Thousands rally - nothing to report?
Nothing has been posted on ((i))ndymedia about the weekend's worker's protests in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin. Although it seems that many activists prefer to stick their radical news and photos on the corporate spy-website Facebook these days, there is more to it with these rallies. Even the revolutionary left (for example the Workers Party, Beyond Resistance, the Aotearoa Workers Solidarity Movement or Socialist Aotearoa) have nothing to report on the CTU organised rallies on their websites.
So what happened? According to the capitalist media, 1500 rallied in Civic Square in Wellington, 500 in Dunedin, 1000 in Christchurch and an unreported number of people in Auckland. This makes it one of the biggest workers protests in quite some time. However, that was it. The CTU put its non-sensical Fairness at Work message across and encouraged people to vote for the Labour Party next time round. The radicals were grumpy and we all went home again. CTU president Helen Kelly (who is, of course, in the Labour Party) says "the Fairness at Work campaign will include submissions to the select committees" - wow, that's simply amazing! She also announce a national day of action for 20 October. But we have already heard from the public sector union officials that they have decided that "this is not our fight" and won't be doing stopworks on October 20th.
While Unite's UTU squad looks impressive, but compare them to the 1981 squad armed, equipped with helmets and wooden shields ready for battle, and Unite's corbond placards look rather pathetic.
So what to do...? There are currently Workers's Solidarity Networks being formed. In Wellington, there is a meeting on Tuesday August 31st at 7pm, upstairs meeting room, Wellington People’s Centre, Lukes Lane to form a new workers’ network in Wellington to support workers to fight for better wages and working conditions. A similar project seems to be the solidarity.org.nz website. Beyond Resistance has provided a good overview of the situation in Christchurch.
Comments
I think it's a bit premature
I think it's a bit premature to be wanting full reports just two days after the actions. The groups mentioned work collectively: that includes discussion and drafting collectively.
In a personal capacity though, Christchurch was dissapointing (but highly predictable). The numbers were awesome, but the CTU did a great job at disempowering the crowd and our anger. The speakers were tame, the sound system shitty and the CTU action put forward was to sign a postcard and send it in.
We did march to the rally as an anati-capitalist bloc, which was succesfull and made more noise than the putrid chants being put forward at the CTU rally. (Honestly, the MC had to read chants from a fucken sheet — talk about passion!) A few of us then marched to the Manufacturers Employers Association building, but it was a small group: the rally had gone on way too long and people were directed to go home rather than do anthing and hindered anyone coming with us. One Unite member overheard the police tell an EPMU official that there were radicals wanting to cause trouble — we did want to get on the mic to suggest a march — but we were blocked from doing so by CTU officials.
Jared
hey Jared,I wasn't balming
hey Jared,
I wasn't balming the radicals for not reporting anything - but the whole thing is so disappointing, that there literally isn't anything to say, other than the CTU sucks big time. Too much on BR and other anti-capitalist who try and get things moving.
Yeah cool, I didn't take it
Yeah cool, I didn't take it as blaming, just thought I would point out that groups take a little longer than individuals : )
Jared
Don't worry AWSM is
Don't worry AWSM is collecting reports from around the country and is going to publish them in the next Solidarity. It takes a while for us to publish stuff because it needs to be internally discussed and rewritten if objections are made, and because we're just too busy with work and everything.
Indymedia has never been good at publishing news on class-based stuff. Class based material very rarely gets promoted on the features while if something on war or October 15 or tino rangatiratanga etc appears, it seems to get immediately stuck on the features. So your overview is welcome. Did the 'Utu squad' picket burger fuel on the day in Auckland or was that photo from their earlier picket?
To Jared: why was the manufacturers employers association chosen as a target? Manufacturers have little power within the capitalist class in NZ, the financial wing of capital is dominant nowadays i think. But good on you for actually trying to go to a 'target'.
Hi Fydd,They've been putting
Hi Fydd,
They've been putting out heaps of pro-90 day media in the local Press, and for the more practical reason that their HQ is walking distance from the Cathedral Square. We wanted to get across the idea that this wasn't simply a National Government Bill, that it was a class issue etc.
We had a route planned which included the Labour Party office and the Canterbury Chamber of Commerce, but alas, the rally went on for so long that enthusiasm for a march was totally dampened. Also there's no Buger Fuel down here, but it looks like there are a few people coming out of the woodwork who have been sacked under the current bill — a women at one of those beauty shops in the malls, for instance.
Jared
"Indymedia has never been
"Indymedia has never been good at publishing news on class-based stuff."
That's because it's not Indymedia's job. Indy's job is to provide an open-publishing news site, that any activist or group can use. Publishing class struggle news is the job of class struggle activists, just like publishing October 15 or tino rangatiratanga news is the job of activists in those causes.
"Class based material very rarely gets promoted on the features"
I'm not sure what you mean by "class based material". Looking at the range of features over features over the past few weeks, most of them involve class issues. Can you explain further?
Having been an Indy feature editor in the past, I know how much time and energy goes into researching, drafting, crafting, and getting consensus on features. Kudos to the currents eds for keeping a steady stream of feature going up over the last few weeks.
I'm not always happy with the balance of topics in features either. But as I've said to Scott in the past, the best way of addressing that is to join the ed collective yourself, and do the work to make sure your preferred topics are covered. Of course you don't need to be in the ed collective to email the ed list with suggestions for newswire articles you think deserve to be promoted, including your own. If those who take on the ed responsibilities are working in a vacuum, of course the content of the site is going to reflect their priorities.
Nga mihi aroha, Strypes
thanks Strypes
Was going to write something similar myself, cheers for that.
Currently, pretty much anything written with a bit of effort in the local newswire goes to feature. Idealy, something new every day would be good but we dont have that much content being submitted, so often the Eds (only a few of us) have to put things together. Of course, we have our own interests and knowledge so if we're driving content it will reflect where we are coming from.
Anyone concerned about content issues can contact the editorial list if they think something should be made a feature.
Cheers.
Wouldn't it make sense to
Wouldn't it make sense to have some kind of feature writing guide publically available on the site? Or what the editorial collective are looking for with regards to a feature story? It does seem a bit willy nilly to me at the moment.
Jared
yep
To give you an example of what would work for a feature right now. Labour rallies took place nationally on the weekend, if each region of class struggle activists posted something of what happened, who was there and why, etc, then I would be more than happy to spend 10 minutes or so adding some pictures, putting together an intro and featuring it. Currently we only have a report from Auckland in the newswire.
Alternatively we could chase this information and put it together ourselves, but that takes time and we have such few active eds.
I'll have a think of something we could put up to make it more clear how people can put something together that makes promoting to a feature quick and easy.
Cheers.
i think writing up something
i think writing up something would be good to make the process more clearer, and more open. i disagree with you when you say "Currently, pretty much anything written with a bit of effort in the local newswire goes to feature." i've read plenty of stuff on indymedia newswire that has been well written and researched, but does not make it to the features, while it seems to me on occasion that if you are friends of the editors or a well-known activist your piece gets a pretty much immediate promotion or just magically appears on the features page eg. statements on the invasion of afghanistan. overall, the process seems a bit haphazard and inconsistent.
anyway, you editors are doing well, i'm just quibbling over minor stuff, so dont take it like i am shitting on your unpaid work. in fact i'm shit stirring, which you occasionally need to do to understand internal processes. i understand doing indymedia behind the scenes stuff is thankless, so keep the website going, it is really useful, especially for those outside the activist loop so we can keep up with what is going on.
and i'll take back my comments on indymedia being rubbish on class based stuff. i had a look at the features in the last few years and there has been lots of features on strikes and lockouts and so on. i'd like to see more given the current abuse by capitalists and their politicians -- for example on attacks on beneficiaries, but that's up to us to write stuff. i think my comments were coloured by the early years of indymedia which seemed to plain ignore class based stuff and especially workplace disputes (i'm talking not just of the features but the indymedia collectives i was in).
I tried to dig out some old
I tried to dig out some old stuff on the indymedia wiki on writing features, but couldn't find anything anymore. So it would be good to write something up around writing features, but also more generally on writing good articles. Sam's recent article on Rapa Nui (http://indymedia.org.nz/article/78881/police-evict-occupations-rapa-nui) is a good example I think (I'll propose it as a feature in a second).
Thanks for taking back your back your comment, Fydd. There was a lot of stuff on here during supersize, and also the progressive lockout, plus many other strikes and lock-outs. Yep, things were pretty bad at the start on class, but have improved LOTS imo in recent years.
Interesting comments everyone, cheers -smush
Hi Fydd and others, Yip being
Hi Fydd and others,
Yip being an Indy Geek is a pretty thankless task at times :-) I was going to take you to task about the lack of class features as I did think we were doing pretty well with the content we were getting, so am glad that you reckon were doing alright in that aspect.
Yeah the feature process is pretty haphazard - even for editors, because each feature has only to be approved by one other ed apart from the ed who initially either creates or suggests and article for a feature. This means there is little oversight for features and quite often means that features need work after they have been approved or in my opinion probably aren't really worth featuring. This is unlikely to change in the near future as there are few active eds.
In my opinion what makes a good feature is something that ties in a bunch of recent articles ie, if there were reports from each of the demos over the weekend there would (or should) have been a feature tying them all together with some background info on the reasoning behind the demos. I feel that features should expand on newswire articles like the example I gave and should only be rarely be promoted newswire articles. Again this is unlikey to happen given the lack of reporting on many topics and again, the lack of editors.
I'm quite big on website usability and functionality and personally this is one of the major failing of this site at the moment. Even for an editor putting a feature together takes much longer than it really should and can be counter intuitive in parts. This site has come a long way thanks in no small part to the two main people who put together the new site, but there is still a lot of work that could go into it, for example: live streaming of video or audio from events, making video, images and audio much easier to upload or link to, enableing non eds to be able to suggest articles for features. There's also a bunch of little things that bug me about the site.
Well I've kinda finished my train of thought and I would like to say it's great to have some well thought out feedback on the site, I do feel it is an important project moving forward and as usual there is much more we could be doing.
I would like to add that the comments are mine alone, I haven't really talked to any other eds about this in much capacity so they should be taken as my points of view and not of the wider editorial community.
Open Indy Proces
Kia ora
Some good points made by all. In relation to the comments about the first couple of years of Indy being poor on "class stuff", you seem to be defining this as reporting on the labour movement. I disagree with this narrow definition. To me *every* issue is a class issue, or at least has class elements, but pointing this out is the job of op-eds and comments, not news stories, which are supposed to stick to reporting the facts.
In terms of reporting on the labour movement, it has to be pointed out that industrial action was at a low ebb in the early part of the noughties. Activists were focussed on things like the mass movement around the GE campaign, and the campaign against the US-led invasions in the middle east. A news site can only report on what's happening. It's not at fault if the wrong kind of issues are getting priority by activists (in some people's opinion).
Speaking of writing up feature guides, it's probably also about time the Editorial Policy got updated. There are a few points in it which were specific to software Indy isn't using any more, and the spammer lists and the process around that haven't been updated for years. I sent an email to the ed list a few months ago about this, and about some hidden article I thought shouldn't have been hidden and got no response. It's important that Indy process is transparent and responsive.
Keep up the good work
Strypey
Fairness (and Balance) At Work?
"When workers rights are under attack - Run for cover and vote Labour"?
Sorry Ms. Kelly, nine years of a Labour coalition government has shown that they are nearly as much anti-worker as the Tories. The Employment Relations Act was a Bosses' law that limited the right to strike and this law was central to right-wing Labour Party industrial relations policy.
Submissions to Select Committees do nothing when you have a filthy Tory government that has an anti-democratic agency and will push it through regardless of public consultation. I know people who have submitted against the Search and Surveilance Bill, the Future Focus Bill and the 90 Day Bill. In such cases the tories ignored the majority of submissions that were against their agenda. For example, over three quarters of submissions were against the Future Focus Bill, and apart from a few minor additions to work test exemptions, the Bill was passed unamended.
That the weekend demonstrations did nothing to help those young non-unionised workers was of no surprise. The current CTU are not dissimilar in sentiment to the Scabs who betrayed the rank and file union members who wanted a National Strike against the Employment Contracts Act. The opportunity was there for the CTU to call for large scale organised militant strike action against the government, instead we got a sing-song, balloons and a few stale sausages.
The reality is that most young workers are non-union and have no idea about their rights (let alone know about 'Fairness at Work' or other meanless slogans) - and the pontificating bureaucrats and right-wing lackeys who organised the weekend demos don't give a stuff about them. The result of government policy is that New Zealand will have a new group of talented young workers who will spend their entire lives moving between 90 Day trials and the Dole. I wish that the CTU had spent the thousands of dollars it cost to perform these demos to instead help this vulnerable group of people.
Auckland
Hi Anonymous,
"But we have already heard from the public sector union officials that they have decided that "this is not our fight" and won't be doing stopworks on October 20th."
Actually the PSA is fully committed to the 20th stop work meetings. The concern is with the NZEI, PPTA and NZNO being unsure about the commitments that they can make due to school and nurses. The current idea sounds like there will be several rallies in Auckland close to school clusters so that it can be done around lunchtime so there is a longer-than normal lunch period for the students. They have already said their private sector members will probably attend. Not the best news in the world, but certainly not the worst. It would be good if the schools were shut down for half the day, then younger workers will be able to attend the rally.
"While Unite's UTU squad looks impressive, but compare them to the 1981 squad armed, equipped with helmets and wooden shields ready for battle, and Unite's corbond placards look rather pathetic."
Solidarity pickets and blockades require numbers. We are organising for a day of protest this Saturday at Burger Fuels. If you get down on the picket, or even better, organise one, you'll be one more body on the line.
@FYDD:
"Did the 'Utu squad' picket burger fuel on the day in Auckland or was that photo from their earlier pick"
Earlier photo. We thought there was going to be a picket but it appears there was some miscommunication or someone was pressured not to do anything. We're not sure.
@Darrien Kemp
"When workers rights are under attack - Run for cover and vote Labour"?
"That the weekend demonstrations did nothing to help those young non-unionised workers was of no surprise. The current CTU are not dissimilar in sentiment to the Scabs who betrayed the rank and file union members who wanted a National Strike against the Employment Contracts Act. The opportunity was there for the CTU to call for large scale organised militant strike action against the government, instead we got a sing-song, balloons and a few stale sausages."
I am all for militant strike action. But people still seem to have this idea that union beaucrats are holding people back and we use that as an excuse not to do anything. 1) It's not that simple - basic organising and class conciousness went out the window in the 90's, 2) the basics of getting back to basics needs to be done and it needs to be done infused with a radical spirit. That's where solidarity networks can play an important role.
I hope to post up a plan for direct action on the weekend by tommorow afternoon.
Yours,
Simon Oosterman
PS - too busy organising action plan and day job to post article about Auckland. There were probably about 500 people there, was lively and focused on getting key delegates in attendence. Good turnout from Hamilton.
Socialist Aotearoa organiser and writer Joe Carolan is in Ireland which is why there wasn't a post from them. Good attendence by the comrades, but it's members and workers we need there. Anyone got any ideas? I didn't get many of my members there and I would have loved for them to walk off the job.
We've got until October 20 to help get good numbers in attendence and make it a good rally. But we shouldn't stop planning other activities to involve people.
Some thoughts on growing our confidence
What I've seen in Otautahi is a series of actions, starting with a handful of people on a picket, growing to a march of a couple of hundred in the freezing cold a few weeks ago, and building again with the 1000 or so people who filled the Square on Sat. This is a campaign that is gaining traction beyond us usual suspect, it's growing, and gaining confidence, and this is good news.
I thought it was great to have David Rovics on stage singing a blatantly anti-property folk song. I don't think it would have hurt organisers on Sat to let Al on the mic to announce the anti-capitalist march, but I doubt many people would have come anyway. By that stage half the crowd had left, and those that remained had been out in the cold for a few hours. Your march would have made more sense before the rally, when people were fresh and it was warmer.
All due credit for your efforts guys, but don't kid yourselves that waving placards and chanting outside purely symbolic targets magically becomes "direct action" just because it's anticapitalists doing it, instead of liberal social-democracts. We are not going to grow or deepen this campaign by just holding bigger, and bigger rallies and marches, whatever the targets we march to. Rallies, marches and other symbolic actions have their place, but they will only continue to grow if the movement they symbolise is seen to have some teeth
This is why I'm thrilled to see the UTU pickets happening. Without this kind of direct action - which actually costs the bosses who are attacking workers - the turnout at public events will peak, and peter out. UTU squads are only one example of the myriad forms action against the attacks onto defend both employed and unemployed workers could take. They don't need to be organised only by the existing unions, but so far the only direct action against these attacks I've seen was co-ordinated by activists who are paid union organisers.
Like Simon, I'm sick of the implied accusations that union "beauraucrats" are discouraging people from taking more militant action. Workers are scared of losing their jobs, losing hours, losing "privileges" like breaks, and leave. It takes some effort to convince them they have a right to strike, and even more effort to make sure the union can actually back them up when the boss attempts to nip the unionisation efforts in the bud, by sacking, disciplining, or socially marginalising workers involved.
If anticapitalists want workers to act on their theoretical leads, they need to take their arguments into the workplace. Those of you who think workers are champing at the bit to take militant action and being contained by union organisers, need to put your energy where your mouths are, and go do some workplace organising. See if you can learn from the sucesses and failures of what the Autonomous Workers Union, and the Solidarity Union tried to do, and do a better job than the trade unions are doing.
The thing is Strypey, there
The thing is Strypey, there wasn't one mention by the CTU or their speakers of organising in the workplace, industrial action, or any prctical action that would give ithis struggle 'some teeth' as you say. They didn't even mention the fact that the bill had passed its first reading. And you can't tell me a 'Celebration of Fairness' equates to the kind of 'teeth' neede to stop such a bill.
Exactly? Which shows how fucked the whole thing on Saturday was: there was no mention of the Stopwork on Oct 20th.
Please don't assume that because we wanted to march in order to illustrate a point that this is all we're doing! We are conscious of building this struggle and are actively trying to doing that (you should come to a meeting or too — there's plenty to do). And how do you know what we do in our own workplaces, what conversations we have woth co-workers (and whanau)? I think your comments assume too much without even talking to us about it.
Jared
Kia ora koutou@Jared, at the
Kia ora koutou
@Jared, at the risk of replaying the debates we've had on the BR email list, I'm going to address your points here.
sure I agree the CTU are playing softly, softly. It's been a long time since they had to run a public campaign, and there are lots of things they're forgetting, as you mention. The thing is I don't think, as others seem to, that this is conscious political strategy on their part. I think it's just as likely to be oversight, and some friendly suggestions to the organisers might be more helpful than publicly lambasting them for being "bureaucrats". I could be wrong. I do have friends on both sides of the paid organiser/ anticapitalist militant divide, but I admit my only part in this campaign has been to come to a couple of rallies, I haven't played an active part in the organising.
"And you can't tell me a 'Celebration of Fairness' equates to the kind of 'teeth' neede to stop such a bill."
Certainly not. It was a pep rally. A toe in the water. As I mentioned, the UTU squads look more like teeth. But don't underestimate the importance of building confidence to participate in the biting end of things by getting large groups of people together for more symbolic, feel-good activity like the 'Celebration of Fairness'.
Certainly I'm making a lot of assumptions, and I apologise to anyone who they don't apply to. They are based on more than 10 years of working shoulder-to-shoulder with anarchists, marxists and other militant activists who have never seen the inside of a workplace (except as a customer), let alone involved themselves in union organising, or been on a strike picket, and whose anti-trade-union rhetoric is based on the writings of 19th century philosophers, not their own observations of contemporary unions. I'd just like to see people showing the respect for the diversity of tactics they want to see for militant tactics, in their comments about less militant tactics.