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The ninth issue of Solidarity, free newssheet of the Aotearoa Workers Solidarity Movement. Download the .pdf above, or click below to read the contents online.

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Wednesday 2nd June, 7pm
Workers Educational Association, 59 Gloucester St

This month, the Christchurch Anarchist-Communist Discussion Group will be looking at the topic of Women and Work. We will be discussing patriarchy in our society and what effect it has on the work done by women, both paid and unpaid.

Before the discussion, you should read the short article on the topic (.pdf format, 192kb). We will have copies available on the night, but reading beforehand and thinking about ideas it brings up will enable better discussion.

From the discussion article:
“While approximately 60 percent of males’ work is paid, almost 70 percent of females’ work is unpaid. Not only do women suffer with receiving less pay than men, they also come home to do more work and for this they are not paid. Most of the unpaid work women do constitutes looking after children and household chores. Mothers do 2 hours of unpaid work a day more than fathers. Men still work these 2 hours but it is paid and outside the home.”

The group meets on the first Wednesday of every month and aims to provide a space for the open discussion of anarchist-communist ideas and practice. Each month there will be a short article to read or a short video to watch, that we can then discuss together.

It’s free, and tea, coffee and biscuits will be provided.

The group is a joint effort of the Christchurch branch of the Aotearoa Workers Solidarity Movement and Beyond Resistance.

Living Utopia (Vivir La Utopia)

Spanish with English subtitles. 95 minutes. Made in 1997

This documentary by Juan Gamero consists of 30 interviews with survivors of the 1936-1939 Spanish Revolution. After decades of organising by Spanish workers and peasants, the revolution saw huge swathes of Spanish industry and agriculture socialised and run collectively by the workers and peasants.

Ultimately it was crushed by the forces of General Franco with assistance from Fascist Italy and Spain, however the events in Spain still offer us one of the best examples of anarchism in action.

Public Talk: Introduction to Anarchist-Communism

The film screening will be preceded by a talk from a member of the Aotearoa Workers Solidarity Movement, a nationwide anarchist-communist organisation.

The Aotearoa Workers Solidarity Movement is an organisation working towards a classless, stateless society: anarchist communism. That society would be run by a federation of workplace and community councils, with everyone having a say in decisions that affect them. Resources and property would be communally owned and controlled by everyone. Production would be geared to satisfying everyone’s needs, people would give voluntarily according to their ability, and produce would be distributed freely according to need.

Not content with attacking workers rights and conditions and selling off our national parks to the latest venture capitalist, prisons appear to be latest victim of a global crusade to turn everything into a commodity to be bought and sold on the market.

If the government gets away with its latest plan to fund the new Wiri jail in Auckland through costly ‘public-private partnership’ in other words privatization subsidized by the taxpayer, we should expect to see more prisoners behind bars so that companies will make a quick killing from profit and prisons being used as source of efficient cheap labour. These latest proposals fit in with wider neo-liberal offensive to introduce a ‘three strikes policy’ similar to the US which has increased re-incarceration levels and acts as filter to criminalise and discipline our class.

Prisons are not a deterrent and offer no long term solution to eradicating crime. Prisons kill; rates of suicide are increasing which is directly related to neglect and suffering inside. Prisons bolster the crime of capitalism which creates the socio-economic conditions for ‘anti-social’ crime in our society to flourish. While the real criminals, who are as responsible for redundancies, lay-offs, insecurity and wars remain in power.

There is no doubt there are a small number of offenders who need to be removed from society for their own good and that of others, but the vast majority of prisoners are from working-class backgrounds that are locked away due to the inequality in wealth and power in our society. The difference, is that in a libertarian communist society where everyone has free and equal access to the social wealth created, and a criminal justice system geared firstly towards protecting the interests of the rich and powerful abolished, we will decide.

As anarchists, it is important to build a culture of resistance and class solidarity inside as well as out by providing a platform for prisoners and their families to organize and agitate. Prisons are an integral part of the class system and vital to the survival of capitalism and the preservation of wealth and privilege. Prisons can only be abolished as part of the social and political revolution that destroys capitalism and the state. In the meantime, we must win improvements in the here and now. This debate goes the heart of what type of society we want to live in and opposing prison privatization is an important first step in this struggle.

- Sean Matthews

National recently released their discussion document on mining, proposing the removal of 7000 ha of land from Schedule 4 (protected lands) so that mining can be considered on a ‘case-by-case’ basis. This has led to a bout of anti-mining sentiment. The environmental NGOs are busy gathering submissions and groups like Coromandel Watchdog are planning on-the-ground civil disobedience to stop the bulldozers. There have been marches in Wellington and Nelson, and tens of thousands marched down Queen Street, Auckland, on May 1st to oppose the Government’s plan.

About a dozen of us gathered at Trades Hall, Wellington for a discussion on the mining debate. AWSM holds regular discussion evenings in Wellington and Christchurch. We had envisioned a discussion on how we should engage with the anti-mining debate from an anti-capitalist perspective, but it turned out to be a different conversation, because of the 40,000+ march against mining the previous Saturday.

The discussion included the following points: (Please note that these don’t represent the view of AWSM or all the people present at the discussion – it was a discussion rather than a planning meeting):

• If mining is done by a state owned enterprise it’s no more environmentally friendly
• National are not worse than Labour – they just do things faster.
• Frustrating that 50,000 people would come out for anti-mining but not for any thing else
• There is a lot of nationalism in the anti-mining debate, e.g. “Our parks”
• Miners’ unions are not necessarily nested in new seems and new areas being opened up for mining; there doesn’t need to be a divide between those against the opening up of Schedule 4 and miners.
• In Britain the National Union of Mineworkers and Earth First! have joined up to oppose opencast mining.
• If a divide is perpetuated, what side do we stand on?
• Ideally the anti-mining movement wouldn’t be dominated by the large environmental non-governmental organisations (e.g. Greenpeace, Forest and Bird).
• It’s possible to have a mass movement that is much more democratic. It would be much stronger if lots of little groups were doing stuff. That way, those who wanted to get active could get involved.
• It is grassroots – organised via Facebook etc.
• Greenpeace did a lot of organising, including emailing the Sign-On list.
• Not going to stop mining with a really big march.
• Both ‘mining’ and ‘don’t mine; we’ve got a great tourism industry’ reinforce capitalism. We need to argue this is a false ideology. Could use the debate to push a specific anti-capitalist ideology; people care about this issue.
• The discourse is narrow.
• The environment centres of the 1980s and 1990s were grassroots based. They were a way for greenies to do something local – both vague liberal stuff and direct action. Those groups have died; they went under by cuts to funding as part of the neoliberal agenda.
• We have these peaks of mobilisation at the moment, e.g. anti-Iraq, and then it drops away again. With anti-Vietnam work it took years to mobilise.
• The current mining debate overlooks class. A major critique of mining companies and what they are trying to do globally. Financial capital built up all these debts and now they are desperate for money.
• Cyanide dams have to pump for 200 years or else the cyanide dries out, oxidises, and is then water soluble.
• There is no gold-mine that’s been successfully ecologically rehabilitated.
• If we open up more mines, it’ll fuck people up.
• Are we opposed to all mining? Would Tiwai (aluminum smelter) exist in an anarchist-communist society?
• We wouldn’t need as much mining. Currently industry is competing against each other. That goods become obsolete is built-in, especially under modern neo-liberal capitalism. A lot more could be recycled. Consumerism is fed upon people – it’s all we’ve got. Mining could be done by robots because it is a shit job.
• Everyone is packed together – there is more solidarity – These are better paid jobs. Part of the bizarre alienation is that people are desperate for those jobs even though it gives you black lung etc.
• 50,000 people saying “our land” doesn’t have to be nationalistic because in future society, it would all be ours. The land is everybody’s – that’s potentially a really good starting point in terms of talking about distribution of wealth.
• So often greenies are so condescending when talking about alternatives to mining; e.g. ‘oh all those workers could get green jobs’
• Organising a radical anti-mining, anti-capitalist movement is a huge amount of work. It’s very easy to get excited by 50,000 people. How do we engage with it as it exists?

There was a disappointing turnout at this year’s May Day parade in Auckland with around 50-100 participants which literally walked a few hundred yards. The day started brightly with one of the biggest demonstrations seen in decades in the city against Government proposals to mine some of our national parks. This was followed with a lively picket outside JB Hi-Fi store on Queen Street, organised by the Unite union, which helped to restore the true meaning of May Day of supporting workers in struggle.

The May Day march ended with free refreshments in the Maritime social club and the usual boring sterile speeches from opportunist politicians from the Green and Labour Party who are no friends of the working class. Such social democratic parties offer nothing apart from propping up capitalism by providing it with a mask of ‘respectability’ and ‘legitimacy’. Only days before, International Workers Memorial Day was marked, and we must remember that on average 50 New Zealanders die each year due to work related accidents and over 2 million die worldwide. The spectre of unemployment, greater casualisation of the economy in which we are expected to be more flexible for the bosses has served to increase the risk and number of work related deaths.

The day finished with a Unite union party to mark their Campaign for a Living Wage and speeches. One of which from an ex Polynesian Panther Party member ridiculously claimed that ‘if you don’t vote don’t complain’. Someone forgot to mention to him that our real voice and power to transform our lives comes from the streets and our workplaces not by electing some useless figurehead every three years.

Reclaiming May Day means reclaiming our lives from the indignity and injustice of capital, trade union bureaucrats and politicians. We need to organise, educate and agitate. As workers, we have nothing in common with bosses whose only motive is in greed and profit. The real message which rings from the hollow of the Chicago martyrs is that only mass direct action and solidarity gets results and will build a better society of tomorrow.