From the Streets, to the Cells, and Back Again

— Em

We were handcuffed and removed, from my tent home in Wellington city's townbelt, at gunpoint, by the New Zealand Armed Offenders Squad. Fifteen other people across Aotearoa, including my brothers and several of my friends, were also taken away. At least sixty houses were busted open and raided. A whole town further north was blockaded, searched and interrogated at gunpoint. The armed offenders squad even took my thirteen year old dog to the pound and told them to put her down as I would not be back to collect her (my animal rights friends rescued her the next day thankfully). Random raids, call-ins and arrests still continue as I write this.

I and the other sixteen arrested and slammed in jail that day, were charged with 'unlawful possession of weapons' under the Arms Act. The charges were based on evidence the NZ police had gathered for almost two years by bugging phones and cars, placing hidden cameras outside homes, following people, laying informants and more, allowed under the new Terrorism Suppression Act laws — for which we were told we would also be charged under. Terrorism charges in NZ carry a maximum twelve year jail sentence and possible deportation to Guantanamo Bay. I had never been to prison before.

One of my best friends and I were locked up in solitary for a week next to each other at Arohata Women's prison. It was a small concrete cell with a camera, a bed, a toilet and several trashy women's magazines with a cage outside that opened for a few hours a day to let us shower. We were fed three times a day through a slot in the door and monitored every thirty minutes. Sometimes they would forget to turn the lights off at night or forget to give us our mail. The second week we persuaded them to let us into mainstream where conditions were not much better but at least you could be with other people during 'unlock.' The third week we were handcuffed, put on a plane with two guards each and taken to another, bigger prison up north.

Prison was a huge emotional and mental lesson for us and a rare and invaluable insight into our (in)justice system and it's tools of psychological and physical control. Of all the prisoners we met, probably 95% of them were Maori, Islander or another non-white skin colour. Most were poor, ill-informed, unsupported and/or rejected by our so-called 'fair society.' Most of the guards had similar demographics. I was appalled at how prisoners were treated. Prison laws are completely arbitrary, changing from one guard to the next. If you have no money in prison you can work if you're lucky for about 15c an hour. Parents often lose their children, partners, homes and livelihoods while they're locked up. Yet this country builds more and more prisons to fill the quotas. It's "good business" they say, while people's lives are destroyed for their profits.

I can't speak much about our court case as we are still going through the courts but of the 17 arrested we were mostly all environmentalists, anti-war activists, unionists and /or indigenous activists. Many of us were well known and thankfully had lots of support from family, friends and other noisy activists. Protests sprang up across the country and even overseas in cities like London, Mexico City, Berlin, Montreal and Melbourne.

After 26 days in jail, the NZ Solicitor-General made a decision not to charge us for terrorism and we were released on bail the next day. (It's an election year this year and the current government's polls dropped dramatically during the protests.)

. . . . .

This was all a few months ago now and since then I have been trying to piece some semblance of a normal life back together. We are all on strict bail conditions still, such as having to report to the police every week, having passports withheld, having non-association orders with friends, family and/or colleagues and restrictions of movement within NZ. Nineteen of us are now facing weapons charges with a four year maximum jail sentence and my co-accused partner faces possible deportation as well. The lawyers expect the trial to take place next year sometime and take around two months. After then who knows what will happen to us...

So yeah, at the moment I've been doing things I thought a lot about when I was in prison (fearing twelve years of isolation from everything I love). I spend more time with my friends and family now and try to be around my dog more often. I'm trying to be around cops and possible bugged spaces less often. I also took a long needed break and quit my usual activism for a while to do something I've always talked about doing since I was little: going 'home.'

Over summer I moved up to my Maori family's old village of Parihaka in Taranaki and started helping out in the community food gardens and getting to understand my history, the people's struggles and their ways of surviving all these generations since colonisation and before. It's a totally different world. Away from all the noise, cars, concrete, speed and hegemonic, capitalist culture of the city there is a beautiful depth and tenuous permanence to everything in the country that dissolves your ideas of individual wants and needs. You can feel the pain that years of deforestation, cow farming and fossil-fuel exploration has given to the land, rivers and sea. You can feel the pain that years of invasion, land theft, war, imprisonment, humiliation and pollution of the people has left, hurting generation after generation. The land and people still struggle to live together but the bonds grow weaker and weaker as the cities and money drag us apart.

I have a lot to learn still... and even more to do, in helping solve that huge, huge problem.

. . . . .

For now, I missed my friends too much and the resources of the city, necessary for my usual activism. Last week I moved back to Wellington for the year. Priority one — stay out of jail and stop my partner being deported. Priority two — finish my film project on grassroots solutions for global sustainability and self-determination (started over 5 years ago!). Priority three — stay sane and healthy by managing my life better and getting out of the city more often. Priority four — learn te reo maori so I can better understand and help my people. Priority five — continue the struggle with the other activist projects I'm involved in, including our community building project, our infoshop, our anti-mining campaign, anarchist and self-determination struggles, prisoner support work, and helping to grow food and reforest the stream banks at Parihaka when I visit regularly now.

Yeah, as a good friend warned me, perhaps I need to move priority three up the list a bit? We'll see though. I need activism to keep me sane and healthy too. If I've gotta go back to jail sometime soon then at least I will have made the most of my time 'outside' having fun and helping more of us and the planet to be free.

Kia kaha, kia toa, kia manawanui. (Be strong, be brave, be big-hearted)

Na Em.

Printed from Rebel Press  ::  www.rebelpress.org.nz  ::  @nti-copyright