Monday 25 May 2009

Hikoi of the hopeless [update 2]

1500 Greens blocked the Harbour Bridge yesterday.  Today, a similar number of racists (and school children trucked in by their teachers to add to the numbers) are blocking the motorways to protest the lack of racist seats on the new Auckland uber-city.

I’ll say that again: this hikoi is not to protest Rodney Hide’s Super City, it’s to protest that Rodney hasn’t thrown them some race-based seats.

Twenty-eight years ago, many of these same people were out on the streets protesting playing rugby against a regime who divided up the body politic on the basis of race.  Now, they’re out disrupting traffic  because the new city being stream-rolled through isn’t going to be based on racial separatism.  The ironies abound.

As I said the other day, there’s  certainly plenty of reasons to protest against the uber-city – here’s several right here – but objecting that it’s not sufficiently racist is not one of them.  In fact, it’s the only thing about the uber-city to like.

Say no to the hikoi, to racist government, and to the Auckland uber-city.

UPDATE 1:  Here’s Johnny Clegg, for everyone who still appreciates irony:


UPDATE 2: My favourite comment on the whole farrago comes from Gregster at SOLO:
And though there were hundreds of them out today, not one day's work was lost.
Although Leighton Smith's was a close contender, that 
Blacks in the US used to have 'special seats' reserved for them -- they were down the back of buses. Fortunately for every individual black man and woman in the US today, one brave black woman, Rosa Parks, challenged the entire ethic behind these special seats by sitting up the front.

9 comments:

Marcus said...

Why is it that I twice got picked up by the cops for hitching on a motorway on-ramp, but 1500 people can wander over the bridge and disrupt a whole city?

Benjamin said...

PC, you're pointing out that blocking the motorways to protest the lack of racist seats on the new Auckland uber-city, is something that you & the Libz should have no problem with. Remember that the road is not owned (un-owned) by anyone (or the general public) as LGM has been promoting here, therefore what the protesters are doing is entirely appropriate. Can LGM see how ridiculous his arguments on road use are?

KG said...

I see MacDoctor regards race-based seats as something that's "part of our treaty obligations."
Words fail.

Peter Cresswell said...

i look in vain through the three short clauses of the Treaty of Waitangi for anything that might promise such a thing, and I find nothing that can't be delivered by a system of one-man one-vote -- and a constitution that protects everyone's property rights.

Redbaiter said...

Still, you must surely have noted that this protest was converted into a dual protest- one for racism and one against the amalgamation. So what do you reckon about being on the same side as a legion of left wing racists?

Sean Fitzpatrick said...

Baiter - it is the nature of that sort of folk that they jump in on any old protest march going.

KG said...

macdoctor Said,

"But not having Maori seats means that Maori will be forced to vote for a Maori candidate to avoid their people being disenfranchised. This effectively means that those Maori who would have wished to vote for a non-maori candidate, cannot do so, seriously restricting their choices.

The same applies to the general election vote as well."

Is this very weird logic--or is it just me?

Sus said...

It's complete nonsense, KG.

Mac is saying that equality is akin to being disenfranchised. Madness.

Note the collectivism at play again, too: "Maori will be forced ..."

Sus said...

Red: There were numerous left-wing racists who marched against Clark's Electoral Finance Bill (as it was then), too.

Sean's right about the rent-a-crowd. They've been doing that for as long as I can remember.

Personally, I suspect the hikoi organisers knew that by combining the two protests, they would achieve two things:

a) attract more marchers, and
b) attract the lion's share of the media coverage.

They succeeded in both.