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 first conversation, Pandora’s Blog editor Samantha Haran sat down with Councillor Jonathan ("Jonno") Sri at his office in Woolloongabba. Jonno graduated from the University of Queensland with a Bachelor of Laws (Hons) and Bachelor of Arts (majoring in Journalism & Mass Communication and in Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Studies). Following university, Jonno is a writer, musician and community worker, who was elected in March 2016 as Brisbane's first ever Greens city councillor (for the Gabba Ward).
Some of Jonno’s priorities as a Councillor are ensuring housing affordability and economic justice, improving public services, environmental sustainability and greater support for the arts and community events. He is an avid supporter of grassroots participatory democracy and is committed to reshaping our local governance system to be less centralised, less hierarchical and more democratic. In this interview, we spoke about his experience at UQ law school, the role of council politics in social movements, the ongoing need for community organising, and his advice for the next generation of justice-focused law students.
A key lesson from our time with Jonno was the need to find that balance of engaging strategically with the state and other institutions, without compromising the integrity of a movement; his position as Councillor gives him access to a range of resources that he would not have otherwise, but he is very conscious of the ways in which the government is designed intentionally to limit the power and the voice of the people. This is why community organising is always important; community organising refers to everyday people coming together at the grassroots level, to take direct action towards solving their collective problems. Just a few examples of great community organising work going on in the inner Brisbane area include: Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance, Anti-Poverty Network, South-East Queensland Union of Renters, Growing Forward (Urban Farming Collective) & Brisbane Free University.
Interview with Jonno Sri
What was your UQ law school experience like?
Mixed to be honest. Coming from a public school into a world of privilege was a real eye opener; I was struck by how naive a lot of people were about the world. A lot of my first year colleagues had been living in a bubble their whole life… I was to some extent in a middle class bubble, but meeting and engaging with the children of the elite was a wild experience.
Whilst I was there, I got really involved in the Law Revue, and wrote for The Obiter as well - and that was, again, a mixed bag. Because honestly sometimes the sense of humour was overtly racist, sexist and really problematic… looking back at it now I’m really quite embarrassed at some of the sketches and some of the articles I was involved in. I don’t know how far either the Obiter or the Law Revue have come in that respect. But, I will say, it was interesting how being in those roles in The Obiter and in Law Revue, you do have the opportunity to curate and interrogate the culture of law school; they serve a strange role of reflecting law school back on itself. It was an interesting experience to be writing these comedy sketches about how fucked up law school is… it’s quite fun and subversive in a way.
I was also really involved in the UQLS - I’d been Law Revue Convener, Obiter Editor, Vice President. (I was the token leftie in all of those spaces). One thing I’m proud of is that alongside a few other students, I helped set up a textbook scholarship program which I think is still going; basically, it is a program where the UQLS would give out free textbooks that were sourced by asking law firms and graduating students to donate their old textbooks.
So yeah, I was really involved in all that sort of stuff. I think law school was good for me in that I learnt a lot of useful skills and I learned the vocabulary I needed to be able to critique unjust systems. Additionally, the relationships I built in law school have also proved quite useful. Again, that being said, it should be noted it was a really stressful and often toxic environment. I think we don’t talk openly about that enough. A lot of people have severe mental health issues as a result of the really toxic study culture, and the widespread elitism.
What do you think is missing from the law school curriculum?
I think what was missing was a more critical reflection of the role law plays in society to reinforce and legitimize unjust power structures. There were 1 or 2 lecturers and 1 or 2 courses that dabbled in that space, but overwhelming the UQ law program serves to reinforce the status quo rather than critique it. That’s really damaging because all these people come through university and they think they’ve had a critical legal education… when actually they haven’t.
What advice would you give to law students looking to go into social movement work?
Volunteer in the spaces that interest you rather than the spaces that law school career advisers would tell you to. I learnt a lot from getting involved in party politics, and also from other activist spaces. Just look for those little opportunities that pop up and they might not seem like they look very good on a resume but that doesn't mean they’re not valuable.
Also - cultivate genuine relationships of care and mutual support with like-minded friends. I think I was lucky that by the end of law school I had a circle of other reasonably progressive people around me who weren’t particularly radical but at least we had a circle of friends where, for example, it was taken for granted that racism was a bad thing.
As someone who has a long history in community organising that pre-dates your Council position, what initially drew you to electoral politics?
I decided I’d put a few years into supporting the Greens party to grow and be a bit more effective, because I really feel that we need to have at least a somewhat effective leftwing electoral movement. I don’t think electoralism should be the end game, but it's useful to have someone to the left of Labor on that level. I see a lot of value in council politics and council power— because even if you can be quite critical of the nation state, there’s something qualitatively different about local councils and that connection to the people. I think one of the first things that got me interested in local government was the Barcelona En Comú movement. To summarise, it was essentially a left wing populist movement that ran an anti-capitalist platform and took over the city of Barcelona. I read this guide they put out - it was called ‘How to Win Back The City.’ I was impressed with their work and it made me realise there was a potential opening there, in local government.
From your perspective now of having been inside the political system for a number of years, why is community organising so necessary? In what ways can community organising do what electoral politics can’t?
The nation state is an inherently violent and coercive institution that serves to defend the interests of capital and reinforce anunjust and brutal status quo. And so expecting that we are going to be able to change this system simply by getting more good people elected to it is really naive. There have been literally hundreds of political projects throughout recent centuries that have sought to effect change through electoralism alone, with very limited success. So I think we need to recognise that building alternative power structures from the bottom up is an essential ingredient in any genuine movement for social change.
That being said, I do think it helps to have good people elected and to have strong community networks that can hold those people accountable. For a deeper dive into my thoughts on this, about the role of electorialism and my own trials with participatory democracy in the Gabba ward, you could check out the article I wrote for JATL’S Pandora’s Box last year: Fixing a Broken System - Practical Trajectories Beyond Representative Democracy.
Article excerpt:
“In an increasingly individualistic society, most of us are rarely invited to think like policymakers and make big decisions about the long-term public interest. We are denied access to a sufficient knowledge base to make informed decisions, and most of us don’t have the time to critically analyse sophisticated propaganda. We don’t get much practice at policymaking. Consequently, many public servants and politicians from across the political spectrum take a default view that ‘the voters don’t know what’s good for them’ and ‘ordinary people can’t be trusted to make the right decisions’ … My experiences with participatory democracy contradict the political establishment’s narrative that voters are irredeemably disengaged. The more decision-making power you give ‘ordinary’ people, the more responsible and thoughtful they become about exercising it… If we can use participatory democracy to redistribute power away from politicians and back to the people, we may yet have a chance of cleaning up this mess.”
What is your ultimate goal with the work you are doing at the moment?
In a way, my underlying goal is to experiment with different strategies and tactics to help understand what works in a given context. I think anyone who feels like they’ve got it all worked out or has a really clear end goal in mind is either misleading us or misleading themselves.Because honestly, we don't really know how to change the world for the better. We have to try different things and see what works.
So I’m really cautious of having a single deep goal, but maybe broadly speaking what I’ve sought to do is redefine the role of an elected representative as something more than just being an administrator of local council services. To demonstrate you can advance radical politics through the vehicle of local council and use that platform to support social movements,projects and campaigns that challenge the political establishment.
To find out more about Councillor Jonno Sri’s work, check out his website and his Facebook page. To get involved and learn about the fantastic work he is doing firsthand, you can come along to his next community event, on Saturday 19th March 2022— a Multicultural Community Day in Orleigh Park, that will also include a panel on Australia’s role in racist imperialism.