As a Collective we have now developed a apply of reflection on the 12 months previous and the challenges forward. The next are particular person messages, but they coalesce as an affirmation of unity and resolve. Instances like these, domestically and globally, can induce a logic of despair and defeatism, however such regressive political occasions also can engender a cussed, stoic venture of knowledgeable resistance. Don’t let anybody inform you {that a} extra inclusive and socially simply world is not possible. It’s higher by far, in no matter methods are open to you, to be a small a part of making it so.
Neil Ballantyne
A pledge for the 12 months forward:
“So, whether or not we’re caught up in rage or love — rageful love, militant pacifism, aggressive nonviolence, radical persistence — allow us to hope that we reside that bind in ways in which allow us to reside with the residing, aware of the lifeless, demonstrating persistence within the midst of grief and rage, the rocky and vexed trajectory of collective motion within the shadow of fatality.” (Butler, 2020). It is a time to rage. To rage on the state of affairs in Aotearoa and the world. These are deeply dystopian occasions, however despair is just not an possibility. It’s by no means an possibility for progressive individuals who imagine that phrases don’t merely describe the world however assist to create new worlds.
It is a time for solidarity at house and internationally. We stand with our Palestinian whānau in opposition to the worldwide political elite and the military-industrial complicated that fuels and funds genocidal, settler colonial violence. Unfathomable violence that buries family members and their vibrant desires beneath pale, gray rubble.
We condemn the previous imperialist masters of necropolitics and their silent accomplices. Those that imagine they’ve the best to decide on whose lives are grievable and whose usually are not. Those that ignore common human rights and human life in favour of geopolitical energy performs protected by militarism and an arms trade drunk on the earnings of conflict.
It is a time to refuse distorted narratives from petty, populist politicians at house who foster a politics of division and hate and the rolling again of the smallest steps in the direction of social justice. We condemn these disrespecting Te Tiriti o Waitangi, those that refuse to guard our collective well being and wellbeing with their schoolboy taunts of wokefullness.
It is a time for forceful, disciplined, militant nonviolence. A time to recollect the folks of Parihaka and the promise of Te Whiti: I stand for peace. Although the lions rage, nonetheless I’m for peace. This New Yr, let progressive social staff do work to guard the social. In our utterances and actions, allow us to pledge to face collectively and work collectively for peace and justice in Aotearoa and the world.
References
Butler, J. (2020). The power of nonviolence: An ethico-political bind. Verso.
New Zealand Geographic. Why wasn’t I informed? https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/parihaka
Liz Beddoe
I’d wish to neglect 2023. It began and ended badly. Lives and houses misplaced in a deluge of rain. Tamaki Makaurau appeared to by no means get well and all 12 months we squelched by a muddy slush of leaves and smelly puddles. We finish the 12 months unable to swim safely on most of our common seashores. And the wise provisions of Three Waters washed away by a flood of banal, brainless racism.
We’ve a change of presidency motivated largely by the childish posturing of an aggrieved white petit bourgeois – the ragtag remnants of those that rejected sane collectivist responses to a world pandemic. The identical individuals who screwed each cent out of measures designed to maintain their small companies afloat and assist them pay the wages of their staff. The identical who will gleefully use the ability to fireplace staff at will in 90 days. The folks too immature to grasp that Covid 19 modified issues and projected their very own worry and grief on one lady, exposing their barely coated vicious misogyny. And who did they vote in? The weak Luxon , the duplicitous Peters and the slimy racist Seymour. Luxon is invisible, Peters is having fun with the ‘convey again youth smoking’ success, trying ahead to a different technology of early lung most cancers deaths. And Seymour’s ACT get together hacks are so bereft of any creativeness or aspiration that they spend their time over the vacation attacking a poet. Small pathetic males with small visions. Not leaders.
It is a authorities of the grumpy grandads that has no optimistic plan to enhance the lives of Aotearoa folks, apart from their wealthy mates of the owner class. Their settlement is a putrid mess of racist canine whistling. Ban te reo Māori signage, ‘overview’ MAPAS, destroy all of the work performed on Te Pukenga and Te Aka Whai Ora. Cease Truthful Pay. The listing of issues they need to ban goes on. It’s like all of your imply previous pig-ignorant, racist, uncles bought drunk and designed a plan for dragging us again to their ‘good previous days’ when a bloke might make a joke with out woke folks calling out their racism, misogyny and homophobia.
So I’m not optimistic about 2024. I’m disenchanted that our skilled leaders might ship out finish of 12 months messages and never acknowledge the horrific genocide of Palestine. I’m baffled by lack of any important perspective of so a lot of our colleagues. There’s little proof that we’re in any form to battle what’s coming. However battle we should. The racists have energy and they’ll go for Te Tiriti , they’ll assault so most of the progressive shifts of the previous few a long time, they’ll impose their warped Christofascist views on ladies’s rights. They are going to push again any makes an attempt to cut back our reliance on fossil fuels. We’re caught with them for some time however we have to be loud, indignant and allow them to know that we are going to problem each transfer they make to drive us away from creating a greater world, for realising the complete potential of a decolonised Aotearoa that holds its head excessive on the world stage. Let’s not allow them to power us again into their imaginary ‘wonderful’ previous.
Ian Hyslop
Social work training entails encouraging folks to consider the development of the social world. In flip, this entails growing a critique of energy and beliefs. At current we have now a divisive hard-right coalition Authorities in Aotearoa New Zealand – it’s an ungainly combine of ethical conservatism and financial fundamentalism: an altogether regressive combine as John Campbell has advised. A part of this goes again to the denial of politics engrained within the old-school blokey ‘Kiwi’ pysch – let’s speak about outboard motors and rugby and beer – something however politics! (Ssshhhh!!!)
Discuss of politics, after all, doubtlessly reveals the elemental divisions in our socio-economic system – that the baches and boats and outboard motors of all these Mum and Dad traders are a results of the exploitive relationship between capital and labour. Greatest to not converse of such issues. Extra particularly, ‘our’ settler colonial state is based on the forcible acquisition of land from tangata whenua and the related repression of Māori language, tradition and life-worlds. It is a little … errrr … ‘unsettling’, so it is perhaps greatest to return to a time when such issues have been hidden. (Ssshhhh!!!)
This closure of horisons entails highly effective pursuits. Why would you need to normalise the usage of te reo – it would encourage higher understanding. Higher to stay to our foundational myths – let’s ‘rebalance’ that historical past curriculum. Let’s return to the concept that that is the land of alternative – in spite of everything, to get forward all you want is a personal college training, half a mill or so of Mum and Dad’s cash and dose of entrepreneurial spirit, proper? We will all do this, proper? Success and happiness are about particular person consumption and accumulation, proper? What are you all whinging about? (Ssshhhh!!!)
Social work college students have to study to see by all of this ideological smoke, as a result of there aren’t so many rags to riches tales the place you’re going – simply good quaint casualities of capitalist modernity. Take away the protections and the poor will undergo whereas the privileged will thrive – this isn’t new knowledge; it’s capitalism 101. We’ve seen an rising politics of proper wing populism globally and the related blaming of impoverished folks, migrants, ethnic minorities and progressive politics, for the ills of the world – all these persons are impediments to creating quick buck, proper? Let’s get New Zealand again on monitor.
The nice common weet-bix consuming Kiwi household get an equally bland eating regimen of knowledge on the under-funded mainstream tv information. There may be little or no depth protection of the unfolding genocide in Gaza for instance – bites of stories bought from world company shops is about all we get. And why would you need to feed Joe and Jane public any deeper evaluation? Far too disturbing to be informed that the USA – that bulwark of worldwide liberal freedom – has sanctioned the killing of greater than 20,000 folks by the carpet bombing of occupied and territorially imprisoned Palestinians. Why would you need to inform that story – higher left to these woke varieties to worry about, proper? (Ssshhhh!!!)
So, that is the place the strains of ideological contest are drawn for 2024. We’ve loads of progressive voices however the reactionary proper has the political ascendency. Schooling, of itself, doesn’t change the structual underpinnings of inequality in Aotearoa or globally, but it surely certain as hell helps to chop by all of the bullshit we’re fed. There may be nothing pure in regards to the present world order – it’s largely a operate of historic privilege, greed, self-interest and the train of energy. Extra importantly, as a result of it’s constucted, the social and financial system could be deconstructed – what has been made could be modified.
Blissful New Yr to every and all – suppose, care and act for social justice as, when and the place you may! Stand up, stand-up, converse to all that ‘Ssshhhh’ – name it out / drown it out!! Kia kaha!!!
Emily Keddell
“It’s not sufficient for journalists to see themselves as mere messengers with out understanding the hidden agendas of the message and the myths that encompass it”. So stated the fantastic journalist, documentary-maker and commentator John Pilger, who handed away yesterday within the UK.
John had 50 years of labor fearlessly exposing the interaction of energy, capital, greed, colonialism and oppression that have been themes in each concern he examined intimately: Australia’s historical past and settler remedy of Indigenous Australians, Pol Pot’s genocide in Cambodia, the apartheid regime in South Africa, East Timor injustice, Vietnam’s crucible and naturally, Palestine. He tried his greatest to be a ‘reality teller’, usually at immense price to himself.
However let’s return to the messengers. Social staff can really feel the identical method – only a messenger of presidency or organisational coverage, doing as we’re informed, translating coverage into apply like an automaton, with out a lot discretion or abilty to replicate on ‘hidden agendas’ or resist the myths surrounding them. This talent, nevertheless, is extra essential now than ever, although after all it’s essential no matter get together politics. We’d like to have the ability to learn the double-speak at play and select our response.
To the triumvirate of our new authorities, ‘we’re all equal’ actually means ‘to appease our core voter base, we have to declare a drained notion of meritocracy, as a result of to deal with historic inequities through variations in approaches and assets makes them really feel attacked and aggrieved’. ‘Cracking down on critical youth offending’ actually means ‘let’s switch all the youngsters in youth justice over to corrections, use ineffective ‘boot camps’ to make it look to our Pākehā center class voters like we’re robust on crime, regardless that the consequence will likely be extra younger folks entrenched into a lifetime of crime moderately than leaving it’.
The decoding isn’t that arduous, however like several language framing, over time it might change into regular, even persuasive, if we have now little likelihood to unpack it. Preserve unpacking. Comparable hidden agendas are swirling in reporting on the genocidal assault on Gaza. To talk in opposition to Israel or Zionism is claimed to be ‘anti-semitic’ (as if to talk in opposition to Pol Pot was ‘anti-Cambodian’), whereas the dropping of leaflets onto a folks about to be bombed allows claims of ‘warnings’ although there’s nowhere to go in a walled jail.
On the time of Pilger’s 2002 documentary, ‘Palestine remains to be the difficulty’, he said that an “historic injustice has been performed to the Palestinian folks and till Israel’s unlawful and brutal occupation ends, there will likely be no peace for anybody, Israelis included”. How proper he was. In regards to the trigger, answer and what would occur if the occupation didn’t finish then, or now.
Ki te mau te rongo, kia tau te manatika.
Deb Stanfield
By some random likelihood I hearken to an interview with the late Irish poet Seamus Heaney. He covers a number of issues, together with questions in regards to the place of politics in poetry. Apparently throughout the Irish “troubles” Heaney and his contemporaries debated this – Heaney thought poetry was inherently political and he believed those that disagreed with him have been complicated politics with propaganda, or of utilizing poetry to take sides or supply opinion.
I’m inquisitive about this and marvel in regards to the place of poetry in Palestine. I’m conscious that Palestinian poets are actively focused and killed presumably as a result of nice energy of their phrases. Even when poetry isn’t deliberately political, it has traditionally been interpreted as such. I learn a New Yorker article printed on Christmas day 2023, by the Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha who describes his household’s perilous journey out of Gaza. He carried with him his most up-to-date guide of poems: Things you may find hidden in my ear: Poems from Gaza. He says that by the point he escaped his Israeli captors, he had lived a number of new poems. He had typed them onto his cellphone throughout his horrible ordeal, and afterwards sat down at his laptop computer to re-live them, form them, share them.
Mosab Abu Toha’s phrases are about extremes. What it means to go away your homeland, to expertise brutality, watch the killing of kids, and nonetheless have the capability to benefit from the scent of bread and the great thing about olive timber. This distinction is chilling; it each infuriates me and makes me so deeply unhappy. These feelings join in my thoughts with all different disasters – the kids in our jails, the abuse dedicated by our state, the denial of our local weather emergency, violence in opposition to ladies – the listing is infinite. Somewhat than distract me from what else is occurring in our nation and world wide or minimise them within the face of what’s occurring in Gaza, Mosab Abu Toha’s poetry helps me to really feel a robust connection between all issues unjust. A standard humanity.
In his interview, Seamus Heaney quotes the poet Robert Frost: “Like giants we’re hurling expertise forward of us for the second once we can strike a line of goal throughout it.” It should take great braveness to do this, observe and file atrocities, re-live them, talk them repeatedly, expose your self to extra of the identical. This 12 months I consider all of the individuals who have performed that in 2023, the activists, journalists, poets, whānau – all who’ve lived and spoken out in opposition to injustice indirectly. I thanks and want you peace in 2024.
Picture credit score: Y@nnickR
