Wollongong Socialists organises working people across the Illawarra for a more equal, democratic, and just society.
We are rooted in Wollongong's proud tradition of working-class organisation — a city shaped by industry, by union struggle, and by communities that have always understood that solidarity is how people survive and prevail.
We bring together people who want to do more than talk about change — through public meetings, direct action campaigns, political education, discussion groups, and a publishing programme that puts socialist ideas into circulation in our region.
Open forums on the major political questions facing working people — locally, nationally, and internationally.
Direct involvement in the issues that matter to our communities: housing, workers' rights, public services, and more.
Study groups, lectures, and workshops exploring socialist history, theory, and contemporary politics.
Regular discussion meetings and written material that put socialist analysis into the hands of working people.
We hold regular public meetings on the pressing issues of the day — war and peace, economic inequality, the climate crisis, workers' rights. These meetings are open to everyone and designed for genuine debate, not just preaching to the converted.
We participate actively in campaigns that affect working people in the Illawarra — opposing cuts to public services, supporting workers in dispute, fighting for housing affordability, and joining with others in building movements for change.
Political education is central to what we do. We run workshops, reading groups, and lecture series covering socialist history, Marxist theory, the history of the labour movement, and contemporary political analysis.
Smaller, regular discussion meetings give members and interested people the chance to dig into particular questions, debate strategic and theoretical differences, and develop a collective political understanding.
We produce written material — analysis, commentary, longer essays — that brings socialist perspectives to the questions facing workers in our region and beyond. Our publications are part of a tradition of working-class political writing that we take seriously.
We believe in democracy as a principle that must extend into every institution that governs people's lives — including the economy. Real democratic participation means more than voting.
A just society is one where wealth and power are shared — not concentrated in a few hands while others go without. Equality requires structural change, not charity.
An injury to one is an injury to all. We build solidarity across workplaces, communities, and borders, because that is how working people have always won their greatest gains.
Individual effort alone cannot transform unjust systems. It is through organised, collective action — in unions, campaigns, and political movements — that lasting change is won.
Wollongong Socialists is a working-class political organisation based in the Illawarra. We believe socialism — the democratic, collective control of the economy and the institutions that shape everyday life — is not only desirable but necessary if humanity is to address the crises it faces: environmental breakdown, widening inequality, the erosion of public services, and the ongoing insecurity of working life.
Wollongong has always been a working-class city. Its history — in the steelworks, on the waterfront, in the mines and the service industries that have grown since — is a history of organised labour and collective struggle. We are proud to be part of that tradition and to work to extend it.
We organise through meetings, campaigns, education, and publications because we believe that political change requires both organised activity and a battle of ideas. Working people need access to socialist analysis and debate — not as an academic exercise, but as a tool for understanding and transforming the world they live in.
Socialism, for us, means building a society in which democratic institutions govern the economy, in which the things everyone needs — housing, healthcare, education, energy — are publicly owned and democratically run, and in which the wealth that working people create is shared fairly among those who create it.
Working people built this city. They can rebuild the world.