Glen Innes calls for Solidarity from Aotearoa is Not For Sale.

State housing activists in Glen Innes are calling for support from the Aotearoa is Not for Sale coalition. The Tamaki Housing Action Group has been defending their community from privatisation since late last year. Our National led government wishes to make a large section of state owned land in Glen Innes available for private development. This is the front line of asset sales in Auckland at the moment.

Phil Twyford from the Labour Party has been vocal in his criticism, saying:

“National need to go back to the drawing board. This development project breaks every rule of urban planning. It’s a disaster.”

Housing New Zealand has already scared off many long term community members, many of them elderly, with threats of homelessness if they didn't comply. Around 40 state homes are currently empty and contractors protected by large police squads have already begun the process of removing houses from the area.

The other night police brutalised and arrested protestors who stood staunch in front of a house removal truck, including well known social activist John Minto. Local resident Yvonne Dainty who recently appeared on “Think Tank” finished the night in hospital after suffering multiple seizures during the police assault.

More recently there was a battle between protesters on police on Lyndhurst Street. More than 50 police were called in to forcibly remove the group that had assembled in front of the removal truck. Many were left with cuts, bruises and torn clothes after an evening of being pushed, shoved, punched, strangled, kneed and thrown to the ground by police. However it took the police 2 hours to move the house 50 metres down the road.

 

More than 50 police were called in to forcibly remove the group that had assembled in front of the truck.

 Jimmy O'Dea was hospitalised by officers who threw him backwards onto the curb. This officer rolls his eyes as the community tries to call an ambulance.

Four people were arrested including John Minto, Omar Hamed, Malcolm France and a local man. John Minto accused the police of arresting who they perceived to be leading the demonstration. Clearly the police are unable to understand the concept of people thinking for themselves. They are yet to release that any attack on our movement only increases our numbers, our resolve and our experience.

 John Minto accused the police of arresting who they perceived to be leading the demonstration.

This was highlighted when MPs Hone Harawira and Phil Twyford joined over 100 people to protest against police brutality outside Glen Innes police station the day after police had assaulted community activists. The anger at the blatant injustice was tangible as the group marched and chanted up the street.

Protester Marion Peta said the clashes had galvanised them, adding it was now "more serious". "I felt our group grew last night because of that," she said. "The march from the police station up to Torrington was amazing. There were flags and people everywhere."

We have since been able to physically stop the removal of houses on three occasions now using only our bodies, our voices and our cameras. The Battle at Lyndhurst shows we are beginning to understand the need for direct action in this situation. The vast opposition to these developments has been exposed and now is the time for us to find the most effective tactics in this struggle.

The situation is becoming increasing embarrassing for both the police and the government. National have been under fire from opposition parties over their total incompetence in dealing with the housing crisis. A report by the Housing Shareholders Advisory Group in 2010 found there was a 70,000 house shortfall across the country. Instead of addressing the issue the government has made it more difficult to get on the state housing waiting list in an attempt to hide the problem.

Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei said the housing crisis was ''a ticking time bomb''.

"We urgently need to increase the supply of housing to cover the 70,000 house deficit we have in New Zealand. At this pace it will take decades. Families were struggling with high-cost, low-quality, overcrowded housing while some families didn't even have housing," she said. ''There are still many thousands of families out there in need."

Housing Minister Phil Heatley recently announced $25.3 million of the social housing unit growth fund had been allocated for 16 new projects in the Auckland region. Labour's housing spokeswoman Annette King said Heatley's announcement ignored the fact non-government organisations had put $170 million into social housing. ''To say that $25.3 million is going to make a lasting contribution is laughable.''

The Aotearoa is Not For Sale coalition is a very exciting opportunity to create a united front in opposition to asset sales. Everyone can and should get involved. There's still a lot of work to be done if we want to be successful with our campaign to Keep our Assets. Whether your skills are in media design, music, journalism, engineering or rugby, whether you're an eco-warrior or a trade unionist, a worker or a student, everyone makes a valuable contribution. 

If we can learn to work together on a common cause I believe there isn't a force in this country that can stop us. After all there's nothing that beats the winter blues better than creating a wave of political change that sweeps across the country.

If you would like to subscribe to the text alerts for Glen Innes text your name + defend gi to 0212080218.

A useful info sheet on the situation in Glen Innes:

Can people power defeat the government?

The Battle of Lyndhurst - Police clash with protestors as another state house in Glen Innes is removed.

May 10th 2012 - 9-11pm

Massive Police Brutality tonight in Glen Innes as the state stole another working class house. John Minto, Omar Hamed, Malcolm France and a local man arrested. Jimmy O'Dea thrown to the curb by the cops, knocked unconscious, sustained head injuries and taken away in an ambulance. MANA Glen Innes can't win this fight by themselves. We need to mobilise a force that cannot be moved. Next time the pigs come to remove a state house we need to meet them with thousands. When G.I. is under attack. Stand Up. Fight back.

Joe Carolan captured the following videos...

Fire from Hawaiki; Water from Tongariro

State-owned Nga Awa Purua Geothermal Power Station is not for sale

Iwi threatens lawsuit to halt power-asset sales
Central North Island iwi Ngati Tuwharetoa is threatening legal action to halt the partial sale of Mighty River Power and Genesis Energy unless it is given a share of the private sector profits to be generated from the use of its land. 


 Prime Minister John Key was yesterday downplaying the prospect of court action but Greens co-leader Russel Norman said a legal challenge from Tuwharetoa could at least delay the partial asset-sales programme. Read More

Asset sales protests spark unlikely partnership
An unlikely partnership has formed to fight the Government's partial asset sales, with Grey Power and the New Zealand University Students Association launching a petition aimed at getting a referendum on the issue. Read More


The fires of Ruaumoko were summoned from Hawaiki by the early Maori explorer Ngatoroirangi as he lay close to death on the peak of Tongaririo. The fires have to this day been a blessing on Ngatoroirangi's descendants and since settlement the geothermal power has been harnessed for the people by state-owned power stations.

The waters that flow through the hydro-electric power stations of the central North Island come largely from the snow-capped volcanic peaks that sit in the centre of Tongariro National Park. Te Heuheu Tukino IV gifted the peaks of this park to the Government in 1887 to protect them for the people of New Zealand.

The privatisation of these power stations will turn the ahi of Ngatoroirangi and the wai of Te Heuheu's gift over to control by super-rich  individuals and transnational corporations. Those who would privatise the fires that come from Hawaiki and the waters that run from the tapu peaks of Te Ika a Maui have stirred up new challenges from tangata whenua to the privatisation and exploitation of the mana whenua of the volcanic plateau.

If a legal challenge delays the privatisation plans for the Governments' SOEs the National Government the protest movement on the streets will be encouraged to step up action against the asset sales. Legal challenges will give investors pause but what will really destabilise share prices and the ability of the Government to sell off shares will be mass, direct action, occupations of  power stations around the country.

Sign of the times

Dining with the Devil

Sky TV chief executive John Fellet was also present at a private dinner party attended by Opposition leader David Shearer at the home of Sky lobbyist Tony O'Brien, the pay-TV company has confirmed. Read More

Watch Outfoxed, a documentary about the Sky TV, Fox Media empire online.

“Most humble day”: the Murdoch empire on the defensive

John Newsinger, International Socialism


Rupert Murdoch’s enforced appearance before the House of Commons Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport on 19 July 2011 was an unprecedented humiliation. It signified the eclipse, at least temporarily, of his political influence in Britain. And this was at a time when his power seemed to have become greater than ever. While both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown had willingly subordinated themselves to Murdoch and tailored their policies to fit his business agenda, under David Cameron it looked as if his influence was about to climax. The coalition government was all set to wave through his takeover of BSkyB, savage cuts had been imposed on the BBC at Murdoch’s request and he was to be given entry into the potentially extremely lucrative area of state education with a planned academy (hilariously specialising in “journalism”) in Newham. And, of course, at Cameron’s elbow was his Director of Communications, the former News of the World editor Andy Coulson. Even Mark Thompson, the BBC director general, not someone exactly renowned for standing up to the government, felt driven to publicly warn of the danger of “a concentration of media power in the UK that’s unheard of in British history and unheard of anywhere else in Europe…extraordinary power”.

Britain seemed well on the way to becoming a fully-fledged “Murdochracy” on the Australian model. The hacking scandal has wrecked all of this and put the Murdoch empire on the defensive.As the criminal activities of Murdoch’s newspapers were exposed to the light of day, politicians who had once courted the man ran for cover. They either condemned his influence (although without ever acknowledging its full extent) or, more usually, remained silent and refused to come to his aid. David Cameron, for example, actually sent an emissary to apologise to his good friend, Rebekah Brooks, for his inability to stand by her. Even David Blunkett, who had always found Murdoch “very reasonable”, failed to come to the defence of his benefactor. When Blunkett was forced to resign from Blair’s cabinet in November 2005, he went straight to a meeting with Murdoch for “a pleasant drink”. Murdoch offered him a consolatory column in the Sun worth £150,000 a year! Read More

Workers' voice?

The union movement isn't just old, white men in the Labour Party anymore.

CTU funded TV show The Union Report is into its third episode and still has yet to have a single union member or delegate on its show.

One of its most recent commentators has even been washed out Labour Party hack Mike Williams. Yawn. What a ratings killer.

There isn't anything wrong with what union officials have to say. Many have quite interesting things to say. But shows stacked with officials and "commentators" doesn't make it a union report, it makes it a union bureaucrats report. What people want to hear are the voices from the coalface, voices from the shopfloor. We want to see horny-handed miners talking about safety in mines. We want to see the face of a nurse who has seen twenty years of hospital work. We want to see the man mountains who work in the about to be privatised energy companies. We want to hear what primary school teachers have to say about how they bet  back national standards.

The union movement and the union members who pay for the CTU and all its activities deserve much, much better than Mike Williams and Chris Trotter as their spokespeople.

Here are some possible guests to have on the show:

• Talley's meatworkers locked out for 60 days.
• Firefighters who narrowly voted to ratify a controversial new agreement.
• Hillside rail workers who face their workshop being closed down.
• Pregnant workers on parental leave campaign.
• Teachers on charter schools, national standards and performance pay.
• Cinema workers who have begun industrial action for a pay rise.
• Seafarers on the slave ships now in our waters.
• Nurses or doctors affected by understaffing in hospital wards.
• University workers on the changes to tertiary education.
• Diplomats on public service cuts.
• Caregivers at Oceania on their dispute.

-SA

The working class. What they look like. What they sound like. Found on picketlines around Aotearoa.

Exit the eurozone or exit capitalism?

In Greece's elections the radical left coalition SYRIZA appears to have 16.6% of the vote. SYRIZA's leader says, "The Greek people didn't give them the mandate to take those decisions [about austerity]. In the birthplace of democracy, there is no democracy. The time has come to return democracy to the place where it was born."

 In France social democrat François Hollande sees off Sarkozy for the Presidency. he's promising to bring home troops from Afghanistan and bring in a 75% tax income above one million euros. On Hollande's flank is Jean-Luc Melenchon's Left Front calling for a citizens insurrection and winning 11% of the vote, nearly 4 million people, in the primary round.

Tens of thousands of people across Spain protested Sunday against education and health care spending cuts as the country slides into its second recession in three years.

As Richard Seymour of leninology.blogspot.com says, "For now the radical Left has siezed the initiative, upended the electoral system, and torn apart the austerity script so painstakingly drafted by the ECB, the presidency and the finance ministers."

Yet in the darkness rises a new fascist threat - Le Pen in France, Golden Dawn in Greece, the EDL in the UK 

How can we make sense of the accelerating political turbulence? What does it mean for the global anti-capitalist left?

Join Socialist Aotearoa for a discussion on the breaking news from Europe's anti-austerity rebellion.

Where: Unite Union, 6a Western Springs Road, Kingsland. When: 7.00pm, Thursday 10 May.

Dayle Takitimu - "This is the time for the uprising"

Dayle Takitimu of Te Whanau a Apanui tells the hikoi "This is the time for the uprising!".