Shaken - But Not Stirred: Canterbury Is Denied Democracy For The Third Time.

Water and Grass: The economic value of productive pastures is deemed by the National Government to be more important than popular political control over the water that keeps them green. In Canterbury this has led to a third delay in the return of full democracy to the region.

 

THE GREAT CANTABRIAN RIGHTS ROBBERY continues. With six of the thirteen Regional councillors set to be appointed, until at least 2019, by the Environment Minister, Dr Nick Smith, Canterbury’s long-promised return to democracy has, once again, been delayed.
 

And still the streets are empty.
 

That the people of Christchurch have been a little preoccupied since 2010 is acknowledged. But the same high-handedness that prompted the elimination of Cantabrians’ regional democracy has also been a frustrating feature of their city’s rebuild.
 

And still the streets are silent.
 

Large sums of money continue to be extracted from the people of Canterbury by “Commissioners” for whom no one has voted. Practically without a murmur, the oldest principle of democratic governance – that taxes may only be levied by representatives chosen by the people themselves – has been cast aside.
 

“No taxation without representation!”: the principle for which seventeenth century Englishmen were ready to execute their King, and in the name of which eighteenth century Americans proclaimed a revolution; has stirred New Zealanders hardly at all.
 

Where are our John Hampdens? Our John Pyms? Why have we yet to produce an Antipodean version of John Adams? John Hancock? Thomas Jefferson? All of these champions of representative government – the farmers, merchants and lawyers who challenged King Charles I and King George III – were men of substance. They dared to win, even though to lose meant death. But New Zealand’s men of substance; our farmers, merchants and lawyers; what have they dared?
 

Precious little has been risked by those whose screams would, undoubtedly, be among the loudest were Cantabrians rights being abrogated by a left-wing government. Indeed, one could argue that the destruction of regional democracy in Canterbury was undertaken at the behest of farmers, merchants and lawyers. For isn’t it these latter groups that have the gained the most from the elimination of their fellow citizens’ democratic rights? While ordinary Cantabrians retained the capacity to thwart their grand plans for Canterbury’s precious water, how could the region’s farmers, merchants and lawyers possibly have attracted the level of investment required to bring them to fruition?
 

Dr Smith dismisses all such claims as cynical. Rather than a case of careful political engineering, erected in the interests of the farmers, merchants and lawyers who vote National, the destruction of Canterbury’s regional democracy is presented by the Minister as some sort of glorified water conservation measure. Any return to normal democratic governance, argues Dr Smith, would inflict irreparable damage on a process which he clearly believes to be beyond the capabilities of elected citizens.
 

“The fear would be that you’ve got this population divide pretty even between rural and urban, and rather than those commissioners being able to look for the middle way through, that you end up where we were – a highly polarised council not making any progress on these very important issues.”
 

Dr Smith refuses to accept that, by silencing the voice of urban conservationists, he has, in effect, facilitated the water exploitation schemes of rural Cantabrians. His justification hinges on what he considers to be the superiority of technocratic over democratic decision-making.
 

But this justification works equally well for any and all attempts to limit the scope of democratic decision-making. The notion that society would be morally and materially improved if all the important decisions were left to a self-replenishing caste of “philosopher kings” is as old as Plato’s Republic. That every attempt to put Plato’s ideas into practice has very quickly resulted in the decisions of the wise becoming practically indistinguishable from the interests of the wealthy, has always been one of the strongest arguments in favour of democracy.
 

Nor is it reasonable to suppose that Dr Smith’s technocratic problem-solving will remain quarantined in Canterbury. In October 2016 it is likely that the balance of power on the Hawkes Bay Regional Council will shift decisively against the proposed Ruataniwha Water Storage Scheme. But, after what happened in Canterbury, the region’s voters are surely justified in wondering whether their democratic judgement will simply be over-ruled by Dr Smith, and a group of Commissioners installed to make certain that “progress on these very important issues” continues.
 

Would this be enough to see the people’s pitchforks lifted up and their flaming torches lit? One hopes so, but all the evidence so far suggests otherwise. New Zealanders definition of democracy appears to embrace a sort of plebiscitary oligarchy, under which a group of politicians are given the right to govern exactly as they please – subject only to a triennial vote of confidence.
 

But this definition of democracy condemns us all to live under an elected dictatorship where politicians are free to impose decisions of ever-increasing mendacity: ceasing only when a decision of such outrageous awfulness pushes the population beyond its collective pain threshold; and the people remember that they have rights.
 

This essay was originally published by The Press of Tuesday, 24 March 2015.

Doing Something: Obama's Second Inaugural Address

"We, The People": Unburdened by the compromising calculations of re-election, President Barack Obama, in his second inaugural address, challenged his fellow American's to fully realise the clear democratic purpose of those first three words of the United States' Constitution.

 

“WHY DON’T you guys do something?” Those were the words that sparked the Gay Liberation Movement.

 

It was the summer of 1969 and in New York City’s Greenwich Village there was, to quote Bob Dylan, “music in the cafés at night and revolution in the air”. When the New York Police Department raided the mafia-owned Stonewall Inn, a favourite haunt of the Village’s gay community, on Saturday 28 June, trouble was not expected – and yet, trouble came.

 

A young lesbian woman, beaten and manhandled by the NYPD’s finest, challenged the swelling crowd of gay street kids and transvestites to “do something” and all their pent-up frustration and rage at the petty humiliations routinely inflicted by the authorities spontaneously erupted into a series of riotous protests that were not finally brought under control until nearly 72 hours later.

 

It is a measure of the sea-change in American politics that, on Tuesday morning, the re-elected President of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama, included the Stonewall Riots among the seminal moments in the history of the struggle for gender, racial and sexual equality in America.

 

To the nearly one million people gathered in the Washington Mall to witness the second inauguration of America’s first black president, Mr Obama declared:

 

“We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths – that all of us are created equal – is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth.”

 

Many gay Americans must have wondered if their ears deceived them. Could their President really be saying that the Stonewall riots belonged alongside the world’s first women’s convention, held in the little upstate New York town of Seneca Falls on 19-20 July 1848? The gathering which gave the world a ‘Declaration of Sentiments’ signalling the birth of Feminism and the long struggle for women’s rights? Yes he was. Nor were the billy-clubs that battered the patrons of the Stonewall Inn to be in any way distinguished from the billy-clubs that battered Dr Martin Luther King and the hundreds of black civil-rights marchers he led into Selma, Alabama, on 7 March 1965. They were all instruments of oppression: instruments to be overcome.

 

Could the man standing on the Capitol steps really have said such things? Yes he could. And he said more – much more:

 

“It is now our generation’s task to carry on what those pioneers began. For our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers, and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts. Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law – for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.”

 

"Why Don't You Guys Do Something?" The gay patrons of the Stonewall Inn confront the New York City Police. Greenwich Village, NY, NY. Saturday, 28 June 1969.

 

In the same week that the head of the Sensible Sentencing Trust, Garth McVicar, asserted that Gay Marriage would lead to an increase in New Zealand’s crime-rate, President Obama’s words are not only timely, but inspirational.

 

They give notice to all those who, like Mr McVicar, regard the great struggles for human equality and freedom not as markers of humanity’s progress towards the unconditional love Christ commanded, but as harbingers of Western Society’s imminent collapse, that the crippling social conservatism of the past thirty years is at an end.

 

The “Rainbow Coalition” that Mr Obama has woven out of Blacks, Hispanics, Working Women, Trade Unionists, Gays and Youth: those Americans whom the Republican Right has worked so hard to marginalise and exclude; now have a President who is not only ready but eager to imbue those first three words of the United States’ Constitution – “We, the People” – with all the democratic purpose America’s Founding Fathers intended.

 

Radio New Zealand–National’s Morning Report characterised President Obama’s second inaugural address as a call for unity in a bitterly divided America. It is far from being that. In his own way, President Obama is also asking: “Why don’t you guys do something?”

 

The American Revolution, begun in “a spare Philadelphia hall”, continues.

 

This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 25 January 2013.

Same Sex Marriage - A Turning Point

The Man Of The Moment: President Barack Obama's public affirmation of same-sex marriage, like LBJ's famous 1965 civil rights speech to Congress in which he pledged "We shall overcome.", marks an important turning point in the quest for full civil equality for all Americans.

HE WASN’T ALWAYS A GOOD MAN, in fact Lyndon Baines Johnson was very often a bad man. He was from Texas, of course, which explains a lot. In Texas’s primary elections, which were the only electoral contests that really mattered in the “one party” states of the Democratic South, political bosses would ask their candidates: “Do you want us to vote ‘em, or count ‘em?” By this they meant: do you want us to bring in actual people to pad your vote; or do you want us to stuff the ballot boxes? LBJ won the 1948 Democratic Party primary for the US Senate by “counting ‘em”. He never looked back.

But if LBJ was a byword for the sort of “dirty deals done dirt cheap” that made the US Senate such an august example of republican virtue, he did have one truly great redeeming feature: he loved the poor. And in the United States of America, and most especially in the southern states of the old Confederacy, that meant loving black people. Not enough, it is true, to seat the integrated “Mississippi Freedom” delegation at the Democratic Party’s National Convention of 1964. But enough to put his Presidential signature on the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

To be fair, he did more than simply sign the crucial piece of legislation giving teeth to the Civil Rights Act of the previous year. President Johnson came to Congress on 15 March 1965 (just one week after a murderous attack on civil rights marchers in Selma, Alabama) and delivered what was, arguably, the greatest speech of his life.

"We Shall Overcome." On 15 March 1965, just one week after civil rights marchers were attacked by state troopers in Selma, Alabama, President Lyndon Johnson placed the full weight of the executive branch of the US federal government behind the Voting Rights Act.

“I speak tonight for the dignity of man, and the destiny of democracy”, he told the assembled representatives and senators. Speaking to America’s purpose: to the promise of freedom and equality that gave it birth; and to the dignity that is the birthright of every American citizen; LBJ said:

“This dignity cannot be found in man’s possessions. It cannot be found in his power or in his position. It really rests on his right to be treated as a man equal in opportunity to all others. It says that he shall share in freedom, he shall choose his leaders, educate his children, provide for his family according to his ability and his merits as a human being.”

The President brought his address to a close with the words that only a week before, as the dogs and the state troopers were unleashed upon them, the Selma marchers had sung to the world. Openly supporting the demonstrators, LBJ declared:

“Their cause must be our cause too, because it is not just Negroes but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.”

Crippling Legacy: State troopers assault civil rights marchers in Selma, Alabama.

Last week the world heard another American president speak out for civil rights. Barack Obama told his fellow citizens that: “It is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.”

How fitting it is that this president offered that affirmation. Because there are still many Americans (some of them in his own party) who refuse to see the question of who can marry whom as anything more than a trivial, second-order issue, and a political diversion. They forget that when Barack Obama’s own mother was born there were still places in the United States where not only marriage, but even sexual intercourse, between a black man and a white woman could land them in jail – or worse. The union between President Obama’s white mother and his black, Kenyan, father, in many American states would have seen outraged Klansmen reaching for their robes, and their ropes.

Presidents are not saints, but neither are they wholly sinners. Light and dark may have been blended in LBJ’s soul to an unsettling degree, but that 1965 pledge to Congress: “We shall overcome”; was a vital step towards the full emancipation of Black Americans.

The question of “Who can marry whom?” is not a trivial, second-order issue. It’s about human dignity and human rights.

There are occasions, said President Johnson, when “history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man’s unending search for freedom.”

President Obama’s affirmation of same sex marriage tells us: that time is now.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times, The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 18 May 2012.

Russel's Tussle

An Entirely Predictable Confrontation: The news media's insatiable appetite for conflict is redefining the meaning of both protest and free speech. The alleged "right to offend" one's fellow citizens (and their guests) threatens to obscure the original justification for free speech: i.e. the benefits that accrue to the whole of society when citizens are able to challenge state-defined "reality" without losing their lives, liberty or property.

RUSSEL’S TUSSLE with Chinese Vice-President Xi Jinping’s security detail raises some very interesting questions about the meaning of protest. It also shows how the news media’s insatiable appetite for conflict is fundamentally re-defining the nature of protest action.

Before going any further, however, we’ll need a working definition of both the noun and the verb. What is "a protest"? And, what does it mean "to protest"?

Put simply, protest is about registering your objection to and/or expressing your disapproval of someone or something. A protest can be individual, or it can be collective, but essentially the protester is saying: "I don’t like this."

Protest can take a wide variety of forms. From the formal, carefully argued diplomatic protest delivered by an ambassador, to the angry torching of a foreign embassy by a frenzied crowd.

The news media, however, is redefining protest. Rather than use the term in relation to objection and disapproval, it prefers to present protest in terms of provocation, confrontation and agitation.

From being a statement or demonstration of disagreement, protest is now regarded as something very close to an act of aggression.

This dangerous new definition of protest encourages the notion that any individual or group which sets up a confrontation between themselves and their opponents is guilty of nothing more than exercising their "freedom of speech". Even when it is clear that the confrontation has been carefully engineered to provoke its targets into doing something they will later regret, the protagonists insouciantly argue that this, too, is the protesters’ "right".

But the conflation of the right to free speech with confrontational and provocative political behaviour allows those responsible for what would normally be regarded as profoundly unethical acts (such as burning down an embassy) to escape all moral sanction. Basically, if you’re "making a protest" – you can do whatever the hell you like.

This position is morally indefensible. It is simply untenable to argue that political acts can be conveniently separated from their consequences. With rights come responsibilities: the right to free speech doesn’t include the freedom to shout "Fire!" in a crowded theatre.

Protest always occurs within a political context: a unique set of circumstances that the ethical protester is obliged to consider when deciding upon the nature of the protest he or she wishes to make.

What were the major elements of the political context in which Dr Russel Norman’s tussle took place?

Most obvious were the deepening economic and cultural ties between New Zealand and the Peoples Republic of China. That Mr Xi, one of the most powerful men on the planet was here, on New Zealand soil, is a sign of how large this nation now looms in China’s diplomatic calculations. The very real benefits for New Zealand’s economic welfare already flowing from this relationship are considerable.

Against these benefits Dr Norman entered the claims of the "Free Tibet" movement. Highly contentious, politically dubious, and hotly disputed by Chinese historians, these claims counted for more – in the minds of the Greens’ leadership – than increasing the good-will already fostered between the New Zealand and Chinese peoples by successive governments.

Well, that was their choice to make – as was the manner in which they drew attention to those claims. Dr Norman, as a parliamentarian, could have made a speech in the House of Representatives. He could have written an article protesting the treatment of Tibetan dissidents for the op-ed pages of the daily newspapers. He could even have done what his predecessor, Rod Donald, did and stand at a respectful distance from his country’s guests, holding aloft the Tibetan flag in a silent and dignified gesture of disapproval and solidarity.

But that is not what Dr Norman chose to do. Instead, he enthusiastically bought into the news media’s definition of protest and took up a position which any sensible person could have predicted would provoke a strong reaction from the Chinese Vice-president’s security guards and which would, almost certainly, lead to a physical confrontation.

Dr Norman has justified his actions in terms of defending democracy against totalitarianism.

I don’t buy it.

All I saw were the actions of an ambitious politician, whose shrewd judgement that confrontation wins more screen time than reasoned dialogue persuaded him to provoke the Chinese into giving him the wall-to-wall coverage he was seeking.

Russel’s tussle wasn't a protest, it was a media event.

This essay was originally published in The Dominion Post, The Timaru Herald, The Taranaki Daily News, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Evening Star of Friday, 25 June 2010.

Keeping the Peace

The Perfect Protest Recipe: Multiple arrests outside the ASB Classic Tournament, where Israeli tennis professional, Shahar Peer, was playing, guaranteed maximum publicity for the Palestinian cause. But surely, when a protest's entire political effectiveness turns on breaching the Queen’s Peace, one can hardly complain when her officers move in to restore it?

THE ARREST in early January of eight citizens protesting against the participation of Shahar Peer, an Israeli tennis professional, in the ASB Classic Tournament raises some interesting questions about both the legal and moral obligations of protesters and police.

Video clips taken at the scene confirm that the arrests were made under Section 42 of the Crimes Act – which mandates both ordinary citizens and police officers to restrain anyone in the commission of – or about to commit – a "breach of the peace". (The eight arrested were later charged with disorderly behaviour and obstruction.)

Putting to one side these eight cases, now sub judice, the legal interface between a citizen’s right to engage in political protest and his or her duty to "keep the peace" warrants closer scrutiny.

Historically, a breach of the peace "can arise from virtually any conduct which caused or (can generally be regarded as likely to cause) either alarm, annoyance, upset or embarrassment to another person or persons." Rather alarmingly, the British legal commentator, L.J.G. Emslie observes that: "There is no limit to the kind of conduct which may give rise to a charge of breach of the peace."

This almost unlimited discretion is explained by the fact that the charge is neither a criminal nor a civil offence but a "legal oddity created by the Royal Prerogative". It’s a concept whose origins go all the way back to the reigns of King Henry II and King Edward I – both of whom assumed power following a civil war.

The "King’s Peace" stood in vivid contrast to the violence, disorder and general lawlessness prevailing in those parts of 12th Century England where the royal writ did not run. Where ordinary people could be assaulted, abducted, raped, robbed, enslaved and even murdered without hope of rescue or redress, there was, understandably, a strong desire for someone – anyone – to impose order.

Unfortunately, the "order" imposed was all-too-often that of the local feudal lord. (A bit like having Tony Soprano as your local police chief!) What made the "King’s Peace" so important was that, theoretically, it applied to all his subjects – the high and mighty, as well as the poor and lowly.

The King’s Peace was thus akin to a peace treaty ending a war. The former belligerents all agreed to end hostilities, and their rights and duties in the new order were clearly spelled out. Most importantly, having agreed to the "treaty" and accepted its protocols, every subject was expected to honour it.

To make certain that hostilities were not recommenced in his absence, the King appointed "Knights of the Peace" – later renamed "Justices of the Peace". From the perspective of these peace-keepers (the medieval equivalent of our modern day police force) any group of subjects attempting unilaterally to infringe the rights of another group of subjects was guilty of breaking the "treaty" – or, "breaching the peace".

As agents of the Crown, the King’s peace-keepers were institutionally predisposed to regard any form of political activity as a direct challenge to the Royal Prerogative. Modern police forces tend to react in exactly the same way – regarding all but the most inoffensive manifestations of political behaviour as breaches of the social contract which allows citizens to go about their lawful business without let or hindrance.

This explains why the Police react so forcefully to protests, such as the series of demonstrations outside the ASB Tennis Centre, which are intended to impede the lawful pursuits of other New Zealanders (in this case by diminishing their enjoyment of an international tennis tournament). In the eyes of the Police, such demonstrations are inimical to everything the "Queen’s Peace" is intended to preserve.

Few aspects of human behaviour are as likely to arouse powerful emotions as politics, which is why the Police must be especially careful to prevent situations developing where people become angry enough to initiate violence against their political opponents. The incident in 1981, when protesters effectively halted the rugby match between the Springboks and Waikato, offers a sobering example. In the hours following the game’s cancellation ugly scenes of violence erupted all over Hamilton.

Nor is this a purely ethical consideration. Since one of the fundamental duties of the Crown is to preserve the peace, any failure to do so renders it not only morally but legally liable for any and all damages arising from its breach. It is this consideration which explains the powerful historical association between "breach of the peace" actions and instances of "riot and affray".

So, where does this leave those citizens who feel so strongly about an issue that they are willing to abrogate the "social contract" which allows us all to get along with one another without resorting to violence and/or intimidation? The classic answer is very clear. Those who engage in "civil disobedience" by intentionally breaking the law and/or negating the rights of their fellow citizens must be willing to bear the consequences.

In the case of the Shahar Peer protests, the demonstrators were deliberately interfering with both the player’s and the spectators’ right to participate in and enjoy a tennis tournament. Their purpose in doing so was to draw public attention to the manifest injustices suffered by the Palestinian people at the hands of the Israeli State. The moral right of an oppressed people to be given justice, they argued, superseded the legal right of New Zealanders to enjoy a tennis match without interruption.

But the Police, if they are to be fair to all those New Zealanders who have (metaphorically) signed the "treaty" requiring the universal and unequivocal observance of Statute Law, cannot accept this. No group (however loftily motivated) can be permitted to arbitrarily limit the rights of their fellow citizens with impunity. If they were, what reason would other groups have for keeping the peace?

The only way disruptive protesters can escape the charge of having "double standards" is by willingly accepting the consequences of their actions. The anti-Peer protesters rejected the option of using exclusively visual means to make their point, insisting that their protest had to be loud enough to put the case for the young Israeli’s non-participation before the spectators.

But surely, if the entire political effectiveness of your protest turns on successfully breaching the Queen’s Peace, then it ill-behooves you to complain when her officers move in to restore it?

This essay was originally published in The Independent of Thursday, 21 January 2010.