One Monday I travelled out to give a talk to the high school students at the Steiner school in Belmont, they were a great class and it's good to see students interested in and (they kept asking when the next march was) keen to get involved in activism.


I started off my presentation by talking about Hone Hika, who cut down the flag pole at Russel, in the Bay of Islands, in the mid to late 1840s. He cut the pole down not once, not twice, but thrice. He also was a skilled soldier that took part in quite a few battles. I wanted to talk about non-violent protest but had to include this because I believe it was so important historically how he went after the symbols of power -such as the flag pole as a means to his ends.

I then talked about Parihaka, but not in depth because they had studied it the week before...what a cool class!


They were really keen on finding out about Greenpeace. It really is a cool story about how a bunch of hippies decided to charter a ship and sail it into an American nuclear test site in 1969. Greenpeace originally called this action a 'mind bomb, and they followed up their nuclear victory with the campaign against sealing. The above picture is of Greenpeace activists spray painting seal pups so that their fur would be useless to sealers. Again It's that attacking symbols again, like Hika, but with a direct action twist -it actually stops the crime continuing. Greenpeace brought this coherant theory of non-violent direct action to the World that was so important in New Zealand's most famous and successful protesting struggle -to make New Zealand nuclear free. Greenpeace also bore the ultimate cost when the Rainbow Warrior, was bombed killing photographer Fernando Periria.



The springbok apartheid protests showed another way of New Zealanders protesting that hadn't been seen since the massive strikes of the 1950's or the massive rounds of union protests that precceded both World Wars. Absolutley massive demonstrations and a political question that could split communities. It also showed some innovation that broke the monotony of march, struggle, dispersal -march, struggle, dispersal. Protestors dressed up as clowns or in the above picture a pilot is dropping flour bombs to disrupt the match at Eden Park in Auckland. Dangerous for use, but inovative.


I then gave a short workshop on different ways to stop something, as a means of protesting. One way, as pictured above is to chain your self to something, in this case an anchor, that is necessary for this ship to move, with it's cargo of genetically engineered organisms. There are other ways are to build barriers to stop something, they don't have to be sturdy -or could be made out of whale meat boxes, or sand bags or human -you can lock your self to a gate, in effect forming a wall, or just by linking arms a mass of people can form a wall that is pretty hard to move. Another way is put your self in the way of something and if they attempt to pass or continue they could hurt you. This was the theory the original Greenpeace crew was using. One activist used this theory by chaining himself to rail road tracks to halt the train and it's dangerous cargo...however didn't inform the train in time (and located himself around a bend), with predicable results. So to use this theory it is best to be well supported and public, such as the below picture.


This is called the tripod and is only effective against vehicles. By simply setting this up, no trucks can get through without seriously damaging you first, so that the authorities must use equipment such as cherry pickers to cut you off. This gives the activist hours of truck-stopping.

I think the students enjoyed the talk and asked a whole heap of questions. I am stoked to have gotten the oportunity to speak with them and I just wish we had had someone come and talk to my high school class about protesting.