another, and also the people who listen in, who call us, who send in messages… it's been an absolutely radical education for me.
I love that! And it is something I’m really honoured and grateful that I got to participate in as well. Another one of your fantastic projects I’ve had the chance to be a part of is Brisbane Free University (BFU), an awesome free education project you’ve been running for a decade now. I’d love it if you could share what it's about, how it began and what your intention was with it!
Yes! So BFU is a free education project that we started at the end of 2012. I was in undergrad when we started it, and it has a similar kind of origin story and collective behind it as Radio Reversal. My co-collaborators Fern Thompson and Briohny Walker - we became friends and we started talking about our experiences of education and the university. This included both the absolutely transformative experience of education in our own lives, the ways that we loved coming together to think and the moments at which that had been possible in our experiences of formal education, but also our deep concerns that that seemed very limited in the university. So BFU grew out a community-based desire to have spaces where we could come together to think. We wanted to open up the positive experiences of university to more people, to take that to a different space and put it to service in a different way.
In terms of the specifics of what we do, it has been really wonderfully malleable - over the years it has taken a number of forms. At the moment, the majority of our week-to-week activity is a radical reading group which we’ve been facilitating for 6 years now. I think the presence of radical reading groups is a signifier that there is a deep desire amongst a lot of people for spaces of critical engagement. People want spaces to come together and think deeply about the world. We often frame the radical reading group as not being so much about being able to understand the texts on their own terms but trying to understand what they mean for the world, and what it means to use these texts strategically when we’re thinking about building movements, about how we engage in strategic acts of refusal in our workplaces for example, how we build unions, how come together as communities to build mutual aid and co support. BFU definitely seems to be something engaged in learning for the joy of learning, but also maybe more so learning for the joy of collective struggle.
I love that so much. I also think that the high engagement with projects such as BFU really shows that there is something that they are doing that universities and other traditional educational institutions aren’t offering, both substantively and in terms of access. In your opinion, what is that difference? Between community political education projects, such as BFU and Radio Reversal, and institutional education?
Such a good question, and I have a bunch of sort of vaguely connected answers to that. The first one is that I don't think free education projects are necessarily trying to replace traditional universities. They function very differently; the purpose is not really to ‘authorise’ people; there’s no certificates, you're not being asked or assessed at the end on how well you understood the text. Instead, the marker of a good reading group is a really interesting conversation, which I think is a very different project. I also don't think any of these free education spaces are perfect, and they are certainly not free of the tensions that exist in universities… power relations still exist in those spaces and they are still organised around hierarchies that are often unnamed, that are sometimes hard to identify, that are very hard to rupture.
But I think perhaps the thing that feels exciting, the space of possibility that I see in these community-based education projects, is that we come together to do this and at best we can take mutual responsibility for these spaces. In that sense we get to learn not just ideas, but we also get to learn what it means to learn together. And that's probably the thing I’ve learnt the most from free education projects; not so much learning ‘things’ but learning what it means to come together to think together, to come to a point where I think with a chorus. I think with all of these people I’ve now spent 10 years thinking the world with and alongside. And I think there's something very powerful about being able to engage in learning collectively, not least because it gives us access to sites beyond our own lived experience - it means that we are constantly cross checking our experiences of particular political structures against other peoples and realising those generative gaps, the ways that our experiences don't tell us everything about the world, they tell us some really partial things. When we bring those experiences together with other people, and we read deeply and we learn in the pursuit of collective knowledge, rather than individual knowledge, we get a little bit closer to find a liberatory pedagogy, a practice that's not about personal authority or becoming an expert, but is about how we use this, how we do something material with the stuff we learn.
I couldn’t agree more. Being a part of community education has been such a transformational experience for me personally as well - as you said, getting to a point of ‘thinking in a chorus’ with the people you love is such an incredible feeling! Before we finish up, I just have 2 final questions! First, what general advice would you give to law students (or graduates) looking to do social movement work? Or more so, how can you use a legal education in a positive way in the movement space?
I think there's some absolutely fantastic examples of folks already who are engaging and developing really radical possibilities for law students. I know you've spoken in the past to Clare Scrine from Action Ready which I think is a really tangible example of what folks with legal training have been able to do. There is also a huge space at the moment for radical lawyering… having lawyers that work for the movement would be incredibly valuable. But it is a challenging thing to do. I think one of the reasons it becomes hard to get lawyers in the struggle is because lawyering is hard work, and it's really hard for lawyers to stay engaged in community when they are busy and tired and overworked. But I think those relationships with community are everything. They are the thing that will form your politics, the way you’ll understand how to use the law in service of community and movements. So, I think as much as it's hard, trying to be grounded in political community, knowing who you are accountable to, can really help. Particularly when you're going through what often feels like a conveyor belt right? Like the early years of being a lawyer, much like the legal education project, I think does feel like you're inexorably moving in a particular direction… having people who will hold you through that process is so important!
The other thing I would say is that wherever you are lawyering, also engage your labour rights! Lots of lawyers are really exploited in their workplaces as I just said. Varied forms of exploitation are considered acceptable in the industry and are held in place by this mythic vision of the law as a brotherhood. So if you're going to be a lawyer, work in your workplace… unionize! Try to rupture to logics of overworking. And importantly, remember who you're working for, right? Like if you're willing to work 50 hours a week, work 40 of them for pay and 10 of them for free, for the cause. There's an element of being able to kind of model the kinds of transformations you want. Figure out who you want to be of service to, and work towards that!
Absolutely. I think staying rooted in your values and principles is so important when you’re working in a necessarily conservative, status-quo enforcing industry. And community is absolutely the way to do it! Having people who can remind you what really matters to you. Which I think leads perfectly to our final question… what is your ultimate goal with the work you are doing at the moment?
I’ve been thinking a lot about this, because I’m coming to the end of my PhD thesis, and I’ve been thinking a lot about how the thesis itself does not feel like the work. The thesis has been an incredible experience, to have the privilege of having this long to write a piece of work, and there are certainly things that can only come clear through a deep writing process. But for me the marker of what this work means is what happens next; whether it is taken up by community, whether it means something to other people, the things I can do with this work next. And I think for me the main goal of my work in general is to work in and for community and particularly in and for the communities I’m accountable to. In the context of my current project, I’m working directly on histories of colonization, so the work is primarily accountable to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, is accountable to the broader political communities I'm part of. And I think for me that is the goal. To figure out ways to be of service to community, and to do that joyfully.
To learn more about the awesome projects Anna is involved with, you can check out Brisbane Free University’s website here and Radio Reversal’s website here. To get involved, Brisbane Free University’s Radical Reading Group has a Facebook group which you can join here, and Radio Reversal is live on 4zzz every Thursday at 9am, and you can stream on-demand online here. To keep up with Anna, you can follow them on twitter here and instagram here!
