Migration, Racism and New Zealand Politics
From 2015, and gathering pace during 2016, an ugly development took place in New Zealand politics: a growing chorus of anti-immigrant rhetoric, with an anti-Asian slant. The rightwing populist New Zealand First has long traded on being anti-immigrant, but Winston Peters’s crowd have now been joined by the Labour Party, some union officials, and, since […]
Mass Action Can Change Society
The mass of ordinary people who can change society. The ruling class, the capitalist media, and academia all stress workers’ powerlessness, and these ideas often filter through to people who want to change the world. The emphasis can get put on heroic individuals, spectacular action designed to ‘shock’ the masses out of their alleged passivity, […]
Keep the ‘European Students Association’ off Auckland University campus!
So Trumpism has hit New Zealand shores. A group calling itself the ‘European Students Association’ is trying to set itself up at the University of Auckland. The group’s website is covered in all the usual muck of the far right, with slogans echoing SS phrases from Nazi Germany and weasley phrases about ‘European culture’. This […]
Solidarity for Sanctuary – no deportations!
Unionists and members from the wider community came together last Saturday afternoon in a show of solidarity with 9 Indian students facing deportation. The students, many of whom have finished their studies, face deportation as it was discovered that agents in India had falsified documents without their knowledge. The students were lured to New Zealand under […]
Blame the bosses – not migrants!
So this month saw the end of Planet Key. Bill English’s ascension gives us an opportunity to survey political possibilities for our movement. There is plenty for workers to feel angry about, and plenty about which the Government has nothing but the feeble excuses. From the housing situation in Auckland to the recent embarrassing back […]
Green vomit and statistical nonsense: lies about immigration and housing
A few days ago the Labour party announced a new policy of increasing police numbers by 1000. I groaned at this news but it didn’t really surprise me. Then yesterday I heard of the new Greens policy on immigration, with James Shaw calling for a drastic reduction in numbers. Is New Zealand First calling the shots here, aided and […]
No Deportations!
On Monday night in quiet leafy suburbs in Lynfield, the silence was broken by calls for justice from a crowd of around 50 people. Justice for the 150 Indian students who have been swindled by immigration agents overseas and tertiary institutions here in New Zealand. The National Party was hosting a public meeting at the Lynfield Community […]
Our ‘work ethic’ is not the problem
John Key came out this week and said it: New Zealanders are just too lazy or drug-addled to work, so we have to bring in migrants to “do a fabulous job” harvesting fruit and veges. It’s a meme that has done the rounds on the media, slyly suggested by employers, farmers and politicians but never before as baldly […]
Resisting the pro-police backlash after Dallas
THE POLICE KILLING of two Black men–Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, a suburb of the Twin Cities in Minnesota–last week horrified people around the world and brought protesters into the streets in large numbers across the country to proclaim that Black Lives Matter. Yet just as quickly, in […]
After the Brexit: Fighting Racism
Kevin Hodder sent these notes from London: I awoke in London to a shock. Travelling from New Zealand and only briefly abroad, I only had a relatively tenuous grasp on the debates going on in the UK around the “Brexit” vote. The details of these debates are not for me to cover. Irrespective of why […]
