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The tenth 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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“Long ago the Spanish used weapons to kill our ancestors and take our wealth. Now they only need to contaminate us and take our wealth from under our noses.”
- Julia Carrasco, farmer, Choropampa

Free film screening
Wednesday July 7th, 7:30pm
Thistle Hall, 293 Cuba Street

On June 2nd, 2000, a truck from South America’s largest gold mine spilled 151 kilograms of liquid mercury, contaminating three villages in Peru’s northern Andean mountains. The mining company admits that over 900 people were poisoned, but villagers say the real number is much higher.

The villagers’ courageous struggle for health care and justice inspired the documentary Choropampa, The Price of Gold.

“Each time I return to Choropampa, people have grown weaker, as though a terrible plague has befallen the village. Many are losing their sight and motor-skills, their hands tremble uncontrollably, they have difficulty walking and some are even paralized. They die of mysterious illnesses, and yet the company and Peruvian government insist the “mercury problem” has been resolved.”
- Stephanie Boyd (co-director/co-producer)

Over the weekend of June 5-6th, the Aotearoa Workers Solidarity Movement held its 3rd national conference since it was founded in October 2008. Almost all members were able to attend, meaning people from 5 different regions across the country were present, at the fantastic venue of the Wellington People’s Centre.

The weekend was spent reflecting on and discussing our activity over the previous 12 months, making some changes to our core politics (as written in our Aims & Principles) and how we work (detailed in our Constitution) and coming up with plans for the next 12 months, plus some longer term thinking as well.

Reflecting on the past 12 months

We discussed briefly the current state of class-struggle. While we have not come to any conclusions about what is happening in society, we considered that under the current recession, important issues seem to be low pay, overwork, increasing casualisation and unemployment, increasing costs of living, cut backs to community, education and health services, the privatisation of services and infrastructure, and the rise of a surveillance state replete with more prisons and instruments of repression. While there has been some limited resistance, such as how government workers thawed the pay freeze that was placed on them, mostly resistance is still fragmented, small-scale, isolated and at a low-ebb.

Since the 2009 conference, AWSM has grown slightly – from having members in 3 regions, all in the North Island, to having members in 5 places across both islands.

We have been involved in supporting a range of different workplace struggles in various parts of the country, including (but not limited to): Zeal 320 flight attendants, JB Hi-Fi retail workers, Parliamentary cleaners, Ministry of Justice staff and Synovate call centre workers. We have also been involved in struggles for an increase to the minimum wage, for pay equity between men and women and against the proposed pay freeze for public sector workers.

Outside the workplace, we have been involved in fights against cuts to ACC, against the introduction of user-pays charges on residential water in Wellington, against the closure of the 198 Youth Health Centre in Christchurch, and against the introduction of the Search & Surveillance Bill nationally.

In Wellington and Christchurch we have organised (in coordination with Beyond Resistance in Christchurch) public discussion groups and film nights, on a range of topics including current attacks on the working class, mining in national parks, dole autonomy, tactics for workplace struggle, women and work, and more. We have also hosted talks by a member of the Workers Solidarity Movement in Ireland, looking at how the WSM organise and some of their successes and failures over the past 25 years.

We have published 6 issues of our newssheet, Solidarity, and are now on target for publishing it every month, a goal which we previously had not been able to attain. The current distribution is 700 paper copies across 6 different centres, plus electronic distribution worldwide. Some discussion was held at the conference about increasing the number of paper copies we distribute.

In addition to this, we have produced a handful of different leaflets for various events and struggles, which have been distributed across the country. We have started writing news and analysis articles specifically for the website, as well as those we publish in Solidarity, and our members have been involved, on an individual level, in a variety of other things, including one who spent several months engaging in industrial action (including strikes) at their workplace, involvement in the October 15th Solidarity campaign, and more.

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Auckland’s ‘Mad Butcher’ Peter Leitch has claimed his recent knighthood was striking a blow for the working class. In media interviews after he was awarded the title he repeatedly made the claim that he was a working class bloke who loves his sports and likes swearing a lot. He told the Dominion Post “I’m not bloody PC mate, not a bit” as if this proves his working class credentials.

About the only time we hear the phrase working class being used in a positive way in the mainstream media is when a millionaire or politician is trying to prove they are just ordinary people like you and me.

The reality is Peter Leitch has made his money from other peoples work. He built his business empire by employing hundreds of other people to make profits for him, then sold the business and is now living off the proceeds. He is now described as a philanthropist, which means he doesn’t actually need a job, and spends his days watching sports and giving away some of his money to charity.

The Mad Butcher company website features photos of Peter Leitch posing with various sports stars and even wearing one of those old “working class” cloth caps. Anarchists do not define class based on your dress sense, accent, or taste in sports teams. We see society as fundamentally divided across economic lines. The working class are the vast majority of people who survive by selling their labour, and also includes those who do unpaid labour or are unemployed.

A small minority of people live off the profits generated by the working class just because they happen to own businesses, factories and other property. Despite being born to a poor family in Newtown, Wellington, Peter Leitch has far more in common with his corporate millionaire friends in Auckland than he does with the people working behind the counter in one of his butcher shops.

Auckland mayor John Banks and National Party Minister of Social Development Paula Bennett are also examples of ruling class figures who often use their working class backgrounds to appeal to ordinary people. Like Peter Leitch, they also like to portray themselves as outsiders, not afraid to rock the boat, and “not PC” as if they are rebels or anti establishment. All three are part of the ruling class and are the enemies of working class people.

Introduction to Anarchist-Communism

On June 5th, the Aotearoa Workers Solidarity Movement held a public talk introducing the ideas of anarchist-communism, followed by a screening of the film Living Utopia, about the Spanish Revolution and Civil War of 1936-9. About 40 people attended the event, held at the New Crossways Community Centre in Mt. Victoria.

Introduction to Anarchist-Communism

We live in a beautiful world. After millions of years of evolution, humans have built vast societies that span almost the entire globe. These societies, however, are marked by massive differences in wealth and power. While some individuals have more than they could ever possibly use, let alone need, many of us struggle just to put food on the table, or even to have a place of our own to put a table in. Our society is fundamentally divided into two classes – the ruling class, encompassing a tiny percentage of the 6 billion plus people living on this planet, and the working class, the vast majority of us. The system which divides us is called capitalism.

Some people think of male factory workers when they hear the term working class, but this is not what we mean. The working class is not limited to blue collar workers in factories, but instead it includes all of us who are forced to sell our labour power to survive. This includes people who are in paid employment, whether in a factory, office, cafe or retail store. It also includes those who are unable to find paid employment, or have chosen to refuse the drudgery of paid work in order to attempt to live on the meagre benefits supplied by the state, and who provide a vast potential pool of labour that enables the ruling class to further keep wages down. The working class includes stay at home parents, doing vital unpaid work to raise the next generation of human beings. In short, if you don´t own a business, if you aren´t part of the Government, if you aren´t independently wealthy (such as from an inheritance), then chances are you are a part of the working class.

Now we can begin to see why the working class is so vital in the struggle to end capitalism and build a better, more just society. Through the sheer weight of numbers, we in the working class, if we are able to recognise our collective strength, can threaten the very existence of classes. But it is not through numbers alone that the working class has the potential to destroy this rotten system. As workers, we create wealth for the bosses each and every day at our jobs. Some of this wealth is returned to us in the form of wages, but much is stolen. This stolen wealth is often called ¨surplus value¨.

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The recent attack on the flotilla carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza has come as a shock to the so-called ‘international community’. Even for a State which in recent memory has massacred thousands and which to this day continues its brutal military occupation of Palestine, a massacre of unarmed activists carrying aid to one of the most impoverished places on Earth (in international waters no less), is a particularly brazen act. However as opportunistic politicians use this tragedy to score cheap political points those of us who have nothing to gain from their system of exploitation and oppression need to keep our wits about us.

Already Turkey has been the most vocal in its denouncement of the Jewish State, unsurprising given the widespread anti-Israeli sentiment of the local populace, that the boat was a Turkish one and the fact that Israeli-Turkish relations have been deteriorating for some time now (most notably since Turkey pulled out of a joint military exercise with Israel last year). However moral condemnation coming from a State which has been ruthlessly oppressing its own Kurdish population for decades and which has long been supportive of Israel (and, therefore, Israel’s brutal oppression of Palestinians), ought to be taken with a grain of salt.

Predictably the Parliamentary opposition in this country has been quick to seize what it sees as an opportunity to mend its own beleaguered public image, with Labour Party leader Phil Goff condemning Israel’s disproportionate use of force. Ironic coming from a man who was directly involved in supporting what is now almost a decade long occupation of Afghanistan, is a staunch supporter of Israel and who is part of a government which was itself a product of the near extermination of an indigenous population. Of course we also can’t forget that impotent organisation the United Nations, which has called for those responsible to be held to account. Given that it was the United Nations which supported the creation of the Jewish State (and the subsequent displacement of near 800,000 Palestinians) in 1948, Ban-Ki Moon and his cronies would do well to take a look in the mirror.

Though perhaps asking smooth talking politicians to consider their own involvement in the bloodbaths which characterise modern day international relations would be too reasonable a request to be taken seriously.

As the nationalist thugs who prop up this bankrupt system known as capitalism continue with their denouncements, proclamations and calls for accountability, the people living in Gaza continue to suffer, starve and die and the families of nine sincere and dedicated activists will continue to mourn their losses. After being shelled back to the stone age little over a year ago, rebuilding in Gaza has been sluggish if not non-existent as a result of the crippling blockade on its borders, enforced by Israel and Egypt. No matter what they might say, the politicians don’t care about this repugnant fact of life in the Middle East, and they have no intention of changing it. Just like everything worthwhile we have gained in this world, an end to the siege on Gaza will be a product of direct action, self-organisation and international working class solidarity. If we want to help our brothers and sisters in Gaza we need to reject the petty nationalists who seek to divide us in order to promote their own opportunistic agenda. We need to take matters into our own hands; nine activists have given their lives doing exactly that.