Tribute

It's going to be all abortion-blogging all the time this week (at least)from me. I have a lot to say.

But before I say anything else I just want to pay tribute to the women who fought the battles - who got us here.

The abortion fight in the 1970s was intensely long and gruelling. As I was growing up I knew abortion was an option (although I wasn't aware how ridiculous the laws were). It was only an option because people fought so long and hard both before and after the law changed.

As well as those who pushed the issue forward in the 1970s, there have also been women who have kept the issue alive over the years. Particularly at ALRANZ.

I've always loved the metaphor that those of us who are fighting for a better world are each a link in the chain - and I think as we make more chain we should appreciate that which already exists.

Howard Zinn 1922-2010: "I never died" says he

The first book I ever read by Howard Zinn was SNCC: The New Abolitionists. I've read a lot of his writing since then, and I think it's his most powerful book.

Howard Zinn wrote an essay The Optimism of Uncertainty. He argued that history should give us hope, not because it guaranteed that the powerless would win (it really doesn't), but because it showed extraordinary, unpredictable change is possible. The Civil Rights Movement, particularly SNCC, is an example of the unpredictability of hope. On the 1st of February 1960, Ezell A. Blair Jr., David Richmond, Joseph McNeil, and Franklin McCain, sat down at the counter of their local Woolworth's and refused to be served. Nobody could have predicted what would grow out of that action.

There have been so many attempts to hide the history of collective resistance, including the reduction of the the freedom movement SNCC was part of to someone sitting down on a bus and someone else giving a great speech. Howard Zinn wrote history like it mattered, because he wanted to cultivate the hope that history brings.

Choosing Conflict and Discord

I understand finding something to get excited about in the idea of Barack Obama being president (I don't share it, but I can see where it comes from). I cannot understand anyone with any progressive tendancies not being appalled by his speech. The first commentary I read on the speech which made sense was Louis Proyect's:

In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted - for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things - some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

[Yes, they wrote books about that. They are called Horatio Alger stories and they are bullshit. Bill Gates got where he is by being born into one of Seattle's richest families and by exploiting technology that had hitherto been common property.]

The Daily Show also did pretty well

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Changefest '09 - Obama's Inaugural Speech

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

I don't have time (or interest) to pick apart the whole speech, but there was one section that really stuck out to me*:

For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West, endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.

For us, they fought and died in places Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn.

Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life.

I'm going to ignore the reference to Vietnam because that's a whole nother rant, which I'm going to assume that the reader can supply themselves. I will quickly draw attention to the fact that this narrative of US history ignores anyone who was living there before European colonisation.

But my point is something quite different. People did toil in sweatshops, endure the lash of the whip and plow the hard earth. But they didn't do these things because they wanted to create the world that exists now, they did it because the alternative was starvation or death.

Millions of people worked in sweatshops, were held as slave and farmed in difficult conditions. They did so with varying degrees of control and consent. To say they did these things to bring about the world that currently exists is obscene. Millions of people have millions of different dreams, struggles and views of the purposes of their lives. Maybe some people were aiming to create the world that currently exists. But I know that some slaves, workers and farmers had a different idea of the worlds that they wanted to create. I know, because I've read about them, that some dreamed of worlds much like the world I fight for.

To claim generations of people were struggled and were exploited because so they could help create the world that we live in now is both ignorant and arrogant

* Although can I just say his view of the unselfish worker who gives up his hours so his friend will keep his job made was despicable boss pandering. How about both those workers go on strike to keep everyone's job and reclaim some profits from the bosses. I'm not saying I expect anything else from the president of the united states. I'm just saying that I don't see how anyone could have seen Barack Obama's inauguration address as doing anything but choosing sides with the rich and powerful

That's twice I've agreed with the Prime Minister this year

I was delighted to see that Dick Scott was given the Prime Minister's award for non-fiction writing. New Zealand is rather short of radical historians. If we had more there'd be more then someone would have written a book about 1951 more recently than 1952. But in 1952 Dick Scott, who was working as a union journalist, recorded those 151 days.

Dick Scott found out about Parihaka when he was reading about a libel trial - the history was that obliterated from Pakeha (and some Maori) conciousness. Resistance to colonisation has been a constant thread of this country's history. The best way to weaken that resistance is to try and wipe the memory of that history. If we see ourselves as alone, as doing something no one has tried before, then we are tiny and insignificant and the task seems impossible. If we see ourselves as part of a chain that goes back through the generations, than anything seems possible.

Dick Scott has kept the links in those chains strong, that's a worthwhile life.

Some of them actually were, or at least had been

Writer James McNeish is calling for an apology to New Zealanders who had their careers destroyed by McCarthyism (audio link). He does a very good job of talking about the unfairness of the process, and how people's lives were destroyed.

His emphasis, in every case he talks about, is how false and unfounded the accusations were, which is missing a rather important point. A lot of the people whose lives were destroyed by McCarthyism were communists, they suffered just as much as people for whom the accusations were unfounded.

Defending only those for whom the accusations were false is actually continuing McCarthyism.

A few more things on wikipedia

I've discovered that the talk pages of wikipedia are far more interesting than the articles themselves.

For instance from the Eric Hobsbawm talk page:

I removed stuff about him being a communist. You need to prove to the reader he is. This is a very sensitive legal issue. Please don't just revert go get the sources you need to "prove" he is. thanks!

Documenting that Eric Hobsbawm is a communist - that would requrie some dedicated research.

Making fun of wikipedia is one thing, but this does represent a larger problem. At wikipedia being a member of the communist party is treated as libel in a way the, to me, far more serious charges of being a member of the Labour party, Democratic party, or Republican party is not. I've read the talk pages of a few communists (people who were at one point members of a communist party and remained dedicated socialists throughout their life) right-wingers tend to want to put 'communist' every second sentence in an effort to discredit them (the discussion on Pete Seeger is particularly torturous in that respect), and supposedly well-meaning liberals remove the word 'communist'. Either side is treating 'communism' like it's a taint, and most of the biographies follow this line, by emphasising when and why people left the communist party, and why they didn't leave it sooner. That's not lacking a point of view, it's just sharing a generally accepted point of view.

Or lets look at Louise Nicholas's Wikipedia page. The edit which made the page read "Louise Nicholas is a New Zealand liar who alleged that..." was only up two hours and twenty six minutes (which is, of course, two and a half hours too long). Then the article was edited so it said "Louise Nicholas is a New Zealand woman who falsely alleged that she was raped..." That was up for almost a day. But it still says "Louise Nicholas is a New Zealand woman who made allegations..." I understand it's unlikely to say "Louise Nicholas was raped by Clint Rickards, Bob Schollum an Brad Shipton", although I think that's a serious fault of wikipedia. But can't she at least say she was raped, rather than 'alleging' it?

That's just the start of it. The article on rape has rape apologetics so ridiculous and stupid that I hadn't even heard them before. Comparing the biographies of radical women and radical men, you get the entirely expected result that people are more likely to have written about radical men, and their actions are given far more weight.

I understand that wikipedia can be useful, but it is not the way of the revolution. Free spaces will always reproduce the power structures of existing society, without concerted effort. There is no counter-balance within wikipedia, no effort to give extra weight to the powerless. Therefore, no matter how much useful information it contains, it will always support the status quo, more than it challenges it.

Point of View

Byron at proletblog has always been a fan of wikipedia, an enthusiasm I don't really share. I've written a bit about this before. But since he's started writing about wikipedia and history:

As of yesterday I'm back at university, had my first lecture of the new semester yesterday which includes all the basics, what text book to buy, what times the tutorials are, and of course, a stern warning on the evils of Wikipedia, according my history lecturer Wikipedia is not to be trusted, in fact she was adament that if any of us cite Wikipedia we would fail the course.

I have no objection to that policy - although partly for the mundane reason that once you get to university you shouldn't be citing any encyclopedia.

There's the common argument against Wikipedia, which is it's unreliability. In the article on the miner's strike:

Folk singer Billy Bragg wrote several songs dealing with the strike as a current event, namely "Which Side Are You On?"

That's not an error that anyone who had a background in unions, let alone labour history, could make. The error was pointed out on the talk page in 2006, and still hasn't been fixed. Obviously errors aren't limited to Wikipedia - everytime I read a general history of New Zealand I go looking for errors in my area of research - but that sort of error shows that the author(s) do not have any depth of knowledge, or context in the subject they're writing about.

But my objection to Wikipedia as a font of historical knowledge is much more fundamental than that. As the article Byron linked to said:

. Despite Wikipedia’s unconventionality in the production and distribution of knowledge, its epistemological approach—exemplified by the npov policy—is highly conventional, even old-fashioned.

I would go further, and say it was conservative, and privileged the knowledge and experiences of the powerful over the knowledge and experiences of those without power.

Here's an example from the Talk page about the miner's strike. Someone asks:

people who were not there who work for a news paper take credence over people who were there, but didnt work in the media? I can provide quotes to living people,NUM activists,strikers,miners for quotes, but this would not be allowed?

Someone else responded

No, this is precisely the sort of thing which will not do - please read the verifiability policy and the reliable sources guidelines. Reporting something which someone said to you is not good enough - that's original research, which is forbidden.

Radical historians have fought hard to expand historical record beyond what people have written down. You cannot do radical history when you privilege what's written in newspapers about a strike over the experiences of people who participate.

If we're looking at open source history we need to dream bigger than a better version of Microsoft's Encarta. Wikipedia's policies against original research, its priviledging of published sources, and its belief in objectivity, means that it will always be limited, and reflect the history of the powerful. We need to move beyond that, we need to do original research, write about people's experience, and most importantly, we need to have a point of view.

Come to New Zealand - we'll treat you like a rock-star

If you're organising an anti-war demonstration in Wellington, at some point you're going to have to talk about speakers. Generally someone will talk about how we want to have really good speakers this time. Then everyone will nod, there'll be a long pause, and then someone will say 'well how about Keith Locke?'*

When I was in London in 2004 I attended an anti-war meeting, and they had a comedian who was really funny and someone who had been to Iraq recently and had specific information and two other really good speakers - just for a meeting.

Sometimes I think about the people who organise the anti-war marches in Boston, who can have conversations about whether to have Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn this time.

The left in New Zealand is generally very short of people who have knowledge, confidence, and authority which is what you need to be a good speaker. Partly that's our own fault, I think. I think we could do a better job of building contacts with good speakers, and building up each other's confidence and support people in gaining knowledge.

But it's not common, and so when someone comes from overseas who doesn't just have knowledge, confidence and authority, but also a place in history, it's the event of the year.

When Noam Chomsky came to Wellington they had to move the event from St Andrews on the Terrace to the Town Hall. Tonight, when Angela Davis was speaking in Wellington they filled a lecture theatre that seated 300, had an overflow room that seated half as many people again, and still they turned 200 people away. That was with minimal publicity.

I plan to write two posts on Angela Davis's talk, first I want to write about my reaction to the talk itself (and the audience), and then I thought it was about time I posted the argument for the abolishment of prisons, and why I agree with it.

But before I did any of that, I wanted to suggest that more prominent left-wing activists should come to New Zealand. We can't offer you much, but we can promise to treat you like you're the most exciting person to come to town since Angela Davis...

* I have some affection for Keith Locke, despite the fact that I hate his party more every time I think about them (although he supported something really dodgy recently - can't remember what). But he's not going to inspire anyone to the barricades.

Review: Red Diapers, Growing Up in the Communist Left

Josh's older sister's farvourite game was 'Party Meeting' she played it with her friend Simone. Vera and Simone were the party leaders, teddy bears and younger brothers were the rank and file:

"Tonight," said Simone, "we will hear a report on the Negro Question from our junior member, who" - she scowled at me - "needs considerable education on the subject." She tapped her slide rule of Vera's desk and nodded at me to begin.

"The Negro Question's getting a lot better,' I said. "Because before they wouldn't even let Jackie Robinson play in the majors. But now we've got five Negroes just in the Dodgers alone." I counted them off on my fingers.

"There's Jackie, and Campanella behind the plate, and Newcombe and Black on the mound, and this season Junior Guilliam at second base. And he might even win Rook of the Year."

Vera and Simone looked at each other, shaking their heads and making tsk tsk sounds through their closed lips.

"I think we have to bring him up on charges," Vera said.

"White Chauvinism if I ever heard it," nodded Simone.

"Don't you know that even if they let Negores play a stupid game and get traded for money like slaves, they're still lynching them in the south?" Vera asked me. "Haven't you read your own father's articles on the Emmett Till case?"

"And what about Male Chauvanism?" said Simone, waving her ruler at me. "Did you ever stop to think that all your previous ballplayers are men? What about the plight of the colored woman?"

"He's left deviationist and right opportunist both at the same time," said Vera.

"Clear cause for explusion." said Simone"

That is from one of the almost 50 accounts from the children of communistsin Red Diapers. Having so many short accounts, gives a real depth to the book. There's a tapestry of experiences, with common threads, but also real differences.

I'm fascinated by the history of the Communist party of America, particularly in the 1950s, when the organisation was so persecuted. Partly because it is so foreign to the way I do politics, their way of organising wasn't just not my cup of tea, it was clearly counter productive to growing. The party line was often ridiculous (particularly during the war, my grandfather left the British Communist Party over the Nazi-Soviet pact, and the pro-war line that followed wasn't any better). Despite all these reservations, the Americans of the 1940s and 1950s I most admire were all in the Communist part. It was the only game in town - no one else was prepared to fight.

I loved these child eyes view of the fight. Both for the politics - in some tenements in New York everyone was either linke (Left) and Communist or rechte (right) Socialist - and for the common threads of childhood. Many of the children write about how terrified they were once Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed, they knew their parents were communists, would they be put to death too? Communist children didn't just have common fears they developed their own sub-culture. rather than 'pinky swears' they'd say "By my Pioneer Honour, Touch Red" - and each child would touch something red.

There are some terrible parents, of course, and some awful hypocrisy. One girl's father spent his time doing party work, and when his wife (who earnt all the money) was back late he asks his 11 year old daughter where the food is kept, and demands she makes his coffee. Mostly I think the communism and the parenting skills weren't particularly related, the good parents would have always been good parents, the bad parents would always have been parents. Although I suspect for some children, the more their fathers (the most controlling, abusive behaviour in these accounts were always from the fathers) portrayed themselves as righteous, the harder it would have been for the child to understand their behaviour within the family.

There were some really sweet family moments as well. One of the writers came from a Finnish-American community, where the Party had run the annual Christmas Eve event. One year, the party leaders decided that the consumerism and Christianity of the ceremony was a problem, so instead there was a winter celebration without presents. When they got home their parents gave them presents, and told them not to tell anyone. Years later they learned that every single one of their friends' parents had done the same thing.

The most heart-breaking memoir was from Bettina Aptheker. I'd heard of her, she was involved in the Berkley Free Speech Movement. When the right accused her of being a communist, she wrote a letter back saying "Yes, I am a communist, and I'm proud to be a communist." She's one of the many figures of the 1960s that I admired, without knowing too much about.

When I am in my late twenties an older comrade whom I dearly love confides in me. She tells me that in the early 1950s she had been instructed by the party leadership to question women in the Party about their sexuality. In particular she was to ask them if they'd ever had a homosexual liaison. If the answer was yes she was instructed to ask them to voluntarily resign from the Party of face expulsion. "Even if it was only once," the comrade says to me. "Even if they had since married." She goes on, explaining "It was to protect the Party from potential informers. If they were desperate enough to hide their sexual encounters, the FBI could force them into becoming informers." There is a silence into which I say nothing. "I'm so ashamed of myself," She tells me. "It was wrong." Now as I remember this comrade's confession I think that I must have known of this as a child. I must have heard these discussion around me known the consequences of my feelings for women as I reached adolescence: to be made an FBI informer or be expelled from the party/my family, to be cast out.

I am going to read her memoir, I want to know more about her story.

Bettina Aptheker, is not the exception, most of the contributors are still fighting for a better world, in their different ways. Communists have largely been written out of American history, and their legacy ignored. Few people mention that the almost all the young northern white people involved in the Civil Rights Movements were red diaper babies. Carl Bernstein, who contributed to the book, is rarely placed within his radical, fighting legacy. Many of the writers gain real strength from their heritage. The sense that we are all part of a long chain of resistance has particular meaning when the link is so intimate. It gives them direct access to the strength and hope we can all draw from the history of those who fought back.

'If we are to build a mass movement we must recognize that no individual decision, like rejecting consumption, can liberate us.'

I always have problems with the 'what sort of feminist are you?' discussions. It pisses me off that the form these phrases take 'anarcha-feminism', 'socialist feminism' 'liberal feminism' implies that feminism needs help ('liberal' is the adjective modifying the noun 'feminism'). But more importantly the feminist writing that I agree the most with is from the women's liberation movement. I sometimes get a bit embarassed by this - there's been very complex bodies of theory developed since the late 1960s/early 1970s, surely it's simplistic to prefer the ecstatically written, rapidly mimeographed writing of women who were finding their voices 40 years ago? But the women of the women's liberation movement, with their background in radical politics, focus on organising, and their eyes on total change, make sense to me in a way that very little else does. I'm not really talking about individual issues, I think the analysis of lots of issues have developed a lot in the last 40 years, but a vision of what being a feminist means, and what a feminist movement should be.

But whenever I doubt that I'm all about women's liberation, I find another article from that time that sums exactly what I'm trying to say (this one thanks to Bitch|Lab. Ellen Willis wrote a fantastic article about the problems with consumerist politics. It starts:

If white radicals are serious about revolution, they are going to have to discard a lot of bullshit ideology created by and for educated white middle-class males. A good example of what has to go is the popular theory of consumerism.

As expounded by many leftist thinkers, notably Marcuse, this theory maintains that consumers are psychically manipulated by the mass media to crave more and more consumer goods, and thus power an economy that depends on constantly expanding sales. The theory is said to be particularly applicable to women, for women do most of the actual buying, their consumption is often directly related to their oppression (e.g. makeup, soap flakes), and they are a special target of advertisers. According to this view, the society defines women as consumers, and the purpose of the prevailing media image of women as passive sexual objects is to sell products. It follows that the beneficiaries of this depreciation of women are not men but the corporate power structure.

First of all, there is nothing inherently wrong with consumption. Shopping and consuming are enjoyable human activities and the marketplace has been a center of social life for thousands of years.

The locus of oppression resides in the production function: people have no control over which commodities are produced (or services performed), in what amounts, under what conditions, or how these commodities are distributed. Corporations make these decisions and base them solely on their profit potential.

As it is, the profusion of commodities is a genuine and powerful compensation for oppression. It is a bribe, but like all bribes it offers concrete benefits—in the average American’s case, a degree of physical comfort unparalleled in history. Under present conditions, people are preoccupied with consumer goods not because they are brainwashed but because buying is the one pleasurable activity not only permitted but actively encouraged by our rulers. The pleasure of eating an ice cream cone may be minor compared to the pleasure of meaningful, autonomous work, but the former is easily available and the latter is not. A poor family would undoubtedly rather have a decent apartment than a new TV, but since they are unlikely to get the apartment, what is to be gained by not getting the TV?

and it ends

Furthermore, the consumerism line allows Movement men to avoid recognizing that they exploit women by attributing women’s oppression solely to capitalism. It fits neatly into already existing radical theory and concerns, saving the Movement the trouble of tackling the real problems of women’s liberation. And it retards the struggle against male supremacy by dividing women. Just as in the male movement, the belief in consumerism encourages radical women to patronize and put down other women for trying to survive as best they can, and maintains individualist illusions.

If we are to build a mass movement we must recognize that no individual decision, like rejecting consumption, can liberate us. We must stop arguing about whose life style is better (and secretly believing ours is) and tend to the task of collectively fighting our own oppression and the ways in which we oppress others. When we create a political alternative to sexism, racism, and capitalism, the consumer problem, if it is a problem, will take care of itself.

1981: Molesworth St

A few years back I was protesting one of America's wars (at this stage they have started to run together). We met at the cenotaph and were heading up to the American embassy - so we headed up . It was near dusk and I heard more than one person say 'Remember Molesworth St' - in the sing-song tone that particular chant is rendered. I found it distinctly unnerving

For those of you for whom the phrases 'the tour' 'the field at Hamilton' and 'Molesworth st' mean nothing, I'll provide some facts. In 1981 the South African rugby team came to New Zealand, breaking an international supporting boycott, which New Zealand had signed up to. Muldoon, the New Zealand Prime Minister of the time, was a misogynist, racist, homophobic, fuckwit of a man and he refused to stop the tour. In New Zealand the 1970s had been a decade of protest and mobilisation, and there were many, many people, who were prepared to fight the Springboks presence here with everything they had.

I think a lot of the questions about 'why?' haven't been answered yet, and while everyone from the Listener down is prepared to give the simplistic answer (it was a generation gap, it was town vs. country, it was all about hating Muldoon), actual research will be needed to provide the actual answers. But it is indisputable that there were a lot of New Zealanders who cared passionately about stopping this particular rugby tour.

One of the things that impresses me most about the anti-tour movement is their stamina - the Sprinboks were in the country for six weeks and at least in Wellington there were bi-weekly big protests, with meetings, advertising, and all the other stuff people have going on as well. I can imagine how exhausting, how unrelenting that would have been, particularly in days when you couldn't advertise anything by e-mail or text message.

So the night the All Blacks played Taranaki in New Plymouth 2,000 people met at parliament in Wellington. They were going to the South African embassy (there are a lot of Embassies in Thorndon) and walked up Molesworth St. The police drew a line and pulled out the batons - a 16 year old girl was hit on the head 5 times, for wanting to march up the street.

The police's role upholding the power of the state was pretty stark during the tour. Geoff Chapple tells of one police officer on that baton line taking down then baton and telling the protester 'I wish I wasn't here. I don't want to be here.' There are always individuals who maintain some sense of self and decency, even in a structure which is designed to take that from them. But the police iin general knew which side they were on - and were prepared to use batons to the head on teenagers walking up the street.

1981: Hamilton

I was having coffee (and by having coffee I mean herbal tea) with friend (and occasional commenter) Betsy, and a friends of ours, who are also a couple. We were nattering away about various random stuff and The Tour came up. The coversation went something like this:

Male half of the couple: Go on tell them, you know you want to know.

Female half of the couple: I was on the field in Hamilton

Me and Betsy: OH MY GOD!

Being on the field in Hamilton is easily the Woodstock of the New Zealand left (except as far as I know everyone who says they were on the field was actually there). It was direct, collective action, and it was successful in about as prominent a way as you can be - on international television.

Today's the 25th anniversary of stopping that game. A good time to salute those who managed to stop the match, particularly the people who made it onto the field.

For those of you who have little to no idea what I'm talking about I explain here.

1981: Day of Shame

I don't know if they deliberately scheduled tonight's All Black Springbok match on the 25th Anniversary of the first match of the tour. I doubt it, there wouldn't be a weekend this winter that wasn't the anniversary of something (they don't have a game in Hamilton - which I think is in good taste - although more on that later).

I'm going to take advantage of this anniversary to do a little bit of history writing. Hamilton, Molesworth St and the Tests at least, I may decide to cover some other events, and write some analysis as well as recalling events, we'll see how we go.

Poverty Bays vs. South Africa was the day that the sport boycott was officially broken. The protests in Gisbourne weren't that big - I imagine 500 people is a large march by Gisborne standards, but given people travelled from outside it was a tiny fraction of the Gisborne population. The protests were larger away from the match, 600 in Dunedin, 1,500 in Auckland, 3,000 in Christchurch.

In Wellington, my hometown, there were 5,000 people on the streets the day the sports boycott was broken. They blockaded the National party headquarters (often a worthy goal), and marched on parliament. I know how 5,000 people fills Wellington's streets - that was their beginning.

More on Homosexual Law Reform

My friend tells a story about her grandmother who we'll call Judith. Every time the Sallies came around Judith would empty her purse into their collection bucket, she'd grown up in a religious household and respected the work they did. In 1985 she stopped - she no longer gave them a cent - and told them that the reason was because of the homosexual law reform petition.

I feel the same way, when I was on diversion I wouldn't do volunteer work for the Salvation Army. I'd never donate anything to them - although I do occasionally buy stuff from their stores if it's cheap. You lead an organised hate campaign and I'm prepared to judge you for that for far more than 20 years.

But I'm prepared to give them credit for this: apologising:

On the eve of the 20th anniversary of Homosexual Law Reform, the head of the Salvation Army has apologised to the gay and lesbian communities for the Sallies' decision to administer the petition opposing law reform.

“We regret any hurt caused to people by the process of the petition and desire to build bridges to all sections of the community,” said Commissioner Garth McKenzie, Territorial Commander for the Salvation Army in New Zealand.

I'm not going to start giving the Sallies anything, but I might feel better about buying stuff from them.

There are a few good articles about that time.

I'd also storngly recommend listening to the Radio New Zealand documentary about the law reform debate (I can't link to it, because the site is down at the moment, but it was on at 4pm today so it shouldn't be hard to find). It was a truly excellent documentary - it let voices from the past speak for themselves.

It was upsetting and disturbing though. While I've heard about the Jerry Falwell's of the world who blame everything on homosexuality - they seem a little bit unreal and elsewhere - it's unnerving to hear them talking here (even in the past). There was one man who talked about hoping that terminal AIDS patients died soon, because he believed that the more people who died of AIDS the less likely parliament was to pass the bill. I just can't understand that there are people who think like that.

Just 20?

The Homosexual Law Reform Act became law 20 years ago today:

An Act to amend the Crimes Act 1961 by removing criminal sanctions against consensual homosexual conduct between males, and by consequentially amending the law relating to consensual anal intercourse

Reading the list of people who voted against the bill makes me angry as if it wasn't 20 years ago. I'm angry at the closet cases; I'm angry at Don McKinnon (his brother has played a huge part in establishing the gay and lesbian archives); I'm angry at the supposed liberals in the National government (Ruth Richardson I'm looking at you); I'm also angry at God for finding Whetu Tiritakane Sullivan, because she was so cool and staunch during the Contraception, Sterilisation and Abortion Act debate, but then had a car crash, was found by God and changed her mind.

25 Years Ago Today

One of the biggest lecture theatres at Victoria University has a sticker up the front it says "Mobilisation May 1: Stop the Tour". That sticker made me happy every single time I saw it (and mostly I saw it at 7.30am as I was leafletting lecture theatres to let students know about protests). It's been up 25 years now - the first big anti-tour mobilisation was May 1 1981. The second big mobilisation was July 3. It's been 25 years since everyone came out - Auckland to Eltham. The retrospectives have already started.

I'm going to take this opportunity to write about The Tour, and its meaning. We weren't in New Zealand in 1981, but I remember going on the protests of four years later. I remember chanting, and being out late and the excitement of getting food from a place which, in my memory, had bamboo shoots painted on the walls. As I became politically active in my own right, the history of 1981 became something I claimed and took strength from. That time means a lot to me, as an activist now, but it also has a place in our history, that I don't think is written about. I suspect a lot of the retrospectives will be too simple and smug - I want an opportunity to put a view that doesn't see the fourth labour government as the culmination of what people were fighting for.

I also don't write about the power of collective action - they stopped the game at Hamilton - one person couldn't have done that.

I don't understand why anyone cares about the Democrats: Post #1 in an occasional series

There are a lot of strange things about reading political blogs of another country. But for me the weirdest is that I'll be reading a really interesting new blog that seems to have a reasonable analysis and then, out of nowhere, they'll mention the US Democrat party in vaguely complimentary way. Now I will make clear that I believe that talking about the US Democrat party without swearing is too complimenary. But I don't understand why sensible intelligent people who seem to have some analysis engage with the Democrat party at all.*

So I thought I'd start an occasional series where I talked about how much the Democrats sucked, and put forward reasons why people might still pay them attention (I know the general population doesn't - the general population have realised that the Democrats aren't worth voting for and so generally don't vote - but people on the left).

I'm going to start by looking at a myth I find quite common among any discussion of the Democrats - the myth of the good old days. Apparently there was some time in the past where Democrats were better than they are today, where they stood for something. I just don't buy it, and so I'm going to have a quick jaunt through the history of recent Democrat US Presidents in an effort to find out when this golden age could have occured. Now I'll be clear that I'm no expert in American political history (Carter in particular I don't know much about, but to be fair I don't think a lot of other people do either). Most of what I know about presidents I know because I've read about people protesting against them, but it's a starting point.

Clinton: Now I realise that at the time everyone on the left hated him - and welfare reform would be more than enough reason. Possibly his slogan to go down in history as a good president could be: "I just bombed and starved Iraq." But I won't spend too much time on him, because most people acknowledge how right-wing he is.

Carter: He was the one who signed the Hyde Ammendment into law. American's haven't had any right to abortion since that happened. I believe that if Roe vs. Wade gets over-turned it will not be as big a shift in the abortion landscape as the Hyde Ammendment. When 'women have a right to an abortion' became 'women with money have a right to an abortion', then any further differences such as 'women with money to travel to states where abortion is legal have a right to abortion' are just differences in scale, not a difference in kind.

LBJ: "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" and if that didn't instantly disqualify him from being a candidate for a good president, then the fact that he choose the segreationists over the freedom fighters at the 1964 convention should be more than enough.

At the SNCC national headquarters they had a poster that said "There's a town in Mississippi called Freedom, there's a street in Birmingham called Equality, there's a department in Washington called Justice." (well I may have got the towns and the street wrong but you get the idea). They were talking about LBJ's and Bobby Kennedy's justice department.

JFK: Like LBJ only prettier, creating more problems with Cuba, and without the commitment to social justice.

Truman: Hiroshima and Nagasaki

(also a lot of red-baiting and life-ruining was as much the result of Truman's policy as it was McCarthy's personal vendetta).

Roosevelt: I think, generally, Roosevelt is what people are talking about when they idealise the Democrats. But the first thing people must remember that until the 1960s the Democrats were the party of segregation. Roosevelt's party was the party that enforced Jim Crow. Roosevelt's policies - such as the New Deal or desegregating the army were the bare minimum to dampen resistence.

But it's not just the many things he didn't do that make Roosevelt a bad president. He was the man who ordered that Japanese-Americans be rounded up and put into camps.

Bombing the shit out of a number of places, starting a land-war in Asia, making life worse for women, poor people, and those who weren't white, these are not the actions of people we call friends. Those are not actions that can be forgiven. If these were the actions of the good old days of the Democratic party god help us now if we depend on them in any way.

* I'm not talking about voting for them - I take a very calculating approach to voting and can imagine situations where I might think of voting for a Democrat candidate. I mean paying them any attention, and talking about them as if they were part of the left or particular campaigning for them.

A borning movement

JoAnn Robinson, Ella Baker, Fanny Lou Hamner, Diane Nash, Joseph McNeil, Ezell Blair Jr., Franklin McCain, David Richmand, Michael Schwerner, Andy Goodman, James Chaney, Julian Bond, Ruby Doris Robinson, Mary King, Casey Hayden, John Lewis, James Farmer and Bob Moses.

Those are just some of the names that I remember. There were so many more people involved in the civil rights movement than Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.*

There was an interesting discussion on Alas about animal rights protesters, and the appropriateness of comparing them to the civil rights movement. My feelings about this were made clear when Hugo Schwyzer compared something (I'm still not sure what) to Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.

I consider my knowledge of the civil rights movement barely adequate to write something about that movement on my blog. But I have decided to try because those with power, from the president of the united states down, have co-opted the Civil Rights movement - and what it stood for. Part of that is presenting a wartered down, simplified version of its history, and concentrating a few leaders, rather than the people who actually did the work.

For me the hope that I need to continue fighting comes from realising that people have fought and won before - that I am just one link in an incredibly long chain. We can't maintain that chain unless we know, preserve and fight for our own history.

So when Hugo talks about every movement needing it's Malcolm Xs and it's Martin Luther Kings. I just despair. The two myths of the civil rights movement that deradicalise it the most are the idea that Rosa Parks was just tired that day, and the idea that the movement was some sort of spectrum between Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. This just isn't true, in the 1950s and 1960s there was a much more complicated range of views about America's racist society and what to do about it than the popular image of these two men.

But it's more than that, I believe that political movements can survive without Martin Luther Kings and Malcolm Xs. A movement does not stand or fall on charasmatic speakers, and leaders. The most important people in the civil rights movement were not the people you've heard of, but the people who haven't.

By focusing on the leaders and the speeches, the work those in the movement did is forgotten. It was door knocking, and organising, not great speeches, that created a movement. It was tiring, dangerous, hard work, that many people subsumed their life to.

On Alas people were talking about the lessons of the civil rights movement. I'm sure there are many different lessons, but for me the most obvious one, is the one that official history tries to hide. The Civil Rights movement was founded on collective action and understood that the only power we have is when we work together. That's why I think it's important that we stop repeating the myths about the civil rights movement.

If you don't know anything more about the civil rights movement than what you've picked up by osmosis, then then do some reading, before you write about it. Civil Rights Movement Veterans is an amazing starting point. Hundreds of people who were involved in the movement have started to write about their experiences on the site itself, and it has a huge bibliography and set of links for people who want to know more (if you can beg, borrow or steal a copy of SNCC: The New Abolotionists by Howard Zinn then I would highly recommend doing so).

If you do know something about the civil rights movement (and I would expect that both Hugo Schwyzer and Vegankid do) then act like it. Stop making it the cliche to which everything else is compared, instead talk about the movement when you have something of substance to say.

What happens after

Idiot/Savant sent me a link from the Sydney Morning Herald:

SOME Aboriginal victims of assault are locked up for outstanding minor charges after reporting domestic and sexual assault to police, discouraging women from reporting offences.

In one case last year, a woman went to a Sydney police station after being raped, only to be held in a cell overnight on an outstanding warrant, the Wirringa Baiya Aboriginal Women's Legal Centre, in Marrickville, reported.

This sort of stuff shouldn't surprise me. Intellectually I know that it happens, I know that women get treated like shit, I know that black poor women get treated most shittily. But whenver I hear a story like this it really does shock me. I think it's because the individual stories make things real to me. I imagine her life, I imagine what that night in jail would have been like.

But Australia isn't the only country fucking over rape survivors. They've released new sentancing guidelines for convicted rapists in Britain.

The council advises judges that “date rape” or “acquaintance rape” is as serious as “stranger rape”. An offender who ignores a victim’s wishes is guilty of rape, it says. But judges are then told that where consensual sexual activity takes place before the rape, it “must have some relevance for sentencing purposes” — although this is not defined.

Are we supposed to be grateful? A committee (headed by a man) has told judges (mostly men) has decided that rape (a crime mostly committed by men to women) doesn't become less serious because the woman in question already knew the man. Isn't that a great step forward that the judges have acknowledged that knowing a man isn't, in and of itself, a form of consent?

As for the rest, the idea that prior relationships between the rapists and the woman he raped have any bearing at all, shows how fucking far we have to go to be treated like human beings.

The awfulness doesn't end there:

Yesterday Professor Martin Wasik, chairman of the Sentencing Advisory Panel, said the guidelines were “simply stating accepted case law.” The breach of trust involved in a rape by someone known to the victim could make it as serious an offence as a “stranger” rape. But the more difficult area involved rapes where the couple had sexual familiarity.

The panel took the view that there was a difference between someone who set out to rape a person he knew; and “a situation where rape occurs after sexual familiarity, up to and perhaps very close to, actual intercourse — and then the victim said ‘no’.”

I hope that my readers know that there isn't actually a difference - rape is sex without consent - no matter what had happened. Even if you'd been playing kinky games from the rafters

Again it shouldn't surprise me that judges think differently and it doesn't (I don't put myself in their shoes either), it just makes me angry.

When addressing the behaviour of the police, the attitudes of the courts, we're not even fighting rape itself. We're just fighting about what happens after; we're fighting to make it a little less worse for women who have been raped.

I can understand the desire to blame the police and court system for this failure. They're agents of the state, I'm not particularly fond of them.

But I've seen enough to know that making things worse for rape survivors isn't limited to those with state-power. I know that there are many people out there who can treat rape-survivors like shit. I know that groups that talk about changing the world don't necessarily care if the men in them are rapists.

I know that in left-wing circles if a woman says she was abused or raped, by people within the circle, then she'll be put on trial, just as surely as women who go to the justice system are. And if she doesn't say anything then no-one will call unecessary attention to bruises, or black-eyes.

For most rapists, there are no consequences, formal or informal. There are consequences for all too many women out there who try and pursue justice and safety.

So any men out there, know you can rape women with impunity, know that there is no need to treat women as human beings. I don't know if you can imagine what it's like to live as a woman knowing that, maybe you could try.

I've talked with some of the women who were involved in the New Zealand women's liberation movement about that time, and there's one idea in particular that's stuck with me. A really great woman was telling me about the discussions they'd had and she said - "but then we reached a brick wall, because we realised that we couldn't change men."

My great grandmother was involved in the temperance movement; she was a Welsh Presbytarian Minister's wife - that's what they did. I find the temperance movement fascinating from a feminist perspective, particularly in New Zealand (and Australia, and some of the Western states in America) where it was successfully linked with winning women the vote. Obviously I don't think their goals would have achieved their aims. We actually have hard evidence of that, to say that prohibition in America didn't end violence against women is a ridiculous under-statement. As a feminist any analysis that holds alcohol responsible for male violence offends me. Although there's enough alcoholism in my family that I understand hating the stuff, I do know that ultimately it's not alcohol that's the problem

And yet I think that in some ways my great-grandmother had a better analysis than I did, at least she had an idea.

I believe in collective action. History, particularly the way I read it, shows the power that people can have when they work together. I've got some experience of that, experience on a very small scale, but I have an idea of how to organise. Sometimes I get arrogant about it - I tell people how I'd organise campaigns if I cared about the issue (and I think it more often than I say it).

But when it comes to rape I just don't have any idea where to start. Even if we're not talking about how to end rape, even if we're just talking about how to deliver women who have been raped some safety and justice, even on that smaller project I just draw a blank. I don't know where I'd begin. I'm not even sure our society could even manage any steps towards what I want.

We're so far away from a world where women's bodies are our own that I don't even know which direction to face.

In Memorium: Ernie Abbott

Ernie Abbott was the caretaker at Trades Hall, the Wellington Trade Union building. This picture of him was taken for the Evening post. The price of cauliflowers had leaped from 50c to $1.40, and as a member of the caretakers and cleaners union Ernie Abbott was protesting this increase. This was the time of wage and price controls and a government spokesperson had described cauliflowers as a luxury.

He died on 27 March 1984 when someone left a bomb in a suitcase at Trades Hall.

It was a bomb for the unions, no doubt about that. There was a Wellington Trades Council meeting that day to plan a campaign against Muldoon. The police never found the person who left that bomb.

I didn't know Ernie Abbott, but I know people who were at Trades Hall that day, people I wouldn't know if they'd been the ones who picked up the suitcase.

Today someone left an empty suitcase outside Trades Hall - it got blown up by the bomb squad. I've no idea why someone would do something like that, do they think it's funny to remind people of times a comrade was blown to smithereens? But what got me was the media coverage.

No-one called it terrorism. The caretaker of a building was blown up by a bomb planted against a political movement - and they didn't call it terrorism.