Socialist Aotearoa

The Slavic Punk Rock Connection

2012-01-26T03:41:00.000-08:00

“Everyone is driving eighty in a fifty zone, there is fucking rubbish in the street, fucking tagging, and that’s all because everything is slowly going to shit. People are pissed off, the young people don’t have jobs, they don’t know what they’re going to do in the future. They’re dropping out of school, they have no enthusiasm you know. So what do they do? They fucking trash shit, they’re tagging, they’re going wild. That is all indication that it’s not that great”.

Ziva Radlovacki, singer of four piece Auckland punk band Nemamo Ime is however, not referring to Croatia or Serbia, countries mending from the immense social and economic cost of the war two decades ago, and where the four members immigrated from in the early to mid 1990s, but to New Zealand in the present day.

“This is the thing, is that we actually came from that fucked up country because of the government and whatever the fuck happened then to here. And then, the same shit started coming. Really slowly, happening here….In the way that there is inflation, raising taxes, tax this, tax that, the people’s wages are staying the same while everything goes up, all the cost of living goes up. . You can’t really compare to what happened over there but this is a young country, so you know. That’s how it starts”.

It is the perfect night for drinking outside a bar in the city. Drummer and guitarist, brothers Dalibor and Denis Andzakovic who work in IT, with singer/chef-by-trade Ziva are having a few beers after a band practice which going on their enthusiasm, was as fast and energetic as their live set. Bass player Emil Mihajlov, a high school social studies teacher is having an early night. Dalibor is drinking an Americano (equal parts Campari, Soda, and sweet Vermouth) as he doesn’t “feel like getting shit faced”.

According to Dalibor, the proper version has gin instead if soda and is called a Negroni.
According to Denis, the Russian version has vodka and is called a Negrowski. The music of Nemamo Ime is a scathing, catchy sing along style (with the occasional finger melting guitar solo) reminiscent of old school street punk. But although their influences (mainly the hundreds of punk bands in Croatia, but also Sex Pistols, Clash, Dead Kennedys, Ramones, Stiff Little Fingers) are present, the style is entirely their own, as organic as how the band itself found the style that worked for them.

They met at the Dalmatian Club, a place for the community to meet each Sunday night and “put on some beats and learn the cultural dances”. Another guy “who was a bit of a waster” suggested Denis and Dalibor join him in playing some folk covers, It seemed like a good idea, but didn’t turn out so well.

“What we played and what the crowd wanted to hear were a miss-match” Dali explained, though he smiles at the memory of sound checking Cowboys from Hell in a church in Takapuna. They tried playing covers, everything from ACDC to ZZ Top, discovering that they just played everything faster, with no decision to do so or explanation why. “I don’t want to say it degenerated into punk…” Dalibor ventures. But he can’t finish the sentence.

-+The waster went on to non-musical endeavours, and the four left were soon writing their own songs, a process natural and easy enough to make the majority of bands sick with envy. Ziva arrives at a practice with lyrics, a bit of tinkering ensues, a riff is formed, Dalibor whacks a cow bell and the whole thing falls into place. Between the lyrics, beats and riffs, there is something rare that slots into place and makes everything work.

At no point did they decide to be a punk rock band, nor does anyone in the band have a clear understanding why they ended up writing punk songs.

"Several passing Anarchists who were out dumpster diving managed to rope Nemamo Ime into a gig at Thirsty Dog on Karangahape Road."

While the crowd at the Dalmatian Club may have been less than impressed, it was during one of these sets the band were heard by several passing Anarchists who were out dumpster diving, and who managed to rope Nemamo Ime into a gig at Thirsty Dog on Karangahape Road. “We were expecting tumbleweeds” says Dalibor. We thought nah, people won’t like it because we don’t sing in English. But by the second song people were bobbing up and down”.

“That night we actually met another Croatian scumbag” adds Denis. He was like Man! Didn’t expect to hear those songs in New Zealand!”

Ziva, from Serbia, was especially sceptical, as he doesn’t write songs in English. “I’ve tried and I have a couple of songs in English…when I need a rhyme…I put some English words in.”
Are his lyrics a warning? Angry? Taking the piss?

“At first I just write down everything as I feel it, so yeah its angry. But I also sometimes take the piss, but about the serious situation. I try to write about all the shit that annoys me, pretty much. Songs about politics, and all the shit, the economic situation in our old country, our former country. And there is a couple of songs about the government here”.

Songs such as ‘Johnny The Dice‘.

Ziva took the melody for the chorus is from an old Croatian kid’s TV show called The Dice, which translated goes “The Dice, the dice, through time and space”.

Nemamo Imes little number is translated to “Bullshit to bullshit, through time and space, and always the same old questions, and always the same old themes”.

In post-election New Zealand, with 250,000 children still in poverty, a lack of jobs, worker’s conditions under attack, wages stagnated and election promises still ringing hollow in our ears, the song’s message that nothing is changing despite the political rhetoric is all too relevant.

Another song, ‘Provincial Hell’ is about a stabbing that happened in Ziva’s home town. “It’s the same shit. Small town, people are bored, no jobs, everything is concentrated in the big cities, you know, fucking privatisation, everything is there, small towns dying out. I mean, same thing. Look at Auckland, its expanding, farms and small towns are getting smaller and smaller, people are bored, they’re drinking, taking drugs. You fight cos’ you’re bored, you fucken stab someone cos’ you’re pissed off instead of talking your way through it. It’s the same here”.

When Ziva arrived in New Zealand in 1996, he says he hardly heard of a murder.

“Everything was from overseas, rugby and cricket. And now…there is murders, babies dying, kid died, this one got stabbed, this one got beaten to death”.

The root cause of violence is something they all have an understanding of.

“If someone is unhappy, and they’re going to take it out in some way, the easiest way is to take it out on someone who is defenceless or the same as them. They’re not going to take it out on the government because they can’t do it…Easiest way is to get drunk and stab him” Ziva says, pointing at their friend Nick, to the amusement of everyone at the table. “And you release your frustration, but after it happens you get arrested, fucken jail for life, you sober up and by the time you realise what (has) happened its too late. More and more this is happening. That’s where I find the correlation between this shit that has happened over there and over here. That’s what I write about and what we play about”.

Ziva keeps in touch with friends back in in the old country, everybody he knows is trying somehow to get out. But they lack the resources to do so.

“When we went back a few years ago, most of the people we knew that were Dali’s age or slightly older had, you know, moved to the UK or Germany” says Denis. “The majority of the economy comes from tourism…there isn’t any industry yet. Getting a job in IT for example in Australia or UK or wherever, if you’ve got some certs you can do that. In Croatia, zero chance. Because there is nothing to do. It is still in a rebuilding stage”.

Denis likes to be optimistic, and hopes in a few years infrastructure will get built and people will be able to progress.

Croatia: “The majority of the economy comes from tourism…there isn’t any industry yet."

“Yeah but its still the same old shit” counters Ziva. “They started privatisation because you know, they wanted to start making money and companies can grow whatever. But it’s the same old rules they stick with like what happened under Communism, which wasn’t really Communism because all these politicians and managers and bosses, they were always pocketing money, and everyone was ‘equal’. Bullshit. They’re still doing it the same way, there is a lot of corruption, criminality. And I wouldn’t say there is a middle class. Well, maybe a little bit. But its starting to look like that here isn’t it?”

We talk a bit about the wharfies, and their battle in the Port of Auckland, and what it will mean if the Union is smashed and privatisation is brought in.

“They sell all the assets and everything, people lose jobs, can’t get jobs…I mean its still so small, we have jobs, we work. We drink beer, have fun whatever. But go to Australia” he smiles as though advising me too. “That’s another thing that reminds me of the shit back home. People trying to get out. Here, its Australia. There is better jobs, more money.”

One of the consequences of the Wharfies losing their battle would be the flood of highly skilled port workers going to Australia where the money is better, and the where they wouldn’t have to tolerate bullying bosses. We talk about how “being competitive” for Tony Gibson means having a ‘casual work force’.

“And casual worker doesn’t give a shit. That is why he is casual. He is going to come, pretend to work…probably fuck up and get hurt” says Ziva.

Just as strong as the serious subject matter of their songs, and the experiences that have shaped them, is the ethic of enjoyment that exudes from every aspect of Nemamo Ime. They present as four people who play the music they love with little regard to popular sentiment. Their’s is a refreshing honesty.

They happily talk of the sea of beer bottles in their practice space, a damp, mouldy basement that also serves as the studio for their next album, a follow up to their first EP, a release available for free download. and featuring the crowd pleasing ’Rakia’, a tribute to the popular Yugoslav drink . Similar to Germany’s schnapps (which they assure me is sub standard to the Croatian Rakia), it involves getting 60kg of your favourite fruit, dumping it in a barrel with some sugar, then distilling it. A semi-heated debate follows a suggestion that you can use a mix of fruit. Dalibor scoffs at this notion. “What? You’re going to make a fucken tutti-fruity Rakia?” While 60kg of apricots can be “a pain in the arse to find”, pears and plums are easy enough
“Slavic connections” Denis says proudly. “You go to an old family who are retired and their orchard has turned to shit, and you say “Hey! Mind if we come and tidy your orchard for you and take the fruit?” And rotting fruit, the just fallen onto the ground and started to rot is the best for making booze. Six weeks later, twenty litres of booze”.

In true DIY punk tradition, they record their music themselves on equipment acquired from sources sympathetic to the cause.

The correlation they identify between the results of the neo-liberal economic model New Zealand has followed in the last twenty seven and a half years, and the increasing social slide into violence is impossible to ignore. It is a chilling reminder of how important the stakes are, of what can happen when the working class feels the pinch of tough economic times and people in power find scapegoats.

As Denis puts it, “eventually some arsehole starts shooting guns”. He tells me a theory from Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek (who Denis describes as ’awesome, giant beard, bat-shit crazy‘) on his cure fore for extreme racism. Which is, odd as it sounds, is more racism. “When we had former Yugoslavia, everything was forced polite, because someone figured out that the only way these guys won’t be at each others throats is if they all have the same right to shut the fuck up. Before Yugoslavia and that sort of stuff, yes there were a lot of people that were pissed off at each other, but the majority would take the piss and there would always be horrible racist jokes. So they desensitized everything. Every single nation has its stereotypes (as any New Zealander on the end of a sheep shagging joke can relate too). Then Yugoslavia came along, and they said “oh no you have to be polite, and say I like your cultural dances, and you have great food”. Fuck off! I don’t care about your ethnic dances I want my dirty jokes!. It is a little bit silly, but it is a valid point. If everyone takes the piss out of everything else then the silly things can’t be taken seriously.”

An amusing way to counter what Freud called ‘the narcissism of minor difference’, where in an effort to separate themselves, people make the smallest, most insignificant of differences between them into huge ones.

Zizek: The cure for extreme racism is....more racism.

And the future? “The old pensioners will sit around, drink Rakia and talk shit and the subject of politics will often come up but it is just like a discussion they will have.”

Denis says that the “horrible nationalists” are the kids fifteen and younger, who weren’t even born when the war was on.

“It only takes a little bit to twist the young mind, you know. You twist it the wrong way and then shits going to get fucked up in fifty years, or forty years, or thirty years or however long it takes for someone to have enough power to squash you”.

But, he says it doesn’t have to be that way.

“The last time we were there we decided fuckit, we’re sick of the family and that sort of stuff, grabbed an acoustic guitar and a box of piss (a Croatian box of piss is 25 half litre bottles in a plastic container), and we parked up next to the Danube river and played some random songs and whatever. And we met some guys, they were wearing military uniform…ish. Basically, I was sixteen, seventeen at the time, these guys were…youngest one was twenty. And they were the fucken coolest cats ever. They were like ‘yeah man, fuck all that shit, this guys from Macedonia and hes’ like my brother and we go out boozing’ and that sort of stuff. And they were the coolest cats. They understood what happened and they didn’t care. Its all bullshit and its bad for ya”.

As the effects of the attacks on the working class continue, and attempts at dividing us along insignificant lines increase, I hope the importance of that last line is remembered. Just in case, here it is again.

Its all bullshit, and its’ bad for ya.

-Matt B., SA.

NO WAR ON IRAN

2012-01-26T00:15:00.000-08:00

Neither Tehran nor Washington, bring all the regimes down.

Anyone who has been paying even the slightest attention to international relations recently will be aware that tensions between the US and Iran are increasing at an alarming rate. Those of us who wish to live in a safer and more humane world should be asking ourselves: “How can I help to prevent yet another bloody conflict in the Middle East?” Ironically the answer to this seemingly difficult question is surprisingly simple. However, in order for us to understand the solution, it is essential that we analyse the situation.

I think we would all agree that the US and Iran are part of human civilisation. So what are the situations of the humans in these countries? Let us look at the faces behind the flags.

Life is an uphill struggle against poverty, unemployment and low wages for the majority of people in Iran.

In March 2010 the Iranian regime’s Supreme Labour Council set the monthly minimum wage for workers at 300,000 tomans (NZ$350). That amount was not even enough for a single person’s basic needs, let alone those of a worker’s family. According to the Mehr News Agency; “Many women now work as clerks, operators and in service jobs and are even deprived of the minimum wage.” Even the most conservative estimates by the Iranian government put unemployment at around 12% and the number of people living below the poverty line at 30 million.

Life is an uphill struggle against poverty, unemployment and low wages for the majority of people in Iran. However there are some who live a different lifestyle. Let’s have a glimpse into the world of the Iran’s super rich. Last year Iranian financiers suspected of growing rich through links to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were caught flaunting their wealth on millions of dollars worth of cars. Buyers in just three cities imported some 48 top-of-the-range sports cars between March and July 2011: Tehran, Isfahan, and Shiraz. According to an investigation backed by the European Union. Many of the cars are owned by shareholders in banks that are heavily indebted to the government.

Scandals like this are commonplace under Ahmadinejad's government. Last September Mahmud Reza Khavari, CEO of the country's largest state bank, Bank Melli, resigned over allegations of embezzlement worth $2.6 billion. He was reported to have fled to Canada.

Perhaps surprisingly for some, society in the US is not so different. A recent Gallup poll revealed that nearly one in five American workers are worried they will not be able to feed themselves or their families. New census data indicates an official child poverty rate of 21.6 percent; the highest rate the government has recorded since it began tracking the data in 2001. Figures from the Department of Education, from the 08/09 school year, indicates that one million students are now homeless. Officially, 49 million people, more than 16 percent of the population, are living in poverty.

Meanwhile Forbes magazine released its annual tally of the 400 richest Americans, whose combined net worth has soared to $1.53 trillion, up 12 percent since last year. To even make the list, it was necessary to have a fortune of at least $1.05 billion, more than ten thousand times the median net worth of an American household.

In the US also life is a constant struggle for the majority of people whilst a small group of super rich enjoy unimaginable wealth. We have seen that there are some similarities between the two nations with regard to social inequality. Now let us look at the political tensions that have been building up.

The Iranian regime has repeatedly insisted that it has no plans to build a nuclear weapon. However, when Iran announced two weeks ago that its Fordo uranium enrichment plant was operational, the US responded with threats of military action.

Iran’s envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Ali Soltanieh, described the US reaction as “exaggerated and politically motivated.” According to Iran, the Fordo plant will enrich uranium to the 20 percent level required to produce medical isotopes. Soltanieh pointed out that the IAEA has installed cameras in the plant to monitor operations and carries out regular inspections to ensure enriched uranium is not diverted to military purposes.

US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta has acknowledged that Iran was not building a nuclear bomb at present. However he stated that Iran was “developing a nuclear capability” and “that’s what concerns us.” He warned: “Our red line to Iran is: do not develop a nuclear weapon.”

The US and European Union have imposed embargos on Iranian oil exports that are ruining the country’s economy. Europe alone accounts for about 20 percent of Iran’s oil exports which are the country’s main source of income.

Japan has already taken steps to reduce its oil imports from Iran and is preparing for an embargo following a visit from US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. Japan’s Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba told the media that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (both enemies of Iran) had been approached to supply more oil as Japan wound back its imports from Iran. Japan and South Korea account for about 25 percent of Iran’s oil exports.

Iran’s oil exports have not been the sole focus the economic pressure from the US. President Obama recently signed into law a measure that would exclude corporations doing business with Iran’s central bank from the American financial system: resulting in a 20% drop in the value of the rial against the dollar. Furthermore Japan’s state-owned exploration company Impex has already bowed to US pressure to abandon its joint development of the Azadegan natural gas field.

The US has also attempted to pressure China into winding back their oil purchases from Iran. This however was unsuccessful as China has developed close economic relations with Iran and continues to purchase large quantities of Iranian oil, in part to avoid being dependent on close American allies such as Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. China has publicly opposed the imposition of further penalties on Iran via the UN Security Council and has so far refused to back Washington’s sanctions. China’s vice foreign minister, Cui Tiankai, declaring: “Regular economic and trade relations between China and Iran have nothing to do with the nuclear issue.” The US could punish Chinese corporations for trading with Iran; a move that would dramatically heighten economic tensions between the US and China.

In response to this ongoing blatant provocation from the US, Iran has threatened to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, carrying out a 10-day war game to prove its military ability. The strait at its narrowest is 54 kilometres wide. It is the only sea passage to the open ocean for large areas of the petroleum exporting Persian Gulf and is one of the world's most strategically important choke points.

US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta declared that the US would not tolerate such action. “That’s another red line for us, and we will respond to them,” he said. General Martin Dempsey, the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff confirmed that the US “had invested in capabilities to ensure that if that happens, we can defeat that... We would take action and reopen the Straits.”

Eager to demonstrate Iran’s available allies Iranian President Ahmadinejad travelled to Latin America. He visited nations whose leadership shares a common hatred for the US including Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and Ecuador. The president of Venezuela; Hugo Chavez defended Iran’s nuclear program and referred to their mutual enemies as “devils,” as he has in the past.

Threats from the US are being accompanied by a relentless campaign in both the US and international media to demonise Iran as a rogue state bent on acquiring nuclear weapons. Including completely erroneous allegations that Iran is building a missile base in Venezuela.

Meanwhile in Iran parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani has announced that several people have been arrested in connection with the assassination of Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a deputy director of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility. Roshan died in a car bomb explosion last Wednesday. Police say a motorcyclist attached a magnetic mine to the car Roshan was travelling in. Iranian officials have said that the United States and Israel were behind the assassination. Both have denied any involvement.

The Iranian regime has also signaled a harder line, by imposing a death sentence on Amir Mirzaei Hekmati, a US citizen and former Marine convicted of spying. The US has denied that Hekmati was a spy. These allegations come amid a series of assassinations and a program of sabotage directed against Iran’s nuclear and military programs over the past two years, indicating that Israel is waging a covert war inside Iran, with US support.

So what’s really going on? Why is the US government behaving like this? In order to understand the motivation of the US we need to be aware that Iran has the 3rd largest crude oil reserves on the planet with 138 billion barrels. This is of fundamental importance for two reasons.

Over 50% of global energy needs are met by oil.

Firstly we live in a world run by oil. We use oil to make petrol, diesel, jet fuel, bunker fuel and kerosene. Oil powers our cars, trucks, planes, ships, homes, ports, factories and offices. We use it to make pesticides and fertilizers, plastics and waxes, tar, sulphuric acid, asphalt, petroleum coke, paraffin wax, synthetic rubbers, cosmetics, perfumes, industrial solvents and much much more. Oil makes everything and moves everything. Over 50% of global energy needs are met by oil. We even need oil to build renewable energy facilities. If we ran out of oil tomorrow, industrialised human civilisation would collapse and billions of people would die.

Secondly the US is the strongest imperial power of our day. The US has over one thousand military bases around the world. They are the largest producer and exporter of weapons. They have the world's biggest military budget comprising 36 percent of total world military spending and using up more than 50 percent of their own national budget. It is vital that the US controls as much crude oil as possible in order to remain the dominant economic and political force on the planet. It achieves this using its armed forces, heavy influence over other nations around the world and all the while it keeps its citizens in the dark as much as possible using a compliant corporate media. Since the end of World War Two the US has bombed China, Korea, Guatemala, Indonesia, Cuba, Belgian Congo, Dominican Republic, Peru, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Lebanon, Grenada, Libya, Iran, Panama, Iraq, Kuwait, Somalia, Croatia, Bosnia, Sudan, Afganistan and Yugoslavia. (It may be interesting to note at this point that although currently presented, as “one of the most dangerous nations on earth” Iran has not attacked another country for over 200 years) The confrontation with Iran is part of a global imperialist strategy that goes far beyond concerns with Tehran’s alleged nuclear weapons program. US imperialism is seeking to establish its unrivalled influence over the key energy-rich regions of the Middle East and Central Asia.

War with Iran would of course bring other benefits to the ruling elite in the US. For a start US corporations would be able to make sickening amounts of profits from the sale of weapons, ammunition and other equipment required for a large scale armed conflict. Unfortunately disaster capitalism is big business; when an imperialist nation such as the US destroys infrastructure in other countries they are able to make billions of dollars in profits by giving US corporations the contracts to rebuild. Not only this but they are able to open up Iran for business, taking control of the financial institutions and bringing in more US corporations to turn a profit from the demand for goods and services.

The US invaded Iraq with a military force made up of American working class people sent to kill and be killed.

The working class do not benefit from war. For them it brings only increased suffering. Take the Iraq war for example. Iraq has the 4th largest oil reserves on the planet with approximately 115 billion barrels. People were sold the same stories we are hearing now about the development of nuclear weapons, which of course later turned out to be a total lie. The US invaded with a military force made up of American working class people sent to kill and be killed. They massacred over a million men, women and children living in Iraq. Meanwhile companies like Halliburton (a corporation responsible for the construction and maintenance of military bases, oil field repairs, and various infrastructure rebuilding projects) collected $17.2 billion in Iraq war related revenue from 2003 to 2006 alone.

There is no solution to the seemingly inevitable armed conflict between Iran and the US that does not begin with an attack on the wealth and power of the corporate and financial oligarchy of both nations. The majority of citizens in both nations are victims to class society and free market capitalism. In order to ensure that the basic needs of all people in both countries are met we must expropriate the vast fortunes of the ruling elite. The financial institutions and corporations they control must be taken over and run democratically in the interests of social need and the benefit of all human life.

Iran had a revolution against the Shah (a brutal dictator) relatively recently in 1979, however, it was unsuccessful in that Khomeini (a prominent leader of the revolution) and the clergy leadership actually represented a counter-revolution against the genuine struggle of the working class. In the end they represented the interests of the old privileged classes and of global capitalism. This is portrayed in the single fact, that in spite of all the thunderous shouts of "death to America" they never did anything to hurt or even weaken the position of American imperialism. On the contrary they were later revealed to have borrowed money and bought arms from many western countries, including the US. The true leaders of the Iranian revolution were those worker leaders who lead the general strike. Without them, the Shah would not have been toppled and the history of the revolutionary movement would have been many times bloodier, probably ending with a massive defeat or at best a bloody civil war.

To prevent this derailing of the revolution by the petit bourgeoisie and in order for lasting radical change to become reality we need to organise the independent industrial and political mobilization of the working class around the world in mass struggle, aimed at the conquest of political power and the socialist transformation of economic life. Only then can we begin the transition away from fossil fuels, imperialist wars, unnecessary suffering and the destruction of our planet towards a truly sustainable and prosperous future for all.

-Shane M., SA

You can't kill a rebellion

2012-01-26T00:13:00.000-08:00

Invasion Day march in Canberra

2012-01-25T17:40:00.000-08:00

Invasion day marchers in Canberra.

Four years too long—time to scrap Intervention laws

May, 2011

In July 2012, NT Intervention powers, such as compulsory 5-year leases and management powers over all assets and organisations within Aboriginal communities, will reach their sunset clause. Federal funding for smaller dispersed settlements known as Homelands, currently capped at $20 million, is also set to run out next year. The question, “What comes next?” has again thrown debate about the future of the NT Intervention into the national spotlight.

Tony Abbott visited Alice Springs in May to call for a “second Intervention”. Julia Gillard is set to visit the Territory in June.

Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, made Darwin her first stop on her recent Australian visit. The government had wanted to keep her away from the NT. Pillay’s NT visit was planned only after Dr Djiniyini Gondara, a senior Yolngu leader, lobbied her in Geneva to specifically pay attention on the Intervention.

Pillay condemned the Intervention for causing “enormous anger, pain and humiliation”. She said the policy was discriminatory and that she had heard first hand about the “imperialist attitude” of Intervention bureaucrats.

Similarly Pat Anderson, the author of the Little Children Are Sacred Report, which called for a serious response to the problem of child abuse in Aboriginal communities, has come out swinging. Anderson’s report was used as the pretext for Intervention. But in a keynote speech at a Sydney Aboriginal health conference she attacked the policy as “neither well intentioned nor well evidenced”. “The future of children in the NT”, she said, ”is not being protected by the Intervention. It is being further undermined”.

Under pressure, Labor’s Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin has tried to distance herself from the “way the Intervention started” conceding it had caused “widespread anger and distrust”. But Macklin remains ruthlessly committed to the policy itself.

The government is currently trying to coerce communities into signing “voluntary” extensions of the 5-year leases imposed by the Intervention. But only 16 communities earmarked as growth towns have signed 40-year leases after being threatened that they will not get funding for new housing unless they sign. Some growth towns like Yuendumu are refusing to sign despite chronic overcrowding. The vast majority of communities will get no new investment—so why would they lease their land?

Bob Beadman, the NT government bureaucrat responsible for the growth towns policy told The Age that only three leases had been signed outside of the growth towns. “It seems inconceivable to me they will be able to wrap up negotiating long-term leases before the five-year leases lapse.”

Macklin has already declared that punitive control measures could be pushed beyond the 5-year sunset clause, although this will require legislation to extend the Intervention.

Attacking Aboriginal rights

The Intervention has choked Aboriginal communities, forcing people to move and assimilate into “mainstream Australia”.

Ideologically, the Intervention blames Aboriginal people and their culture for the social problems, while practically it is aimed at smashing the foundations of collective Aboriginal life. As Pat Anderson says, “it rejects self-determination as a ‘failed policy’. It does not approach our communities as having anything valuable to offer or indeed of having achieved anything in the past.”

Gary Johns, president of the assimilationist “Bennelong Society” sets out the Intervention’s ideological underpinnings in his book Aboriginal Self-Determination: the Whiteman’s Dream. It was launched by former Liberal Minister for Indigenous Affairs, and Intervention architect, Mal Brough.

Johns denies the Stolen Generations and blames extraordinary rates of Indigenous incarceration on “bad behaviour” by Aborigines. He says, “Land Rights, welfare and culture have locked Aborigines out of the good life”.

Johns’ book is a call for the disbanding of Aboriginal organisations set up through the struggles of the 1970s and 1980s and for government to put the final sword into remote communities. Aboriginal people must “move to where there is work and stay there”.

Bob Beadman was frank with The Age about the strategy of “population concentration” that lies behind current government policy.

“I know all the stories about improved health, improved social outcomes because people are on their own country, from which they derive autonomy… I’m sure I would be happier and healthier if I moved to a coastal area and did absolutely nothing and the government provided everything for me… but they won’t.”

Beadman and Johns are both racist and wrong. The Third World living conditions and social problems in remote Aboriginal communities are the result of ongoing refusal of governments to provide basic services.

The Intervention has cut the estimated 8000 waged jobs held through Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) to just 2400 which will be progressively cut back and abolished completely in July next year.

Only 2240 public sector positions have been created to replace the 8000 CDEP jobs. More than 60 per cent of them are part-time and many are on the lowest level of public sector pay—an effective pay cut for people previously on CDEP.

The CDEP cuts, the abolition of community councils and the seizure of their assets, has destroyed much of the productive activity of the communities—including land management programs, municipal and cultural works, small tourism and farming ventures.

Meanwhile, there has been a 30 per cent increase in Indigenous incarceration since the Intervention began and a 50 per cent increase in rates of suicide and self harm.

The Intervention, along with the Strategic Indigenous Housing and Infrastructure Program (SIHIP), has spent upwards of $2.5 billion. This money could have supported Aboriginal communities but it has been wasted on bureaucrats and contractors.

The real people bludging off the public purse are the Government Business Managers, who live in compounds surrounded by cyclone fencing on salary packages approaching $200,000 per year.

There have been increases in funding for health care and new teachers, but as Pat Anderson argues, “The diminished sense of control and increased stress will lead to poorer health and social outcomes in the future”. In 2009-10 school attendance fell from 62.1 to 56.5 per cent and in 2008-09 a shocking four out of every 1000 Indigenous kids were hospitalised for malnutrition, the highest figure in the last decade.

Alternative

The campaign against the NT Intervention will use the June 21 Darwin rally marking the Intervention’s fourth anniversary to launch a statement called “Rebuilding from the ground up: An alternative to the NT Intervention”.

The statement puts forward uncompromising demands for self-determination. It puts the blame for social problems in Aboriginal communities squarely back on the brutal history of dispossession and ongoing discrimination. All Aboriginal communities are viable—racism is not.

Initiated by the Intervention Rollback Action Group in Alice Springs and the Stop the Intervention Collective Sydney, the statement is a synthesis of the demands from Prescribed Area People’s Alliance meetings and community leaders for the past four years.

More than 15 leaders of Aboriginal communities and the Aboriginal Legal Aid service in Darwin (NAAJA) have already endorsed the statement.

The demands of the 11 point plan include the repeal of all Intervention laws (including Income Management), the re-establishment of Aboriginal community councils, investment in all communities, an end to compulsory acquisition of Aboriginal land and the rescinding of all leases signed under the NTER.

A central demand is for “Jobs with Justice”, the creation of a new Aboriginal employment program that pays proper wages and allows community based organisations to set development priorities—a campaign gaining support from trade unions across the country.

“Rebuilding from the ground up” is written as a basis to galvanize grass-roots struggle—both in NT Aboriginal communities and cities and towns across Australia.

There must be no “second Intervention”. Self-determination must be put back on the agenda.

By Paddy Gibson - Solidarity Australia

For a full copy of the “Rebuilding from the Ground Up” statement and details for the anti-Intervention anniversary rallies see stoptheintervention.org or rollbacktheintervention.wordpress.com

Mass arrests at Occupy Auckland

2012-01-25T17:07:00.000-08:00

Mass arrests at Occupy Auckland today as the police moved in to squash the protest camp. The second raid in four days, over 60 police and dozens of security guards have arrested 20 protesters.

Many comrades are still in the cells as the state cracks down on the protest camp. They join the ranks of those arrested around the world from Wall Street to Barcelona and from Cairo to Santiago. Len Brown and the Auckland City Council show their true colours by smashing the protest of the 99%.

As Egypt celebrates one year of their revolution, the tents of protest in Auckland are carted away by the army of the 1%.

Occupy Auckland didn't have a permit to camp. Bouazizi didn't have a permit to sell fruit. Victory to the global revolution. You can't evict an idea. You can't kill a rebellion.

we needed inspiration, to be awakened
in our bodies, our lives made present
here we are
the world is not right, just or fair
the most have the least
the least have the most

-Socialist Aotearoa

Tahrir trembles again with the Egyptian revolution

2012-01-25T16:12:00.000-08:00

Revolution 2.0: Sunset for the military dictatorship.

Millions return to Tahrir on the anniversary of the #Jan25 revolution against Mubarak.

In Alexandria the revolution continues.

A monument inscribed with the names of the martyrs.

The bridges of Cairo are lined with people.

Tahrir square at dusk.

Kevin Coval - All the pharoahs must fall by Hossam El-Hamalawy

A year on from the Egyptian Revolution: Socialist Worker editor reports from Tahrir Square

Socialist Worker editor Judith Orr reports from Tahrir Square in Cairo on a day of protest and celebration, a year after the fall of Hosni Mubarak

11.20pm

Today has seen a massive mobilisation in Cairo. And the news from Suez and Alexandria and other Egyptian cities is of huge demonstrations there too.

This has been another historic day in a year of historic moments in Egypt.

Scaf wanted a day that would be about the achievements of the revolution, which they think they can take credit for.

They wanted everything to settle down and for people to accept that the revolution was over.

But that is not what happened today. If anything, people were reminded of all the hopes and dreams they had held when they set out to challenge Mubarak's dictatorship.

All day people repeated the phrase, "We need to complete the revolution." The concessions the military have already made, such as lifting the long hated emergency laws, are not enough.

Field Marshall Tantawi, the head of Scaf,has made it clear that the emergency laws will remain in place to prevent "acts of thuggery".

As university teacher Mohammed pointed out, "Scaf refers to strikes as 'thuggish'. We know they want to target workers who take action against their bosses."

Workers' struggles are picking up again. Today was a public holiday, so the next days and weeks will be critical to see if the workers' movement can drive the revolution forward.

Parliament has already become a focus for discontent. Activists predict that workers and the poor will increasingly organise protests there.

It's coming up to 1am in Cairo. There is still a roar of noise from Tahir Square as thousands remain there and in the surrounding streets. Many have bedded down in doorways and on scraps of grass on traffic islands. They don't want to go home.

No one knows what tomorrow will bring. But one thing is certain. Whatever the military or government say, the people have spoken once again. This revolution is not over.

8.00pm

There has been debate all day about what to do next. Some want protesters to "stay in Tahrir Square until Scaf goes". Meanwhile the Muslim Brotherhood and Salfist organisations are calling for people to "celebrate – and then go home".

Whether or not staying in square would work would depend on numbers and on what demands were put up, argues Manar, a revolutionary socialist.

She adds that the revolution is not solely about the square: "The revolution needs to be made everywhere, not just in Tahrir." The slogan used by The Socialist newspaper is: "The square and the factory are one hand".

A large group of protesters have set up an angry demonstration outside the state TV building at Maspero, just along the corniche from the entrance to Tahrir Square.

"The TV station is important for every dictaorship," says Khled Ali, a doctor in philosophy. "It's a way of controlling the people. Nothing has changed here since the first 25 January – it's the same people, the same words."

The army is protecting the TV building behind barbed wire. Troops stare impassively at the protesters. Traffic passing along the corniche toot their horns in support of the protest.

Veteran socialist Kamal Khalil is here. He told me that the military is the problem – they are part of Mubarak's regime.

"Scaf wants to make it difficult for workers to organise unions," he says. "They keep putting obstacles on our way. They want to make sit-ins illegal.

"But the Egyptian revolution can still be won if workers get organised and fight. We need political strikes where every worker stops and refuses to work until we achieve victory."

6.15pm

The temperature has fallen now that it's getting dark, but the day is far from over. People have laid out newspapers where they are to talk, rest and eat. Every bit of rubble can act as a stool. People weave around the impromptu meetings trying not to disturb them.

About 20 young people have sat down in the pavement opposite the Egyptian museum. "We're here because we are the people who started the revolution, the young people," says Youssef, a student, and his sister Rodino, who is at high school.

"It's been too slow. It feels like nothing has changed. This was a revolution for the poor, but so far the poor have not won. We need a completely different system. Better pay, better healthcare, better public transport. That's what today is about. That's what still needs to happen."

3.15pm

A dense march of football supporters, known as the ‘Ultras’, goes up Talaat Harb Street, one of the main streets leading into Tahrir Square.

Many of them had played heroic roles in the street battles against Mubarak’s forces.

Today they shout the slogan of one year ago—"Bread, freedom, justice".

Amina is watching from the side. "They are using the same slogan because we have not won yet. The army council is crushing us. We need a second revolution

"I don't like what is happening after the elections. I am a Muslim, I wear a headscarf, but I do not want an Islamic state. We have 8 million Christians in Egypt. What will happen to them?

“We need an Egypt for everyone. It's not just about political changes—We need social change. Better education, health care. That's why we are still on the streets.”

2.30pm

It is getting very difficult to move around the square because the numbers are so enormous.

Time and time again people say, "This is not a celebration". One young man, Ahmed, stands solid against the crowd surging around him. His face is painted in the colours of the Egyptian flag. He holds up a sign calling for justice for those who have been killed in last 12 months.

He said, "I'm here to remind people about those who died. They are the real heroes. They died because they believed in a better Egypt. That's not too much to ask is it?"

Just off the square the newly painted wall of the American University is getting a makeover. Teams of young graffiti artists are spraying anti-Scaf slogans while older demonstrators sit on the pavement edge beside them resting their legs.

The volunteers who are searching people as they arrive in Tahrir Square struggle to keep up.

Is there anyone in Cairo not out in the streets today?

12.30pm

Every avenue leading to Tahrir Square is filled with people chanting and marching.

Already there is debate about what will happen when the day is over.

The Salafists and some leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood are saying that people should celebrate then go home.

State television and the channel which supports Scaf say its a day of celebration and then everything should go back to normal—whatever normal means in Egypt under military rule.

If the numbers are big enough then maybe there will be a new sit in. But, say activists, "The revolution is not just the square it is in the factories and in the universities."

The struggle for the future of the revolution has to go on in every workplace, school and community.

As one headline in the Revolutionary Socialists’ (RS) paper says "the square and the factory one hand"

People buying copies of their paper and taking leaflets surround the RS stall. There are also leaflets to fill in if you want to join their organisation.

10.30am

The sun is shining in Tahrir Square. People are starting to arrive—families with food and blankets, people in wheelchairs, children in buggies.

Scooters piled high with bread and water squeeze past to stock up the stalls in the square.

Everyone is searched and ID checked by volunteers as they enter. Several stages have been constructed overnight and some sound systems are already at full tilt, playing music and speeches.

Around the city at least 12 different demonstrations are assembling to march to the square.

Only one year ago Hosni Mubarak sat in power, fully expecting that he and then his son would continue to rule for decades to come.

Now he and his son are in prison and protesters delight in mocking his image. This day last year the people lost their fear and took to the streets and held them.

It took only 18 days to finish Mubarak. But on 25 January 2011 the Egyptian people began something that they still want to finish.

I speak to Mahmoud, a young man who has brought with him a blood soaked T-shirt from the battles on 28 January. “We have not come here to carnival and then depart,” he tells me.

“We want to complete our revolution. Mubarak is down but the system is not."

So they are coming back to Tahrir in their tens of thousands to show they still have the power to break the rest of the regime.

The following should be read alongside this article:

Egypt's Revolutionary Socialists: We want to expose the lies of the elites

© Socialist Worker (unless otherwise stated). You may republish if you include an active link to the original.

Remembering Bloody Sunday - 40 years on

2012-01-24T01:06:00.000-08:00

Join the Connolly Club of Auckland as we look at the background events leading up to the Bloody Sunday massacre- the Orange State, the Civil Rights Movement, the autonomous zone of Free Derry, and the revolutionary wave that spread across the world in 1968 that led to a mass movement in the North of Ireland.

1pm till 5pm, Sunday 29 January @ Unite, 6a Western Springs Road, Kingsland - Discussion forum will be followed by a screening of the movie Bloody Sunday, starring James Nesbitt. Facebook event here.

Everyday we fight the system

2012-01-23T19:15:00.000-08:00

Right to protest | Right to camp

2012-01-23T01:24:00.000-08:00

Occupy Auckland on day 101 - still camping, still protesting.

On day 101 they came in the morning. Dozens of police officers and private security guards. The identification numbers were the same on up to four of the officers. They cops were ready for a day of massive violence against the peaceful Occupy protesters.

Since the election the Occupy protesters have been vilified by the right-wing, unloved by much of the vacillating left yet still scores of young (and old) activists have spent night after night holding the ground in Aotea Square and now Queen Street, Victoria Park and Albert Park.

There are now two main types of Occupiers in Auckland City. The radical youth; many jobless, others studying, some workers whose minds were set on fire by the revolutions of 2011 and the Occupy Wall Street movement. They have consistently shown solidarity with those engaged in struggle, from the campaign against evictions in Glen Innes to attending last weeks mass meeting in support of the wharfies. They are the future of the left in this city and today if Len Brown was watching out his window he would have seen them pulling down the fences his goons were sent to erect.

The other type of Occupier like Roger are those who once described themselves as homeless. They are predominantly Maori, reflecting Auckland's shameful homeless statistic - 80% of homeless are Maori. Through Occupy they have begun self-organising for their own security, cooking and shelter based primarily on tikanga. People are even growing their own vegetables. They have created in Auckland what were known as Hoovervilles in America during the 1930s depression - a refuge of last resort for those thrown into the abyss of neo-liberalism.

Socialist Aotearoa activist Malcolm France and Occupier Lyn were today arrested for defending Occupy Auckland. Occupy stalwart Chris Glen was also nicked by police when he tried to take the protest to Len Brown in the council chambers, left, was dragged back by the cops and then was trespassed. Socialist Aotearoa mobilised in support of the Occupation today and many of our members physically helped stop the eviction. We unconditionally support the right of people to occupy and protest the inequalities of capitalism and we wholeheartedly support the right of the city's homeless people to build and maintain their own camps on public land. Right to protest. Right to camp. We're right to occupy.

John Minto has already rubbised Len Brown and the Auckland City Council's slurs against Occupy - "That's just bulls**t. That's just lies - rubbish. They'd just prefer not to have banners and placards in parks."

The eviction has backfired heavily in the media on police and council and the Occupation has been strengthened as a result. As Joe Carolan, Socialist Aotearoa activist told the media, "You can't close down an idea using the police. What this movement is about is not just camping, it's not just about occupying a space of land, this is actually questioning why there is such injustice and economic inequality in western society as a whole.''

Adbusters editor-in-chief Kalle Lasn spoke recently of Occupy's prospects; 'To me, the core impulse behind this movement is the feeling among young people all over the world that the future doesn’t compute, that their lives will be full of ecological, political and financial crises, and that they will never have a life like their parents did. And unless they stand up and fight for a different kind of a future, they’re not going to have a future.'

The sparks that fly as the police hammer cracks down on the council anvil have already burnt the police and reignited anti-capitalist resistance in central Auckland. Hope will turn to anger for those whose future does not compute. In 2012 the rebel alliance in Auckland's parks and around the world will need to think hard about how to advance their struggle against death-star capitalism.

Occupy Auckland is not over yet.

-Socialist Aotearoa

Shine a light on poverty

2012-01-23T00:47:00.000-08:00

All proceeds going to Auckland Action Against Poverty's 2012 campaigns. Facebook event here.

This is revolution in the making

2012-01-19T19:43:00.000-08:00

99 days for the 99 percent: On this momentous day we will celebrate the 99th birthday of Occupy Auckland, Occupy New Zealand, Occupy Australia, and Occupy Together movements around the world. We march in solidarity with you all. Our causes should unite us, not divide us, they are many.

Children's crusade

2012-01-19T13:46:00.000-08:00

Sixteen year old activist Jazmine Heka from Whangarei has begun a campaign against child poverty and has launched a petition to up the pressure on the Government to implement free healthcare and free school lunches for children as well as bring in regular checks on rental homes.

Inspired by the Inside Child Poverty documentary that screened just before the last election Jazmine has launched a movement, Children Against Poverty, because "Twenty-two per cent of kids in New Zealand live in poverty. I find it disgusting, it's not right. We're so rich in food, we have the resources to be able to care for our children. Every child deserves basic needs - food, a safe environment to live in, medical care."

You can help the campaign by downloading Children Against Poverty's petition and collecting signatures.

Video- Auckland Community support for Wharfies

2012-01-19T01:53:00.000-08:00

120 activists pack Auckand Trades Hall to organise community solidarity with the Wharfies. Electric atmosphere on the Left, determination to fight and defeat the evils of privatization and casualisation. And as much as the bosses and right wing would love us to show the tactics and strategy discussed beforehand by the leadership of MUNZ (Gary Parsloe, Russell Mayne and Victor Billot), well, guess you'll see in the next few weeks ;)

Mana - We Support the Wharfies

2012-01-18T17:36:00.000-08:00

19/01/2011 - Media release - MANA Movement

“MANA supports wholeheartedly the rights of the wharfies who work for the Port of Auckland,” states MANA leader Hone Harawira.

Harawira says, “Workers across the country need to wake up and smell the coffee - if the wharfies loose this fight then the casualisation of working hours will become a permanent feature of employment in this country. Everybody who earns a low to middle income job will have to wait by their phones for their boss to call to see if they are working or not, not knowing how many hours they will work and be paid for each week.”

“As a country we should be doing our utmost to back our wharfies. Despite the efforts of National and the country's media to make this dispute about money, this is all about having reliable and stable employment. The workers want to know that they have a set number of hours per week. If it was about the money why would they only want to settle for a 2.5% pay rise when they are being offered 10%?"

"What I don't understand is why the workers are being held responsible for risks to the business. Tony Gibson will get his huge salary each week no matter what and the Council wants a 12% return on capital no matter what. It is the wharfies who are expected to pay the price each week if business is down. Under any other business regime, the owner is the one who takes the risk, not the workers!"

“As for politicians saying that we should not get involved, what a load of crap. This dispute became political when Rodney Hide set up the appointments of the Board of Directors for the port. Auckland Mayor Len Brown needs to step up to the mark and back the workers - after all the port is Auckland's asset. The owners of any business have a duty to make sure their managers treat their workers fairly."

“In 1951 there was a watershed strike involving wharfies. Today we are faced with another defining moment regarding employment rights in this country. Rest assured that if the wharfies lose then this right wing Government will see it as an endorsement to go ahead with the casualisation of hours and it will be another blow to the union movement, a movement that has for so long protected blue collar workers.”

New AntiCapitalist- Victory to the Wharfies!

2012-01-18T03:11:00.001-08:00

the Jan 2012 edition of AntiCapitalist, focussing on the Wharfies fight on the Ports of Auckland, is available to read and print out HERE.

Public meeting Thursday

2012-01-14T20:45:00.000-08:00

On the Waterfront

2012-01-10T17:32:00.000-08:00

The wharfies of Aotearoa have a proud tradition of fighting for workers rights- from the heroic Jock Barnes and the Great Lockout of 1951, to the murder of Christine Clarke on picket duty on the last day of the 20th Century. Embibed with a solid working class democratic culture, they hold monthly stop work all out meetings, monthly delegate meetings, and elect and strongly contest all positions within their union. They have a thorough internationalism, and take action in solidarity with comrades across the five continents. Their record of digging deep in solidarity with other workers in struggle in New Zealand is unsurpassed- recently they gave $6,000 to the locked out workers in the meat plant at Marton. Over the years, they have fought to maintain and strengthen their conditions, so that they can earn a decent crust to feed their families.

Now they are facing the attacks of a CEO and a board who are largely the creation of Rodney Hide, and many of the directors who accuse the wharfies of being greedy are members of the 1%, who double dip and sit on various committees that pay them thousands of dollars per meeting.

The battle is about two main neo-liberal attacks- casualisation and privatisation.

Casualisation- the wharfies have fought hard to win rostered 8 and a half hour shifts, allowing them to plan their work-life balance with their families. At the turn of the century, hiring on wharfs the world over was nothing but a glorified slave auction- stevedore bosses would check a man's body and teeth before hiring for a day, or throw the remaining chits for a day's work in the air so desperate workers would scramble and fight each other tooth and nail for a backbreaking day of exploitation. Those who doubt the veracity of these images should watch Ken Loach's heartbreaking documentary, the Flickering Flame, about the betrayal of the Liverpool Dockers in the early 1990s.

Rodney's boys want the bad old days back, so that wharfies hang by the phone, waiting for a call for a shift that could vary between 2 and 12 hours in duration. These are the problems that many workers face in the fast food industry- and many of those workers are pushing for strike action in May for guaranteed hours.

Privatisation- the crisis at the Ports has been manufactured, and as the National Government plans to push through asset sales, it needs to create a pretext for stealing the wharfs from public ownership. Apparently, a profit of 8% per year is not enough for these insatiable exploiters. They would do well to cast their eye overseas, where many economies dream of such growth. If the bosses defeat the union and push through casualisation, then the knives of the government will not be far behind.

Which is why the idiocy of Auckland's supposed left wing mayor Len Brown is disgusting. He follows the proud tradition of his Labour party mates who took neither side when the Wharfies were locked out in 1951- except Len pretends to be on everybodys side. He says he's against privatisation, but in the middle of a struggle and a lockout, he chides workers for defending their pay and conditions, and talks about flexibility and the need to return greater profits.

If this is going to be indicative of David Shearer's new Labour party's approach to unions, then clearly a stauncher political ally, like the Mana Movement, is needed by workers in struggle.

2011 was a year of revolution and revolt in many other countries overseas, but in Aotearoa, where lions were led by donkeys, we saw many bad draws and defeats in our union movement, from the Hobbit debacle to the Marton lockout. The CTU and the union movement need to stop fucking around- when an employer locks out a group of workers, we need to mobilise en force, blockade entrances, and physically occupy workplaces. It's time to call a scab a scab- no point in good union workers starving to death slowly on a roadside when this kind of industrial scum knife their fellow workers in the back. A united workforce will beat any boss black and blue- its the class traitors in our midst we need to deal to in 2012.

So, learn the lessons of 2011. The Wharfies, the vanguard of our movement, lead the battle in 2012. Socialist Aotearoa will be standing with them on the waterfront, blockading and occupying if needs be. We call for social movements such as Mana and Occupy to join the struggle at the gates of the wharves, and ensure that no scab gets through and no work is done until the evils of casualisation and privatisation are defeated.

Moderate parties such as the Greens and Labour, who claim to oppose asset sales, should mobilise their branches and supporters to physically join the battle at the wharves, and come on down for some solidarity picket duty. A large United Front and public demonstration opposing casualisation and asset sales should be organised by summers end, so that the 70% or so of Kiwis who oppose privatisation can manifest in number akin to the anti-Mining struggle led so deftly by Greenpeace in 2010.

If the wharfies win, then the battle against privatisation is on. If they lose, then this government will continue to steam roller over the pathetic excuse that the mainstream left believes is opposition. Their battle is the battle of the 99% against the greedy 1%- abandon them at your peril.

Len Brown is a scab

2012-01-08T15:29:00.000-08:00

He called himself the Mayor for all of Auckland but when it came to the crunch this morning the workers of Auckland discovered that Len Brown is a scab.

Mayor gives striking port union the message: "Auckland Mayor Len Brown has issued an ultimatum to the Maritime Union in the bitter industrial dispute on the city's wharves, saying there must be more flexibility in work practices to make the port more productive and profitable for the council."

By supporting the attacks on wharfies wages and conditions Len Brown has chosen to support the 1% against the 99% in a dispute that as Matt McCarten pointed out is as much about privatisation as it is about workers' rights.

Sign the open letter here: WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON? An Open Letter to Len Brown

WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON? -- An Open Letter to Len Brown

Dear Len,
When you were elected the first Mayor of Auckland Supercity, you promised to be on the side of workers, the poor and the social movements fighting for a fairer New Zealand. But there are now serious conflicts occurring in the City which beggars the question- whose side are you on?
(1) The Lockout of MUNZ workers at the Council Controlled Ports of Auckland
(2) The eviction of over 150 State Housing tenants and their families in Glen Innes
(3) The proposed eviction of Occupy Auckland from Aotea Square, representing the movement against the the elite 1% who control the wealth created by the 99% who work.

Any left winger worth their salt would support the MUNZ workers on their picket line, fighting for a living wage. Any left winger worth their salt would stand with the families of GI, many of whom are Pasifika and Maori, who you claim to have a special love for. And any left winger worth their salt would stand up to those undemocratic, corporate forces who have turned New Zealand into one of the most unequal societies in the world, according to last week’s OECD report.

Whose side are you on, Len? And do you really run this city, or is it run by the likes of your corporate CEO, union buster Doug McKay?

We, the people of Auckland listed below, call on you to support our workers, tenants, students and citizens, who are fighting for their jobs, homes and democratic rights.

Signed by over 40 peoples so far including stevedores, nurses, students, lecturers, social workers and accountants.

The empire strikes back

2012-01-06T00:22:00.000-08:00

"We want fire" - Class struggles in North Korea

2012-01-05T16:18:00.000-08:00

Riots and workers' struggles are common place in South Korea. It is only a matter of time before they spread to North Korea and bring down the Stalinist regime.

The world watches the coronation of Kim Jong-Un and the mass outpouring of grief for Kim Jong-Il in the outcast state capitalist regime of North Korea with a mix of fascination and horror wondering how a country with 200,000 living in gulags could ever enter the 21st century of global capitalism, parliamentary democracy and media unlimited. The tight control of society the state regime exerts creates "gulags of the mind" that mirror the Soviet-style prison camps which Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn described so well in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.

Yet even as the regime projects an image of stability during an orderly transfer of figurative power economic problems continually drive the Stalinist ruling cabal into conflict with the working class and force the state capitalist elite to intensify efforts to integrate their regime into capitalism. Yet the pariah traditions of the North Korean state ensure that the integration is lopsided and partial. The North Korean state capitalist economy is increasingly being opened up to integration within the circulatory system of global free market capitalism.

As Tony Cliff described the problem facing the Russian state capitalists in 1991; "They have to raise the productivity of labour. That’s why all of them accept the need to move away from the command economy. But they are trapped because the command economy is not yet dead and the market economy is stillborn. So they get a combination of both systems." These combination of state capitalism and the market economy only increase the slide towards class conflict.

Capitalist Islands

Despite professing to be a Communist country the North Korean regime is building islands of transnational capitalist exploitation within its territory in an attempt to generate foreign funds to prop up its regime.

One of these areas is the Kaesong Industrial Region on the border with South Korea where some 48,000 North Korean workers generate US$50 million in revenue for the dictatorship. Despite the tension between the two Koreas the numbers of northern workers being employed here continues to grow each year feeding the demand by South Korean capitalists for super-exploited labour and North Korea's need for cash. Cash is then spent by the regime on luxury goods such as watches, gold and liquor (or even beef from New Zealand) which is distributed amongst members of the North Korean ruling class. Mostly however it is used to fund the bloated military, police and administrative bureaucracy needed to control society.

These capitalist islands also tie the South Korean capitalist class to the survival of totalitarianism in the North which becomes a necessary element in low wage competitiveness for production worth nearly a billion dollars a year. The Kaesong industrial zone is also a real threat to the wages and jobs of the manufacturing working class in South Korea as corporations outsource to the state capitalist belt where wages are 95% lower.

Negri and Hardt wrote in their influential Empire, "The spatial divisions of the three Worlds (First, Second and Third) have been scrambled so that we continually find the First World in the Third, the Third in the First, and the Second almost nowhere at all." What we see in Kaesong is an evil paradise of neo-liberalism which ruthlessly marries Stalinist state control of workers with the access to the post-Soviet, unfettered uber-capitalism.

Guest Workers

As well as allowing capitalist enterprises to operate inside its territory, North Korea exports its slave labour system across the Middle East, Asia and Eastern Europe to earn millions of dollars in extra revenue. According to HRW,

The US government's Trafficking in Persons Report 2009 states North Korean workers employed overseas "are subjected to harsh conditions, with their movements and communications restricted by DPRK (North Korea) government 'minders' and face threats of government reprisals against them or their relatives in North Korea if they attempt to complain to outside parties." The report further says "worker salaries are deposited into accounts controlled by the North Korean government, which keeps most of the money for itself, claiming fees for various "voluntary" contributions to government endeavors. Workers only receive a fraction of the money paid to the North Korean government for their work."

The report further notes the countries in which North Koreans reportedly work through such arrangements include Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Russia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, Yemen, the United Arab Emirates, Libya, Angola, China, Mongolia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand, and Laos. They include some 10,000 to 20,000 North Koreans who have worked in the logging industry each year in the Russian Far East since 1967

In 2006 some 400 North Korean workers were working as seamstresses for a company in the Czech Republic before objections from US customers, anti-trafficing organisations and the late Czech President Vaclav Havel put an end to the practice.

BBC exposed in 2009 in a riveting video report available online, the exploitation of North Korean workers in Russia by a corporation owned by British businessmen. As the documentary shows not only are the workers exported to be exploited by multinational capitalists but the entire North Korean state capitalist administrative, thought police and propaganda system is exported in miniature and reconstructed thousands of kilometers away from North Korea.

In 2011 when the North African uprising broke out in Libya some 200 North Korean doctors, nurses and construction workers were stranded after Pyongyang refused to allow them to return home fearing a spread of the democracy contagion.

In October 2011 the Independent broke a story of North Korean forced labour working in Mongolia making garments that are sold on the UK High Street. Around 3000 workers in 2011 could have earned around £7 million in revenue for the regime, as there wages are paid directly to a bank account of the North Korean embassy.

The labour export system in 2007 was estimated to annually send out 70,000 North Koreans around the world and the US State Department revised that to 100,000 recently. Under tight totalitarian control the North Korean guest workers are a sought after labour force celebrated by capitalists around the world for their obedience and productivity. “I remember an 18-year-old North Korean girl who had injured her hand and kept on doing grueling leather work, producing twice more than her Czech, Ukrainian, or Mongolian peers. That is precisely why the Czechs are always willing to welcome North Korean workers."

Uprising

Yet even as the North Korean Workers' Party ruling elite exports its proletariat around the world it creates its own gravediggers. As Tony Cliff explained in The Nature of Stalinist Russia,

The historical task of the bureaucracy is to raise the productivity of labour. In doing this the bureaucracy enters into deep contradictions. In order to raise the productivity of labour above a certain point, the standard of living of the masses must rise, as workers who are undernourished, badly housed and uneducated, are not capable of good production. The bureaucracy approaches the problem of the standard of living of the masses much in the same way as a peasant approaches the feeding of his horses: “How much shall I give in order to get more work done?”

But workers, besides having hands, have heads. The raising of the standard of living and culture of the masses, means to raise their self-confidence, increase their appetite, their impatience at the lack of democratic rights and personal security, and their impatience at the bureaucracy which preserves these burdens. On the other hand, not to raise the standard of living of the masses means to endanger the productivity of labour which is fatal for the bureaucracy in the present international relations, and also to drive the masses sooner or later to revolts of despair.

Increasingly cracks are beginning to show in the North Korean regime as the working-class begins to find new ways to resist the barbaric dystopia they live in. Although protests and outbreaks of violence directed at the regime are rarely reported, observers have noted increasing restlessness in the wake of the Arab spring.

Timeline of recent resistance (clipped from regional news sources)

December 2009 - Riot by merchants over currency change in the eastern city of Hamhung. Twelve ringleaders executed by the regime.

January 2010 - Residents, including war veterans aged in their 70s or 80s, protested last month outside a city hall in Danchon, North Hamkyong province and that authorities rushed to release 1,000 tons of rice to placate them.

February 2010 - One person was killed by armed guards on Feb. 16 when a group of people attempted to rob a food train at Komusan Railway Station in Puryong-gun, North Hamgyong Province, defector group North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity said. The attack came on North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's birthday after a disastrous currency reform sent food prices skyrocketing. The train was loaded with rice imported from China, the group said. Workers, outraged over the death, attacked armed guards with ploughs and police and military were called in.

February 2011- A North Korean resident in Chongjin, North Hamgyong province, told RFA that an unidentified group of assailants stoned the city's former inspection chief to death this month, amid an increasing level of food thefts and anti-government acts. In a most telling sign of the breakup of social control, Chosun said even solders, hungry for food, were joining the protests.

Radio Free Asia reports that signs of resistance are emerging, including the murder of the former chief of public security in Chongjin, North Hamgyong Province. It quoted a local as saying the man was killed by several assailants who threw stones at him as he rode his bicycle home at night. "It seems to be an act of revenge," the source added. The man had earned a bad reputation during 14 years of ruthless rule in the city, sending residents to labor camps regardless of their situation if they were caught violating rules. Early this year, one villager in the province apparently killed three government inspectors who confiscated wood he had gathered to build a fire.

February 2011 - Small pockets of unrest are appearing in North Korea as the repressive regime staggers under international sanctions and the fallout from a botched currency reform, sources say. On Feb. 14, two days before leader Kim Jong-il's birthday, scores of people in Jongju, Yongchon and Sonchon in North Pyongan Province caused a commotion, shouting, "Give us fire [electricity] and rice! "

A North Korean source said people fashioned makeshift megaphones out of newspapers and shouted, "We can't live! Give us fire! Give us rice!" "At first, there were only one or two people, but as time went by more and more came out of their houses and joined in the shouting," the source added.

The State Security Department investigated this incident but failed to identify the people who started the commotion when they met with a wall of silence. "When such an incident took place in the past, people used to report their neighbors to the security forces, but now they're covering for each other," the source said. The commotion started because the North Korean regime had diverted sparse electricity from the Jongju and Yongchon area to Pyongyang to light up the night there to mark Kim's birthday on Feb. 16.

"Discontent erupted because the regime cut off electricity that had been supplied to them only a few hours a day, and they had hard time putting food on the table due to soaring rice prices." A North Korean defector said the Jongju and Yongchon area "has long been a headache to the regime due to the spirit of defiance of the people there."

June 2011- Leaflets calling for the overthrow of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's regime were scattered in Hoeryong, North Hamgyong Province in mid-June, the Asahi Shimbun reported Friday. North Korea deemed the incident a threat to national security and launched an intensive investigation to find out who printed and distributed them after collecting scores of leaflets between June 24 and 25, the Japanese daily said. "The General is not the bright sun of the 21st century, but has only brought us darkness," it quoted the leaflets as saying. "Let's end the age of Kim Jong-il. We want rice." North Korean authorities believe the leaflets were printed and distributed in the North rather than by South Korean civic groups. They have incinerated those that were found and dispatched an entire unit of security agents to find out whether any locals still have them. "Sources said the fliers indicate a growing dissatisfaction with Kim among the North Korean population," the Asahi added.

December 2011 - Eight armed North Korean soldiers defected last month across the Apnok (or Yalu) River separating North Korea and China, prompting security to be tightened around the Chinese border town of Dandong, the Daily NK reported Wednesday.

Tony Cliff, one of founding members of the Socialist Workers' Party and International Socialist Tendency, pioneered theories of state capitalism in an attempt to explain the situation in Stalinist Russia. Cliff sought to describe the difficulties faced by the Russian proletariat but also to suggest, correctly, how workers would inevitably bring down Stalinism; "The class struggle in Stalinist Russia must inevitably express itself in gigantic spontaneous outbursts of millions. Till then it will seem on the surface that the volcano is extinct."

We want fire

Crisis in North Korea catalyses exodus. As HRW has noted, "Hundreds of thousands of North Koreans have crossed the border into China since a famine hit the country in the mid-1990s." As technology shrinks the world North Korean workers find new ways to breach the Chinese walls erected by thoughtpolice to sterilise them from global culture. CDs containing South Korean TV dramas are smuggled into the country and widely circulated amongst North Koreans. Out of 18,000 students at a regime university 2,000 were reported to have subversive videos when their CDs and USBs were searched in 2009. In May 2010 the regime worried that underground activists in the Yangang province were setting fires to buildings to destabilise the regime.

As the need to maintain a vast military and police state able to survive in a capitalist world creates more and more pressure on the North Korean elite to raise new surplus through increasingly allowing outside capitalist exploitation of its workforce it will be driven into terminal crisis. As Cliff observed of the Stalinist ruling class of Russia in 1991, "The rulers find themselves in such a cul-de-sac, they can’t go back and they can’t go forward."

The voices of the working-class return again to haunt the bureucracy as the cry is heard in the streets, "We want fire!"

-Sam Lee, SA

No 2012 pay rise for 1 in 5 workers

2012-01-04T20:03:00.000-08:00

According to a recent survey 21% of businesses intend to give no wage increase for staff and only 17% intend to give wage rises higher than the rate of inflation. What can we say but...

Fuel to the fire in 2012

2012-01-04T16:24:00.000-08:00

A nightmare scenario for capitalists sees Greek-style riots and strikes spreading uncontrollably across Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East in 2012.

The unrest of 2011 - the Arab Spring, Asian worker struggles and Eurozone meltdown - is set to ignite even more dramatically in 2012 as the economic crisis deepens.

Came a Hot Friday

The Arab Spring is set to reignite across northern Africa and the Middle East as protesters return to the streets of the regions cities to continue the struggle for democratic freedoms, improved wages and against corruption. Promising a 'hot Friday' are activists in Amman who will return to the streets after a simmering December which saw widespread rioting in Jordanian cities, including over questions of land privatisation.

Rebellion spreads to Nigeria next Monday when the union movement begins an indefinite general strike to paralyse the country and stop the Government from removing petrol subsidies that will cause pump prices to double and send food prices spiralling. The fuel furore has also taken on political dimensions as protesters also call for "living wages" and slam the move as an attempt by corrupt politicians to further enrich themselves with the saved Goverment funds: “The prices of everything will increase - transport, housing, school fees, food, etc. The common man will not be able to survive,” Ganiat Fawehinmi, widow of a human rights lawyer told reporters.

In Libya protests are growing as citizens come to realise that the National Transitional Council (NTC) installed in Tripoli after massive NATO intervention in the anti-Gaddafi uprising is nontransparent and there are still ongoing human rights abuses including arbitrary imprisonment, impunity for former Gaddafi regime officials and the theft of public money by NTC figures. As one activist in the oil rich country stated, "We are also critical of the NTC’s lack of transparency. Its meetings take place behind closed doors and we are only ever informed of the results, never of the decision-making process. This is not democratic! Furthermore, we don’t even know all of the members of the Council, only those who founded it." Oil company executives from the likes of BP and Shell have swarmed into the country's hotels in the wake of Gaddafi's ouster as Western countries replace the Gaddafi regime with a new puppet tyranny already promising preferential investment for companies from NATO countries.

Wildcat

The working class across the Asia-Pacific region is on the move forcing large corporations to give concessions on wages and conditions and increasingly asserting political demands during strikes and protests.

Freeport mine workers in the Indonesian province of West Papua will head back to work after winning a 37% wage increase after a three month strike in which nine workers were murdered by Indonesian police. Strikes continue to plague China as well as authorities continue to seek to appease rather than repress an increasingly political, organised and militant working-class which late in 2011 took over the southern town of Wukan with 20,000 people forming an self-governed commune for two weeks, barricaded roads and won an end to corrupt land sales to real estate developers.

Oil workers in the central Asian country of Kazakhstan are continuing their strike which began in May 2011 for wage rises, independent unions and the release of an imprisoned labour lawyer had by December and with the murder of sixteen workers transformed into a political uprising calling for allowing independent political parties in a country which is a police state run for the oil moguls.

Pakistan's largest city Karachi was hit by strike action in the transport sector over gas price rises while hospital workers took strike action over the murder of a Doctor whose brother is a centre-left politician.

As workers increasingly flex their industrial muscle in China and elsewhere radicalised workers will be increasingly intolerant of undemocratic regimes and corrupt authoritarian rulers. Just as the Mahalla textile workers' strike in 2006 inspired the Egyptian revolution wildcat action by the 'most dangerous class on the planet' - 200 million Chinese proletarians - and its transformation into anti-capitalist, revolutionary consciousness will determine 'whether or not a socialist Earth is still possible'.

Squeeze

Greece is on its way to defaulting on its debt and exiting the eurozone by March as union leaders refuse to accept new wage cuts and austerity measures being demanded by the EU and IMF. The squeeze on Greek workers living standards is a prelude to what will be another year of even worse austerity for European workers and students. As Socialist Worker reports,

The global debt crisis has intensified and is threatening to tear apart the euro project.

There is also an ideological dimension. Merkel, Sarkozy and co are determined to restore the euro’s fortunes by pushing through a pan-European austerity programme.

They know those plans will create misery for millions of people. And they know that mass resistance could scupper them. That’s why they are so keen to present austerity as a necessary evil rather than a choice.

As the squeeze continues more general strikes, riots and occupations will be generated as bitterness at capitalist elites in Europe turns to hatred. In Ireland a recent factory occupation, squatted community centre, nationwide protests against user charges on septic tanks show that even in one of the less turbulent crisis wracked countries apathy is slowly turning to revolt.

Crush

In Syria Assad's regime is forced to withdraw tanks from city centres. In Egypt international solidarity protests highlight the military's regimes repression of socialists. Throughout America Occupy camps are evicted with tear gas and rubber bullets but new actions take form such as Occupy Homes. In the UK the Tory Government refuses to back down on cuts to pensions even after the more than 2 million strong general strike on November 30 and provokes calls for renewed action. In China a dissident is jailed for nine years for calling for constitutional democracy and becomes a cause celeb.

Crushing the rebels becomes a precondition of establishing the conditions for renewed capitalist accumulation of wealth. The scale of the crisis and depth of the resistance precludes a short-term fix or handful of concessions from stemming local uprisings from becoming increasingly regional in character as acts of resistance resonate to neighbouring cities, campuses, factories and villages.

2012 promises to be another year of revolutionary struggle and militant activism as the brutal crackdowns of festering regimes and rising poverty of economic crisis add material fuel to the fires of rebellion lit in 2011.

-Socialist Aotearoa

Support the strikes

2012-01-04T00:43:00.000-08:00

Sit down, fight back in 2012

2012-01-03T22:10:00.001-08:00

"At Westfield, South Auckland, in 1937, freezing workers went on strike but stayed in the building – stringing up hammocks to sleep in. This was New Zealand’s first ‘stay-in’ strike, and it was successful. The workers were objecting to increased working hours with no extra pay. After the government stepped in, they won a bonus." - Te Ara

The union movement in Aotearoa has entered 2012 beset on all sides by attacks.

Auckland's waterfront, no stranger to industrial hostility, is now the site of an epic conflict between on one hand the despicable CEO of Ports of Auckland Tony Gibson and the complicit Mayor Len Brown, and on the other the members of the Maritime Union, fighting against the casualisation of their jobs.

In South Auckland the NZEI is reporting that there is no support for the privatisation of public schools from principals there.

Meanwhile firefighters' industrial action is dragging on, as Fairfax media tries to ramp up anti-union sentiment in an online poll.

The result of the Marton meatworkers' dispute shows that the New Zealand union movement is too slow to respond to disputes and fails to hit the employers hard enough by shutting down the capitalists operations.

In Marton workers were starved back to work on reduced rates (a defeat any way you look at it) after spending most of their time on the picket line watching scabs enter the plant. The 100 plus workers could have won the dispute if they had marched into the plant, sat down and refused to move.

The tactic of the sit-down strike is one of the most effective tactics available to workers to win disputes. The 1937 wave of sit-down strikes begun in an autoplant in Flint, Michigan 75 years ago involved half a million workers in 1000 sit downs.

The sit-down strikes rapidly changed the balance of class forces in America. As one activist noted, "Enduring union organisation was forged in just a few years. Vast numbers of workers were radicalised. As Noam Chomsky put it, “They had a huge effect. They terrified owners and management, and there’s a very good reason for that. A sit-down strike is just one step before taking over the factory, kicking out the bosses and the managers and saying, ‘We’ll run it ourselves’.”

The sit-down tactic had also been used to great effect in 1936 by the French working class "Wage rises of 7-15% were won. CGT leaders, however, had difficulty selling workers on the agreement and ending the strike wave."

In 1937 they even spread to an Auckland freezing works exciting great fear from the country's employing class but stopping the employers from imposing a wage cut on the freezing workers. On the 75th anniversary of the first use of the sit-down tactic in Aotearoa freezing workers are heading back to work in Marton with wage cuts after failing to use direct action tactics to stop the production at CMP.

Sit-down strikes at the port, in schools threatened with privatisation and in fire stations could beat back the attacks of the richest 1% and the anti-worker National Government and turn around the steady decline in union membership and growing wealth inequality the country has seen for the last twenty years.

Yet if sit-down strikes are going to take hold union activists will have to learn how to organise networks of workers across industries and unions who can defend themm like the networks of activists who have led the Occupy movement and built the Arab Spring. It is in the coming together of networks of militants outside of established bureaucracies and hierarchies that people can work collaboratively together to, "outwit the police, to beam their message into the newsrooms of global media, and above all to assert a cool, cutting-edge identity."

Seventy-five years after the first wave of sit-down strikes swept the world it's time once again for workers around the world to sit down and fight back.

In 2009 on the UK's Isle of Wight a small occupation in a wind turbine factory called Vestas that was being closed down turned into a massive struggle that nearly saw the UK government buy the factory and keep it running. As one of the worker occupiers described the dispute, "It’s about the government not keeping their promises, and it’s about renewable energy and global warming."

From Tahrir to Aotea- DEMOCRACY UNDER ATTACK

2011-12-21T01:12:00.000-08:00

On December 20th, supporters of Occupy Auckland marched from the occupation in Aotea Square to the US Consulate, to protest the American government's material support of the Military Junta that killed ten people and injured over 900 more in vicious attacks on Tahrir Square the day before.

The next day, December 21st, the Auckland Council was successful in getting a Court Order to evict Occupy Auckland from Aotea Square, and has given 48 hours notice for the occupiers to leave. Political organisations and social movements such as MANA, the Unite Union, and the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party have also been singled out for draconian attack, in a ruling that sees legitimate political protest criminalised.

This was done by Len Brown's Council, a council and a mayor that purports to be left wing, a Mayor that purports to represent workers, the low paid, Maori and Pasifika. Yet we see in his city state tenants facing eviction from their homes in Glen Innes, workers fighting for fair pay locked out in the Council Controlled Ports of Auckland, and now basic democratic rights being suspended and attacked.

Len Brown must be held accountable for his attacks.
On Thursday 22nd December, at 4pm,
people will gather outside Auckland's City Hall,
to ask the question-

Len Brown- whose side are you on?

Defend democracy- from Tahrir to Aotea Square.

Standing with Egypt against the military

2011-12-20T14:50:00.000-08:00

From Aotea to Tahrir- Solidarity with the Egyptian Revolution

2011-12-18T23:22:00.000-08:00

From Tahrir to Aotea- Solidarity with the Egyptian Revolution.
Down with the military dictatorship-
meet at Occupy in Aotea Sq at 5pm Tuesday December 20th,
then go down to US Consulate for picket against US arming Egypt's Junta.

The “Cabinet Offices” Massacre: a new crime by the sons of Mubarak in power

Statement by the Revolutionary Socialists of Egypt
17 December 2011

9 martyrs … 500 injured … this is the result of confrontations between the Egyptian Occupying Forces and the revolutionaries in a fresh attempt to bring the revolution to its knees and to bring back the Mubarak regime. And why not?

After all, the leaders of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces are the sons of Mubarak, and they are loyal to their economic self-interests.

The generals of SCAF control around 20 percent of the economy and are completely opposed to the interests of millions of working people who barely scrape a living. Most of them can’t find jobs which offer the chance of a decent life or even offer the hope of changing their lives for the better.

The “valiant” armed forces, members of Military Investigations and gangs of government-backed thugs attacked the peaceful sit-in in the street of the Cabinet Offices. After fabricating an argument with Abboudi, one of the young ultras [football fans] who was playing football, they harassed him, subjected him to electric shocks and abuse, and then refused to release him for more than an hour.

This turned out to be merely a pretext for a pre-prepared attack to disperse the sit-in by force and burn the protesters’ tents.

The old lies are being circulated that the local residents are offended by the protesters, even though the street where the sit-in is located does not block the traffic, and the area itself is a district of government buildings, ministries and embassies and not a residential area.

Thugs and the commandos of “our” army in civilian clothes took over government buildings which are now effectively under military occupation, including the parliament building itself, in order to throw stones and glass at the protesters and activists who joined them in Qasr al-Aini street to express their anger at the attack on the sit-in.

Dozens of demonstrators have fallen to baton charges, water cannons, rubber bullet rounds and live ammunition.

These developments follow a rising tide of workers’ protests, and the announcement by large numbers of workers’ organisations of their intention to demonstrate and occupy in order to continue the revolutionary tasks of cleansing public institutions of the remnants of the Mubarak regime and the redistribution of wealth in society.

This is why it was necessary to break up the sit-in by armed force in order to block the possibility of fusion between the working masses who brought down the Mubarak regime by their strikes in the last days of his rule, and the revolutionaries in the sit-in outside the Cabinet Offices.

These events also come as the end of the parliamentary elections is approaching, and with it the beginning of demands for the army to return to its barracks and the formation of an elected government.

All this points to a growing tendency within the army which wants to create chaos and panic so that the generals can seize the reins of power by popular demand, or at least to muzzle the revolutionaries until political positions and powers can be divided between the opportunist political forces which consented to enter the battle of parliament under military rule.

There is no alternative to continuing the revolution in the public squares, in the universities and in the workplaces … there is no substitute for working to win the popular masses, and at the heart of them the working class, to the revolutionary camp.

If we do not, the Occupying Forces, under the leadership of Tantawi will continue to kill revolutionaries and abort the revolution.

O masses of our people! The massacres of the Cabinet Offices have brought down the government of Ganzoury, who spent his life serving his master, Mubarak, and who wanted to enter the Cabinet over the blood of the revolutionaries.

We must fight together for these demands in order to achieve the goals of the revolutions to win bread, freedom and social justice, and so that the blood of the martyrs has not been spilled in vain:

1. A revolutionary government with full powers
2. Retribution for the martyrs and the trial of the murderers on the military council
3. Reduction in prices and a rise in wages
4. Nationalisation of the stolen privatised companies to provide work for the unemployed
The military council is leading the counter-revolution … but the revolution continues.

The Revolutionary Socialists
17 December 2011

Len Brown - Which side are you on?

2011-12-11T15:59:00.000-08:00

More photos from Saturday.

Hip hop is on the move

2011-12-11T15:48:00.000-08:00

The aggressive and racist tactics of the New Zealand police towards first Tiki Taane in Tauranga and just recently Scribe in Wellington for freestyling an anti-police rap is illustrative of the arbitrary and discriminatory nature of New Zealand's justice system where young Maori and Polynesian men are targeted and profiled by an aggressive police force disconnected with the communities they operate in.

Maybe the clearest sign that hiphop is on the move is the standing of activist rapper Jayson Gardiner as a Mana Movement candidate in Tauranga. His latest track People's Party clearly shows the potential of Mana to bring radical, anti-capitalist, pro-Maori, working class politics to young people around the country. Gardiner, coming from the site of the Rena grounding and an area of New Zealand with high youth unemployment may quickly emerge as the voice of a restless generation revolution that won't pay for the crisis and can't wait for change.

If the hiphop generation in Mana follows their comrades overseas into becoming generation revolution then it will cause shockwaves across Aotearoa and inspire youth in our Pacific neighbours like Fiji, Tonga and the Solomon Islands to rise up as well.

Photos from anti-eviction march

2011-12-11T13:59:00.000-08:00

Hundreds marched on Queen Street on Saturday to protest the government's plans to evict families from state houses in Glen Innes. A massive Mana presence, a big Socialist Aotearoa contingent and support from Greens and Labour all bolstered the demonstration. G.I. residents reiterated their commitment to resist the evictions and stand together against the destuction of their community.

Throwing kids to the market

2011-12-07T20:18:00.000-08:00

The announcement of National's coalition deal with Act MP to create charter schools in Christchurch and south Auckland has been condemned by education unions, principals and left political parties. Predictably it is being welcomed with open arms by the Business Roundtable and other nefarious neo-liberals. Disturbing has been the creep into Christchurch reminiscent of the drive for charter school creation in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. In New Orleans 70 percent of students go to charter schools, where the schools have been "expelling students with learning disabilities at twice the rate of charter schools elsewhere in the country. In the UK where charter schools are known as academies teachers' unions are discussing strike waves to stop the sell off of public schools. As one teacher said, "There is a plan, cooked up in corporate boardrooms, to make profit out of state education."

Socialist Aotearoa stands behind pupils, teachers and parents who will fight the sell off. The corporate agenda National and Act are pushing through is about allowing corporations to make a profit out of education by throwing kids to the market. We support the Quality Public Education Coalition which will fight these reforms and win, just as they held off the imposition of the bulk funding of teachers salaries in the 1990s. Their statement on charter schools is excellent reading.

Charter schools proposal uses the poor to advance the agenda of the rich

QPEC condemns the government proposal to trial charter schools in low-income areas of Christchurch and South Auckland.

Instead of confronting the causes of educational underachievement, and rewarding those frontline schools that battle to overcome the effects of poverty on children’s minds, the government is using the issue as cover to import a failed private business model from the US which will further damage education in these communities.

“Let us be clear” says John Minto, Deputy Chairperson of QPEC, “This is not about helping our most disadvantaged children, but about smuggling in new forms of private schooling. Charter schools are effectively private schools run with public funding”.

“This has nothing to do with improving education but everything to do with creating private business opportunities for wealthy investors. National using the poor to advance the agenda of the rich”.

John Minto said that it is particularly nauseating to hear the suggestion that Act leader John Banks and Prime Minister John Key are concerned to improve education achievement for kids in low-income areas.

Both send their kids to wealthy private schools and John Banks has a long history of racism directed against Maori and Pacifika communities of South Auckland who predominate in education underachievement.

Prime Minister John Key claims that opposition to charter schools is based on vested interests within the education sector. This is humbug. Instead it is vested business interests which are behind this bid to privatise education.

QPEC will mobilise its resources to continue to promote solutions to improve education for New Zealand kids and we will vigorously oppose failed business models hoisted on the backs of the kids who need the most help to achieve in education.

QPEC’s 2005 factfile on charter schools is appended to this release.

QPEC FactFile: Charter schools

What are they?

‘Charter schools’ is a term used in the United States to refer to schools which have been given a level of autonomy from school district and/or state control. The amount of autonomy varies extremely widely. On the one hand, some charter schools are given a small amount of power to spend funds as they choose, but without the ability to choose their own staff. At the other end of the spectrum, there are a range of ‘contracted out’ schools (see Edison and private schools), new schools based on principles of autonomy, a ban on union membership in some schools (and thus a ban on access to collective contracts) and other such approaches.

There appears to be over 2,500 charter schools currently in operation, up from nil in 1991, although most are in a few key American (and Canadian) states. Charter schools tend to be much smaller than ordinary public schools (average roll 137, compared with 475), and there is little money available for start-up costs. Many, particularly those run by community organisations or groups of teachers, are very starved of resources. They serve a wide range of populations. Some are focused very strongly on poor, black and immigrant communities. Others appear to engage in some cream-skimming behaviour. Most are unable, at least formally, to select their intake except through ballots.

The average charter school has less autonomy than the average New Zealand school – it could be argued that our whole system is made up of charter schools. But there are differences. The ability to start small, community-focused schools (which exists in theory in New Zealand under s.156 of the Education Act but barely at all in practice) has brought about some interesting approaches. The English equivalent of charter schools were formerly known as ‘grant-maintained’ schools and City Technology Colleges, but the new push in that country is for so-called specialist schools.

Who advocates them?

They are advocated by a very wide range of groups, which is why they have proved a popular intervention. Charter schools are supported by neo-liberals as a move towards publicly-funded vouchers for private education. At the other end of the political spectrum, they are supported by community organisations who want to ensure access to education for school drop-outs, mainly black youth in the inner-cities. The following quote demonstrates the diversity:

…. the condition of education – particularly in urban areas populated by our nation’s most impoverished, disadvantaged children – remains perilous. Performance data show wide, persistent gaps in student achievement... Increasingly, educational reformers view charter schools as a way to provide a more effective education to students who are ill-served by the public school system as it is currently structured. Support for charter schools comes from a wide array of groups, including conservatives who also support taxpayer-financed vouchers; business leaders… African American and Hispanic civic groups; community leaders; and parents searching for ways to reform public education without totally destroying or abandoning it (Fusarelli, 2002 p. 21).

Charter schools tend to be strongly supported by the parents of children who attend them:

There is, in all surveys, high levels of satisfaction with charter schools. Parents rate them superior “in terms of class sizes, school sizes, attention and teachers, quality of instruction, and curriculum. Parents also reported that their children were doing better academically in the charter school” (ibid).

Charter schools are a very popular intervention, but research evidence shows that the promise of innovation and improved educational outcomes is often not borne out in practice. These schools may be popular, but it is unclear whether they are effective.

Main arguments in favour

From the neo-liberal perspective charter schools may offer freedom from state interventions, shifting accountability to the marketplace (a charter school will only survive if it attracts students). Some states allow charter schools to by-pass local teacher employment agreements, and, as a result, have hired large numbers of unqualified teachers (in Texas, 54% of charter school teachers are un-registered).

From the community perspective, charter schools can be a progressive force. Milo Cutter, a teacher who worked with other teachers to set up a charter school, describes a community-based school for at-risk adolescents which maintains a student:staff ratio of 6:1. The school was able to survive in its first few years only because a private power company provided about a third of its funding. It now survives on a mixture of school district and grants funding (Cutter, 1996).

There is some evidence of ‘innovation’ in the literature, including: longer school days and Saturday classes; mandatory summer school courses; bilingual education programmes; schools for at-risk students; alternative curricula such as the international baccalaureate; and a range of teacher initiatives such as multi-age grouping, mainstreaming, use of technology to enhance student learning, performance-based assessments and project based learning.

A paper lauding California’s charter school experience is fairly typical of the literature (Premack, 1996). The focus is on the ‘diversity’ of the more than 100 schools (many of which cater for special needs populations) rather than genuine curriculum innovation. This raises an important question. Is the aim of charter schools in practice merely to deliver the curriculum in ways which meet the needs of niche special needs groups? If that is the case, why is the whole raft of organisational reform needed?

Charter schools may not be selective; they must take whoever comes and places must be filled by ballot when there is overcrowding. This is in contrast to s.156 schools in New Zealand which are of ‘special character’, allowing the school to choose who attends on a range of pre-determined characteristics (e.g. Discovery One in Christchurch selects on parental involvement criteria).

Main arguments against

There are many excellent examples in the literature of innovative school programs in operation in charter schools. These involve, music, exploratory learning, individual tuition and a range of learning tasks. But it is rarely stated is the programme is being compared with. The un-named and undefined ‘public school system’ sits behind the rhetoric, as if each classroom, each lesson and each teacher is uniform; and as if the students sit behind their lined-up desks each day and appropriate knowledge (or not) in a Dickensian fashion. It is as if any notion that ordinary public schools, which educate the vast majority of American youth, can be effective or innovative has been abandoned. So instead the only ‘innovation’ being sought is through these charter schools and through voucher schemes. This is a general criticism of the so-called reform literature, and also of the political forces that advocate reform.

It is hard to evaluate the scheme as a whole. There are huge differences between regions in terms of the rules, funding and requirements of charter schools. For example, one study noted:

Two of the more controversial aspects of the charter school phenomenon, however, are that in ten states, for-profit organisations can legally manage and operate charter schools and in some states, church-related organisations are eligible to sponsor charter schools (Bloom, 2003 p.145).

One California-based research team examined whether the more market oriented charter schools (a subset of all charter schools) were more likely to engage in cream-skimming behaviour (Lacireno-Paquet et al, 2002). They found that, while cream-skimming was not evident, market-oriented charter schools were less likely to enrol children with special needs:

While non-market-oriented charter schools are serving equal or higher proportions of needy populations than the traditional public school system, those with more entrepreneurial aspirations are not. The percentage of special education students served is nearly twice as high in non-market-oriented charters than in market-oriented ones (ibid p. 155).

There are some underlying issues in charter schools. At its more extreme end, charter school legislation is an invitation for any and every special interest group to start and run their own school according to their own values. Some say this is a good thing – that the public system attempts a useless ‘one size fits all’ exercise. But in increasingly diverse communities worldwide, the school yard is often the only place where diverse cultures meet, and if that is lost, is this not a recipe for increased inter-group tensions? Also, there is a major problem of accountability for results.

Finally, while underfunded, charter schools do remove funds from the general public school system which appears, in many parts of the United States, to be of very poor quality. Taking funds from a poor quality system, in which probably the least-motivated families remain, to put into new, small, inefficient, struggling schools seems a recipe for disaster at a systemic level, and ignore the very parts of the system that most need to be improved.

Can the differences be resolved?

Lubienski makes the point that, after a decade of increasing popularity of charter schools, and large amounts of research, we still do not know much about any actual changes brought about by charter schools. His paper reviews “all known research and scholarly studies available that reported evidence of innovative practices in charter schools” (ibid p. 406). He says:

…there is a notable paucity of classroom practices developed in charter schools that were not already available outside the charter school model (ibid, 413).

Lubienski’s meta-analysis uncovers a sustained pattern of “organisational change coupled with pedagogical and curricula conformity” (ibid) in charter schools. This finding has significant implications for policy, not only in but also beyond the United States. If every school in New Zealand is a charter school, then have our reforms stifled rather than encouraged pedagogical reform? If so, might alternative approaches, such as the drive for specialist schools in the UK be more effective in achieving quality reform rather than administrative and organisational change?

Lubienski’s paper concludes with a long discussion of why pedagogical innovation is virtually absent from charter schools. Reasons appear to be supply side – inadequate resources, a lack of vision, failures of the competitive model – and demand side, in terms of what might be the inherent conservatism of parents over what they perceive constitutes a high quality education. The shadow of the upper middle class traditional learning institution may have blighted the innovative potential of charter schools in much the same way that reform in other countries appears to simply reproduce a uniformed, disciplinarian hierarchy.

Much of the literature discusses the financial problems of charter schools in terms of both start-up costs and ongoing funding. Sugarman (2002) notes that there are funding problems endemic to the whole US school system, as well as some issues specific to charter schools. The four issues that are system wide are: inter-district inequalities (an issue taken up by Kozol, 1991); intra-district inequalities; inadequate spending; and special needs funding. The specific issues relating to charter schools, many of which have been covered above, include: how to count pupils (especially when there is a longer school day); enrolling and counting distance learners; the monitoring and reporting regimes to ensure accountability; and the need for supplemental funds (because of high building costs or other issues) (Sugarman, 2002). The author concludes that the growth of charter schools has ironically brought attention to bear on overall inadequacies in the funding regime of US schools, which may need to be addressed in the future.

It seems that charter schools cannot overturn the inequities of the public schooling system. Indeed, a key research finding is that equity provisions tend not to be enforced even where they exist. A worrying element is the growth in segregation, and charter schools cater for specific niche markets. More importantly, it appears there is significant between-school inequities in charter schools (Wamba & Ascher, 2003).

What about the future?

Wells (1998) describes the laissez-faire nature of charter schools as providing freedom but virtually no support. “Furthermore, without additional resources targeted towards the poorest communities, charter school operators have little power to overcome existing inequalities within the large and uneven public education system”.

Wronkovich notes that charter schools may leverage broader change in the schooling system, which he believes is sorely needed:

…little substantive change has occurred in the basic structure of the public system of education in decades. The standard of 180 days of 6.5 hours each that was established at the start of the 20th century has persisted. Compartmentalised instruction based on the model of the industrial revolution is still the norm… We now teach everything from sex education to AIDS education to driver education. In many schools we provide two meals a day to children and try to cope with the many social ills they face. It is no wonder that some present day reformers have sought to escape the overburdening mandates. They see the public education system as one that has become confused about its mission (Wronkovich, 2000 pp.5-6).

However, this view begs the question of why, if broad-based school reform is needed, such an indirect route is expected to be successful. If the public sector needs reforming, why not reform it? The charter school campaigners would argue, it seems, that the public system is too bureaucratic to change, and yet allows for the possibility that this offshoot system will respond quickly to market forces.

The hopes of neo-liberal charter school supporters that they will soon lead to universal vouchers across the USA seem unlikely to be realised. Voucher schemes are not increasing in size or scope, whereas charter schools are increasing in number. The long-term effects of continued charter school growth is likely to be a schooling system which is increasingly fragmented (even more so than in the past), populated by large numbers of small, niche schools of variable quality. Not a model to be emulated by any system that cares about the overall quality of its schools, even though some of the community-based innovations are attractive.

Political views in New Zealand

When politicians talk about ‘more choice’ for parents they are either talking about some kind of voucher scheme or some kind of charter school model. Key political lessons from charter schools are that they are under-funded, when they are able to bypass collective agreements they employ a lot of unqualified teachers, and that, while there are a lot of really interesting individual schools being run by community agencies, the overall increase in innovation is minor and there is no evidence of improved educational outcomes. As well, questions of how to make charter schools properly accountable for their performance remain unanswered.

The National Party education policy does not overtly adopt a charter school model, but talks about increasing autonomy by several initiatives: bulk-funding teacher salaries (and abolishing national collective employment agreements), allowing schools which have a “reputation for excellence” to own their own property and allowing these same schools to ‘take over’ other schools.

References

Abowitz, K. K. (2002). From Public Education to Educational Publics. Clearing House, 76(1) , p. 34-38.
Bloom, I. (2003). The New Parental Rights Challenge to School Control: Has the Supreme Court Mandated School Choice? Journal of Law & Education, 32(2) , p. 139-83.
Bulkley, K., & Fisler, J. (2003). A decade of charter schools: From theory to practice. Educational Policy, 17(3), 317-342.
Clinchy, E. (1995). The Changing Nature of Our Magnet Schools. New Schools, New Communities, 11(2) , p. 47-50.
Cutter, M. (1996). City academy. Phi Delta Kappan, 78(1), 26.
Fusarelli, L. D. (2002). Charter schools: implcations for teachers and administrators. The Clearing House, 76(1), 20-25.
Garn, G. (2001). Moving from Bureaucratic to Market Accountability: The Problem of Imperfect Information. Educational Administration Quarterly, 37(4) , p. 571-99.
Henig, J. R. H., T.T.; LacirenoPaquet, N.; Moser M. (2003). Privatization, Politics, and Urban Services: The Political Behavior of Charter Schools. Journal of Urban Affairs, 25(1), 37-54.
Jones, T. H., Jr. (1998). Public School Options: Magnet and Charter Schools. School Business Affairs, 64(6) , p. 3-6,8-12.
Kennedy, M. (2002). Charter Schools: Threat or Boon to Public Schools? American School & University, 75(4) , p. 18-26.
Kozol, J. (1991). Savage Inequalities: Children in America's schools. New York: Harper Perennial.
Lacireno-Paquet, N., Holyoke, T. T., Moser, M., & Henig, J. R. (2002). Creaming versus Cropping: Charter School Enrollment Practices in Response to Market Incentives. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 24(2) , p. 145-58.
Leonard, J. (2002). The Case of the First-Year Charter School. Urban Education, 37(2) , p. 219-40.
Lubienski, C. (2003). Innovation in education markets: Theory and evidence on the impact of competition and choice in charter schools. American Educational Research Journal, 40(2), 395-443.
Premack, E. (1996). Charter schools: California's education reform 'power tool'. Phi Delta Kappan, 78(1), 60.
Sugarman, S. D. (2002). Charter School Funding Issues. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 10(34).
Thomas, D., & Borwege, K. (1996). A choice to charter. Phi Delta Kappan, 78(1), 29.
Wamba, N. G., & Ascher, C. (2003). An Examination of Charter School Equity. Education and Urban Society, 35(4) , p. 462-76.
Weiher, G. R., & Tedin, K. L. (2002). Does Choice Lead to Racially Distinctive Schools? Charter Schools and Household Preferences. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 21(1) , p. 79-92.
Wells, A. S. (1998). Charter school reform in California: Does it meet expectations? Phi Delta Kappan., 80(4), 305-313.
Wells, A. S. (1999). California's Charter Schools: Promises v. Performance. American Educator, 23(1) , p. 18-21,24,52.
Windler, W. (1996). Colorado's charter schools: A spark for change and a catalyst for reform. Phi Delta Kappan, 78(1), 66.
Wronkovich, M. (2000). Will Charter Schools Lead to a Systemic Reform of Public Education? American Secondary Education, 28(4) , p. 3-8.

Stop the evictions!

2011-12-06T14:16:00.001-08:00

"We will help the Poor to fight the Rich"

2011-12-05T00:03:00.000-08:00

At the Mana Movement's Post Electoral Hui in Otara on Sunday October 4th, newly elected President Annette Sykes declares war on poverty in Aotearoa, promising that Mana "will move this country decidedly to the Left" and that "We will help the Poor to fight the Rich".

Photos from Auckland waterfront dispute

2011-12-04T16:18:00.000-08:00

To Hell with this- Voices of Struggle from the Unite Conference

2011-12-02T13:10:00.001-08:00

Unite Union held its 2nd National Conference in early December, with over 180 organisers coming from sites as diverse as Language schools, Cinemas, Security, Hotels, Skycity Casino, Call Centres and of course, the quick service restaurants of KFC, McDonalds and Burger King. Members of Socialist Aotearoa have been active with Unite union from the start as members, delegates and organisers, and it was powerful to see such a large turn out of workers ready not just to defend, but to fight for better wages and conditions.

At a cross union panel on Where Now for the Workers Movement after the Election, the argument for workers to step up and go on the offensive won huge applause from delegates.

and there wasn't a dry eye in the house after the testimony of locked out boner Meat Leon Perns testified about the plight of the CMP Meat workers in Marton.

G.I. mass meeting rises up against Tory bureaucrats

2011-11-30T02:59:00.000-08:00

Yvonne from GI names the price-

"Old people will die alone"-

Local Unite organiser Joe Carolan- "Young workers will never have a house"-

Tory tells the people- "Sit down and be quiet"

Bureaucrat Graham goes to the Markets- PPP behind social cleansing

Evil Tory is a "Change manager"- if you want jobs and houses, you need to upskill

Evil Tory Bureaucrat Part Two

Christmas on the picketline

2011-11-30T02:47:00.000-08:00

100 Marton meatworkers look set to spend Christmas on the picketline as their employer refuses to backdown on its attack on these workers living standards. ANZCO CMP, a profitable overseas owned corporation wants a 20% pay cut from these workers and cuts to allowances

The workers have been locked out over 40 days now but are standing strong, bolstered by donations of food and money from unionists and socialists around the country as well as solid community support. The workers are also reaching out to other union members and have been joined on the picket by firefighters, meat workers from around the country and students from Wellington. The locked out union members are holding their headhigh and know that what happens in Marton will have an impact all around the country.

If the working class can get a win here against a greedy multinational then workers will be inspired to fightback all around the country for more pay and against attacks on workers' rights. As locked out worker Steve McGinity said, “We’re not just doing this for our kids, we’re doing it for all meat workers and for all kiwis who are facing attacks on their work rights.”

The CTU is also helping spread the struggle by targeting McDonald's restaurants with pickets and calling for the fast food giant to boycott ANZCO CMP meat. ANZCO are the main supplier of meat patties to McDonalds. Three year-old Tarshay Fiti, whose mother Tasha is locked, out led 100 workers on a march from mediation services down to the local McDonalds in Palmerston North. Children on the picket held signs saying “ANZCO Unhappy Meal”, “ANZCO McLockout” and “McDs can help get my dad back to work.” One of the locked out workers, a solo mother of eight Amanda Chase headed to Britain to talk at the annual conference for Unite, Britain's biggest union.

All this action is important but the key to this dispute will be the ability of workers to shut down the plant like they did in mid-November when a mass picket was organised with supporters from around the country. If this type of action can be sustained like it was in Melbourne at the Baiada chicken factory, workers can win huge gains and get a taste of their power. Workers' power. When workers win a fight it gives them the confidence to provide solidarity and assistance to other workers involved in struggle. Small fights can quickly become big struggles and then a mass workers movement can develop fighting for higher wages and a revolution against poverty now.

You can make a donation to keep these workers and their families fed. The KiwiBank account number is Name: Disputes Fund. Account number: 38-9007-0894028-08 ".

Families pledge to stay put in Glen Innes

2011-11-30T02:44:00.001-08:00

In the working class suburb of Glen Innes 160 families are preparing to resist mass evictions as Housing New Zealand (HNZ) moves to sell off huge blocks of state housing land to private developers.

The struggle has been bubbling away in Glen Innes for some months and several protests have been held but now community opposition is building as family after family pledge to stay in their homes and resist the evictions. At a public meeting held at the end of the November an action committee was formed and a march on Town Hall is being planned for 10 December to send a message to the Government and Len Brown's city council that working class families will not not be moved from their homes. During the heated meeting it was revealed that the Chairperson of the project to "redevelop" the land into private sections was also the branch President of the local National Party. Tenants shouted loudly for her resignation.

Many of the residents described to the HNZ reps what the real consequences of forcing families from their homes would be through intimidation tactics. Elderly people would be cut off from the communities they had lived and worked in all their lives. Disabled people would be further isolated from their friends and support networks. Children would be forced to move schools as families were relocated as far away as South Auckland.

Pacific communities who came in the 1970s and who have supported each other through thick and thin would be broken up and seperated from the community facilities like swimming pools and churches that they have fundraised for and looked after. One woman recounted how as a kid she had collected bottles for the swimming pool. Other residents talked about how it would break up families as people were forced into smaller accomodation losing their families homes. Maori tenants talked about being seperated from their local marae which is where they go when they are "Hungry, cold or have had their power cut off." The evictions will cut people off from their community.

During the meeting every speaker who called for civil disobedience against the evictions was given big cheers. One speaker described how residents will be foreced into high rise units, "Ghetto B", referring to the arbitrary division of the community into "A" zone which will be privatised and "B" zone which will be overcrowded and underresourced.

When state houses were originally built they were designed to be "Homes fit for Cabinet Ministers" in keeping with the egalitarian aims of the 1935 first Labour Government of Michael Joseph Savage. These homes were built with kitchens in the east so the hard working people of Aotearoa could wake with the sun on their face. Soldiers coming home from war were given these houses and told they could live there for as long as they wanted. Some of those old soldiers are sstill living in their home, like the partner of housing activist Sue Henry.

Other speakers discussed the National Party's plan to roll these privatisation plans out around Auckland and that they had Mangere in their sights next. Mangere, we heard, is already rolling, getting organised to fight the evictions too. Local residents who were also members of the State Housing Action Coalition formed to fight evictions in the 1990s talked about the need for unity, direct action and not to trust the HNZ bureaucrats.

Mana Movement activist John Minto pledged his support to the meeting and called for a march to bring the issues of housing to national attention. This was agreed to and is planned for Saturday 10 December, meeting at 12noon at Britomart, in Auckland CBD. Join the resistance. March against the evictions and let's together save Auckland's communities from privatisation.

Email aksocialistaotearoa@gmail.com to get involved.

Anti-Capitalist Summer Special

2011-11-30T02:37:00.000-08:00

Kauaeranga valley, Coromandel: On November 28, just two days after the general election in the beautiful, native forest covered valleys of the Coromandel peninsula resistance to John Key's new National Government and the corporate plunderers they bring with them was already beginning.

50 locals, Coromandel Watchdog and Green MP Catherine Delahunty escort from the valley of waterfalls, walking tracks and mountainbike trails, surveyors from gold mining giant Newmont.

Coromandel Watchdog co-ordinator Renee Annan told the media, “The public needs to know that the mining companies are still intent on mining Schedule Four land and that despite the victory in 2010, exploration activities cannot be legally stopped on this land. That is why we are taking non-violent direct action. Today's peaceful protest is just the first of many unless Newmont leave our area.”

Despite the election of a right wing Government the massive swing to the Greens and the rise of the Mana Movement show that hundreds of thousands of people are uncomfortable with the snowballing ecological destruction, the increasing wealth of the richest 1% and the unchecked power of corporations to pollute and exploit in John Key's "Brighter Future".

National plan to allow more deep sea oil drilling, more fracking, more carbon emmissions, more coal and gold mining, more road building and more urban sprawl. The clean, green New Zealand is becoming a country of oil spills, habitat destruction and smog ridden urban skylines. Just like the residents of the Kauaeranga valley there will be thousands of people prepared to get involved in campaigns and struggles to defend our environment - urban, rural and wilderness. These people will be Maori and Pakeha, from small towns and big cities, students and workers. United against a Government and the capitalist system that treats our whenua as an unlimited resource and our tangaroa as an infinite garbage can.

This new environmental movement has the potential to bring down the Government, pointing out to ordinary farmers and workers how the big business interests that control National are eating our future by despoiling the planet. Corporate capitalism is incompatible with planet earth. People and planet before profit. We need a revolution against the polluters.

Plus: Articles on Election '11, Marton lock out, Glen Innes housing struggle, Egyptian revolution and the radicalisation of hiphop.

Download the full Anti-capitalist here.

Immortal Technique comes to Auckland

2011-11-29T16:53:00.000-08:00

IMMORTAL TECHNIQUE with special guests Akir & Poison Pen and local support from DJ Substance on Friday 20th January at The Studio, Karangahape rd.

After many attempts over the years, Immortal Technique will finally bring his raw political commentary to New Zealand in January 2012.

Born in a military hospital in Peru, Immortal Technique moved to Harlem, New York with his family in the early 80's. Here, he became captivated with Hip Hop culture, writing graffiti and discovering his passion for rhyming. After some trouble with the law, he spent a year in prison, where he began to prolifically write down his ideas about what he had lived and seen in the struggle of New York and his visits back to his native land. On parole, he attended political science classes while selling his music on the streets. During this time he built his reputation as a ferocious battle emcee, winning numerous freestyle rap competitions in the underground hip hop scene.

In 2001, Tech released his debut album “Revolutionary Vol. 1” which was completely self-funded by his rap battle triumphs. In 2002 The Source magazine featured him in their “Unsigned Hype” column. The following year, he released “Revolutionary Vol. 2” and became the only unsigned rapper to feature in The Source’s “Hip Hop Quotable” column for his song “Industrial Revolution”. In 2008 Tech paired up with DJ Green Lantern to release “The 3rd World” – Urb magazine gave it 4 out of 5 stars and XXL magazine termed it ”Pure, unadulterated rebel music”.

Over his career, Technique has worked with the likes of Mos Def, Chuck D & Public Enemy, KRS-One, Brother Ali, Ill Bill, and more recently featured on the title track of Pharoahe Monch’s latest album.

Released as a free download, Techniques latest project, “The Martyr” boasts a stellar line-up of collaborations which includes Dead Prez, Styles P, Vinnie Paz, Joell Ortiz, Mela Machinko and Professor Cornell West, with production credits byTech himself, DJ Green Lantern, Southpaw and the late J Dilla.

A cross between Che Guevara, Chuck D and Fela Kuti, his lyrics focus on controversial issues in global politics. The views expressed are predominantly commentary on issues such as class struggle, poverty, religion, government and institutional racism. He has donated his time and influence to many causes, including building an orphanage in Afghanistan, and more recently has been a vocal part in the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Joining Immortal Technique on his Australian/NZ tour are his partners-in-rhyme, Akir and Poison Pen. Tech’s label mate, Akir (acronym for Always Keep it Real) is a producer and songwriter known for his complex lyrics and social-political content. The Brooklyn born and raised, son of a preacher man, Poison Pen is one of the founding members of the rap indie click Stronghold, alongside Breez Evaflowin’, C Rayz Walz and Immortal Technique.

The (R)evolution of Immortal Technique (Official Trailer)

www.viperrecords.com :: www.twitter.com/immortaltech

But will they vote? A Marxist analysis of Election '11

2011-11-29T01:23:00.000-08:00

On Sunday morning the left woke up with its biggest headache in three years. Although we all expected Key to be re-elected, the shock of his victory along with wins for the right in Epsom, Ohariu Belmont, Auckland Central and Waitakere were gutting. Added to this the modest vote for Mana at 1% alongside the disappointing showing of many of the candidates, including Bradford and Minto, made the defeat even more painful.

But below the surface appearance of the next Parliament, with its tiny majority for National-Act-United Future and Maori Party are some interesting trends. These are the numbers behind the numbers that activists should understand.

The numbers behind the numbers
"A million eligible New Zealanders did not bother to vote in Saturday's election, producing the lowest turnout in percentage terms in 120 years. Turnout dropped by just over 90,000, from 79.5 per cent of those on the rolls in 2008 to 73.8 per cent." This must be influenced by the fact that 100,000 New Zealanders have left for Australia in the last three years as well as by increased depoliticisation.

If special votes fall on the same lines as the votes did on election night there will be an 84,000 vote swing against National, Act, Maori and United Future parties. Government parties lost 7% of their votes 2008-2011, although a 0.6% swing to centre right parties overall. A modest swing against the Government and a swing against the centre left.

Voter turnout went up in all South Auckland Labour held seats. e.g. Mangere up 2406 voters. The increased voter turnout went to Labour. The $15hr message and No Asset Sales did turnout the working class (Pacific/Pakeha/Asian) vote for Labour. This increased left vote in South Auckland will only go up again in 2014 as youth rates and energy privatisation kicks in. Labour held up its party vote better in areas where it has an electoral machine (capacity to doorknock, phonebank, process information and ferry the vote on election day). However the Labour vote has been decimated by emigration to Australia and the Christchurch earthquake. centre-left strongholds all saw huge drops in voter turnout: Wellington Central -4365, Mt Roskill -2021, Hutt South -897, Christchurch East -6390, Dunedin North -3080.

Green Party eroded both Labour and National support in the middle class and tipped over 10%. This is clear from the affluent, liberal suburb of North Shore, where support for National/Act and Labour is down and the Greens will be up 1000+ votes (after specials come in). Greens also continue to do well in the inner-city, suburban seats where they are beginning to look likely to overtaking the Labour vote.

Much more tactical voting on the right and the left in electorate seats sees Epsom retained by Banks, Ohairu by Dunne, Labour retake West Coast and cut into National's majorities in Auckland Central and Waitakere.

The Conservative Party is a dead duck at the moment. The Christian right, focused in the bible belt of Rodney, is not yet strong enough to be a national electoral force even with the war-chest of Colin Craig. It may yet merge with Act. Act has essentially been wiped out and already Banks is floating the idea of rebranding Act and merging it with the Conservatives.

NZ First voters were its traditional Grey Power support base as well as probably a section of Labour voters who thought if NZ First could hurdle the 5% buffer, Key would lose his majority. This seems to be confirmed by the surge in the polls that NZ First rode on the backs of the Nats dipping. The mobilisation of the elderly is interesting. They could prove a political roadblock to attacks on the welfare state. The rapid growth of Grey Power in the early 1990s came as they organised protests against hospital closures, attacks on superannuation and privatisations.

Voter turnout huge drop in Maori seats 2008-2011: 3034 in Te Tai Tokerau, 3157 in Waiariki, 3471 in Waikato, 3647 in Ikaroa Rawhiti, 3934 in Te Tai Haurauru, 4520 in Tamaki Makaurau, 5264 in Te Tai Tonga. The stronger the Mana candidate, the higher Maori voter turnout in general. Mana came from nowhere to come second in two Maori electorates. Sykes put in the best performance and will likely trounce Flavell in 2014.

Mana's party vote outside the Maori roll was tiny. However its strongest showing outside the modest South Auckland vote it received was amongst radical students and intellectuals, Dunedin North 150, Auckland Central 184, Wellington Central 175. 154 in lefty liberal Mt Albert, home of Unite Union's HQ and encompassing Western Springs and Kingsland. It did not get more than a tiny few of the working class vote. Mana failed to create an identity that broke out of the Maori world. This must change before Mana will broaden its appeal.

Mana
It is clear that the declining level of struggle in Maoridom has adversely affected the Mana vote. Mana did well in Waiariki and Tamaki Makaurau, both places engaged in struggle with the Government in the last three years. Waiariki against the terror charges laid against Tuhoe and Tamaki Makaurau for Maori seats on the Supercity. The highpoint of Maori struggle was the 2004 movement against the FS&SB Act and as this struggle has gone into decline there has been a corresponding drop in political militancy and activism amongst Maori.

This drop could not be reversed in the six months Mana had between the Te Tai Tokerau by-election and the general election. It can be reversed in the next three years. A radicalisation of Maori against deep sea oil drilling, mining, climate change and for the return of stolen land could take place and mass struggles could give well to significant gains for working class Maori and Pakeha.

Let’s look at five good parts and five bad parts of the Mana campaign.

Negatives
1. No central party campaign co-ordination. Branches like Auckland central fell apart. Candidate selection took too long. No central media message and volunteers and activists were not integrated well into a larger campaign and message. Campaigning was often focused around high-profile candidates and not around the party vote. For example in the South and West Auckland. This is counter-intuitive under MMP.
2. No vote machine in electorates. Labour have a sophisticated apparatus for collecting and gathering votes based on door knocking, phone canvassing and getting identified supporters to the polls. We need a similar machine if we seek to displace them in working class areas.
3. Too much Maori branding in general seats cost votes as people saw us as another Maori party. Tino rangatiratanga billboards, te reo leaflets are not necessary for people to know we believe in tino rangatiratanga. We needed branding that cut across the whole class.
4. Little relationship to local issues. In contrast with the Greens which took their rivers message around the country, Mana often failed to gain traction in urban areas as promoted policy existed at an abstract level from peoples lives, i.e. the financial transactions tax.
5. Not enough candidates. Candidates in every area could have significantly lifted the profile of our campaign. These should be chosen two years in advance so they can begin the process of weaving together local organisation and profile.

Positives
1. Gave left wing ideas a national hearing on billboards and in the media.
2. Shows significant appetite in Maoridom for a radical party.
3. Annette Sykes. She will win in 2014 easily.
4. Hone’s win. The North voted for revolution.
5. 1% isn’t nothing. It takes a while to build a party. 1% is decent, it’s a start that we have to use to get up to 3% by 2014.

For those who do not believe that 1% is a viable base to work from, they should consider the experience of the left in Ireland and in particular of SWP activist Richard Boyd Barrett who is now a sitting MP for the United Left Alliance in the Irish Parliament. Minto got a lowly 1.7% of the vote on his first run in Manukau East but it is now clear that Labour will deselect the invisible man before 2014. This is a good win for Minto and Mana but we must continue to deepen roots into the community.

Richard Boyd Barrett's electoral history

The increases in Richard’s votes came through ten long hard years of campaigning in the community and winning the respect, trust and then support of thousands of people.

2012-2013 - A campaign for Auckland
In Auckland our struggle will be to reach out to the thousands of Pasifika, Pakeha and Asian workers who liked our message but weren’t ready to break with Labour. Mana turned the language of socialism into the Tax the rich, Feed the kids and Abolish GST. We talked about a higher minimum wage, building more state houses and getting the parasites of poverty out of the hood.

But the collapse of strong Maori protest movements, militant trade unionism, beneficiary action or other forms of community organising did not stop at the ballot box. Only 1% voted for the Mana revolution and that tells us that only 1% are ready for revolution. We have to expand our influence and the numbers of people committed to the struggle for socialism here in Auckland. The only way we can do that is by involving people in local struggles that they can win and from there drawing out the connection with general ideas. In the English city of Liverpool in the 1980s as one of the original gangsters of neo-liberalism Margaret Thatcher commenced the first round of attacks on the post-war welfare consensus, a left wing city council kept the flame of socialism alive in their city.

Tony Mulhearn, one of the '47' Liverpool councillors from 1983 to 1987 described how they defied Thatcher 20 years ago.

"Liverpool showed how Marxists can link directly with working-class people on a clear set of socialist principles. Militant supporters linked up to the aspirations of the working class - a decent job, a decent wage, a decent house, a decent pension - basically what's required to lead a civilised life.

Then we campaigned to meet these aspirations. We translated socialism into the language of jobs, housing, and social services. We were elected in 1983, increased our majority in 1984 on these policies and implemented them.

We started more apprentices in our four years than had been started in the previous 40 years. We built more houses than all other councils in our time in office.”

With the Auckland Council under a centre-left administration we have a chance to push for the council to build council houses, fund more public transport works like the inner city loop through a tax on corporations and implement the breakfasts in schools policy.

A struggle here in Auckland around those three priorities will strengthen the Mana Movement politically and lead into standing a slate of candidates at the local level of city politics- community boards and endorsing councillors in the 2013 elections. Struggles at a local level over the next few years will feed into a larger campaign for Mana in 2014.

2014 Displacing the Maori Party, Making wider gains Electorally
The opportunity in 2014 will be to make gains electorally for Mana. This will involve standing strong candidates in the three Maori electorates where sitting MPs are stepping down. Tariana Turia, Parekura Horomia, Pita Sharples are all gone burgers. Mana will be in a good position to challenge and win these seats and we should support these challenges. Annette Sykes will also be well positioned to win Waiariki and thus destroy the Maori Party as a political force.

The campaign for these seats will have to begin early next year and not let up until 2014. It will mean detailed, well organised campaigning in the Maori seats.

2014 will also be a chance to increase the party vote for Mana. If Mana received 20,000 party votes in 2011 we need to aim to triple that vote to 60,000 votes in 2014. There are three places where Mana can win these extra 40,000 votes. Through the union movement, the student movement and in low income communities amongst non-voters. These are the three groups that will go into a struggle against the new National Government, against capitalism and the bosses.

Socialist Aotearoa will also seek to build a new movement in the unions through Mana Kaimahi Network by encouraging union activists who support Mana’s war on poverty to up the ante in their workplaces, calling for a wave of strikes in the new year for $15hr and a 5% wage increase.
In the community we need to support the struggles around state housing especially in GI. When land occupations break out we need to be there to support them.

We also need to focus on building out the strength of the revolutionary organisation. In a revolutionary organisation there are no rank’n’file members. Everyone should be a leader. We need to broaden our reach into the community, workplaces and universities. More good quality journalism, analysis and reviews going onto the blog makes it easier to get out Anti-Capitalist's quicker. We can use the Anti-Capitalist to link up the struggles, radicalise thousands and educate new activists who will come into the movement.

The election was just the beginning for the Mana Movement and a class analysis of the election results creates a much clearer understanding of the situation in the political New Zealand that allows activists to survive Key's re-election and capitalist dominance and avoid the despondency which has settled over a section of the left.

-Socialist Aotearoa

Beyond the beginning...

2011-11-24T18:08:00.000-08:00

As the economic crisis deepens globally the ruling class continues to push its austerity agenda. On every continent the class struggle grinds on but it is clear that this is just the beginning of a major depression and a major shift in global politics. Globally the picture is mixed. In Egypt a second revolution, this time against the military government, is unfolding in Tahrir square but in Syria the bloody suppression of democracy protests has quickly created a situation of revolutionary civil war. In the UK and Portugal general strikes this month are planned against austerity attacks and could derail the cuts to workers living standards but in Greece, Spain and Italy administrations promising more pain for working people have taken control forcing millions of European workers, students and youth to increase the militancy and combativity of their protests and strikes.

In the US the Occupy movement appears to be losing traction in city squares as local authorities brutally evict many of the camps including Occupy Wall Street. Yet it is deepening its roots in campuses across America as students lead high-profile university occupations against fee increases and the neo-liberalisation of education. Some 120 US universities have seen protests thus far this Autumn/Winter. The Winter may see a slight lull in protests in America, but Adbusters are promising to lead a "full spectrum counter-attack" in the northern Spring that could create the stage for the weakening of corporate control over politics in the US, especially the 2012 election.

The elections and beyond

In Aotearoa the election results will set the tempo for the next phase of the struggle. A small swing away from National and the death of Act with the right losing seats like Auckland Central, Ohariu-Belmont and Waitakere seems likely. The Greens have made significant inroads into middle class votes and a high poll result for them will show that increasing numbers of university educated liberals are uncomfortable with the direction of Key's government. Undoubtedly the Greens are also cashing in on being the favoured party for students for the last decade as they reshape their image around the values of young socially conscious graduates, green jobs, the environment and alleviating poverty. Since the death of the Alliance as a parliamentary force in 2002, a significant chunk of the anti-capitalist left has supported the Green Party but the Green Party's center of balance is shifting towards parliament and away from the movements it originated from. This shift, reflected in the party list, will see it intellectually and politically unequipped to lead the kind of anti-war, social justice and environmental campaigns that MPs like Sue Bradford, Keith Locke or Nandor Tanscoz have in the past, such as against the war in Iraq or against youth pay rates.

The rise of the Mana Movement, as a Maori inspired, anti-capitalist political force backed by swelling numbers of iwi, environmentalists, workers, socialists, union organisers and students and intellectuals is an amazing development. It has brought to the center of political debate left wing ideas from the Robin Hood Tax to the call for full employment and from free breakfasts for school kids to opening our borders to our Pasifika neighbours. It is a new left party. Even if it receives a modest vote on Saturday it will be large and strong enough to operate as an activist movement able to help working people win struggles like the emerging fights over housing in Glen Innes and Lower Hutt and the struggle in Marton over paycuts being forced on meatworkers through a lockout. United action like last Thursday's mass picket of the Marton meatworks can shutdown a factory and if this action can be sustained like it was in Melbourne at the Baiada chicken factory, workers can win huge gains and get a taste of their power. Benefit cuts, youth rates, deep sea oil drilling and the privatisation of energy companies will provoke wider protests and in early 2012 the left should mobilise as a united front to defeat all of these attacks on Aotearoa.

With growing unemployment, stagnating wages and taking an incremental approach to attacks on the environment, Maori and public services the right will be hoping that their next three years in office allows them to increase corporate power and wealth without sparking a major fightback that bloodies its nose like it has over National Standards or too many set piece confrontations like it did over mining National Parks and lost. Strengthening Mana as an activist organisation will be a key task for the left after the election.

One of the most inspiring things about the generally dull election this year has been the radicalisation of hiphop culture. The release of Home Brew and Tourettes's track Listen to us, the mobilisation of Maori voters by Young Sid and the release of Genocide's anthem Stand Up for Mana show that the mood is shifting amongst youth. John Key's Government isn't just passively disliked but now actively hated and campaigned against by the organic intellectuals of the young, poor and the restless. The aggressive and racist tactics of the New Zealand police towards first Tiki Taane in Tauranga and just recently Scribe in Wellington for freestyling an anti-police rap is illustrative of the arbitrary and discriminatory nature of New Zealand's justice system where young Maori and Polynesian men are targeted and profiled by an aggressive police force disconnected with the communities they operate in.

Maybe the clearest sign that hiphop is on the move is the standing of activist rapper Jayson Gardiner in Tauranga. His latest track clearly shows the potential of Mana to bring radical, anti-capitalist, pro-Maori, working class politics to young people around the country. Gardiner, coming from the site of the Rena grounding and an area of New Zealand with high youth unemployment may quickly emerge as the voice of a restless generation revolution that won't pay for the crisis and can't wait for change. If the hiphop generation in Mana follows their comrades overseas into becoming generation revolution then it will cause shockwaves across Aotearoa and inspire youth in our Pacific neighbours like Fiji, Tonga and the Solomon Islands to rise up as well.

Workers' movement

With rebellion brewing in many worksites around the country the potential for a hot Summer of stopworks and strikes against the Government and capitalists is latent in the anti-capitalist winds blowing across the world. Unions have overwhelmingly taken a cautious approach to confronting the first term National Government, especially after the lockout of actors involved in the Hobbit debacle immediately following the October 2010 mobilisation against attacks in workers rights. With steadily declining membership, a result of a more assertive employing class, the loss of manufacturing jobs and an inability to win key disputes (Skycity, Open country, Telecom) unions will have to come out of this election swinging and push hard to re-organise workers, link up disputes over wages and conditions and stamp out the rot and inertia which has crept into the internal culture of many unions. A wage push in early 2012 for at least a 5% wage increase for every worker is a reasonable demand. MPs have just scored a 5% wage increase at the same time as workers are expected to tighten their belts (bosses last year got an average pay increase of 14%). A wave of action linked together around wages would strengthen unions democratic culture, re-activate activist networks within and between unions and turn around the membership decline of unions.

The importance of improving wages to improving the overall economic situation for working people is clear from the statistical data,

Wages are very important. Almost three-quarters (74 percent) of average household income in 2011 was from wages and salaries. Wages and salaries are the main way the great majority of New Zealanders get to share the income this country generates. Unfair wages and salaries contribute to the highly unfair levels of income inequality that have grown in this country over the last two to three decades. We have far too many children living in poverty – a quarter of them or 270,000 by one measure – and two in five are from households where at least one adult is in full-time employment

Beyond the political parties talk of reducing inequality or getting children out of poverty, New Zealand workers will continue to see their overall standard of living deteriorate if there is too little action by workers on wages. If unions do lead a push on wages, it will also provide an early opportunity under the next term of a Key Government (which looks very likely) for Mana to pick up support from workers, especially younger workers coming into the workforce or older workers, particularly non-voters, who once involved in collective action against bosses will see the need for political as well as industrial action by working people. Workers cannot wait for the next Labour government to see wages improve, we have to fight now.

A wave of strikes for a living wage and 5% across the board that strengthens unions, alongside an insurgent Mana Movement whose leader Hone Harawira called today in south Auckland for a revolution against poverty to begin right now, could put Key on the backfoot forced to concede a living wage of $15hr minimum by April and lift the virtual pay freeze in the public sector. This in turn would make it easy for private sector unions to break through in negotiations with their employers and make significant wage gains. Unions must be at the heart of any revolution against poverty if it to succeed.

Return of revolution

The return of global revolution, student occupations, riots and general strikes opens up new possibilities for the socialist left to push back against capitalists in our workplaces, universities, schools and communities. Election '11 marks the end of the beginning for the Mana Movement and an opening of a new phase of struggle that will require resistance in the streets as well as in Parliament to the austerity attacks. With capitalism in deep crisis, war on every continent, and snowballing ecological collapse there will be a need to not only resist the system but also to educate and illustrate the necessity of revolution and socialism- here in Aotearoa and globally. The bosses have money, the police and the media but the left, the workers and the resistance to capitalism have the ideas that can inspire billions worldwide. The idea that we need a socialist revolution from below led by workers, students and the unemployed to take back power needs to be spread everyday and everywhere. Ideas are a catalyst for action and the fuel of revolution. We know we have the ideas and the principles that can change the world. We know how to fight now to win what people need now. We must take these ideas to millions of people who are thirsting for a better tomorrow beyond capitalism, ecological destruction and imperialism. We can refuse their planet of slums and inspire a planet of revolution. We can create a Socialist Aotearoa.

-Socialist Aotearoa

"Workers of Egypt. Rise up for the victory of the revolution"

2011-11-23T00:28:00.000-08:00

Army officer greeted by crowds. He leads the chants "down with the Scaf"

Nearly a year into our glorious revolution, the regime of oppression and corruption led by the SCAF has not ceased to impose itself by force, attempting to erase traces of the revolution and to prevent the impoverished, toiling masses from reaping the fruits of their great struggle.

The regime of repression that is protected by the military had imagined that the revolution was buried and ended, and that the people that rose up last January and destroyed the massive machines of oppression would today submit in the face of tear gas canisters, cartridges and live ammunition.

The multitude now facing death in the name of rescuing the revolution, in confronting remnants of the criminal regime shall triumph as they have triumphed before. And the tools of oppression that were smashed on 28th January will be destroyed anew at the will of the revolutionaries.

The regime has proven beyond a doubt that it is but a deformed continuation of Mubarak's obsolete rule. Our reclamation of those companies stolen by privatizationunder Mubarak's rule is being resisted by the regime today. Those privileges endowed by Mubarak on the elite class of investors continue to be protected by the military regime. The minimum wage that workers called for in the name of a dignified life is being circumvented by Mubarak’s loyalists.

The cold-blooded murder of revolutionaries at the hands of Mubarak's butchers continues with patent debauchery at the hands of the military rulers. Workers stepped forward last February to rescue the revolution, as labor strikes spread to all corners of Egypt to support the uprising, setting Cairo, Mahalla, Suez and Alexandria ablaze; workers in all of Egypt's governorates and its factories and institutions both public and private committed to the struggle.

The dictator was forced to step down when workers’ strikes paralyzed the joints of the regime and threatened its collapse, the regime chose to rescue itself by sacrificing its head. Today the revolution will not be cheated once again and will not be pacified with sedatives. The working class that delivered the revolution to victory in February will not be late to rescue the heroes of the revolution that today hold their ground steadfastly in the face of the regime of corruption and repression.

The companies occupied in January workers will return to occupy soon again and the workers that made their way to the squares of Tahrir, el-Shoun and el-Arba' in will go there once more; the working class will reawaken with their heroic struggle to erase — at the side of the revolutionaries — the remnants of Mubarak'sregime and build a revolutionary path on the basis of justice and freedom.

The Revolutionary Socialists, Egypt

21 November 2011

"Rebellious Comrades"- State of the Nation- Hone's speech to Mana

2011-11-22T19:25:00.000-08:00

Hone Harawira delivers the State of the Nation speech in Mangere, on behalf of the Mana Movement.

Introduction

Being here at Kia Maia for MANA’s State of the Nation address recalls a relationship forged 75 years ago between Ratana and Labour, when Tahupotiki Wiremu Ratana and Michael Joseph Savage charted a path to give succour to te pani me te rawakore – the poor and the dispossessed.

Back then NZ was coming out of the Great Depression – times were tough, Maori and the poor had suffered hugely, and the state responded with job creation schemes, state housing programmes, a quality education system and solid healthcare programmes built by Savage, and endorsed by Ratana.

And underpinning everything was a call to honour the Treaty of Waitangi to bring equality between Maori and Pakeha.

That Ratana / Labour alliance continued right up until the 1980’s when Labour launched an asset sales programme which led to massive employment, gave tax breaks to the rich and increased taxation on the poor with the introduction of GST.

Labour’s economic policy of the time was called Rogernomics. Its leader was Roger Douglas and one of its greatest cheerleaders was Phil Goff.

Ever since then Maori have struggled, the Ratana / Labour alliance has fallen away and today Labour holds only 2 of seven Maori seats.

National’s philosophy of helping the rich get richer at the expense of the poor, and of using blatant racism to promote its legislative agenda, has had an even greater impact on our society.

Rob Muldoon was notorious for a racist arrogance which gave birth to land occupations at Bastion Point and Raglan from where MANA drew two of its candidates, Kereama Pene and Angeline Greensill, and the Springbok Tour protests led by MANA’s John Minto.

Muldoon was followed by Jim Bolger under whom the nation was burdened with the “Mother of all Budgets”, a vicious attack on the foundations of the welfare state that led to the privatisation of our health system, the commercialisation of our housing sector, and the reneging on promises in superannuation and education.

Bolger’s term saw MANA’s Waitakere candidate Sue Bradford arrested on numerous occasions for fighting for the rights of beneficiaries, and MANA’s Waiariki candidate Annette Sykes accused of sedition for daring to challenge the state.

WHY MANA

And that’s why I am proud to be part of MANA’s leadership team … because I stand alongside people who are heroes in the struggle for Maori rights, for human rights and for the rights of Pacifica, of workers, beneficiaries and the poor; I share the stage with people who have stood against both National and Labour governments’ attacks on the marginalised and the defenseless.

And if ever the country needed a movement to redress the devastation caused by 25 years of free-market economics under both Labour and the current right-wing government of National, ACT and the Maori Party, then now is the time and MANA is the team.

The country is crying out for a new direction, a direction away from the broken belief that the market will provide, and that capitalism will lift us from the quagmire of destitution, and the facts are simple – 25 years of prancing down the capitalist road has given us staggering levels of unemployment, third world diseases in communities of the poor, huge increases in the price of food, electricity and petrol, an ever more costly health system, and an education system designed to keep the poor from ever achieving success.

AROHA AND AUSTRALIA

One option for many Maori and the poor is to skip the ditch to Australia – 100,000 Kiwis have given up on NZ and gone to Oz in the last 3 years alone in search of a decent days wage for a decent days work.

And nothing quite reflects this trend like the story of Norman Kirk and a young Maori boy walking hand in hand at Waitangi in 1973, an image that remains imbedded in the minds of those old enough to remember, and then seeing John Key trying to recapture that aura by strolling through Waitangi with Aroha Ireland in 2008, after first meeting her at an election photo opportunity at McGehan Close, a poor neighbourhood in Mt Albert.

Aroha’s story is a typical one – not long after the photo shoot she was kicked out of school, spent time in CYFS care, and left the country because New Zealand offered her nothing and because more opportunities existed for her in Australia – a scenario too many of our whanau have become accustomed to.

The root cause of this exodus is the failure of successive governments to deal with the issue of poverty and the growing gap between the rich and the poor, particularly ironic given that the English came here to escape the pain of poverty and sent their convicts to Australia … and now we’re running away to Australia and those who stay are increasingly more likely to wind up in the new jails being built every year to house the poor and the oppressed.

THE STATE OF THE NATION

And that is the primary issue that defines the State of the Nation today – poverty – which is at record levels right now – at exactly the same time that the rich are experiencing record levels of wealth; when the top 1% has more wealth than the bottom 50%; where the gap between the rich and the poor is worse than in most developed countries; where poverty has become the norm for much of the country; and where we have 270,000 children going hungry every day, suffering from bad health, and picking up diseases that we thought only existed in the third world.

Let’s just take a moment to think about that statistic – 270,000 kids living in poverty, right here in Aotearoa. How many of you thought you would ever hear those words spoken about how NZ treats its children? What has gone wrong with this country’s consciousness, with our sense of right and wrong, with the moral obligation that says we will ensure that future generations are provided with better opportunities than we had?

I am sure that many people tuned into TV3’s documentary “Inside Child Poverty” last night, and I congratulate the producers of the show for forcing us to confront our ugly reality; I thank the Child Action Poverty Group for their efforts in bringing this reality into our living rooms; I feel for young Mathias who has to go to hospital every few months for an illness that could have been prevented; I struggle to accept that in this land of milk and honey one in every five kids lives in poverty; and I find it hard to believe that in a land of such wealth, NZ has the third worst child health statistics in the OECD after Mexico and Turkey.

But the truth is that successive governments since the mid-80s have driven us down the path of selfishness, where those in power have been preoccupied with chasing the dollar and ignoring the pain.

And this election campaign itself has been highlighted by a refusal to accept the reality of child poverty in our homeland, promises of an economic turnaround that nobody believes, and a media show about a meaningless cup of tea in Epsom; when our focus and attention should be on our countries inability to deal with the fact that 270,000 of our children are going without proper food every day.

MANA doesn’t have all the answers – not by a long shot – but we are committed to putting forward policies that help the poor, putting an end to policies that enrich the wealthy, and if necessary mobilising the people to fight for an end to poverty in Aotearoa.

We need to stop tinkering around the edges, and we need wholesale and radical change or we will continue to lose generations of talented NZers to Australia and beyond.

We need to look to progressive countries like Sweden for models, we need to work with the Child Poverty Action Group to create solutions and we need to look to our history for answers to our problems, because the user pays model has failed us miserably and those who have suffered most have been the children of the poor.

CROSS PARTY ACTION

MANA takes the view that the most important issue of this election is poverty, and in particular child poverty. The poor need help – not excuses, not belated promises, but action – now – and we will work with anyone to address this issue.

And we don’t care who claims they’ve said it first, we don’t care who says they’ve got the best policies and we don’t care who wants to be the lead speaker – this goes deeper than political posturing and the hope of securing a few votes here and there.

We need to park our politics at the door, commit to listening to the experts like CPAG, and we need to agree upon a course of action that delivers immediate and positive change for the children of the poor.

We need a formal commitment to a plan to eradicate poverty and we need to work together on legislative change regardless of who the government might be.

We need to commit to doing something now – not next month, not next year – but now, before poverty becomes normalised in our lives.

The world is in deep trouble with the European economy on the edge and America struggling to repay its debts, and unless the world switches on to a financial transaction tax to lessen the pressure on the poor, we are going to be staring a full-blown global recession in the face where poverty will become a way of life for even more of our people.

And having allowed ourselves to be locked into the global economy without safeguards, we need to accept that when economies start going down the toilet, nobody is going to care about our exports or about our economy or about our people – it will be literally every man for himself.

That’s why we need to act now, and we need to act together to push through the policies that will turn our economy around to cater for those in need, before those in need join their rebellious comrades in wreaking havoc around the world right now.

Failure to act is simply not an option. We call on all those who profess a love for our country to join with us in a war on poverty before it’s too late.

MANA’S PLAN TO ERADICATE POVERTY

But it’s one thing to identify the problem; it’s another to offer solutions. MANA’s policies are geared towards eradicating poverty, and here is our plan to improve the nation.

Cost of living

1 Abolish GST to ease the financial pressure on those on low incomes

2 Get rid of pokies, loan sharks, and liquor outlets in poor communities

Education

3 A free high quality education system because that is the best investment a country can make in it’s future

4 Free meals for children at schools because every child deserves the opportunity to learn and to start the day with a decent meal regardless of their circumstances

Employment

5 Provide jobs for everyone on the unemployment register – in schools, marae, hospitals, old peoples homes, kaumatua and kuia flats and community facilities – because a working family is a better family

Income

6 Increase the minimum wage to $15 to put more money into the hands of workers and more money back into the economy

7 Make the first $27,000 tax-free to give people more money for the basics in life such as food, power, petrol and rent

Housing

8 Commit to building 20,000 new state houses to reduce overcrowding and health problems, and to provide the basis for thousands of apprenticeships and jobs in all of the building trades

9 Set state rentals at 25% of a family’s income

Health

10 Free healthcare for all because paying to keep a nation healthy is cheaper than paying to fix a population suffering the many illnesses of poverty

There are other ideas but this package would immediately reduce the level of poverty by increasing incomes, reducing prices, and providing people with jobs and homes.

PAYING THE BILL

Our ideas aren’t rocket science, and we can pay for them with a simple savings and tax plan – saving money by giving no more tax cuts to the rich, no more tax breaks for big business, no more bailouts for failed finance companies, cancelling the construction of new prisons, no more subsidies for private schools, and no more public monies on millionaire yacht races – and a simple taxation plan based on the Hone Heke Tax, a real Capital Gains Tax, an Inheritance Tax, and a Progressive Income Tax.

CONCLUSION

I began this address by talking about the alliance between Labour and Ratana and the bond they formed to serve their people. Today, we face an almost identical set of circumstances. We are in a financial storm that threatens to get worse before it will get better. We have an ever-growing population of poor people in desperate need of employment, housing, education and health.

Ratana and Savage’s foresight saw a new dawn in the politics of this country – the creation of the welfare state and a set of priorities that ensured that those less fortunate did not go without; a revolution that protected those on the very edges of society.

Today we need another revolution – one where people give a damn about the 270,000 kids who aren’t getting enough to eat every day; where society commits to housing those living in inadequate and overcrowded housing; where we find the money to put everyone into work; and where we pass legislation to eradicate poverty.

We need to turn our priorities on their head, and reorder our world to put our people before profit and our children before everything.

This Saturday voters will have an opportunity to back a party who have identified eradication of poverty as a primary goal, of voting for a party that chooses to walk away from the same-old way of doing politics, of choosing a party of activist leaders with the best record of all candidates in stepping up to the plate in defence of the poor and the defenceless, and of supporting a party like we haven’t seen since the Labour Party of the 1930’s.

MANA has no other agenda except the restoration of Maori rights, Pacifca rights, human dignity and reaffirmation of the rights of the workers and the poor.

We wish all candidates well over the next few days, but in particular we wish a new world for te pani me te rawakore, where everyone’s mokopuna can grow up in a world that is a far better one than we live in today.

From Occupy Wall St to Occupy Everywhere

2011-11-22T15:38:00.000-08:00

As movement grows so does the repression

Past week has been challenging and invigorating for the Occupy Wall Street movement. On Tuesday morning protesters were evicted from Zuccotti Park, on Thursday over 30,000 people marched over the Brooklyn Bridge. From New York mayor Mike Bloomberg’s attempted death blow, to a resounding “hell no!” This Sunday I was outside Bloomberg’s residence on the Upper East Manhattan (no, not where the poor live) taking photos of demonstrators on one side beating their drums, and police on the other side holding their batons. In between I noticed an older women holding a sign that read: “We didn’t start the class war”

Indeed, it is only “class war” when the majority from the bottom starts complaining, but when the tiny minority (aka 1%) plunders with impunity, it is just free market capitalism. In the country where people are still traumatized by McCarthyism and the Red Scare, it is very easy to discredit anyone seeking social justice by accusing them of being communist. After all, there are many enemies out there, somewhere, constantly scheming against our freedom. Recently the Republican Party presidential nominee Herman Cain said OWS are trying to destroy America! With that kind of rhetoric and corporate media’s representation of OWS, no wonder police have been given green light to shut it down.

So early on Tuesday morning, without warning, Bloomberg sent hundreds of police in riot gear to evict everyone from the park. Suited troops issued a warning to dazed Zuccotti residents to move out. Some quickly picked up their backpacks and moved away, others remained behind to hold the fort and protect their possessions. All those that remained were arrested. Shocked evictees watched in horror as their tents, tarps, and other personal possessions were thrown on a pile only to be moved onto rubbish trucks. Even the people’s library has been dismantled, with most of the books thrown out.

The news of arrests and eviction echoed around the US, but many knew it was just a matter of time before the troops were sent in. It was a calculated attempt to disrupt the movement that has been growing in popularity ever since its inception.

Timing and execution of the New York raid was carefully planed and coordinated.

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, nonchalantly told BBC in an interview prior to the raid that she was on a conference call with mayors of 18 US cities with Occupy demonstrations. I bet they were not discussing Thanksgiving plans. We all remember scenes from Oakland clashes where one of the protestors was shot by a police projectile. New York, where it all started, was left for the grand finale.

Hours after the arrests and eviction, New Yorkers woke up to the internet SOS inviting them to descend on Canal St in downtown Manhattan. Once people gathered, emergency general assembly was held, and the consensus was reached to march back to Zuccotti Park. “Lets go home!” some of the marchers screamed.

When the march reached Zuccotti it was already occupied - this time by the police and security from Brookfield Properties, the company that owns the park. I spoke with one of the demonstrators who wondered about their demands. Will they put up tents and hold a general assembly? Other demonstrators were carrying copies of a signed court order, stating that the people will be allowed back into the park. Marching around the park with the legal piece of paper in the air, demonstrators shouted to the police that they are breaking the law. “You don’t have to follow your orders,” someone screamed.

No one from the police agreed to be interviewed.

Once again, the ruling mayor and his sponsors underestimated the movement they initially ignored, then ridiculed, and now are attacking. Murdoch’s New York Post is leading the way, verging on entertainment in its militant hatred for OWS movement. Which is comprised of, just to remind everyone, of American citizens, not strange looking terrorists from foreign lands whose names are hard to pronounce, or godless communists waking up from their Siberian hibernation. Just American citizens who are pointing out that the system is rotten at the very core.

If anything, Bloomberg has done OWS a favour. With winter galloping in and conditions at Zuccotti becoming increasingly difficult, Bloomberg has forced the protesters into other spaces, thus spreading the infection. And has also saved OWS from choosing a possibly humiliating retreat from the park due to harsh winter conditions. This way, instead of capitulation, they have been given resolve to fight a forced eviction while in strategic dispersal.

On Thursday the 17th, a Day of Action was planned to mark a two-month anniversary of Occupy Wall St and respond to the recent repression of the movement. By 7am already over a thousand people gathered. I remember it being very cold, and very difficult videoing with a takeaway coffee, lit cigarette, photo camera hanging off my neck and an umbrella hanging off my arm. I clearly didn’t look like one of the organisers, so I was confused when an older man asked me in which direction will the march proceed. I didn’t know, so I just replied that plan was to shut down Wall St and disrupt the opening of the stock exchange.

OWS activists upset over the eviction and corporate media’s attacks on them, vowed to take it to the man. “Enough of this economy that exploits and divides us – It’s time we put an end to Wall Street’s reign of terror” said an announcement on OWS web site. OWS hoped to confront Wall Street with stories of people who have suffered most, who have been on the frontlines of economic injustice. Taking their stories to the powerful, who are “too big to fail”, who have caused the crises that has left millions in dire circumstances. To send a message to traders that people are watching, that people are gathering outside their doors.

Once the march began, demonstrators were constantly reminded to stay on the footpath, and any attempts to get onto the streets were dealt with quickly by the NYPD. In order to disrupt the traffic on Wall Street and confront those working at the stock exchange, demonstrators split into different groups and proceeded to occupy different intersections. I spent some time at one of the intersections with about 60 or so activists, and just as many (if not more) police officers. Circle was formed and activists started sharing their stories of why they are here. Occasionally someone on the way to the bank would shout, “get a job!” to which someone would reply, “I have a job, I’m a teacher.” I listened to some stories, watched some angry striped suits push their way through, and decided to move on.

As I walked down the street I saw a larger group of demonstrators being pushed onto the footpath by police. I went closer with my camera and all of the sudden a group of policemen threw a guy to the ground right there in front of me. My reflex was to point the lens down at the person being handcuffed and unnecessarily beaten. Whilst trying to get my head around what is happening in front of me I was suddenly thrown back a meter. “Get out of here!!”, one of the policemen shouted as he pushed me. “I am on the sidewalk, I’m not doing anything wrong!”, I foolishly replied. His response was to grab me and shove me so violently that I flew backwards another meter and slammed against the nearby wall. “Get out of here!!” he repeated the second time.

Rubbing my shoulder I wondered what laws did I break. Why was I thrown against the building? Oh that’s right, I was taking a video! Thursday’s police actions were particularly disproportional and unnecessary. It was clear that they wont allow the disruption of Wall Street getting on with its business. It didn’t matter why were the demonstrators there, that they were carrying American flags, and were repeating, “this is a peaceful protest!” I think “get out of here” quote encapsulates the day.

During the morning I witnessed few other arrests and clashes, and ran into trouble for the second time. Again because of my camera. This time I was sent flying by a baton-wielding policemen so pumped that I ended up on the ground.

With the police above me pushing everyone away from arresting officers, one of the demonstrators pulled me out of their way. I don’t recommend being on the ground under the advancing police. Well, just don’t recommend being on the ground under anybody’s feet.

At that stage I was bit upset, just a tiny bit, so all sort of crazy thoughts raced in my head. I pictured people siting in their homes watching the events in Egypt and Syria and shaking their heads in disapproval. Thinking how superior we are in the West to have freedom and democracy. Watching the president speak against the violent repression of peaceful protests and reminding their regimes about freedom of expression and rights to protest.

What is the difference here? Seriously, take the level of violence (in the Middle East police and the army are using real bullets, here rubber bullets, batons and pepper spray) and historical context aside, what is the difference? So you have the freedom to purchase any type of short skirt or flat screen TV you want, you have the freedom to insult the president or use profanities in art, but if you question the system, question the legitimacy of the ruling elite, you will be dealt with. If you video the police, you will be dealt with. If you call for a strike, you will be dealt with. If the authority has no arguments left and the popularity of the protest grows, they will resort to brutal force. Which is why in recent weeks the police was ordered to break up occupations in most US cities.

Regardless of what criticism one might have of the OWS movement, and there are many, the fact remains that the movement was born out of desperation. People want accountability and a justice system that holds corrupt bankers, Wall Street speculators and hedge fund managers responsible for the mess they created. They’re asking for accessible healthcare, affordable education, and not massive tax breaks for gigantic corporations and endless money poured into failed wars. Can I hear an “Amen”!

New York Stock Exchange opening wasn’t disrupted, and the famous bell rang right on time, starting another glorious day of trading. Few mic checks later, most agreed to move on. Some groups went to ride on subways with banners and spread the word, others went back to Zuccotti, few diehards remained running around the local streets.

By the evening everyone regrouped and marched on to Foley Square. Along the way I was surprised to see numerous people hanging signs of support out of their windows, and pedestrians clapping at the procession. I was surprised because the corporate media is doing a real good job discrediting the movement, and unnecessarily large police presence and numerous arrests are giving them endless material. Police over-reactions are implying that the protesters are dangerous, and that all the disruptions and police cordons are protestors fault. The fact that no private property was damaged since the beginning of the Occupy movement, and no one has ever attacked a police officer is irrelevant. We can’t let the truth get in the way of a good story.

“Obama is a liar!” read a sign held by a thirty-something man wearing a blue shirt and a red tie. Further down the road, “Bloomberg beware, Zuccotti is everywhere!” said the poster in the window of NYU New School that was now “occupied”. As the procession moved pass the NYU’s New School students behind the windows raised fists and held up “Occupied” posters.

Once I arrived to the Foley Square, thousands of people already gathered there. I wondered if all of them are trying to destroy America? Are all of them communists? I didn’t see anyone communist-looking to ask so I just joined the march. Plan was to walk over the Brooklyn Bridge, which made me a little bit uncomfortable, since I was once already arrested on it. This time there were around 32,000 people marching, so it seemed foolish to try and arrest so many.

Once the procession reached the bridge everyone started shouting, cheering and pointing to my left. I could swear someone shouted, “bat-signal!” Tired, wet and with pain in my back, I was ready for everything, even seeing Batman himself. I turned around and saw a huge “99%”projected on a Verizon building to the left of the bridge. “Now that’s a bat signal!” someone commented. “Don’t be afraid” it read, then it changed to “We are unstoppable, another world is possible,” Crowd exploded in a frenzy of excitement. Reading the projected words I cursed my camera for running out of batteries, and thought of New Zealand.

New Zealand is likely to get John Key for another term, meaning more “business friendly” policies. While here in the US people are exposing the cracks in the system and rebelling against neo-liberal capitalism that has brought misery to so many, New Zealand is preparing for another term with the right. Despite warnings from the likes of professor John Farrar, co-director of the New Zealand Governance Centre at the University of Auckland’s Business School, who said that the government’s privatisation strategies are caught in a time warp and that strategies based on ‘Washington Consensus’ need to be updated, Key is leading NZ down the “business as usual” path.

While the masses demonstrate in this Mecca of capitalism against deregulation, calling for the restructuring of American economy, John Key talks about selling off state assets and cutting public spending. At the time when public services are already struggling and thousands of jobs have been lost, one would expect the government to be more cautious, and not follow the ideologies that might fail as they have in other countries. Who knows, maybe John Key knows better than Professor Farrar, John Stiglitz, Jeffry Sachs and numerous other academics around the world, after all they could secretly be communist!

Last projection I remember seeing on the Verizon building read “Occupy Earth.”

As somebody said, this is a marathon, not a hundred meter race. Protesters’ tents are out of Zuccotti, but the movement isn’t dead, on the contrary. Not here, not in New Zealand, not in Egypt. Today OWS protested outside the Egyptian Consulate in solidarity with Egyptians fighting the military interim government. The similar actions are planed in San Francisco and other towns. I remember a sign held on Canal St last Wednesday, “You cannot evict an idea whose time has come”.

-Emir Hodzic, an Aucklander participating in OWS. All photos by Emir.

The People's Party

2011-11-21T18:24:00.000-08:00

Working class people- fight for your freedom! New mix by Jay Gee, Tauranga MANA massive!

Police to raid journalists Wednesday

2011-11-20T16:58:00.000-08:00

Police look set to conduct raids on four media organisations including two publicly owned broadcasters this Wednesday if the High Court rules against the legality of the recording of the Epsom tea party.

The police search warrants and threat of raids on media organisation that do not have copies of the tape just out from an election brought condemnation from the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ). The IFJ represents over 600,000 journalists in 131 countries.

“While there are ethical questions about how the recording was made, the police clampdown on news media organisations just nine days before New Zealand's general election is alarming, and may be interpreted as an attempt to suppress media freedom,” IFJ Asia-Pacific Director Jacqueline Park said.

Ironically if the police do raid media organisations Wednesday in a fishing exercise on the orders of John Key then the attack on media freedom will coincide with an international day of protest against the killings of journalists on November 23. More than 500 journalists have been killed in the past 10 years and in nine out of 10 cases, the killers have gone free.

International Day to End Impunity is a call to action to demand justice for those who have been killed for exercising their right to freedom of expression and shed light on the issue of impunity.

Every day around the world journalists, musicians, artists, politicians, and free expression advocates are being silenced, often with no investigation or consequences to their persecutors.

Whether or not the taping was intentional or not, legal or illegal, Key's complaint and the police search warrants put the freedom of the newsroom and the safety of journalists under fire. If agents of the state do raid the newsrooms of this country then the international journalist community can add New Zealand to the long list of countries where the powerful intimidate the media with impunity.

Occupy and Theory- where now for the Movement?

2011-11-17T18:01:00.000-08:00

Marama Davidson and Joe Carolan were amongst the speakers at the Occupy and Theory symposium hosted by the Tertiary Education Union and We are the University in Auckland Uni.

We shall Not Be Moved- Glen Innes against evictions

2011-11-16T20:29:00.000-08:00

160 families are facing eviction from their homes in Glen Innes, as the working class face social cleansing to enable private property developers build luxury villas where state houses once stood. It's the age old battle of poor people on rich land- and the greed of property developers and yuppie gentrifiers who want beautiful views of the Bay comes before the needs of poor Maori, Pasifika and Pakeha families.

The Mana Movement sings the old Civil Rights song- "We shall not be Moved". At a time of a massive housing crisis, where many are homeless and jobless, and workers on pverty wages spend over half of their income on rack rents, its time for us to build a massive new 20,000 State Houses over the next two years. This will create jobs, reduce rents and provide shelter for all our people- all of which are basic human rights.

When it comes to the point of eviction, Mana argues for direct action. Houses will be occupied and defended, as Auckland's rent rebel Len Parker did a decade ago with the State Housing Action Collective. G.I. will be occupied, Bastion Point style, and no one will be left without. Housing is a right, not a privilege.

Shame on Labour- Minto versus the Invisible Man

2011-11-16T13:09:00.000-08:00

After 20 years missing in action the local MP for Manukau East failed to appear last night at the first candidate forum in the electorate. When it was announced that Ross Robertson was a “no show” (non appearance and no apology received by the organizers) members of the 60 strong audience held up signs (see pic below) asking where their MP has been for 20 years.

Prior to the meeting Mana Party candidate John Minto said publicly he would call for the MP to resign at the forum. “Ross Robertson is an epic fail as an MP” said John Minto “and now doesn’t have the courage to show his face. Sitting MPs normally stand on their record but Ross has no record to stand on."

“It’s an outrage that the MP for one of the lowest income electorates in the country can spend 20 years in parliament, draw a huge salary and yet remain invisible on any of the issues facing the struggling families he is supposed to represent.

“I searched the internet for ANY sign this MP has spoken out on ANY issue facing the predominantly Maori and Pacific Island electorate in ANY of the past 20 years but drew a complete blank.

“It’s hard to believe the Labour Party has supported this gutless, useless MP for so long.”

Socialist Aotearoa says- John Minto takes on the Invisible Man, the Labour MP for one of the poorest areas of New Zealand, Ross Robertson. The Invisible Man has no record of fighting for anything when you google him, and he doesn't bother to turn up for local husting meetings in working class Otara. The people of Manakau East need a fighter, not a tea drinking yes man.

Vote for Minto, vote for Mana, the Movement of the People.

Soundtrack to the struggle

2011-11-15T21:35:00.000-08:00

Home Brew - Listen To Us feat Tourettes by homebrewcrew

Occupy Otara! Mana builds the Movement.

2011-11-11T22:43:00.000-08:00

Socialist Aotearoa activists joined with the Otara branch of the Mana Movement early Saturday morning, blitzing the market with thousands of new stickers. Whilst "Feed the Kids" and "Abolish GST" were massive hits, the surprise favourite of the day was the bolshie "Tax the Rich" sticker. Working people, the poor and Maori are sick of being ground down by the selfish greed of the 1%, and in a land of high prices, high taxes on the poor and low wages, many Otara shoopers went one further, asking why stop at just Taxing the Rich. :)

The Rich are the ones who have attacked our unions, lowered our wages, disrespected our Tangata Whenua and stolen the wealth we have created. They have had it all their way for many decades now, but internationally, their reign is coming to an end. Its good to see some working class pride and healthy disdain for the ruling class alive and well in South Auckland- SA and Mana activists will be working hard in the constitunecy to win as many votes as possible for John Minto and the Mana Movement in the last week of this campaign.

Tax the Rich.
Until they bleed. :)

Joe Carolan,
Socialist Aotearoa

John Minto: "Mana is about giving the power to communities"

2011-11-10T01:40:00.000-08:00

Part 1

Why stand for Parliament?
Labour as part of the problem
Superannuation
Tax reform -- GST, CGT, Financial Transactions Tax, Inheritance Tax, and Universal Basic Income
Investigation versus implementation
Retirement age
Radical reversal of neoliberalism
Capital Gains Tax and Financial Transactions Tax

Part 2

Would high taxation cause the wealthy to leave New Zealand?
Talleys
Free food in schools
Community gardens
Industrial relations
Treatment by the media
Pokie machines
Refuting the individualist argument
Giving power to communities
Activism in Parliament
Ross Robertson and Manukau East
MPs pay
Unite Union

Part 3

Unite Union
Occupy Movement
Personal Parliamentary ambitions
The Alliance
Alcohol purchase age and reform
Corporate advertising to children
Left-wing stereotypes
Corporate control of the country
Financial Transactions Tax
Compulsory unionism and imbalance in industrial relations
Gender equality

Part 4

Corporate influence and their rights as individuals
What is the Mana Party?
Focus on Maori versus workers
Maori nationalism
Hone Harawira being a one-man-band
Political spectrum ideology
Election predictions
National-Green coalition
Election predictions

Mana: Nats lack common decency on GI housing

2011-11-09T14:37:00.000-08:00

The National Government's move to evict long term residents out of Glen Innes shows they lack any sense of common decency says Mana housing spokesperson Sue Bradford.

Ms Bradford says when Housing New Zealand tenants were asked to move temporarily while a redevelopment project was carried out, they were promised they could move back into the area once the project was completed.

'Then National was elected into government. They broke that promise and told residents they couldn't come back because they are cutting back on the number of state houses in the area.

'Some of these tenants have been living in this community for three generations. They were born there, it's where their friends and family live, it's their community and it's where they feel they belong.

'I believe the National Government neither knows nor cares how traumatic this is for the families concerned.

'It seems that they just don't give a toss about people who are not like them.'

Ms Bradford says some of the housing in question is on one of the last waterfront areas that is still in public housing.

'It appears that the temptation to hand it over to their rich mates in the private sector was just too much for the Nats," said Ms Bradford.

'This is an exceptionally callous act, even by National Party standards.

"Mana supports the Glen Innes tenants in their struggle to be treated fairly.

'Instead of evicting state house tenants, Mana says we should build 20,000 new state houses over the next two years.

'This would provide badly needed jobs and housing at a time when the economy needs a shot in the arm.

'We also back the pledge originally made to the tenants. The next Government should honour that promise and ensure that tenants are rehoused back in their own community.

Sue Bradford is the Mana candidate for Waitakere, national spokesperson for Mana on Housing.

Day 20: "A fightback for meat workers nationwide"

2011-11-09T12:53:00.000-08:00

Locked out workers vote on new offer today

Locked out meat workers will hold a “shed” meeting today at Marton Memorial Hall, 399 Wellington Rd, Marton at 11am to consider a new offer from ANZCO.

New Zealand Meat Workers Union negotiator Roger Middlemass says the union and company were in mediation yesterday while locked out workers and supporters protested outside.

“ANZCO presented some different options at the last minute in mediation today which deserve further investigation,” he says. “We will go back to mediation first thing [Thursday] morning before taking a new offer to members.”

ANZCO locked out the 111 sheep slaughter and processing workers for refusing to accept a 15-20% pay cut, shift changes and reductions in allowances.

The workers will picket the plant at State Highway 1 near Marton from 5am before moving to the memorial hall.

As one comment on facebook said of this mornings picket, "The strength and dedication of the union members are amazing. This morning was such horrible weather. Heavy rain and strong winds. Just been talking to hubby, and he said there are 30-40 people there. 50 at the outside. And they still came out in this HORRIBLE weather at 5am for picketing. At the moment its very cold and very strong winds. Not raining thankfully. Nothing is set up as the wind is too strong. And still they are out there showing their strength. Way to go guys. See you all at the shed meeting. :0)"

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Day 17: 111 workers locked out but standing together

2011-11-06T23:03:00.000-08:00

Urgent support needed for locked out workers at CMP Meatworks Rangatikei. These 111 workers have now been locked out 17 days as the boss tries to force them to agree to an up to 30% pay cut. They are prepared to bargain on this but 20% is unjustified and unaffordable. Food to NZNO in P/Nth. Visit picket, State Highway 1 just past Marton turnoff. Email me if you need more details. This company is wholly owned by ANZCO.

The KiwiBank account number is Name: Disputes Fund. Account number: 38-9007-0894028-08

Remember, remember- It's time for a Political Explosion in Parliament

2011-11-04T21:03:00.000-07:00

combat socialism in South Auckland- house the poor, feed the kids

The Mana Movement launched an explosive electoral campaign on Guy Fawkes Day, threatening to undo his reputation as the only person ever to enter Parliament with honest intentions. Mana stalwarts Hone Harawira, Annette Sykes, John Minto and Sue Bradford were joined by newer faces such as environmental campaigner Angeline Greensill and South Auckland Samoan campaigner James Papali'i, as well as an eclectic mix of funk, reggae, hip hop and soul artistes. Here are some videos of the day, please share widely, and PARTY VOTE MANA- let's bring a political explosion to the Beehive, the like which has never been seen before.

Join the Revolution- the Mana Movement

The Mana Movement's Angeline Greensill and Martyn Bradbury remember Parihaka, Guy Falkes and the 5th of November.

Samoan community activist and former Labour Party councillor James Papali'i tells the story why he left Labour to stand as the Mana Movement's candidate for Mangere

Misty Harrison, 25, represents the Youth/Rangatahi wing of the Party, at list no5.

Sue Bradford, tireless defender of Aotearoa's benificaries and children, and the most effective backbencher ever in Parliament, talks about why she left the Greens for Mana.

Mana's Plan for Economic Justice

Solidarity- $1,111 for the Locked Out Marton Workers

2011-11-04T20:02:00.000-07:00

Lets keep the kids of the Locked out workers fed. All out mass picket to shut down the plant!

Comrades in Auckland organised a fundraiser for the Locked Out Meat Workers in Marton, and raised $1,111. A great night of songs of resistance and struggle- we need similar fundraising nights all over Aotearoa to support these staunch union fighters. And all eyes on Marton next week- turn it into Oakland ;)

Here, Socialist Aotearoa's bard Paul Brown sings out for the workers.

Revolution's on the wall in Fiji

2011-11-03T03:08:00.000-07:00

Fiji's military paint over anti-dictatorship graffiti

[Since Saturday] Fiji's military regime has detained a leading trade unionist and says he will face unspecified charges soon while they look for others.

Fiji Trade Union Congress president Daniel Urai Manufolau was taken as he arrived off an aircraft at Nadi International Airport on Saturday, returning from a Commonwealth meeting in Perth.

In a statement it says Urai "is being questioned on various issues relating to ongoing criminal investigations".

The criminal investigations and the detention of Fiji's union leader relate to graffiti alongside the Nausori-Suva road saying "PM out you lier" (sic), "RFMF remove Frank ... VRT" and "PM your time is over". Daniel joins five other political prisoners in Fiji being held for seditious graffiti.

As the military regime of Frank Bainimarama grows ever more brutal and repressive an underground movement calling itself the Viti Revolutionary Forces is springing up agitating for elections and an end to military rule and the crackdown on churches and unions. The activists have also burnt down police stations and hacked the Vodafone network, getting a text sent to people calling for "passive resistance".

The regime hates this graffiti and the revolutionaries behind it,

Intelligence sources say Fiji's dictator, Frank Bainimarama, gave a clear directive to his personal bodyguards, loyalist and to the police commissioner: "Cut their fucking hands off, no court cases – make an example."

As a result a 12 year old boy had his three fingers broken by soldiers in Lami after he was found tagging a bus shelter with anti-Bainimarama sentiment.

With limited media freedoms, covert action and online are one of the only ways of spreading news and information freely. As a former Fijian human rights commisioner has noted,

Well I think it's the same as Iraq and, you know, we have censorship of the media, either censored from the military, from the police, from the minister of information who is regularly checking out stories and so on and newsletters and things that are distributed locally.

Workers' rights are now non-existent in this Pacific paradise. As the Australian Council of Trade Unions has listed of new emergency laws- unions are not allowed to represent members, collective agreements are void, strikes are illegal and all minimum wages, work conditions and overtime rates have been scrapped.

This is in a country where up to 60 percent of the population live in poverty and over 15 percent of the population (125,000) live in 200 informal and squatter settlements. Economic factors may be a key galvanising factor for revolutionaries, just as they were during the Egyptian revolution. Multinational corporations reaping massive profits amidst widespread poverty ultimately dig their own graves and the Pacific has a long history of rebellion and revolution, including Tonga's 2006 anti-government strikes and riot.

Meanwhile big Australian and New Zealand corporations like QANTAS are collaborating with the military state to drive down wages as are big Chinese firms muscling in to sectors like mining in Fiji as the anti-worker, pro-corporate International Monetary Fund cheers from the sidelines. In fact a QANTAS subsidiary, Air Pacific, essentially wrote the new anti-union laws, as Socialist Alternative in Australia have highlighted. Last year a Fijian democracy activist due to be forcibly deported from Australia jumped to his death in an Australian detention center. A victim of the racist immigration policies that countries like Australia and New Zealand enforce with our Pacific cousins, and that the Mana Movement opposes.

Censored by the thugs of Bainimarama's regime graffiti is one of the ways that an insurgent social movement against the regime can begin to mobilise and the harsh response of the regime to the rebels in turn will only radicalise and grow the opposition. Sooner rather than later struggle between the Fijian people and the state will boil over and street protests and strikes will begin. As Aussie unions prepare for a tourism and retail boycott of Fiji, the left in Aotearoa should also begin to turn up the tempo, strangling the regime economically and supporting the Fijian union movement's fight back politically. The New Zealand Council of Trade Unions must stand up and call for this boycott as well and look at other ways of fighting the dictatorship.

The writing is on the wall in Fiji. Time for revolution is drawing near.

-Socialist Aotearoa

Queen St Banks occupied by Robin Hood Freedom Fighters

2011-11-02T16:42:00.000-07:00

Auckland's Queen St Banks occupied by Robin Hood Freedom Fighters

Occupy Christchurch - a space for radical social change to begin

2011-11-02T16:14:00.000-07:00

O:ChCh set up on the 15th October with 300 people marching on the streets of Riccarton. Various banners, chants and messages were present, from the now infamous "I love kittens" all the way through to 'National - bringing London to New Zealand" with a picture of a flaming molotov being sported. Three years I have been in Otautahi and I have never witnessed anything quite like it. The group consisted of a dynamic mix of the wider community; well beyond the 'usual suspects'.

An open mike was offered to begin the day which was soon put to the test. A group of young ACT Party supporters came dressed in their finest, but before they reached for the mic a motion by the General Assembly was passed - O:ChCh was to be an a-political site. All are welcome but party politics can be left at the door. The result of this first decision and the following agreement that the site is to be drug and alcohol free, has since shaped the tremendous growth of the site.

The initial week was spent getting the basics right while weathering a torrential storm. We now have work groups focusing on areas such as media, legal, creation and action. The groups meet most days to plan ahead, deal with issues and elect a delegate to report back to the evening General Assembly each night. Things have been tweaked and ideas have come and gone but the GA's are now functioning, taking less than an hour to be completed. O:ChCh have successfully run numerous workshops, free markets, sent an army of Robin Hoods into the business districts, Ad Busted Brownlee and Key and have created a space that has enthused a huge level of support. The local union's have all unofficially given their acknowledgement to what we are trying to do, which for me at least, is indicative as to how far reaching the Occupy movement has been.

We are now priming ourselves for a weekend of actions and protest; focusing on the locked out workers at CMP, Maori rights, the people's history and further community networking.

South Hagley Park is immaculate with not a trace of rubbish or damage to be seen. We have mown our grass, moved our tents every-other day, set up compost toilets and have a constant display of colourful and inviting banners. Passers by are greeted with a hot cuppa, a time to talk and a free hug.

As time has gone by the absence of electioneering and political grandstanding has allowed the group to recognise everyone's varying degree's of social consciousness. In recent days the General Assembly( once the daily business was dealt with) settled into discussing what our desires were and what had brought us to O:ChCh. It was a risky move, Occupy has become renowned for its lack of a blue print or concrete idea (it's lack of class analysis has been a big concern for myself) but what we found was we all had a lot more in common than first thought.

The result of this open meeting has been an up swell in energy and affirmative action both on site and in the wider community. The networking is tapping into previously ignored corners, specialists are sharing their knowledge and O:ChCh is well on the way to becoming a formidable place for encouraging radical social change and action.

We can be found on www.occupychristchurch.org.nz and facebook - occupy christchurch.

Matt Jones, Union Organiser, father of two, anarchist and currently involved with the Occupy Christchurch movement.

Friday fundraiser for the locked out Marton Meat Workers

2011-11-01T17:00:00.000-07:00

Please spread through your networks and to all Auckland unionists and supporters of workers rights.

An evening of solidarity for the locked out Marton meat workers.

Music from Lubin Rains (Vietnam War) and Caoimhe Macfehin (Drab Doo Riffs, Heart Attack Alley).
Paul Brown, Scottish folk musician

Bar open from 6pm onwards, Friday 4 November.

Auckland Trades Hall
147 Great North Road,
Grey Lynn.

$10 donation on the door. All cash raised going to feed the families of the locked out meat workers. Don't let them get starved back to work.

Victory in Dunedin- Time to Occupy the Streets

2011-11-01T16:05:00.000-07:00

Last night Occupy Otepoti achieved a major victory. The Dunedin City Council made their first real attempt to squash the movement by formally evicting us – they gave us notice at around 3pm saying we had to be out by 8pm. In a few hours the Occupy movement mobilised hundreds of people to defend the protest. At its height at around 8-8:15pm there were 300-400 people in the octagon.

At Least 150 people marched around the Octagon chanting ‘Whose Streets? Our Streets!’ and ‘Shame on the 1%! Shame on the DCC!’. We then had speeches and the largest general assembly Otepoti has seen. The chant ‘O- C –C- U- P- Y, What does that spell, OCCUPY!’ filled the city centre.

The police force has refused to act on the Council’s eviction notice. They released a statement saying they are going to take people’s ‘right to peaceful protest’ into consideration. They know that there will be more and more people coming to defend the occupation and that they will have to use violence to remove us, like in Melbourne and Sydney. No one wants to see that happen.

We also need to counter attack. We need to organise a march and sit in of the DCC CEOs office. How dare this unelected bureaucrat try and evict us. Occupy needs to congratulate the sensible stance of the police force while making sure everyone in the city knows that it is not the elected council officials that make the decisions – but actually the 1%ers making backrooms deals in the corridors of the bureaucracy.

It is time that the Occupy movement takes our spirit of resistance to the streets. We should leaflet every house in the city explaining the where occupy came from, what we are fighting for, and encourage people to join up and participate in upcoming events.

Te Mana party has the clearest policies, representing many of the demands of our movement. The Hone Heke Tax (1% tax on financial transactions), bring back the right to strike, higher minimum wage, no oil drilling, feed the children, free education and health care... the list goes on. We can door knock every home in the city and talk to people about becoming part of the movement. We need to be at every election forum from now up until the election where we can take the energy from the octagon out to local communities and bring back the experience and support of those same people.

We need to take the spirit of resistance into the workplaces and factories of the city. There is an ongoing struggle at Hillside Workshops in South Dunedin. We need to make a leaflet outlining how the Occupy movement supports these workers and distribute it in the Factory. Through our links with Unite union we can approach every fast food worker in the City and explain what the movement is about and how they can get more organised in their workplaces. Furthermore, there is the ongoing struggle of PACT workers organised by the SFWU and PSA who are only being offered a 1% pay rise.

We need to make it clear to the workers of this city that this is a movement for them. That the occupation supports working people in their collective struggle for better living conditions. That this is a movement that can provide serious pressure on the employers – they are the 1% after all.

The possibilities are endless. We could initiate a campaign for free public transport by talking to every bus driver and helping them get organised to fight for better wages – but also free buses. Ultimately it is the working class, those people who make the wealth and make the system go around, that could have the power to change this system. Camping out in the Octagon is not enough.

If we want to fill the octagon with people, if we want 10,000 people to rally to defend the occupation on a weekday, or any day for that matter, that means strikes! It is through workers withdrawing their labour that our movement can really strike a blow against this system that puts profits before people.

A movement strong enough to challenge the power of the 1%, the employers and the government, will take a long time to grow. There was a growing strike wave over years in Egypt before the revolution earlier this year. However we have already started that process by building links with the PACT workers.

If we want to build a movement that will make the ruling class, the 1%, tremble in fear then it means taking the spirit of resistance the Occupation out to the community and into the workplaces. We have a nothing to lose but our chains!

Yours for the Revolution,

Derwin Smith,

International Socialist Organisation.

These workers have got guts...

2011-10-31T20:24:00.000-07:00

This is the power and potential of the union movement. 111 workers locked out for 10 days but with the CTU leader Helen Kelly and the solidarity of workers around the country swinging in behind them, $21,000 has poured in to their fund in the last 4 days.

Socialist Aotearoa have given $111 and will continue to organise fund raising and solidarity with the meat workers until we win the fight. The next step is to shut the plant with mass pickets and use secondary pickets and a boycott of companies that are selling the scab meat, such as McDonald's restaurants. The workers united, will never be defeated.

Join the facebook group | Donate: 38-9007-0894028-08 NZCTU

Key slagging John Minto brings an invitation for the 1% to meet the 99%

2011-10-31T16:34:00.000-07:00

from John Minto- Mana Economic Justice Spokesperson.

“Instead of slagging off myself and the occupation movement on national television last night Prime Minister John Key should come to Aotea Square in Auckland to meet the people involved in the movement.

“I’m happy to personally accompany Mr Key around the occupation. He would be welcome to come and have a cup of tea and engage in some robust discussion with young New Zealanders and listen to their hopes and fears for this country and the global economy.

“The occupations around New Zealand are part of a global movement which is fighting back against the 1% running the world economy for themselves off the backs of the 99%.

“On this year’s National Business Review rich list John Key was the 56th richest New Zealander with a wealth estimated at $55 million.

“He was among the 150 wealthiest New Zealanders who last year increased their wealth by a staggering $7 billion. And to add insult to injury he would have paid minimal tax on this increase in wealth because most would be capital gains which are untaxed in New Zealand.

“And then just to make sure he’s looking after his rich mates the Prime Minister delivered tax cuts last October with 40% of the value going to the top 10% of income earners.

“Prime Minister Key is part of the 1% who have gained their wealth at the expense of the 99%.

“It’s good to see inequality in New Zealand now becoming an issue of serious public concern. The gaps have always been there but they widened dramatically in the years after Labour’s “rogernomics” economic reforms. In the 20 years after 1984 New Zealand had the fastest rise in inequality in the OECD.

“Mana is fighting the election with policies to turn this around.”

Revolution! From an Arab Spring to a Pacific Summer

2011-10-30T21:31:00.001-07:00

An evening on the struggle for democracy and freedom in the south Pacific. The winds of the Arab spring are blowing in the south Pacific.

Since the recent massacre of peaceful activists in Papua and the new wave of repression in Fiji, the need for solidarity and collective struggle in the Pacific to end the colonisation, genocide and police states is evermore pressing. Are revolutions in the Pacific on the cards? How can people involved in unions, the student movement and Occupy Auckland aid the Pacific struggles for liberation? What does tino rangatiratanga mean today? What role can the Mana Movement play in the fight for Pacific democracy?

Talks by Nik Naidu, Maire Leadbeater and Tracey Lee.

Nik Naidu is the spokesperson for the Coalition for Democracy in Fiji fighting for free and fair elections.
Maire Leadbeater from the Indonesia Human Rights Committee has been campaigning for ten years for freedom for the West Papuan people. She played a leading role in the solidarity campaign with East Timor from the 1980s onwards.
Tracey Lee is a Mana Movement activist based in Te Raki Pae Whenua (North Shore).

And a film on the 2006 Tongan democracy movement that brought democratic reform to the Kingdom through strikes, protests and riot.

8pm - Tuesday 1 November at Occupy Auckland!

"If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together." - Aboriginal activists group, Queensland, 1970s

Police crackdown on OWS protestors

2011-10-30T16:04:00.000-07:00

Only weeks ago I wrote that it is only matter of time before someone gets killed. I thought that after witnessing police on horses charge into the crowd. Tonight Scott Olsen, 24, still remains at Oakland’s Highland Hospital in a critical condition after being hit in the head by a Police projectile.

On Tuesday the Oakland Police Department decided to raid the Occupy Oakland movement and evict them from their encampment. Initially the City Council was supportive, read tolerant, of protestors presence. However, the current view of the City of Oakland is that the conditions have become unsafe and people have to be removed.

Many were arrested during the morning raid in what was clearly an attempt to break the demonstrators’ resolve and send a message to other occupations around the US. Activists responded by staging a march that evening in a show of defiance. The march ended as riot police showered them with tear gas and stun grenades. In one graphic video of the attacks, demonstrators are seen helping an unconscious woman while a stun grenade explodes right next to her face. It was during this evening’s police crackdown on demonstrators that Scott Olsen was hit by a police projectile in the head, and is still in hospital.

On Wednesday night Occupy Wall Street decided to hold a march in solidarity with Oakland demonstrators who have been arrested and hurt. The news of police heavy-handed tactics in Oakland resounded across the American cities and other occupations. “We stand with Oakland as one” the sign read at the entrance to Liberty Plaza.

During the General Assembly at the park, the people’s mic echoed demonstrator’s concerns for future protests and their solidarity with their Oakland comrades. While people voted on whether to send $20,000 from the OWS donations fund to Oakland, I looked at the metal barricades separating the park from the rest of the city. As numerous voices carried fears of future police arrests to my ears, I wondered about the barricades surrounding the plaza. Grey steel structures locked in place, fencing in the community and restricting access to and from the park. I also wondered about the meaning behind their presence? What is the psychological effect on people sleeping within the fenced concrete paddock? Sometimes your mind wanders during General Assemblies.

Looking around lower Manhattan, it is the heavy police presence that is noticed first, followed by hundreds of infamous FX-7 steel barricades blocking off Wall St and enclosing Liberty Plaza. Protesters themselves are caged in the park, surrounded by police watch-towers, surveillance trucks and stationary cameras. Ironically, this movement is called Occupy Wall Street, but it is actually the police who have occupied Wall St. It is the extraordinary police presence that is restricting the traffic on lower Manhattan and creating a feeling of uneasiness for the locals. It is the police who militarized the movement that started as a peaceful demonstration against corruption and corporate greed.

Briefly my mind wandered off into theoretical land, pondering acquisition of valuable property, inequality, astonishing affluence of a small minority, and authorities in place to protect their interests. I was about to get lost at the left-right up-down intersection when drummers reminded me it is time to march.

Hundreds of people started to march from Liberty Plaza down to Broadway just after 9pm. The general feeling was festive and at the same time defiant. However, things quickly changed when NYPD made their first arrests. When I got to the front of the procession I saw approximately 5 police officers on top of a protestor being handcuffed. For some reason I developed a feeling that there is something different about tonight’s march, something different from the previous ones I attended. I couldn’t put my finger on it as I was too occupied taking photos and avoiding police batons being swung to make room between the arresting officers and the protesters shouting “Shame! Shame!”

I think someone yelled “Keep on marching!” and the people responded in agreement. As several protesters were led to the van, hundreds of others decided to keep on going. That’s when I saw the infamous orange net blocking the entrance into the next street. I read the loud orange message and was about to turn back when I saw a group of protesters rush the nets, trying to get under it to the other side. It is only a plastic net I thought. I guess you can lift it. A meter away from me a lone young man looked straight at me while holding the net above his head, the expression on his face wasn’t aggressive, panicked, but calm. As I looked back at him and accepted his offer to go under the net, it occurred to me why tonight was different.

Unlike previous marches, this time (empowered by the plight of their Oakland friends) nobody seemed to be afraid of the police. They were not willing to engage the police, but also not unwilling to disobey.

Police tried to prevent others from passing the net, but were quickly overwhelmed by the sheer number of protestors. I was caught up in the commotion and fell down. In that moment a thought came to me, it would be regrettable to be kicked or hit over the head right now. However, some of the protestors helped me up and I found myself on the other side of the orange divide.

The streets were full of people with banners and flags, zigzagging through car traffic, shouting “Oakland is New York, New York is Oakland!!” Even though some in their cars appeared shocked to see hundreds of people marching against the traffic, walking past their cars, no one committed any damage to any vehicle nor threatened anyone. I wasn’t surprised that the march didn’t erupt into a violent mob, as protesters often screamed out “this is a peaceful protest”, but I was surprised that taxi and truck drivers were honking in support. Some truck drivers had their fists raised out of their windows. I guess the police crackdown on the Occupy movement has evoked some sympathy from those that were, up until now, sitting on the fence.

Police helicopters above our heads directed the police on the ground in order to block the marches progression into Manhattan. However, every time police on scooters tried to block the street, protestors were jumping through the blockade, even over the scooters. One of the protestors stood in front of a police officer holding a peace sign when 2 policemen pushed him to the ground and attempted to arrest him. At that point a number of protesters jumped over parked police scooters and pulled the protestor to his feet and away from the police.

OWS demonstrators continued their march in solidarity with Oakland through lower Manhattan, eventually returning to Liberty Plaza where those holding the fort met them with applause and cheers. Occupy Wall Street is now a community, a mini-village that is in constant contact with other occupations around the country, and what happened in Oakland on Tuesday night has hit the nerve center of the movement. New York responded in solidarity, echoing “We are all in this together!!”

I wonder if the police will realize that they are only invigorating the movement and strengthening people’s resolve with every show of unnecessary force and brutality.
OWS is growing in popularity while the police are becoming increasingly militant in their treatment of the protestors. Police have even accused the OWS of being responsible for the increase in gun violence across New York City!

First they blamed the protestors for forcing the police to spend millions, now the police accuse OWS of being responsible for the increase in violence around New York City. I think the logic goes something like this: If it wasn’t for the OWS, police could better appropriate their resources and fight crime more effectively. Though no one is asking why there is such a heavy police presence around the park? Why are there cameras, watchtowers, barricades, surveillance trucks, communication trucks, and hundreds of armed police surrounding a few hundred protesters assembled peacefully, as is their constitutional right? Are they really such a security threat? Have they destroyed any property or hurt anyone?

Why is the system so afraid of a few hundred die-hard protestors demanding social justice and calling for regulations on corporate donations to politicians? No matter what happens, OWS has already exposed cracks in the US system and has empowered many to speak out. Last week I was in Harlem at the anti-‘stop and frisk’ march, where dozens of activists were willingly arrested outside the Harlem police precinct. OWS supported the protest against racial profiling and the amendment, which permits the police to randomly stop and frisk people.

As Adam Smith said, “Wherever there is great property there is great inequality. For one very rich man there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many”. These days one can see an increase of signs around Liberty Plaza that read, “NYPD protects the rich.” In the face of recent police actions against the movement, why shouldn’t demonstrators ask “who are you protecting?!”

As Hillary Clinton and Obama criticized the police crackdowns in Egypt, Syria and elsewhere, where people took to the streets to demand change, the police in the US are cracking down on Occupy protestors around the country in an attempt to end the occupations. However, protestors in Oakland, and other cities, have vowed to continue protesting and occupying other areas. Here in New York there is talk of occupying Central Park. Somehow I don’t think that the NYPD will be very accommodating if such an occupation is attempted this weekend. ‘Which of us’, said the Lord Hamlet, ‘shall ‘scape whipping?’

-Emir Hodzic, an Aucklander participating in OWS. All photos by Emir.

No consensus with Nazis, no change without struggle

2011-10-30T15:45:00.000-07:00

Racism and fascism have no place in Aotearoa. In the UK combating racist groups like the British National Party means confronting them in the streets.

On the 22nd of October, an incident occurred at the Wellington occupation, which elucidates several fundamental issues requiring resolution within not only the local movement but also to an extent the global movement as a whole.

An individual from the occupation was made aware of a nearby rally in Midland Park by the National Front, an openly fascist, neo-Nazi organization and took it upon himself to approach the neo-Nazis in the interest of inviting them along to a talk he was conducting and welcoming them to the occupation. After a number of concerned individuals expressed their discontent with this idea, a general assembly (GA) was called on the basis that one person from the group did not have the right to invite a whole contingent of people openly hostile to the espoused principles of the Occupy Movement. From the start of the GA, several openly queer/transgendered individuals voiced their obvious concerns at welcoming an outwardly homophobic group to the occupation, primarily regarding their concern for their own personal safety and their right to exist in a safe space. Other members expressed their opposition to the occupation openly inviting and associating with a neo-Nazi organization, regardless of whether association occurred on a group or individual basis on the grounds that in principle the proposition ran contrary to the movement’s goals. However, countering the concerns of those opposed to associating with the likes of fascists and homophobes, a sentiment arose within a majority of the GA that if the occupation really wanted to stay true to its adopted line of “We are the 100%” inclusiveness, it was in the group’s best interest to welcome everyone to the occupation, regardless of the hateful and discriminatory nature of their beliefs. Ironically, this dogmatic notion of all inclusiveness extended to welcoming the “1%” as well, essentially undermining the whole reason for creating a space where the masses have a real voice in determining their own future.

The GA went on for around an hour and a half, where a multitude of naïve ideas regarding the occupation’s power to change, reform, or heal the neo-Nazis were thrown around in favor of welcoming them, indicative of the low level political consciousness that the group as a whole possessed. The line of complete inclusivity was virtually raised to a tyrannical level trumping all other principles, including the preservation of a safe space for all marginalized groups. At a basic theoretical level, the issue of whether or not to endorse the presence of neo-Nazis derives from a fundamental misconception of the “99%” on the part of members of the GA.

After a great deal of deliberation, it was finally agreed upon that no one from the GA outwardly supported the National Front, and that if they used hate speech at the occupation they’d have to leave. This decision nonetheless left many in the group dissatisfied for totally misconstruing the crux of the issue; namely, how to implement the principle of solidarity in actual practice. Can real solidarity with oppressed groups like queer people, Maori, and immigrants exist in conjunction with the open inclusion of those who actively support the subjugation and extermination of minorities? Do we really expect to create safe spaces for marginalized groups through welcoming neo-Nazis to our occupations? Herein lies the danger of a politically undeveloped occupy movement. In the interests of 100% inclusivity, groups that do not understand the implications of their own empty principles can inadvertently undermine the rights and safety of minorities, creating a situation that leads to the disintegration of the movement we seek to create before it has even really established itself on a truly mass level. In addition to fragmenting the occupiers, it totally negates the principle message of the movement.

As a result of this situation, queer members of the GA and others that stood in solidarity with them formed a Queer Caucus to address the issue at hand in a democratic setting where unity existed against neo-Nazis. The caucus returned to the GA that night and made some progress towards heightening the consciousness of the occupation, explicating the conditions that led to the total disregard for the rights of the queer members and any others that felt threatened earlier in the day. The ability of the Queer Caucus to develop the political consciousness of the GA demonstrates the vital role political education must play within the occupy movement as a whole in advancing the struggle.

An important lesson to be learned from this example is that such efforts towards 100% inclusivity ironically end up having the opposite effect on those groups whose rights become marginalized in the pursuit of consensus where there simply is none – it actually pushes people away. In the case of Occupy Wellington, no one who is actually familiar with the beliefs and actions of the neo-Nazi movement has any interest in sharing the occupation with them, let alone tolerating their presence. Indeed, some even feared for their own safety in a space that was ostensibly set up as a means combating oppression and discrimination. The idea of 100% inclusivity is clearly problematic in regards to maintaining the cohesion of the Occupation Movement, but where does it derive from on a conceptual level?

A fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of the 99% was the distinguishable factor that led to a near division within the Occupy Wellington movement. On the one hand of the Wellington discussion, individuals with little or no understanding of class struggle falsely conceptualize the power of the 99% as one founded in the transformative power of love and total inclusivity to magically transform our society. In their view, enemies of the masses, like fascists and the rich business elite for example, will simply experience a change of heart, abandoning their terrible ways once they are incorporated into the Occupy Movement through the intoxicating power of the love demonstrated to them, if only we are strong-willed enough.

A more politically conscious analysis of the “99%” is that a majority of the members of society have been oppressed for the sake of serving the interests of a small minority, and that this situation will not change without some kind of struggle; a reclamation of power. It is the conflict of interests itself that gives the “99%” its true power; namely to overthrow the interests of the “1%” by establishing a system in which the basic interests of the 99% are put before all else, privileging freedom from all kinds of economic, racial, and sexual oppression as the core basis on which progression from capitalism takes place. Those with a more thought out political consciousness recognize the importance of acknowledging that the rich upper class will do everything and anything to maintain the current unequal power structures within society. Moreover, standing united against hate groups and in solidarity with marginalized groups in society is essential to preserving the integrity of the movement.

Without political or class consciousness, or at the very least a rudimentary principle of exclusivity from which to build on, it becomes difficult to avoid situations where the rights of minorities are infringed upon in the interest of pursuing the empty idea of total inclusivity. Unfortunately, the apolitical perception that unconditional love and total inclusivity are the solution to the multitude of problems we seek to ameliorate as a movement is much easier and more convenient to engage with than that of political struggle, deriving itself from an ignorance of the complex issues the Occupy Movement seeks to deal with.

The mechanism of political education as a means of advancing the political consciousness of the members of the Occupy Movement is critical if we wish to build the struggle for justice and avert fragmentation from within. If a GA does not at a minimum share a common understanding of who the oppressor is and a willingness to stand united against them, it is irrational to expect the movement to remain cohesive and progress forward.

-Daniel Hockenberry

John Minto- for the 99%- Tax the 1%!

2011-10-27T05:07:00.000-07:00

John Minto- for the 99%- Tax the 1%!
Mana launches it economic policy HERE

Tunes for Palestine - Thursday Night gig at Occupied Aotearoa Square!

2011-10-25T21:06:00.000-07:00

Tunes for Palestine - 8pm, Thursday 27 October

Come along and enjoy an acoustic concert at Occupied Aotearoa Square to raise awareness and koha for the campaign to end the siege of Palestine.

Headlining the gig is Roger Fowler, who will be leading the next Kia Ora Gaza mission. Roger opened for David Rovics in 2009 and has a history mixing music and activism right back to Jumping Sundays

Also playing will be Paul Brown, a folk artist from Scotland and passionate about social change.

Otis Mace! Otis has opened for Billy Bragg, The Violent Femmes, The Screaming Blue Messiahs, Chris Knox,The Mutton Birds, and the Exponents

And Matt Billington, aka Myth of Democracy, the punk folk voice of Ak City.

In December 2011, Kia Ora Gaza will join an international aid convoy to Gaza led by UK charity Viva Palestina. The convoy intends to break Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza by linking up with Cairo’s democracy movement and entering the besieged enclave through Egypt’s land gate. This strategy could well lead towards the permanent opening of Egypt’s gateway to Gaza, thus fatally wounding Israel’s siege. That would be a truly world historic event.

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Meat companies as greedy as banks

2011-10-25T15:15:00.000-07:00

The meat processing companies of this country are as greedy as the zombie banks that ignited the 2008 crash, that's what the Meat Workers Union are saying, as they fight massive pay cuts at a rural meat plant.

The Meat Workers Union are fighting for the survival of their collective agreement down in the CMP Rangitikei meat works near Palmerston North.

A lock out has forced many of the union members back to work as the company seeks pay cuts of up to 25% but a hearty core of trade unionists are standing up to the lock out and are picketing the company's plant daily.

The majority overseas owned company wants workers to work 5 more hours than the current 35 hour week and get paid less than the current rates. The lock out shows that the post-crisis corporate drive to lower wages and break unions around the country which has resulted in industrial action at dairy factories, universities, call centres and casinos is far from over.

This is how the 1% controls and exploits the 99%, by starving unionised workers out of their collective agreements, through lock outs. Strong unions, militant mass action and solidarity between workers is critical to beating the bosses and holding the line.

As the occupation movement holds city centers around the country it is important to send messages of solidarity to the Meat Workers Union members who are fighting for their right to a living wage.

Kia kaha, kia toa, kia manawanui!

"Last season they said they had the best season they'd ever had last year."

The Two Souls of the Workers Movement

2011-10-25T05:09:00.000-07:00

a discussion at Occupy Auckland on Labour Day

Socialist Aotearoa

The Slavic Punk Rock Connection

NO WAR ON IRAN

You can't kill a rebellion

Invasion Day march in Canberra

Mass arrests at Occupy Auckland

Tahrir trembles again with the Egyptian revolution

A year on from the Egyptian Revolution: Socialist Worker editor reports from Tahrir Square

Remembering Bloody Sunday - 40 years on

Everyday we fight the system

Right to protest | Right to camp

Shine a light on poverty

This is revolution in the making

Children's crusade

Video- Auckland Community support for Wharfies

Mana - We Support the Wharfies

New AntiCapitalist- Victory to the Wharfies!

Public meeting Thursday

On the Waterfront

Len Brown is a scab

The empire strikes back

"We want fire" - Class struggles in North Korea

No 2012 pay rise for 1 in 5 workers

Fuel to the fire in 2012

Support the strikes

Sit down, fight back in 2012

From Tahrir to Aotea- DEMOCRACY UNDER ATTACK

Standing with Egypt against the military

From Aotea to Tahrir- Solidarity with the Egyptian Revolution

Len Brown - Which side are you on?

Hip hop is on the move

Photos from anti-eviction march

Throwing kids to the market

Stop the evictions!

"We will help the Poor to fight the Rich"

Photos from Auckland waterfront dispute

To Hell with this- Voices of Struggle from the Unite Conference

G.I. mass meeting rises up against Tory bureaucrats

Christmas on the picketline

Families pledge to stay put in Glen Innes

Anti-Capitalist Summer Special

Immortal Technique comes to Auckland

But will they vote? A Marxist analysis of Election '11

Beyond the beginning...

"Workers of Egypt. Rise up for the victory of the revolution"

Army officer greeted by crowds. He leads the chants "down with the Scaf"

"Rebellious Comrades"- State of the Nation- Hone's speech to Mana

From Occupy Wall St to Occupy Everywhere

The People's Party

Police to raid journalists Wednesday

Occupy and Theory- where now for the Movement?

We shall Not Be Moved- Glen Innes against evictions

Shame on Labour- Minto versus the Invisible Man

Soundtrack to the struggle

Occupy Otara! Mana builds the Movement.

John Minto: "Mana is about giving the power to communities"

Mana: Nats lack common decency on GI housing

Day 20: "A fightback for meat workers nationwide"

Day 17: 111 workers locked out but standing together

Remember, remember- It's time for a Political Explosion in Parliament

Solidarity- $1,111 for the Locked Out Marton Workers

Revolution's on the wall in Fiji

Queen St Banks occupied by Robin Hood Freedom Fighters

Occupy Christchurch - a space for radical social change to begin

Friday fundraiser for the locked out Marton Meat Workers

Victory in Dunedin- Time to Occupy the Streets

These workers have got guts...

Key slagging John Minto brings an invitation for the 1% to meet the 99%

Revolution! From an Arab Spring to a Pacific Summer

Police crackdown on OWS protestors

No consensus with Nazis, no change without struggle

John Minto- for the 99%- Tax the 1%!

Tunes for Palestine - Thursday Night gig at Occupied Aotearoa Square!

Meat companies as greedy as banks

The Two Souls of the Workers Movement