Anarcho-Syndicalist Speaking Tour

Wow – this doesn’t happen very often! A comrade from the Anarcho-Syndicalist Federation in Australia is visiting Aotearoa and doing a speaking tour with five public meetings across the country. Very exciting! Here are all the details:

Auckland – 3rd November – The Tāmaki Anarcho-Syndicalist Day School!

  • 11am – 6pm, Auckland Trades Hall 147 Great North Rd, Auckland
  • Hosted by Tāmaki Makaurau Anarchists
  • Facebook Event

Rotorua – 4th November – Anarcho-Syndicalism: Its relevance and need today

  • 7pm, Rotorua Library
  • Hosted by the Aotearoa Workers Solidarity Movement
  • Facebook Event

Wellington – 6th November – Modern Anarcho-Syndicalism – an Australian anarchist speaks

Christchurch – 7th November – Ours To Master and To Own

  • 7.30pm, Avon Loop Community Cottage, at 28 Hurley Street, Christchurch
  • Hosted by the Canterbury Socialist Society
  • Facebook Event

Dunedin – 8th November – Ours to Master and Own

  • 6pm, 3rd Floor Seminar Room, Dunedin City Library
  • Hosted by Orago Socialist Society
  • Facebook Event
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A tear for a boxthorn hedge

Boxthorn. Introduced to Aotearoa / New Zealand from South Africa some time in the early 1870s and not long after was brought to Taranaki where it was used for hedges on sheep and dairy farms. In Africa, it was used to keep lions out of villages. In Taranaki, the hedges prevent sheep and cattle from escaping and provide at least some shelter from the prevailing winds.

After virtually all land in Taranaki was confiscated in the 1860s, the forest was cut down and destroyed to make room for farms. Wetlands were drained, hills flattened, roads built and more and more animals were grazed to the point that feed is now supplemented with imports from across the world. The impact of industrial dairy farming on local waterways and the global climate has been devastating.

It soon became apparent that the boxthorn hedges weren’t the glorious solution either: difficult to manage, requiring heavy machinery for regular pruning, and of course invasive. Boxthorn has now been classified as plant pest and can’t be sold nor propagated. More and more hedges have been removed. However, in the sea of grass – a total mono-cultural landscape – boxthorn nowadays often provides the only bit of biodiversity, acts as a carbon sink and provides at least some shelter for the cows who are exposed to the harsh elements 365 days of the year.

And it’s not like farmers are replacing boxthorn hedges with other trees as a place of habitat for birds. They are replacing it with a fence made of chemically treated posts and wire.

Yes, it’s ironic that one would shed a tear for a digger piling up an invasive boxthorn hedge ready to put a match to it. However, in these dire ecological times, every bit of carbon in and on the ground is a climate change frontline. We all know that industrial dairying is a dead-end strategy. It is destructive on all levels: environmentally (the cows suffer, the rivers are polluted, the atmosphere is being destroyed), economically (farmers aren’t even making any money – it’s just the banks who are winning) and socially (mental health issues, loss of community in rural areas due to mechanisation).

Solutions are everywhere. The starting point is building strong, resilient and caring communities. We need to plant trees and grow food (and not commodities). We need to return confiscated lands. We need to protect waterways and the coast. We need to turn the Beehive into a skatepark and the Regional Council debating chamber into a tenpin bowling lane.

Continue reading

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Social Ecology Online Seminar: Oct. 8-Nov. 26

There is another online course with the Institute for Social Ecology. They call it a ‘fall course’ but obviously it is spring in the Southern Hemisphere 🙂 More details here: http://social-ecology.org/wp/2018/09/fall-social-ecology-online-seminar-oct-8-nov-26/

Enroll today for the fall session of the Institute for Social Ecology online seminar Ecology, Democracy, Utopia!  The course will meet Mondays at 1 pm EST from October 8th through November 26th.

Participants will learn the foundations of social ecology and apply these insights to a variety of contemporary political and ecological problems, sharpening their understanding of the world while developing visionary ideas to change it. The course explores a broad range of interconnected themes, including:

  • What is Social Ecology?
  • The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy
  • Understanding Nature: Towards a Dialectical Naturalism
  • Capitalism, Critique, Alternatives
  • Technology, Agriculture, and Society
  • Politics Beyond the State: Popular Assemblies/Direct Democracy
  • Getting from Here to There: Social Movements and Community Organizing
  • Reconstructive Vision: Reclaiming Utopia

Format: The course is arranged into eight thematic units which combine video lectures by ISE faculty, a weekly online seminar, readings, and online discussion forums. Each week, participants watch a video lecture and read assigned texts, then meet online to discuss them with faculty and other students during the weekly seminar. There are also online forums where the conversation can be continued between sessions. There are no written assignments or grades, participants receive a certificate of completion. Through our partnership with Goddard College, students who enroll in their low-residency BA program can earn college credit for the course; some students from other institutions have been able to take the course for credit via their home university as an independent study.

Registration is open to everyone, but space is limited. To enroll, please write us at social-ecology@mail.mayfirst.org and pay the $100 registration fee here.

We look forward to learning and changing the world together!

 

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AARGH Issue 9 is online

Our comrades from The Freedom Shop collective in Wellington have published Issue 9 of their magazine in May. The Aotearoa Anarchist Review can be downloaded as a PDF here.

Articles in this issue look back at the anti-capitalist movement of the late 90s/early 2000s, a flashback to the good old days of ((i))ndymedia, an article on communal living in Wellington and more bad news from Manus Island.

They working on issue 10, if you have anything for it (articles, graphics, poems, whatever), send it to us at FreedomShopAotearoa@gmail.com.

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It feels like everyday life under the revolution: Growing a new world in Rojava.

Matt Broomfield and Tolhildan of The Internationalist Commune of Rojava discuss the daily work of ecological and social revolution – from restoring the health of liberated lands, to learning new ways of living and working together.

Matt wrote the op-ed Here’s why we’re planting trees in northern Syria. Dog Section Press is raising funds to publish the commune’s book Make Rojava Green Again.

It feels like everyday life under the revolution: Growing a new world in Rojava. by This is Hell!

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Here’s why we’re planting trees in northern Syria

This land was liberated from Bashar Al-Assad and Isis. Now we need help to keep it alive.

By Matt Broomfield, a member of the Internationalist Commune of Rojava (first published here)

Matt Broomfield is a member of the Internationalist Commune of Rojava

You can support the Make Rojava Green Again crowdfunder and visit their website for more details about the Internationalist Commune’s work.

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Crop Swap – Toha atu toha mai

an ethics based on sharing and cooperation – that’s Communalism in a nutshell. A beautiful manifestation of sharing with each other is the Crop Swap movement that’s currently taking Aotearoa by storm. What started in 2014 in suburban New Plymouth is now a network of 17 meeting places across the North Island. The idea is simple: Toha atu toha mai / I share with you, you share with me.

“Crop Swap Aotearoa was once a tiny seed that fell into fertile New Zealand soil. In September 2014 a bunch of backyard gardeners met in a private house in Merrilands, New Plymouth, Taranaki, and experienced the joy of sharing their garden produce first hand. Crop Swap Merrilands was born, grew bigger, moved into a public hall and inspired people in other suburbs and villages to start their own Crop Swap hubs.”

The values of the group: “We come together with a mindset of abundance, give with generosity and take mindfully. We understand that we as individuals are only then truly well when everyone’s needs are met. We are open and inclusive and support people in finding their gifts. We are building a multi-generational network of gardeners to support local food production, preserving gardening knowledge and enjoy each other’s company.”

The Crop Swap website – http://www.cropswap.co.nz/ – has a map of all the venues and ideas on starting your own Crop Swap in your community. And you can find a super cute video here.

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Happy May Day!?!

The origins of May Day are still well known for those of us on the revolutionary Left. For a brief refresher: In 1887 four Chicago anarchists were executed. A fifth cheated the hangman by killing himself in prison. Three more spent several years in jail. The state had, in the words of the prosecution, put “Anarchy .. on trial” and hoped their deaths would also be the death of the anarchist idea. The anarchists were trade union organisers and May Day became an international workers day to remember their sacrifice. They were framed on false charges of throwing a bomb at police breaking up a demonstration in Chicago. This was part of a strike demanding an 8 hour day involving 400,000 workers in Chicago that started May 1st 1886. Read more in the Workers Solidarity Movement (Ireland) website

For over a century, May Day has been a day for workers across the world to come together and fight for our collective liberation. While there have been gatherings and protests of workers on 1st May in Aotearoa (NZ) over the years, Labour Day is associated with a public holiday in late October. Labour Day was first celebrated in New Zealand on 28 October 1890, when several thousand trade union members and supporters attended parades in the main centres. Government employees were given the day off to attend the parades and many businesses closed for at least part of the day. The date, 28 October, marked the first anniversary of the establishment of the Maritime Council, an organisation of transport and mining unions. Read more on the NZ History website 

However, there have always been gatherings on May Day by socialist organisations and protest marches were held again with the re-emerging anti-capitalist movement in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Below are a few newspaper clippings.

The only gathering that I could make out this year is the May Day concert in Palmerston North – 5th May at the Globe Theatre. Check out this year’s programme here. Meanwhile workers across the world are marching today, taking a stand against fascism, capitalism and war. Long may it continue. Happy May Day!

 

Christchurch 1905

 

 

 

 

Auckland 1930

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Petone 1933

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Auckland 1934

 

 

 

Wellington 2005

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The Last Stop

By Pete

Recently, I went for a run in West Auckland, in Kumeu to be precise. I try and go for a run once a week to calm my mind. Just a few kilometres to get the heart going and relax mentally. I don’t live in Kumeu and don’t know Auckland very well. Maybe I should have checked out Wikipedia before getting all grumpy: “Kumeu is a affluent, rural community situated 25 km north-west of the Auckland City centre in New Zealand.”

Affluent. Oh yes. The wealth on display on this rural road I was running down was extreme. Revolting. Incomprehensible. Only a few kilometres away, families are living in their cars, lining up at WINZ and flipping burgers on the minimum wage. Meanwhile in Kumeu, there are mansions with a council Capital Value of more than $2 million! Houses the size of castles, garages as big as a school hall and boats that can cross the Seven Seas. And a paddock that could feed a village with fresh vegetables is home to a couple of lonely ponies.

It was private property galore. I was puffed. As I stopped and caught my breath, I spotted a bus stop on the other side of the road. One of the walls was smashed and the inside was full of rubbish. I didn’t look like anyone was using the stop and when I later checked the Auckland Transport website, I couldn’t find any evidence of any public transport servicing the area. Maybe a school bus? Who knows.

But it dawned on me then and there: the only thing owned by the public in this street (other than the asphalt on the road I guess) – this bus stop – is broken, full of rubbish and not in use. And why would it be in use? Thirty years of neoliberalism in Aotearoa have contributed to the expanding divide between the rich and the poor, as have 200 years of colonialism.

The people living on that road have accumulated so much wealth that they simply couldn’t care less about public transport. Yes, a generalisation. But if the only thing communal in your neighbourhood that’s left is an unused, broken and dirty bus stop, then something is seriously wrong.

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The ZAD Becomes Compost: LONG LIVE THE ZAD (Zone a Defendre)!

By Beverly Naidus – repost from the Institute for Social Ecology

When something you have witnessed, loved and cared for is destroyed and uprooted, whether it is a forest, a species, a community or a culture, it can wreck the spirit. The trauma of these violent actions, informed by greed and ignorance, can ripple out widely, encouraging resistance, but it requires attention. In order for the suffering to become compost from which we can plant our visions again, it needs amplification. Writing in the wee hours, on the Pacific coast of North America, I am hoping that these words will be heard, knowing that our peaceful warrior friends in the southwest of France are facing violence today. Continue reading

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