Claudio has lived in the western suburbs since 2003. Prior to that he grew up in public housing in Yarraville. He is a warehouse worker, trade unionist and anti-racist activist.
Claudio’s family history has been central in shaping his political convictions. “My family came to Australia from Chile as political refugees fleeing the military dictatorship of Pinochet”, he says. “They decided to flee to Australia after my father was imprisoned and tortured for being affiliated with the Chilean Communist Party, a story familiar to much of the Chilean diaspora.”
Claudio’s family maintained their political activism and their commitment to workers’ rights and equality as they built a new life in Australia. “My father for many years was a construction worker and shop steward with the Building Workers’ Industrial Union and my mother has worked in a hospital kitchen and been a delegate with the Health Workers Union for many years. As a child, I remember attending picket lines, protests and solidarity events.”
One of the issues they protested about was the impact of asbestos on working class communities. “Many Chileans worked in asbestos removal after migrating and became victims of mesothelioma”, Claudio says. “It’s particularly striking to me that people were able to survive the horrors of Chile only to die thinking they had found safety in Australia from a disease that is preventable.”
Claudio has continued their proud history of trade unionism and political activism. “For many years I have worked in and around Lalor. For the duration of the Covid pandemic I have worked in a Laverton North Warehouse as a container unloader and pick packer. Wherever I’ve worked, I’ve been a proud union member. Today I’m a member of the United Workers Union.”
“I have been an active socialist for the past decade. The first campaign I was involved in was when I was a TAFE student. I was part of organising against the State Liberal government’s deregulation of vocational education. They had plenty of money to invest in building prisons, in locking up working class kids, but not for investing in our education.”
Standing up to neoliberal attacks on the education system and against the criminalisation of young people continues to be a passion of Claudio’s. He is also a tireless campaigner against racism and the growth of the far-right. “In more recent years”, he says, “I’ve been an activist with the Campaign Against Racism and Fascism that has built support for refugee rights and organised opposition to the far-right in Victoria”.
“In 2015, when Islamophobic protestors, including neo-Nazis, took to Melbourne’s streets to mouth their hateful views, I was a part of building solidarity with the Muslim community and standing up to their racism. At the height of the media and Liberal party beat-up about ‘African gangs’, scaremongering which centred on Lalor, we worked with young people from the African community to protest against Channel 7’s racist reporting.”
Claudio is also involved in Victorian Socialists West’s current campaigns for public housing, in support of drug harm minimisation, and against racist policing.
Part of his motivation for running as a candidate for Victorian Socialists is seeing how, over decades, working class communities in Melbourne’s west have been neglected by self-serving politicians more interested in their careers and sucking-up to big business. “We’re faced with an underfunded public health system that’s under enormous strain with Covid”, he says, “with low wages and insecure employment for essential workers, a housing affordability crisis, and I could go on. But no matter how bad it gets, nothing is ever done about it. We need a strong socialist voice that will fight for people out west – that’s why I’m standing.”