Fighting to Choose: the Abortion Rights Struggle in New Zealand
[Alison McCulloch is a freelance journalist and abortion rights activist based in Tauranga. Her history of the abortion rights struggle in New Zealand, Fighting to Choose, will be published by Victoria University Press next month. We spoke to Alison about her book and the campaign.] Alison, you’re an active member of ALRANZ, the pro-choice organisation. […]
Marriage Equality: Aye, do!
We won. 77 – 44. The ayes have it. It feels wonderful. I’d shed a few tears even before the final vote came through. It was not the quality of the speeches in Parliament, necessarily, although some of them were brilliant, Kevin Hague’s especially. But the sense of living through history was what felt so […]
MANA Feeds the Kids
This morning the Otara Leisure Centre reminded me of the photos I’ve seen of the Black Panther Party’s food parcel drive. Thousands of brown paper bags filled with sandwiches, fruit and juice packed the back rooms of the Community centre. Dozens of MANA volunteers and supporting parties, parents and activists worked to together to put […]
The horror we feel today
Khury Petersen-Smith and Sofia Arias attended the Boston Marathon as spectators. They had left the finish line area only an hour before two explosions ripped through the crowd. Today, the death toll stands at three, with more than 100 people injured, a number of them very seriously. Here, Khury and Sofia talk about their response to […]
Stand Up for Kids: Supporting Public Education
Public education in Aotearoa is under attack. From charter schools – the failed money-making scheme imported from right-wing US think-tanks – to National’s ongoing plans to increase classroom sizes to national standards and league tables, the last years have seen relentless assaults on public education. Add to this the disaster of Novopay, and the insecurity […]
Margaret Thatcher 1925 – 2013: May her legacy follow her to the grave
The death of Margaret Thatcher is an important event for anyone who stands for equality and socialism. While the event itself changes little, and Thatcher has not been in power for over 20 years, the legacy of the ‘New Right’ is still making people suffer today. Coming to power in 1979, Thatcher followed a vicious […]
The Arab Revolutions Two Years On
What has come in the West to be called the ‘Arab spring’ was one of the largest outpourings of anger at corruption and injustice in the Arab world in many decades. It saw dictators forced from their palaces, and the people of many nations embrace their ability to make this change. It saw the resurgence […]
US rhetoric and sanctions ramp up dangerous tension with North Korea
North Korea recently issued a “No.1 combat readiness alert” announcing that the “North and South are at war”. Leader Kim Jong-un also put his strategic missile units on standby for launch. South Korea’s mainstream media and politicians say North Korea is “making intentional provocations, ramping up tension”. Socialists should not support such actions by North […]
Marx and the Lassalleans
The following was presented as a talk at Marxism 2013 in Melbourne Who today has even heard of Ferdinand Lassalle? Who cares about Marx’s battles with his followers? Lassalle’s writings are out of print, and his collections sit gathering dust in the stacks and back-rooms of libraries. Picking over these old quarrels seems, at first, […]
Why women need abortion rights: the socialist case
Shomi Yoon gave this talk to the Wellington branch of the International Socialist Organisation in March. “Not the Church, not the state, women must decide their fate”: this was the fighting slogan of the abortion rights campaign of the 1970s. Women’s liberation was a movement that swept across the world, growing out of and alongside […]
