I’ve held off from commenting on this affair until now, as I wanted to get a feel of how the media was handling it, whether facts were being published, and how the Occupy Aotearoa project was coming along.
There have been some interesting things going on. Occupy Wellington has a distributed leadership consensus decision-making group, which holds twice daily general assemblies of all attending the occupation, and is generally allowing allcomers to participate, discuss, vent, and help put plans together.
There have been a few issues, at first mainly weather related (one structure was re-assembled three times in as many days…), but as time has gone by a few personalities have become problems. There are sufficient skills in facilitation within the group that such issues have been quietly and firmly dealt with, although one disruptive visitor has been identified by Police as someone they want to remove from Wellington environs, so reluctantly an agreement was made that they would be contacted if he showed up again; when he did this was communicated to him and he went away immediately after yelling abuse at the ‘hospitality’ team, shouting that it was all lies. But the fact that he wasn’t keen to hang around and dispute the topic (his usual behaviour) gives the lie to his protestations, and to my knowledge he hasn’t been seen since.
Liason with Police and City Council has been positive and open from early days. A ‘hospitality’ roster keeps the camping area safe from random pillaging, whilst also functioning as a meet’n’greet point for visitors, media, and those who are staying overnight but have jobs or study to go to during the day. Organisation of food, waste disposal, recycling and workshops is happening in an organically fluid way, as people volunteer to work on various tasks and rotate as they become interested in different aspects of keeping this kind of action going.
Non-Violent Direct Action (NVDA) principles are being followed in planning any kind of satellite action and with the discussion group structure working well, there is sufficient input to utilise all available skillsets, whilst also having critical oversight from those campers who have more extensive experience in running demo’s, marches, protests or occupations.
There are also Occupy groups running in Auckland/Tamaki Makaurau, New Plymouth/Taranaki, Christchurch/Otautahi, Dunedin/Otepoti, and a satellite of the Christchurch occupation at Nelson.
Some of these groups are in contact with each other, due to affinity group connections between individual campers.
There’s a lot of chatter on FB, Twitter, and mainstream media, not all of it accurate or positive about the events or meanings of these actions. Occupy Wellington has its own webpage here, which is being updated sporadically by various people. There are some workshops planned for Labour Day (monday) with a schedule here, and there’s a ‘blogroll’ of media reports here.
In the interests of fair and unbiased reporting, I have to state that I spent 3 nights camping at the Occupy Wellington site; my tent is still there, in someone else’s use, as I’ve slunk home to try to cure a dose of ‘flu. I admit to being closely linked to quite a few of those who are core to this occupation action, and I 100% support what they are doing.
As usual, here’s a few pix to finish off with. Not sweary at all, totally SFW.
Green Mana electorate candidate Jan Logie with supporters on day one.
Sunday afternoon saw me leaving soggy Wellington on the train and heading up the line to Paekakariki for a showing of The Hollow Men run by Mana Greens as a fundraiser for Jan Logie’s campaign. The journey was made more pleasant by the fact of other greenies travelling out too, and the companionship of my son, who’d decided to join us.
The screening was held in a little church hall in Paekakariki, which was viscerally reminiscent of the small country church halls of my rural childhood – right down to the idiosyncratic placements of lighting switches which had half a dozen of us hunting for the main switch once the movie began to show.
In true small-town form, the first print of the dvd wouldn’t play, a back-up had to be quickly rounded up, and then it was decided to just project it onto the back wall rather than use the too-small screen.
Meanwhile the assembled crowd ate popcorn, handed out in paper bags by Jan’s support crew (made on the premises in the wee kitchen, so the hall smelt nicely of buttered popcorn when we all dribbled in…) and chatted amongst ourselves. There was a small cash bar, so most people had a glass or bottle or two while it all got under way. Plenty of Young Greens present too, including Jack McDonald, who is standing in the māori electorate of Te Tai Hauāuru, an enormous chunk of the west coast of the lower north island that he has been travelling around, giving speeches to various entities.
The movie is well-enough known, I think, that I don’t need to summarise too much, suffice to say that even though the main plot finishes just after the 2005 election, the events portrayed are seared into my mind from that time, and I remembered a lot of the footage. Vanguard Films adapted the script to follow the footage they could find through the Film Archive, TVNZ archives & TV3 archives, so much of it was cut’n’paste of the actual politicians and journalists talking about the events as they happened – so much of this scandal was actually on public record.
Afterwards, Nicky Hager took questions from the audience, and made a brief statement that he considered Dr Don Brash not to have substantially changed his core approach since 2005, so that many of the issues raised in the book and the film are still relevant in NZ politics during the current election campaign.
There was also some brief discussion of his latest book, “Other Peoples’ Wars”, which has just been published, covering some of the same period of time but looking at the Labour Government Ministers and NZDF chiefs involved in sending our SAS to Afghanistan and Iraq, which was of course the subject of much Green protest in 2002/3 (“There are no Just Wars, Just Peace” ring a bell with anyone?) and on through subsequent years, as this illegal war dragged on through a decade. Having just finished reading the book, I thoroughly recommend it, especially for those who weren’t involved in any of the anti-war movements and couldn’t see what all the fuss was about.
Ok, so I admit I should have written about this before it happened, so’s any regulars here might join in if they cared to, but meh, I’ve been busy.
And in any case, re-read the title, Jan Logie has got a great team helping her in Mana electorate, and it showed at the Lighthouse Cinema in Pauatahanui, that semi-rural community north of Wellington famous for preserving a fabulous wetlands area which NZTA now want to drive Transmission Gully straight through.
So, as we all scuttled from our various means of transport through the rain into the cinema, there was a Green info stall with some posters and leaflets, also selling last-minute tickets for the early evening showing of Oranges and Sunshine.
Jan spoke briefly just before we watched the movie, highlighting Green policy around poverty and families, and then we settled down for this directorial outing by Ken Loache’s son Jim; as much of a reason to watch the film as anything else, IMNSHO.
The original book by Nottingham social worker Margaret Humphreys was the result of the events you see in the film, as she uncovered to her horror the evidence of mass, forced migrations of underpriviledged children in the 50’s and 60’s, with the active collusion of both the UK and Australian Governments.
Her book Empty Cradles caused a furore at the time, but as the title sequence acknowledges at the end of the film, it took 23 years after she pieced the facts together for those Governments to apologise to the children who were removed from families into care, and then spirited half a world away while their parents tried to get employment, housing and debts under control.
It certainly makes you think about our current social welfare provisions, particularly those around fostering, adoption and the provisions in law for making children at risk wards of the state. I for one came out of the session in mild shock, and considering carefully the phrase ‘let s/he who is without sin throw the first stone’ … for the judgemental nature of those upper-middle class civil servants in the UK was a very big part of this action, which can only be framed as class war, misogyny and extreme cruelty to parents and children alike.
For anyone interested in the subject of forced removals of children for adoptions in NZ, there is an excellent book on the subject by Dr Anne Else, A question of adoption : closed stranger adoption in New Zealand, 1944-1974, which gives very good background to the shaming of mothers, then-current protections in law so that paternity could not be stated for illegitimate children, particularly if the father was already married, and other grounds under which young women were deemed to be unfit to bring up their children. This was published in 1991 by Bridget Williams books, and should be available in the WCC libraries as well as holdings in the VUW libraries.
Jan Logie speaking before the screening.
The Listener had coincidentally given this film a very good review (by film reviewer Helene Wong) just last week, so the final tally of attendees may have been boosted unwittingly by their aid – Jan is seen speaking in the larger of the two cinemas, but we had screenings in both available cinemas, such was the demand.
I thoroughly recommend both that you see this movie, either as it screens around the country or at some future date on DVD, and also that you see a movie in one of the Lighthouse Cinemas scattered around Wellington region – Petone has one as well as Pauatahanui – and I’d generally say that the experience of seeing movies in smaller, local cinemas has a lot going for it. Wellington particularly has had a resurgence in small cinemas dating back to the re-opening of the Empire Cinema in Island Bay a few years ago, and most recently the refurbished Roxy Cinema in Park Rd, Miramar owned by Sir Peter Jackson, but one of the few he owns which is open to the general public.
Lastly, I’d like to thank every professional social worker who deals with families day-to-day – it is an unremittingly stressful job, as the central character in this film shows viscerally. You are women (and some men, too) who are truly worth your weight and more in gold, and heroes and heroines for all the children whose lives are touched and strengthened by your support.