Nick Fredman has been a socialist activist since 1990. He has been active in the student movement, in solidarity with struggles in Indonesia and East Timor, environmental campaigns and the movement for refugee rights. He is a founding member of the Lismore No War on Iraq group.
From 1997, he helped establish a branch of the Democratic Socialist Party in Lismore, the first instance of socialist organising in Northern NSW for many years. Since the launch of the Socialist Alliance branch in the area in 2001, Nick has helped it to establish a network of supporters from Mullimbimby to Grafton.
Nick works as a desk top publisher at Southern Cross University, and is active in the National Tertiary Education Union. He is a member of the SCU branch executive and of the National Council of that union.
Sue has worked for the NSW TAFE Commission and the Sydney Institute of TAFE, where she was active in the Teacher's Federation. She was centrally involved in the successful campaign to save the on-site childcare centre at Ultimo campus.
Sue currently works for the Department of Public Works and Services (DPWS) as a planner. She is a member of the Public Service Association and is Chair of her workplace committee. She is currently working with other delegates to rebuild the union in DPWS.
Sue is a member of the Marrickville branch of Socialist Alliance, and stood as its candidate for the seat of Grayndler in the 2001 federal election.
Roberto Jorquera was born in Chile in 1970 migrating to Australia with his family in 1975 due to the dictatorial Pinochet regime. Roberto has been involved in various progressive struggles and solidarity campaigns with the people of the Third World for over 15 years. Roberto first got involved in campaigns against cuts to higher education in the 1980's taking on the position of Education Officer of the student Union at Griffith University in Brisbane. In 1992-1993 he was a union delegate for the Health Services Union of Australia in Melbourne and also organising campaigns with the Committees in Solidarity with Latin America and the Caribbean which he still does today. In the late 1990's he spent fours years in Perth involved in the Campaign Against Racism and as Coordinator of the Socialist Alliance Recently he has been active in the Free the Refugees Campaign and the protests against the war on Iraq.
He is a member of the Western Suburbs branch of Socialist Alliance.
Sam is 32 years old and lives in Campsie with his partner Janet. He is a waterside worker and member of the Maritime Union of Australia. For many years he was an active member of the ALP which he joined as a teenager, becoming President of Young Labor (Tasmania) in 1989. Later Sam resigned in disgust at Labor's adoption of pro-big business policies. He commented, "Everyone can see that Bob Carr and Labor have become loyal servants of the big end of town. I'm with Socialist Alliance because it puts people and the environment first."
Sam is an enthusiastic supporter of workers rights and is often seen at the picket line, including the Metroshelf dispute at Revesby. He has also been helped organise many environmental and social justice campaigns, most recently the M1 protests against corporate globalisation and the movement against war in Iraq.
The way Arab and Muslim Australians have been vilified and attacked in recent times makes Sam particularly angry. He said, "We've even seen racist bullies attack women in supermarket carparks. This has to stop. People need to realise that the government and media are targetting this part of the community to take the heat off their own failures, to try and sell their war for oil in Iraq and to attack our civil liberties. Socialist Alliance is not afraid to stand up to this rubbish and we will do so in our campaign."
Sam Wainwright is a member of the Canterbury-Bankstown branch of Socialist Alliance.
Chris Williams (known as Will) is 24 years old and has been active in a wide variety of people's rights campaigns in the Illawarra since he moved there from Sydney three years ago. He is a part-time worker at the People's Medical Centre in Warilla, and a central activist in the Wollongong Refugee Action Collective.
Chris is the Assistant Secretary of the South Coast May Day Committee and, in 2001, helped to organise the Justice for Palestine campaign in Wollongong. He is a member of the Illawarra branch of Socialist Alliance
Paul Benedek has been a socialist activist for six years. He was a founding member of the Free the Refugees Campaign in Sydney's western suburbs, and subsequently helped establish a second FRC group in Sydney's inner suburbs.
Paul has been involved in the campaigns against corporate tyranny, participating in the protests against the World Economic Forum in Melbourne on "S11" 2000, and the "M1" actions outside the stock exchange in 2001 and DIMIA in 2002.
He is a committed workers' rights campaigner, and helped organise support for the workers' picket lines at Metroshelf and Dayson in particular. Most recently, Paul helped form the local Leichhardt Anti-War Committee. He is a member of the Sydney Central branch of Socialist Alliance.