Beyond Resistance

Talley’s AFFCO will lockout a further 250 meat workers indefinetly from
next Tuesday 6 March.

Unaffected New Zealand Meat Workers Union (MWU) will strike in solidarity
with the workers on Tuesday similar to Friday’s protests which saw over
1,000 workers striking.

Workers at the meat processing plant in Rangiuru, near Te Kuiti, will join
750 workers locked out last Wednesday at Moerewa, Horotiu, Rangiuru,
Feilding, Whanganui and Wairoa. No workers have been locked out at Wiri
and Napier which are both fully unionised.

Meat Workers Union AFFCO Rangiuru site president, Kaipara McGarvey, says
the lock out at his site doesn’t apply to 170 union members and 130
non-union members, most of whom were recently employed.

“The company is trying to split families as well as coworkers and now they
want to create division at Rangiuru too,” he says. “Yesterday we saw
parents striking in solidarity with their locked out kids and coworkers
standing up for their mates and we’ll do it again next Tuesday.”

Meat Worker’s Union General Secretary, Dave Eastlake, says union members
started a work ban on training replacement labour for locked out workers
this morning.

“It only took Tally’s AFFCO 10 hours of face-to-face negotiations before
they locked out workers without thought for our families, the local
buisinesses which rely on our incomes and the farmers who supply the
stock,” he says. “We want the locked lifted immediately and for
negotiations to continue.”

Mr Eastlake says non-union members, most of whom were employed in the few
weeks, have been supportive with a number joining the union yesterday.

ENDS

Please, by forwarding this to a friend you can save paper and the planet ; )

FROM KATIPO: The Katipo collective are pretty excited about our new website, which now has some new books available—if you haven’t already seen it, have a peek here: http://katipobooks.co.nz/ If you’ve linked to us in the past, you may need to change the link (the old website is long gone).

The new website also has one of those email sign-up things, so if you want to stay in touch with us, be informed of new books, and know when we are having stalls or events, please take a second to sign up here (or at our website): http://eepurl.com/jxeE9 We promise not to spam you too much : )

Because our website is still new, we’d be stoked if you wanted to forward this email to a friend.

Thanks again from the Katipo Books Workers’ Co-Operative

–
Katipo Books Workers Co-Operative
http://katipobooks.co.nz/

The Maritime Union has confirmed it has today placed another strike notice on Ports of Auckland.

The seven day full stoppage would start on Friday 9 March immediately following two week long periods of full strike action that begin tomorrow (Friday 24 February 2012.)

Maritime Union National President Garry Parsloe says the strike action is due to the port management seeking to contract out labour and create a casualized workforce.

“The strike notice can be lifted as soon as we hear from the CEO at the port that he will stop the contracting out plan he has embarked on.”

He says the actions of the port are threatening the livelihoods of workers and their families.

Mr Parsloe says the contracting out plan is dead in the water, as growing opposition from political representatives, a community coalition of port stakeholders, and the public of Auckland, comes on to management to find a negotiated settlement.

He says the Union is ready and waiting to engage in negotiations over a collective agreement, as soon as the threat to its members jobs was lifted.

A major campaign has been launched by the Maritime Union and Council of Trade Unions to promote secure jobs at the port (www.saveourport.com)

‘Pages from New Zealand history: Tracing Joe Hill’s Ashes in New Zealand’ was a talk given as part of a series of lectures on radical New Zealand history. It traces the ashes of Joe Hill—union organiser, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World—to wartime New Zealand, touching on the workers movement in that country, censorship, and the actions of the New Zealand State.

Next week features a talk by Murray Horton on conscientious objectors during the Second World War. For more info check out: http://beyondresistance.wordpress.com/2012/02/07/pages-from-new-zealand-history-february-sessions-at-the-christchurch-wea/

By Endnotes: The term ‘communization’ has recently become something of a buzzword. A number of factors have contributed to this, the most prominent being the coming into fashion of various texts. Of these, The Coming Insurrection – associated with the French journal Tiqqun, and the ‘Tarnac 9’ who gained the doubtful prestige of being at the center of a major ‘terrorist’ scandal – has been by far the most influential. In addition to this, the voluble literature produced by autumn 2009’s wave of Californian student struggles – a literature partly inspired by such French texts – has been a significant factor.1 The confluence in this Californian literature of, on the one hand, a language inflected by typically grandiloquent Tiqqunisms, and on the other, concepts in part derived from the works of a more Marxist French ultra-left – and the convenient presence in both of these reference points of a fairly unusual term, ‘communization’ – has contributed to the appearance of a somewhat mythological discourse around this word. This communization appears as a fashionable stand-in for slightly more venerable buzzwords such as ‘autonomy’, having at least the sparkle of something new to it, a frisson of radical immediatism, and the support of some eloquent-sounding French literature. This communization is, if anything, a vague new incarnation of the simple idea that the revolution is something that we must do now, here, for ourselves, gelling nicely with the sentiments of an already-existent insurrectionist anarchism.

But this communization is, in all but the most abstract sense, something other than that which has been debated for some thirty years amongst the obscure communist groups who have lent the most content to this term, even if it bears traces of its ancestors’ features, and may perhaps be illuminated by their theories. Of course, ‘communization’ was never the private property of such-and-such groups. It has, at least, a certain minor place in the general lexicon of left-wing tradition as a process of rendering communal or common. Recently some have begun to speak, with similar intended meaning, of ongoing processes of ‘commonization’. But such general concepts are not interesting in themselves; if we were to attempt to divine some common content in the clutter of theories and practices grouped under such terms, we would be left with only the thinnest abstraction. We will thus concern ourselves here only with the two usages of the word that are at stake in the current discourse of communization: that derived from texts such as The Coming Insurrection, and that derived from writings by Troploin, Théorie Communiste and other post-68 French communists. It is primarily from these latter writings – those of Théorie Communiste (TC) in particular – that we derive our own understanding of communization, an understanding which we will sketch in what follows. As it happens, these two usages both proliferated from France into Anglophone debates in recent years, a process in which we have played a part. But it would be a mistake to take this coincidence for the sign of a single French debate over communization, or of a continuous ‘communizationist’ tendency within which the authors of The Coming Insurrection and, for example, TC represent divergent positions. What is common to these usages at most, is that they can be said to signal a certain insistence on immediacy in thinking about how a communist revolution happens. But, as we shall see, one ‘immediate’ is not the same as another; the question is which mediations are absent?

If the tone of the following text is often polemical, this is not because we take pleasure in criticising people already subject to a very public manhandling by the French state, charged as ‘terrorists’ on the meagre basis of allegations that they wrote a book and committed a minor act of sabotage. It is because long-running debates related to the concept of communization – debates in which we have participated – have become falsely associated with the theories presented in texts such as The Coming Insurrection and Call, and are thereby in danger of getting lost in the creeping fog that these texts have summoned.2 What is at stake is not only these texts, but the Anglophone reception of ‘communization’ in general. It has thus become necessary to make the distinction: the ‘communization theory’ now spoken of in the Anglosphere is largely an imaginary entity, an artefact of the Anglophone reception of various unrelated works. The limited availability of relevant works in English, and the near-simultaneity with which some of these works became more widely known, surely contributed to the confusion; a certain traditional predisposition in relation to France, its theory and politics, probably helped. The Anglosphere has a peculiar tendency to take every crowing of some Gallic cock as a cue to get busy in the potting shed with its own theoretical confabulations; add to this a major political scandal, and it seems it is practically unable to contain the excitement.

But our intention is not simply to polemicize from the standpoint of some alternative theory. Insofar as it is possible to grasp the determinate circumstances which produce texts like this, they do not simply present incorrect theories. They present rather, the partial, broken fragments of a historical moment grasped in thought. In attempting to hold fast to the general movement of the capitalist class relation, communist theory may shed light on the character of such moments, and thereby the theoretical constructs which they produce. And, in so doing, it may also expose their limits, elisions and internal contradictions. Insofar as such constructs are symptomatic of the general character of the historical moment, their interrogation may draw out something about the character of the class relation as a whole.

If communization signals a certain immediacy in how the revolution happens, for us this does not take the form of a practical prescription; ‘communization’ does not imply some injunction to start making the revolution right away, or on an individual basis. What is most at stake, rather, is the question of what the revolution is; ‘communization’ is the name of an answer to this question. The content of such an answer necessarily depends on what is to be overcome: that is, the self-reproduction of the capitalist class relation, and the complex of social forms which are implicated in this reproduction – value-form, capital, gender distinction, state form, legal form, etc. In particular, such an overcoming must necessarily be the direct self-abolition of the working class, since anything short of this leaves capital with its obliging partner, ready to continue the dance of accumulation. Communization signifies the process of this direct self-abolition, and it is in the directness of this self-abolition that communization can be said to signify a certain ‘immediacy’.

Communization is typically opposed to a traditional notion of the transitional period which was always to take place after the revolution, when the proletariat would be able to realise communism, having already taken hold of production and/ or the state. Setting out on the basis of the continued existence of the working class, the transitional period places the real revolution on a receding horizon, meanwhile perpetuating that which it is supposed to overcome. For us this is not a strategic question, since these matters have been settled by historical developments – the end of the programmatic workers’ movement, the disappearance of positive working class identity, the absence of any kind of workers’ power on the horizon: it is no longer possible to imagine a transition to communism on the basis of a prior victory of the working class as working class. To hold to councilist or Leninist conceptions of revolution now is utopian, measuring reality against mental constructs which bear no historical actuality. The class struggle has outlived programmatism, and different shapes now inhabit its horizon. With the growing superfluity of the working class to production – its tendential reduction to a mere surplus population – and the resultantly tenuous character of the wage form as the essential meeting point of the twin circuits of reproduction, it can only be delusional to conceive revolution in terms of workers’ power. Yet it is still the working class which must abolish itself.3

For us, communization does not signify some general positive process of ‘sharing’ or ‘making common’. It signifies the specific revolutionary undoing of the relations of property constitutive of the capitalist class relation. Sharing as such – if this has any meaning at all – can hardly be understood as involving this undoing of capitalist relations, for various kinds of ‘sharing’ or ‘making common’ can easily be shown to play important roles within capitalist society without in any way impeding capitalist accumulation. Indeed, they are often essential to – or even constitutive in – that accumulation: consumption goods shared within families, risk shared via insurance, resources shared within firms, scientific knowledge shared through academic publications, standards and protocols shared between rival capitals because they are recognized as being in their common interest. In such cases, without contradiction, what is held in common is the counterpart to an appropriation. As such, a dynamic of communization would involve the undoing of such forms of ‘sharing’, just as it would involve the undoing of private appropriation. And while some might valorize a sharing that facilitates a certain level of subsistence beyond what the wage enables, in a world dominated by the reproduction of the capitalist class relation such practices can occur only at the margins of this reproduction, as alternative or supplementary means of survival, and as such, they are not revolutionary in themselves.

Communization is a movement at the level of the totality, through which that totality is abolished. The logic of the movement that abolishes this totality necessarily differs from that which applies at the level of the concrete individual or group: it should go without saying that no individual or group can overcome the reproduction of the capitalist class relation through their own actions. The determination of an individual act as ‘communizing’ flows only from the overall movement of which it is part, not from the act itself, and it would therefore be wrong to think of the revolution in terms of the sum of already-communizing acts, as if all that was needed was a certain accumulation of such acts to a critical point. A conception of the revolution as such an accumulation is premised on a quantitative extension which is supposed to provoke a qualitative transformation. In this it is not unlike the problematic of the growing-over of everyday struggles into revolution which was one of the salient characteristics of the programmatic epoch.4 In contrast to these linear conceptions of revolution, communization is the product of a qualitative shift within the dynamic of class struggle itself. Communization occurs only at the limit of a struggle, in the rift that opens as this struggle meets its limit and is pushed beyond it. Communization thus has little positive advice to give us about particular, immediate practice in the here and now, and it certainly cannot prescribe particular skills, such as lock-picking or bone-setting, as so many roads, by which insurrectionary subjects to heaven go.5 What advice it can give is primarily negative: the social forms implicated in the reproduction of the capitalist class relation will not be instruments of the revolution, since they are part of that which is to be abolished.

Communization is thus not a form of prefigurative revolutionary practice of the sort that diverse anarchisms aspire to be, since it does not have any positive existence prior to a revolutionary situation. While it is possible to see the question of communization as in some sense posed by the dynamic of the present capitalist class relation, communization does not yet appear directly as a form of practice, or as some set of individuals with the right ideas about such practice. This does not mean that we should merely await communization as some sort of messianic arrival – in fact, this is not an option, for engagement in the dynamic of the capitalist class relation is not something that can be opted out of, nor into, for that matter. Involvement in the class struggle is not a matter of a political practice which can be arbitrarily chosen, from a contemplative standpoint. Struggles demand our participation, even though they do not yet present themselves as the revolution. The theory of communization alerts us to the limits inherent in such struggles, and indeed it is attentive to the possibilities of a real revolutionary rupture opening up because of, rather than in spite of, these limits. For us then, communization is an answer to the question of what the revolution is. This is a question which takes a specific historical form in the face of the self-evident bankruptcy of the old programmatic notions, leftist, anarchist, and ultra-leftist alike: how will the overcoming of the capitalist class relation take place, given that it is impossible for the proletariat to affirm itself as a class yet we are still faced with the problem of this relation? Texts such as Call or The Coming Insurrection however, do not even properly ask the question of what the revolution is, for in these texts the problem has already been evaporated into a conceptual miasma. In these texts, the revolution will be made not by any existing class, or on the basis of any real material, historical situation; it will be made by ‘friendships’, by ‘the formation of sensibility as a force’, ‘the deployment of an archipelago of worlds’, ‘an other side of reality’, ‘the party of insurgents’ – but most of all by that ever-present and always amorphous positivity: we. The reader is beseeched to take sides with this ‘we’ – the ‘we of a position’ – to join it in the imminent demise of ‘capitalism, civilization, empire, call it what you wish’. Instead of a concrete, contradictory relation, there are ‘those who can hear’ the call, and those who cannot; those who perpetuate ‘the desert’, and those with ‘a disposition to forms of communication so intense that, when put into practice, they snatch from the enemy most of its force.’ Regardless of their statements to the contrary,6 do these pronouncements amount to anything more than the self-affirmations of a self-identifying radical milieu?

In this more insurrectionist incarnation, communization emerges as an answer to a real historical question. But the question in this case is the ‘what should we do?’ posed by the conclusion of the wave of struggles that had the anti-globalization movement at its center.7 The authors correctly recognize the impossibility of developing any real autonomy to ‘what is held in common’ within capitalist society, yet the exhaustion of the summit-hopping, black-blocking activist milieu makes it imperative for them to either find new practices in which to engage, or to stage a graceful retreat. Thus the ‘TAZ’, the alternative, the commune etc., are to be rethought, but with a critique of alternativism in mind: we must secede, yes, but this secession must also involve ‘war’.8 Since such supposedly liberated places cannot be stabilised as outside of ‘capitalism, civilization, empire, call it what you wish’, they are to be reconceived as part of the expansion and generalization of a broad insurrectionary struggle. Provided the struggle is successful, these alternatives will not turn out to have been impossible after all; their generalization is to be the condition of their possibility. It is this dynamic of generalization that is identified as one of ‘communization’ – communization as, more or less, the forming of communes in a process that doesn’t stop until the problem of the alternative has been solved, since it no longer has to be an alternative. But all of this is without any clear notion of what is to be undone through such a dynamic. The complexity of actual social relations, and the real dynamic of the class relation, are dispatched with a showmanly flourish in favor of a clutch of vapid abstractions. Happy that the we of the revolution does not need any real definition, all that is to be overcome is arrogated to the they – an entity which can remain equally abstract: an ill-defined generic nobodaddy (capitalism, civilization, empire etc) that is to be undone by – at the worst points of Call – the Authentic Ones who have forged ‘intense’ friendships, and who still really feel despite the badness of the world.

But the problem cannot rest only with this ‘they’, thereby fundamentally exempting this ‘we of a position’ from the dynamic of revolution. On the contrary, in any actual supersession of the capitalist class relation we ourselves must be overcome; ‘we’ have no ‘position’ apart from the capitalist class relation. What we are is, at the deepest level, constituted by this relation, and it is a rupture with the reproduction of what we are that will necessarily form the horizon of our struggles. It is no longer possible for the working class to identify itself positively, to embrace its class character as the essence of what it is; yet it is still stamped with the simple facticity of its class belonging day by day as it faces, in capital, the condition of its existence. In this period, the ‘we’ of revolution does not affirm itself, does not identify itself positively, because it cannot; it cannot assert itself against the ‘they’ of capital without being confronted by the problem of its own existence – an existence which it will be the nature of the revolution to overcome. There is nothing to affirm in the capitalist class relation; no autonomy, no alternative, no outside, no secession.

An implicit premise of texts like Call and The Coming Insurrection is that, if our class belonging ever was a binding condition, it is no longer. Through an immediate act of assertion we can refuse such belonging here and now, position ourselves outside of the problem. It is significant perhaps that it is not only the milieu associated with Tiqqun and The Coming Insurrection that have developed theory which operates on this premise over the last decade. In texts such as Communism of Attack and Communism of Withdrawal Marcel, and the Batko group with which he is now associated, offer a much more sophisticated variant. Rather than the self-valorizations of an insurrectionist scene, in this case the theory emerges as a reconceived autonomism informed by a smorgasbord of esoteric theory – Marxian and otherwise – but ultimately the formal presuppositions are the same.9 Taking the immanence of the self-reproduction of the class relation for a closed system without any conceivable terminus, Marcel posits the necessity of a purely external, transcendent moment – the ‘withdrawal’ on the basis of which communists can launch an ‘attack’. But, within this world, what can such ‘withdrawal’ ever mean other than the voluntaristic forming of a kind of ‘radical’ milieu which the state is quite happy to tolerate as long as it refrains from expressing, in an attempt to rationalise its continued reproduction within capitalist society, the kind of combativity which we find in The Coming Insurrection?

To insist, against this, on the complete immanence of the capitalist class relation – on our complete entwinement with capital – is not to resign ourselves to a monolithic, closed totality, which can do nothing other than reproduce itself. Of course, it appears that way if one sets out from the assumption of the voluntaristically conceived subject: for such a subject, the totality of real social relations could only ever involve the mechanical unfolding of some purely external process. But this subject is a historically specific social form, itself perpetuated through the logic of the reproduction of the class relation, as is its complement. Not insensitive to the problem of this subject, The Coming Insurrection sets out with a disavowal of the Fichtean I=I which it finds exemplified in Reebok’s ‘I am what I am’ slogan. The ‘self ’ here is an imposition of the ‘they’; a kind of neurotic, administered form which ‘they mean to stamp upon us’.10 The ‘we’ is to reject this imposition, and put in its place a conception of ‘creatures among creatures, singularities among similars, living flesh weaving the flesh of the world’.11 But the ‘we’ that rejects this imposition is still a voluntarist subject; its disavowal of the ‘self ’ remains only a disavowal, and the replacement of this by more interesting-sounding terms does not get us out of the problem. In taking the imposition of the ‘self ’ upon it to be something unidirectional and purely external, the ‘we’ posits another truer self beyond the first, a self which is truly its own. This authentic selfhood – ‘singularity’, ‘creature’, ‘living flesh’ – need not be individualistically conceived, yet it remains a voluntarist subject which grasps itself as self-standing, and the objectivity that oppresses it as merely something over there. The old abstraction of the egoistic subject goes through a strange mutation in the present phase in the form of the insurrectionist – a truly Stirnerite subject – for whom it is not only class belonging that can be cast off through a voluntarist assertion, but the very imposition of the ‘self ’ per se. But while our class belonging is unaffirmable – a mere condition of our being in our relation with capital – and while the abstract ‘self ’ may be part of the totality which is to be superseded – this does not mean that either is voluntarily renounceable. It is only in the revolutionary undoing of this totality that these forms can be overcome.

The prioritisation of a certain tactical conception is a major outcome and determinant of this position. Theory is called upon to legitimate a practice which cannot be abandoned, and a dualism results: the voluntarist ‘we’, and the impassive objectivity which is its necessary counterpart. For all their claims to have overcome ‘classical politics’, these texts conceive the revolution ultimately in terms of two opposed lines: the we that ‘gets organized’, and all the forces arrayed against it. Tactical thought is then the guide and rule for this ‘we’, mediating its relations with an object which remains external. Instead of a theoretical reckoning with the concrete totality that must be overcome in all its determinations, or a reconstruction of the real horizon of the class relation, we get a sundering of the totality into two basic abstractions, and a simple set of exhortations and practical prescriptions whose real theoretical function is to bring these abstractions into relation once more. Of course, neither Call nor The Coming Insurrection present themselves straightforwardly as offering ‘a theory’. Call in particular attempts to circumvent theoretical questions by appealing from the outset to ‘the evident’, which is ‘not primarily a matter of logic or reasoning’, but is rather that which ‘attaches to the sensible, to worlds’, that which is ‘held in common’ or ‘sets apart’.24 The ostensible point of these texts is to stage a simple cri de coeur – an immediate, pre-theoretical stocktaking of reasons for rebelling against this bad, bad world – on the basis of which people will join the authors in making the insurrection. But this proclamation of immediacy disguises a theory which has already done the mediating, which has pre-constructed the ‘evident’; a theory whose founding commitments are to the ‘we’ that must do something, and to its paternal they – commitments which forestall any grasp of the real situation. Theory which substitutes for itself the simple description of what we must do fails at its own task, since in renouncing its real standpoint as theory it gives up the prospect of actually understanding not only what is to be overcome, but also what this overcoming must involve.

Communist theory sets out not from the false position of some voluntarist subject, but from the posited supersession of the totality of forms which are implicated in the reproduction of this subject. As merely posited, this supersession is necessarily abstract, but it is only through this basic abstraction that theory takes as its content the determinate forms which are to be superseded; forms which stand out in their determinacy precisely because their dissolution has been posited. This positing is not only a matter of methodology, or some kind of necessary postulate of reason, for the supersession of the capitalist class relation is not a mere theoretical construct. Rather, it runs ahead of thought, being posited incessantly by this relation itself; it is its very horizon as an antagonism, the real negative presence which it bears. Communist theory is produced by – and necessarily thinks within – this antagonistic relation; it is thought of the class relation, and it grasps itself as such. It attempts to conceptually reconstruct the totality which is its ground, in the light of the already-posited supersession of this totality, and to draw out the supersession as it presents itself here. Since it is a relation which has no ideal ‘homeostatic’ state, but one which is always beyond itself, with capital facing the problem of labor at every turn – even in its victories – the adequate thought of this relation is not of some equilibrium state, or some smoothly self-positing totality; it is of a fundamentally impossible relation, something that is only insofar as it is ceasing to be; an internally unstable, antagonistic relation. Communist theory thus has no need of an external, Archimedean point from which to take the measure of its object, and communization has no need of a transcendent standpoint of ‘withdrawal’ or ‘secession’ from which to launch its ‘attack’.

Communist theory does not present an alternative answer to the question of ‘what shall we do?’, for the abolition of the capitalist class relation is not something on which one can decide. Of course, this question necessarily sometimes faces the concrete individuals and groups who make up the classes of this relation; it would be absurd to claim that it was in itself somehow ‘wrong’ to pose such a question – the theory of communization as the direct abolition of the capitalist class relation could never invalidate such moments. Individuals and groups move within the dynamics of the class relation and its struggles, intentionally oriented to the world as it presents itself. But sometimes they find themselves in a moment where the fluidity of this movement has broken down, and they have to reflect, to decide upon how best to continue. Tactical thought then obtrudes with its distinctive separations, the symptom of a momentary interruption in the immediate experience of the dynamic. When this emergent tactical thought turns out not to have resolved itself into the overcoming of the problem, and the continuation of involvement in overt struggles presents itself for the time being as an insurmountable problem, this individual or group is thrust into the contemplative standpoint of having a purely external relation to its object, even as it struggles to re-establish a practical link with this object.

In Call and The Coming Insurrection this basic dilemma assumes a theoretical form. Lapsing back from the highs of a wave of struggles, the tactical question is posed; then as this wave ebbs ever-further – and with it the context which prompted the initial question – theory indicates a completely contemplative standpoint, even as it gesticulates wildly towards action. Its object becomes absolutely external and transcendent while its subject is reduced to fragile, thinly-veiled self-affirmations, and the ‘what we must do’ that it presents becomes reduced to a trivial list of survival skills straight out of Ray Mears. In the moment in which Tiqqun was born, as the structures of the old workers’ movement lay behind it and the field of action became an indeterminate ‘globalization’ – the horizon of a triumphant liberal capitalism – class belonging appeared as something which had been already cast aside, a mere shed skin, and capital too became correspondingly difficult to identify as the other pole of an inherently antagonistic relation. Here lies the historically-specific content represented by these texts: the indeterminacy of the object of antagonism, the voluntaristic relation to the totality constructed around this antagonism, the indifference to the problem of class and its overcoming. The ‘desert’ in which Tiqqun built its sandcastles was the arid, featureless horizon of a financialized, fin-de-siècle capitalism. Setting out in this desert, unable to grasp it as a passing moment in the dynamic of the class relation, Tiqqun could never have anticipated the present crisis, and the struggles that have come with it.

The ‘what shall we do?’ posed by the end of the wave of struggles which had the anti-globalization movement at its center is now passed; there is little need in the present moment to cast around for practical tips for the re-establishment of some insurrectionary practice, or theoretical justifications for a retreat into ‘radical’ milieus. It is a cruel historical irony that the French state should find in this standpoint – defined precisely by its helplessness in the face of its object, its fundamental reference to a moment that has passed – the threat of ‘terrorism’ and an ‘ultra-left’ worth crushing even further. And that, while it busies itself with the defiant, melancholy outpourings of a stranded insurrectionism, pushing its unhappy protagonists through a high-profile ‘terrorist’ scandal, tectonic movements are occurring within the global capitalist class relation far more significant, and far more threatening for capitalist society.

The global working class is at present under a very overt attack as the functionaries of capital attempt to stabilise a world system constantly on the brink of disaster, and it has not had any need of insurrectionary pep-talk to ‘get started’ in its response. The Tiqqunist jargon of authenticity accompanied the outbreak of student occupations in California, but these were of course not the struggles of an insurrectionary ‘communization’ waged voluntaristically in the desert, against some undefined they. These struggles were a specific conjunctural response to the form that the
current crisis had taken as it hit the Californian state, and the higher education system in particular. This was a situation which demanded resistance, yet without there being any sense that reformist demands would be at all meaningful – hence the ‘no demands’ rhetoric of the first wave of these struggles. At the same time, communization of course did not present itself as a direct possibility, and nor was any other ostensibly revolutionary dynamic immediately on the cards. Caught between the necessity of action, the impossibility of reformism, and the lack of any revolutionary horizon whatsoever, these struggles took the form of a transient generalization of occupations and actions for which there could be no clear notion of what it would mean to ‘win’. It was the demandless, temporary taking of spaces in these struggles that came to be identified with ‘communization’. Yet, given the absence of any immediate possibility of actual communization here, the language of yesteryear – ‘TAZ’, ‘autonomy’ etc. – would have been more appropriate in characterizing such actions. While such language was, ten years ago, that of the ‘radical’ wing of movements, in California this flowering of autonomous spaces was the form of the movement itself. Perversely, it was the very anachronism of the Tiqqunist problematic here that enabled it to resonate with a movement that took this form. If Tiqqun’s ‘communization’ is an insurrectionary reinvention of ‘TAZ’, ‘autonomy’ etc., formulated at the limit of the historical moment which produced these ideas, in California it met a movement finally adequate to such ideas, but one that was so only as a blocked – yet at the same time necessary – response to the crisis.

It is as a result of this blocked movement that ‘communization’ has come to be barely differentiable from what people used to call ‘autonomy’; just one of the latest terms (alongside ‘human strike’, ‘imaginary party’ etc) in the jargon of a basically continuous Anglo-American sensibility. This sensibility always involved a proclivity for abstract, voluntarist selfaffirmation – in Tiqqun it merely finds itself reflected back at itself – and it should thus be no surprise that here, ‘communization’ is appropriately abstract, voluntarist, and self-affirming. This arrival of ‘communization’ at the forefront of radical chic probably means little in itself, but the major movement so far to find its voice in this language is more interesting, for the impasse of this movement is not merely a particular lack of programme or demands, but a symptom of the developing crisis in the class relation. What is coming is not a Tiqqunist insurrection, even if Glenn Beck thinks he spies one in the Arab uprisings. If communization is presenting itself currently, it is in the palpable sense of an impasse in the dynamic of the class relation; this is an era in which the end of this relation looms perceptibly on the horizon, while capital runs into crisis at every turn and the working class is forced to wage a struggle for which there is no plausible victory.

• 1. See for example the collection After the Fall: Communiqués from Occupied California, http://afterthefallcommuniques.info/.
• 2. The following discussion will focus specifically on are The Invisible Committee, The Coming Insurrection (Los Angeles, CA: Semiotext(e), 2009) http://tarnac9.wordpress.com/texts/the-coming-insurrection/ and The Invisible Committee, Call (2004), http://www.bloom0101.org/call.pdf, rather than other works associated with Tiqqun, since it is these texts that have been the most influential in the current Anglophone reception of ‘communization’. It is primarily with this reception that we are concerned, rather than any more general assessment of Tiqqun as, for example, a contributor to ‘continental philosophy’.
• 3. For a fuller discussion of these issues, see ‘Misery and Debt’, and ‘Crisis in the Class Relation’ in Endnotes 2 (April 2010), http://endnotes.org.uk/ issues/2.
• 4. For a discussion of the concept of programmatism, see Theorié Communiste, ‘Much Ado About Nothing’, Endnotes 1: Preliminary Materials for a Balance Sheet of the Twentieth Century (October 2008): 154-206, http:// endnotes.org.uk/articles/13.
• 5. ‘Plato could well have refrained from recommending nurses never to stand still with children but to keep rocking them in their arms; and Fichte likewise need not have perfected his passport regulations to the point of ‘constructing’, as the expression ran, the requirement that the passport of suspect persons should carry not only their personal description but also their painted likeness.’ Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, p.21.
• 6. See, for example, The Coming Insurrection, p.101: ‘All milieus are counterrevolutionary because they are only concerned with the preservation of their sad comfort’. They protest too much.
• 7. Of course, Tiqqun distinguish their approach from the ‘leftist’ problematic of ‘what is to be done?’ because they see this as denying that ‘the war has already begun’. Instead, the direct question to be posed for Tiqqun is ‘how is it to be done’? But we are not merely concerned with this question as literally posed by Tiqqun. The ‘what should we do?’ in question is that of the post-anti-globalization impasse itself, an impasse which – as we shall see – structures the theoretical content of texts such as Call and The Coming Insurrection. By ‘alternative’ and ‘alternativism’ here, we refer to practices which aim to establish liberated areas outside of capitalist domination, grasping this as possible independently of, and prior to, any communist revolution. Countercultural milieus in general can be said to be ‘alternativist’.
• 8. For an excellent critique of the position of the Batko group see Per Henriksson, ‘Om Marcel Crusoes exkommunister i Intermundia. Ett bidrag till kommuniseringsdiskussionen’, Riff-Raff 9 (March 2011), http://riff-raff.se/texts/sv/om-marcel-crusoes-exkommunister-i-intermundia; English translation forthcoming.
• 9. The Coming Insurrection, pp.29-34. The Coming Insurrection, pp.33-32. Call, p.4.
• 10. The Coming Insurrection, pp.29-34. The Coming Insurrection, pp.33-32. Call, p.4.
• 11. The Coming Insurrection, pp.29-34. The Coming Insurrection, pp.33-32. Call, p.4.

‘Pages from New Zealand History: The White New Zealand Policy’ was a talk given at the Christchurch WEA on the making of a White New Zealand Policy in New Zealand, a policy that especially targeted Chinese and formed unlikely alliances.

Next Tuesday Jared Davidson will be speaking on Joe Hill and the IWW in New Zealand.

There will be a meeting to discuss the possibility of organising in support of the 4 remaining defendants arrested in the police raids of October 15th 2007 (whose trial began Monday) and more broadly around the issues raised by the raids.

It will be at the WEA (59 Gloucester St) from 7pm Thursday 16th February.

Please pass it on if you know anyone who would be interested,

From Oct. 15th Solidarity: this is the last newsletter before the trial against Taame, Emily,
Rangi and Urs gets underway in the Auckland High Court on Monday, 13th
February 2012. The trial is expected to last up to three months. In
this jam-packed newsletter, we have put together information about the
defendants and the people who want to lock them up, last minute
updates on upcoming events (there is a powhiri at Waipapa Marae (16
Wynyard Street, Auckland Uni) this Sunday at 5pm for the defendants
and supporters) and reflecting on the past 4.5 years.

Now is the time to stand in solidarity with the defendants who are
facing long prison sentences and expose the police racism and state
terrorism. Our friends are not terrorists, nor are they criminals.
They are committed to the liberation struggle – FREE THE UREWERA 4!

There is a Facebook page
(http://www.facebook.com/pages/October-15-Solidarity/25598818522) and
group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/323932007641750/) and a Twitter
feed (@oct15solidarity) to keep you up to date.

See you in Auckland.

:: UPCOMING EVENTS
:: ARTICLES
:: WHO IS WHO – OPERATION 8 ROLL-CALL
:: 4.5 YEARS TOO LONG – A BRIEF CHRONOLOGY
:: DONATIONS
:: RESOURCES
:: LINKS
:: MEDIA ENQUIRIES

:: UPCOMING EVENTS

1. Auckland: Trial starts in the High Court – 13 Feb
2. Auckland: Powhiri at Auckland Uni marae for defendants and
supporters – 12 Feb
3. Melbourne: Free the Urewera Four Solidarity Protest – 13 Feb
4. Auckland: Special GPJA Forum: Drop the charges! – 14 Feb

1. Auckland: Trial starts in the High Court – 13 Feb

The trial is scheduled to start in the High Court in Auckland on
Monday, 13 February 2012 at 10am. There is a call-out circulating for
people to come to the court from 8am for a picket outside. Cnr
Waterloo Quadrant & Parliament Street.

Everyone can come and observe the trial. It is expected to last for 3
months. Court starts sits Monday to Friday and starts at 10am and
finishes about 5pm (except for Friday, when things wind up at 1pm).

FB: https://www.facebook.com/events/359105117439123/

2. Auckland: Powhiri at Auckland Uni marae for defendants and
supporters – 12 Feb

There will be a powhiri at Waipapa Marae (Auckland University) on
Sunday 12 Feb 2012 5pm for supporters of Te Urewera 4. People can stay
at the marae on Sunday night and then go to court on Monday morning
together. http://www.auckland.ac.nz/uoa/ma-waipapa-marae

A bus is leaving from the Eastern Bay Sunday 12 Feb to travel to
Auckland to support. People on the bus are asked to pay a koha ($30)
to go towards travel cost accommodation and kai. The bus will be back
in the Eastern BOP Monday evening. Please call (07) 3129 659 or email
comms@ngaituhoe.iwi.nz to book a seat.

3. Melbourne: Free the Urewera Four Solidarity Protest – 13 Feb

12.30pm – New Zealand Consulate General Melbourne, Level 4, 45 William Street

The High Court Trial for the Urewera Four: Taame, Emily, Rangi and Urs
will start in the Auckland High Court. The four are the remaining
defendants facing charges in relation to the state terror raids of
15th October 2007 in Auckland starting on the 13 Feb 2012. Stand in
Solidarity against New Zealand repression of Indigenous Sovereignty &
Activism , let us show Taame, Emily, Rangi & Urs that they are not
alone and that the whole world is watching.

4. Auckland: Special GPJA Forum: Drop the charges! – 14 Feb

7.30pm, Tuesday, Feb 14: Special Global Peace and Justice Forum: Drop
the charges! Trades Hall, 147 Great North Road, Grey Lynn

This special GPJA forum will have speakers talking about the raids,
their political context and the legal situation of the defendants.
Speakers to be confirmed later. http://gpjanz.wordpress.com/

:: ARTICLE

1. Wellington public meeting packed out
2. The Trial for Terrorism ends but the persecution continues…

1. Wellington public meeting packed out

There was a full-house for the Wellington public meeting to discuss
the upcoming court case. Three speakers discussed different aspects of
the case to a crowd of near a 100 at the Wellington Public Library.

Valerie Morse, former accused in the case, first discussed the
intricacies of the charges. She discussed how the case was a
‘stitch-up’ due to the way in which the crown intends to use illegal
evidence and rely on several different sections of criminal law in
order to try and prove their case. While the remaining four defendants
have been charged with one count of ‘participation in an organised
criminal group’ (Sec 98(A)) and several charges under the Arms Act,
the crown intends to rely in part on complex “parties” law in order to
prove possession. Both of these tactics are a clear demonstration of
the desperation of the crown to secure convictions in the case. After
the botched use of the Terrorism Suppression Act, the brutal raids on
Ruatoki, and the exposure of the police’s widespread criminal
offending,* the crown will use any available means to save face and
justify their actions.

Ati Teepa was the second speaker of the evening. Ati is Ngai Tuhoe,
and his talk really focused on what it means to be Tuhoe, to grow up
in Ruatoki, and what Mana Motuhake is. Ati took the crowd on a
wonderful journey to the valley of Ruatoki, describing what it was
like to live in an area with 11 marae, and penned in by the amazing
ranges of Te Urewera. He described the genesis of Te Mana Motuhake o
Tuhoe as a movement by and for Tuhoe. Wananga were held, led by Tuhoe
leader Tamati Kruger, in which people could learn about Tuhoetanga.
Later the Tuhoe Embassy was established in Taneatua, and it was both a
political space and a social centre. Later Te Mana Motuhake became a
political movement focused on Tuhoe’s sovereignty and role as
kaitiaki. Ati described protests against logging on the sacred
mountain of Taiarahia and against jet-boating on the Whakatane river.

Finally, Felicity Perry provided an extensive analysis of the media
coverage and what we can expect during the Operation 8 trial. Felicity
outlined some of the structural reasons why the media coverage so
often mimics the police’s perspective. She used examples from the past
four years to prepare us for the inevitable sensationalist coverage in
the weeks to come. Calling Operation 8 a story ‘too good to miss’ for
journalist, she said that the imagery of guns and balaclavas was what
got ‘eyeballs to the screen’ and readers to the pages of the
newspaper. Complex issues like tino rangatiratanga and Te Mana
Motuhake o Tuhoe were much more challenging both for reporters and for
their audiences. Felicity reminded us that with the Crown holding
centre-stage for the first 6 weeks of the trial, the coverage will be
decidedly lopsided as the defendants will have no space to counter the
narrative being spun.

The meeting ended with a lively question and answer session. Another
public meeting will take place in Auckland on 14 February.

2. The Trial for Terrorism ends but the persecution continues…

More than 4 years later Tame finally lines up to be heard. This trial
is the opportunity to end this injustice. The context of the T?hoe
history of resistance against the Crown will feature. It is that
history that explains the basis for anti Crown sovereignty statements
allegedly taped by the police. This is what the trial is about. T?hoe,
your presence will help set the right environment for this case over
the coming weeks.

The Details:
High Court: Auckland High Court Monday 13 February 9am court starts,
estimated to last 6 ? 10 weeks.
Themes: T?hoe Solidarity & Justice.
Travel: Bus leaving M?hurehure at the new time of 1pm this Sunday 12
Feb and then returning 1pm Monday 13 Feb. (Book a seat with
violet@ngaituhoe.iwi.nz or 07 3129659)
Pohiri: Waipapa Marae 6pm 12 Feb 2012 (note: it is our understanding
that the powehiri is at 5pm – so best come just before 5pm)
Accommodation: Waipapa Marae & Te Tirahou Marae

The Tribals are considering arrangements to travel from Te Urewera
this Sunday through Monday. Since October 15th 2007, and the so called
Operation 8 that locked down and terrorized a T?hoe Community, made
this a T?hoe Hap? Iwi kaupapa.

5 years on, the emotional trauma and disruption to T?hoe wh?nau has
taken its toll and in the last year Tame together with his wh?nau have
continued to carry the unjust consequences of the Crowns inept ability
to conclude its case.

T?hoe, he p?nui kia koutou, kia t?tau, ahakoa kei te whakarite te
Hauk?inga ki te haere ki T?maki, t?r? koutou ka w?tea, ka t?ea r?nei,
kia tae mai t?tau ki te r? whakatuwhera o te k?hi a te Karauna i t?nei
Mane e heke mai nei. E kitea ai a T?hoe e te Karauna e t? kotahi ana I
runga I t?na Mana, I t?na T?hoetanga hoki.

Ahakoa ng? pukuriri ki te Karauna, ko t?nei haere k?re e haere ana ki
te porot?hi, ki te whakatut? puehu, ?ngari e haere ana ki te tautoko,
ki te awhi, i runga i te ng?kau m?haki, I te ng?kau iti a o t?tau
M?tua T?puna.

:: WHO IS WHO – OPERATION 8 ROLL-CALL

In this section, we will try and introduce all ‘the players’ in the
upcoming trial.

::: The defendants – Taame, Emily, Rangi and Urs

Well, Taame Iti doesn’t need an introduction. He is well-known in
Aotearoa/NZ for his political activism spanning four decades. He was
involved in too many movements to mention: anti-vietnam war, the
Communist Party, the anti-apartheid movement and of course Te Mana
Motuhake o Tuhoe. Taame works as a mental health practitioner for the
Tuhoe Hauora and lives in Ruatoki. Check out
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K42L58BhRww&feature=related

Te Rangikaiwhiria (Rangi) Kemara is of the Maniapoto and Te Arawa
tribes and lives in his tribal area of Te Rohe Potae under the shadow
of the Mt Pureora and Titiraupenga. His computer skills have built
many websites for the Tino Rangatiratanga movement. Rangi is a
founding member of the Maori internet society and is referred to as
‘one of the first Maori on the net’. Rangi is also a gardener who uses
modern as well as traditional permaculture concepts to grow
traditional Maori food as well as the best of superfoods such as
specialist varieties of apples including the Monty Surprise and
Hetlina apples and other superfoods like chia.

Emily Bailey grew up on the bushy hills of Lower Hutt then moved to
Wellington to study fashion design… but soon switched to ecology and
geography. She then planned to live on an offshore island but got into
social politics through the Wellington peace and environment centre
instead. She has been involved in the anti-GE movement, community
gardens, Save Happy Valley, 128 and the Oblong infoshop amongst other
projects. She is now a mum learning her roots at Parihaka while
growing kai, working on climate justice issues and finishing a
ridiculously long film project
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=348p-5e1kKk.

Swiss-born Urs Signer has lived in Aotearoa/NZ for almost 10 years. He
has been involved in various activist groups in Wellington, including
Peace Action Wellington and the 128 social centre. He has a Bachelor
of Music from Victoria University and plays clarinet in various bands.
A recent article in the NZ Herald stated that Urs’ “woodwind stylings
are clearly a danger to any decent society.” Have a listen here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=765x80tr0Ms&feature=related

::: The Crown – Ross Burns and Emma Finlayson-Davis (Meredith Connell)

Crown prosecutor Ross Burns has been involved with this case
(Operation 8) since before the raids of 15th October 2007, advising
the police on the use of the Terrorism Suppression Act. He is also in
charge of the case against gardening stores who were raided in
relation to alleged cannabis growing. His latest case was appearing
for the Auckland City Council to have Occupy Auckland evicted from
Aotea Sq. Ross Burns will be ‘leading’ most of the crown witnesses
with Emma Finlayson-Davis also cross-examining some.

Burns and Finlayson-Davis belong to the law firm ‘Meredith Connel’
whose slogan is ‘making business work for you.’ The law firm has held
the office of the Auckland Crown Solicitor since 1922.
http://meredithconnell.co.nz/our-people/partner/ross-burns

::: The Police – Aaron Pascoe and the Special Investigation Group (SIG)

Operation 8 is a high-level counter-terrorism case conducted by the
Special Investigation Group (SIG). While started by the Threat
Assessment Unit (TAU), it was really Aaron Pascoe’s case, the
detective in charge of the Auckland SIG.

One of Pascoe’s biggest achievements was receiving the Coverstaff
Recruitment Volunteer of the Week award in June Last year as the
Chairman of Te Papapa Rugby Football & Sports Club. Congrats!

Here is a photo of him: http://www.flickr.com/photos/12492550@N03/3533100402/

::: The Media – Fairfax and ((i))ndymedia

We all remember the sensationalist media coverage from the raids in
the newspapers and on TV. It even ended in the Solicitor-General
taking contempt charges against Fairfax media (meanwhile the police
did nothing).

Unfortunately, we can probably expect more of the same this time
round. Will the media even bother to stick around for the defence case?

We encourage people not to solely rely on commercial media outlets but
instead read our website (www.October15thSolidarity.info) and
((i))ndymedia (www.indymedia.org.nz).

::: The Supporters – nga hau e wha

Supporters from across Aotearoa have followed this case over the past
4.5 years, both inside and outside the courtroom. A rally will take
place outside the court on the first day of trial. People are
encouraged to come to court and listen to the crown fabrications.
Court will sit from Monday to Friday from 10am to approx. 5pm (except
on Friday when it will finish at 1pm). There is a lunchbreak from 1pm
to 2.15pm.

::: The Jury – you, me and cousin George

At the start of the trial, 12 jurors will be selected from a large
jury-pool. These Auckland-based people would have received a letter in
the mail, asking them to report for jury duty on 13th February. Jurors
will be selected randomly and both the defence and the crown has a
chance to veto some of the jurors.

::: The Judge – Justice Rodney Hansen

Justice Rodney Hansen is presiding over the hearing.

From courtsofnz.govt.nz: Justice Rodney Hansen graduated LLB (Hons)
from the University of Auckland in 1969 and was admitted to the Bar
the same year. He was also admitted an Associate Chartered Accountant
in 1969 having worked prior to undertaking his law degree as an
accounting trainee/accountant for companies in Australian Consolidated
Industries Ltd group. He joined the law firm of McKegg & Adams-Smith
in 1968, travelled overseas from 1969 and upon return to New Zealand
in 1973 took up a staff solicitor position with Simpson Coates &
Clapshaw. In 1976 Justice Hansen was made a partner of Simpson Coates
& Clapshaw, and later Simpson Grierson and Simpson Grierson Butler
White, before becoming a Barrister sole in 1991. Justice Hansen was
appointed Queen’s Counsel in 1995 and took appointment to the High
Court bench in 1999. He is based at the Auckland High Court.

::: The defence lawyers – Nisbet, Stevenson, Fairbrother, Bioletti and
Hirschfeld

Val Nisbet, from Wellington, will be appearing for Emily Bailey. Val
has been there since day one. Christopher Stevenson, also from
Wellington, is appearing for Urs Signer. He replaced Michael Bott last
year, who was running for parliament instead. Former member of
parliament, Russell Fairbrother, is appearing for Taame Iti while
Jeremy Bioletti and Charl Hirschfeld are defence counsel for Rangi
Kemara. Jeremy previously appeared for Jamie Lockett.

They will bring junior lawyers with them who will also be
cross-examining some witnesses.

:: 4.5 YEARS TOO LONG – A BRIEF CHRONOLOGY

On Monday, October 15th 2007, more than 300 police carried out dawn
raids on dozens of houses all over Aotearoa / New Zealand. Police
claim the raids were in response to ?concrete terrorist threats? from
indigenous activists. What initially started with 20 defendants is now
down to four: Taame, Emily, Rangi and Urs. Their trial will start on
13th February 2012 in Auckland.

The raids were the first ever carried out under the Terrorism
Suppression Act (TSA). On the day of the raids, the police arrested 17
people. One person was immediately discharged, and 16 went to prison
held on Arms Act charges for up to a month while the police sought to
bring additional charges for ?participation in a terrorist group?
against 12 of the 16. In NZ, the consent of the Solicitor-General is
required before charges can be brought under the TSA.

On 8 November 2007, the Solicitor-General refused to give police
permission to bring these charges due to lack of evidence. All of the
accused were released on bail still facing Arms Act charges.

The following week, the Wellington newspaper The Dominion Post
published a front-page article entitled ?The Terror Files? in which
highly sensational extracts of conversations intercepted by the police
were published. These extracts were said to be from the accused, but
they were no longer legally admissible against them because the
terrorism charge on which the warrant for the interception was granted
had failed.

For this article, the newspaper was charged with contempt of court and
a trial was held in the Wellington High Court in September 2008. The
editor of the newspaper freely admitted breaching court suppression
orders against publication. The Solicitor-General said the publication
was the ?most serious breach of an accused fair trial rights? that he
had ever seen. The effect of the article was to deny the defendants
any chance of advancing a defence of ?lawful, proper and sufficient
purpose.? He also said that the police affidavit where the published
bits came from was itself full of conversations that were taken out of
context to make the threat seem ?imminent? and give veracity to the
police?s narrative.

In February and April 2008, four more arrests were made. All were
charged under the Arms Act along with the other 16, bringing the total
number to 20 people in the case.

In September 2008, there was a month-long depositions hearing in the
Auckland District Court. Two of the 20 were discharged from the case,
18 people were sent forward to be tried on Arms Act charges.

One month after the depositions hearing and a year after the original
arrests, the crown brought an additional charge ? ?participation in a
criminal group? ? against five of the accused.

The trial was moved from the District Court to the High Court. The
crown and defendants filed numerous ?pre-trial? applications. The most
significant of these concerned the admissibility of material obtained
by police. During this hearing, the High Court ruled that the police?s
investigation had been illegal: it involved breaches of human rights
and criminal acts, but the material from it was still admissible for a
trial. The defence team appealed the admissibility of this material to
the Supreme Court.

Ultimately, there was a split outcome with the Supreme Court ruling
all of the material illegal, but admissible only against the five
people facing a charge of ?participation in a criminal group.? This
was due to the way the Evidence Act was written which allows the court
to conduct a ?balancing act? weighing up the alleged offending of the
defendants against the actual offending by police. In this case, the
balance of the court decided that Arms Act charges were of a less
serious nature than the offending of the police in gathering the
material, therefore the evidence should not be used against those 13
people who were only facing Arms Act charges. Shortly thereafter, the
charges were dropped against the 13.

The ?criminal group? charge, however, was deemed more serious thus the
illegally obtained material could be used against the five people
still accused despite the lack of any additional evidence.

In the meantime, one of the five remaining defendants, Tuhoe Lambert,
died from stress-related illness.

One of the other pre-trial applications by the crown sought to deny a
jury trial to the defendants, instead petitioning for a trial by
judge-alone. The High Court granted their wish and ordered a trial by
judge-alone, buying into the argument that the matter was too ?long
and complex? for a jury to understand. The defendants fought this all
the way to the Supreme Court, but when the other 13 defendants were
discharged from the case, the crown could not maintain their argument
any longer and dropped their application. There will be a jury trial.

There are now four defendants in the Urewera trial. After four and a
half-years, the matter has been set down for up to three months in the
Auckland High Court.

:: DONATIONS

Cheques – Please make your cheque payable to ‘October 15 Solidarity’,
and post to October 15 Solidarity, PO Box 9263, Wellington, New Zealand.

Wire or Transfer Details – Bank: Kiwibank, Account name: October 15
Solidarity, Account Number: 38-9007-0239672-000

This is a Wellington based group that formed in the immediate
aftermath of the raids. It does both support work and political
organising. Deposits made with the code “Support” will be dedicated
towards supporting all those affected by the raids, arrests and
on-going court appearances.

:: RESOURCES

The www.October15thSolidarity.info website is regularly updated. The
website aims to be multilingual and gives background information
aswell as updates on legal proceedings. There are poster, newsletters
and leaflets available here:
http://october15thsolidarity.info/en/node/236

A DROP THE CHARGES leaflet can be downloaded here:
http://october15thsolidarity.info/sites/default/files/drop%20the%20charges%20A4.pdf

:: LINKS

www.October15thSolidarity.info | www.indymedia.org.nz | www.tuhoe.net
| www.gpja.org.nz

:: MEDIA ENQUIRIES

Journalists are encouraged to email info@october15thsolidarity.info if
they wish to arrange an interview with a defendant or a spokesperson
for October 15th Solidarity.

You are receiving this newsletter because you have subscribed to it
online or you have left your email address on a sign-up sheet or you
were in our personal address books from other campaigns. This
newsletter is sent out on an email list. If you would like to be
removed from the list, go to
https://lists.immerda.ch/mailman/listinfo/october15thsolidarity-newsletter or
email us. Cheers!

Solidarity!

Radical history nights at the WEA, 59 Gloucester Street, Christchurch. Every Tuesday during February, 7—8.30pm, All welcome – koha

14 Feb: The Making of the ‘White New Zealand’ policy 1880-1920 - Philip Ferguson

Philip will be looking at the development of anti-Chinese Racism and its reflection in discriminatory immigration legislation in the late 1800s and early 1900s

21 Feb: Joe Hill’s ashes and syndicalism in early 1900s New Zealand - Jared Davidson

Jared will also have autographed copies of his book ‘Joe Hill’s Ashes’ for sale

28 Feb: Repression in New Zealand during WW2 and the campaign against post-war peacetime conscription - Murray Horton

Murray will be looking at the treatment of pacifists and other antiwar activists in NZ during WW2 and also at the government’s introduction of peacetime conscription in the late 1940s and the campaign against it.

6 March: The 1951 Waterfront Dispute: then and now - Philip Ferguson

Philip will be looking at the struggle of the watersiders and their allies in defence of workers’ rights in the great waterfront lockout of 1951 and how it relates to the current Ports of Auckland Dispute.

Canterbury WEA, 59 Gloucester Street, Phone 366 0285, Email cwea@xtra.co.nz  Website: cwea.org.nz

By Philip Ferguson at Redline

Around 1,500 – 2,000 people attended a lunchtime rally next to the Christchurch City Council offices today. The protest was organised by No Pay Rise for Tony Marryatt, although organisers made it clear that reversing his pay rise and getting him to hand back all the increase he had so far been paid was not the most important object. They want him sacked, they want Parker to resign and they want new council elections in autumn. These positions drew rousing cheers from the crowd. The organisers and crowd also made it clear they did not want interference from the government – they don’t want the government getting rid of Marryatt/Parker and their cronies; they want the protest movement to do it themselves.

As well as more mass protests, other ideas were at least put forward about how to get rid of Marryatt/Parker. At one point, for instance, hundreds of the crowd began spontaneously chanting “Don’t pay the rates”. One of the speakers, a respectable-looking middle-aged guy, suggested this was a good idea and should be taken up.

The mike was opened to ‘ordinary citizens’ to get things off their chest and people from different parts of the city spoke about the problems they faced and the cavalier attitude of the Marryatt/Parker cabal. Several speakers, including Rev Mike Coleman of Wider Earthquakes Communities Action Network, who chaired the protest, mentioned the way in which decisions were made by Marryatt/Parker in secret – in a number of cases city councillors first heard about decisions when they read about them in the newspaper. In response to a question from the crowd, Coleman noted how the deal done with local property ‘developer’ (and now bankrupt) Dave Henderson – the council bought some Henderson properties for over $17 million without having an independent valuation done, Henderson being a mate and all – was an example of business secrecy and cronyism by those who sat atop the council.

One of the professionals speaking mentioned how housing was an urgent need. But while Parker swanned off to Asia and Marryatt was sunning himself on the Australian Gold Coast, people were being left homeless. The council has 1,200 employees in its offices and the PR department alone has 21 people to do its spin work, but there are only three people who are allowed to sign off on building consents. One result of this is that only 2 new houses per 1,000 inhabitants are getting built in Christchurch, while in the neighbouring counties of Selwyn and Waimakariri, the figures are 10 per 1,000 and 12 per 1,000 respectively. In Christchurch the building rate is not even at renewal level, let alone the level required to deal with the amount of homes destroyed by quakes. He also pointed out that while the average household income in Christchurch is $55,000 the average house price is 6.3 times as much. Moreover, if someone bought a section on the city outskirts, where the quakes are less felt, they’d pay $200,000 for the section and $250,000 to build a house. He suggested that house prices shouldn’t be more than three times the average household income in order to have anything resembling access to housing for the mass of people.

The composition of the crowd showed that the royal couple have managed not only to piss off much of the working class in the city but also the civic-minded sections of the liberal middle class and even a chunk of the local bourgeoisie, along with the local Anglican Establishment. Of course, this breadth is also a political weakness of the protest. It is a cross-class affair and so no-one is supposed to speak about class for fear of scaring away the upper class and less radical middle class elements. Nevertheless, probably the speaker who got the best reception of all was a firefighter. He talked about how he had “complete contempt” for Marryatt’s claim that since the quakes began he had been working harder than at any time in his life. The firefighter pointed out that while Marryatt was sunning himself on the Gold Coast with that attitude, he himself (the firefighter) had been in the PGC building with a fellow firefighter performing a double amputation on a trapped person, using a hacksaw and a pen-knife. Yet, he said, his total annual pay was a lot less than Marryatt’s rise and firefighters had been without a contract for a year as they struggled to wrestle an offer above 2.7% out of their employer. (2.7% rise for the firefighters: 70% for their boss.)

Our Redline leaflet (Sack all the Marryatts) included a section on the firefighters and hundreds of copies were snapped up by people taking part in the protest. It was the first protest in a very long time where people have had their hands out to get a leaflet before I’ve got to them and people have come up to get copies. One young woman asked if she could have a bundle to hand out. A comrade from Beyond Resistance, who also had their own leaflet, offered to help with handing out the Redline leaflet. So it was good day for our leaflet.

On the way back to work I passed the ten or so rather forlorn-looking tents which make up whatever is left of the Occupy site in Hagley Park. The big “We are the 99%” banner looked surreal. Having just been at a much, much larger and broader protest, where no-one claimed to be the 99%, the Occupy rhetoric seemed rather eccentric. Of course since the protest outside the council offices really was reflective of the 99%, no-one needed that sort of rhetoric. They were the 99% and they knew it and could see it.

While the liberal campaigners are playing a progressive role in taking up issues of democracy and economic disparity, this is certainly not any sort of class-struggle movement. However they have the honesty not to pretend that they are, either. They also have the merit of being able to mobilise large numbers of people and to at least ask questions that provide a space for more radical voices to be sounded and to be heard.

Natural disasters may, as Naomi Klein has argued, provide opportunities for disaster capitalism; however, they also provide opportunities for the left to get out a critique of capitalism in general. The political fallout from the quakes in Christchurch may just be getting started.