The Freedom Shop Aotearoa

Like many, I get a daily chuckle out of the news story that keeps on giving – the school lunches disaster. This was supposed to be an easy win for the free-market coalition: an opportunity to showcase how much better National and Act are at financial management, how wasteful Labour was and generally how everyone wins when you let competition and the free market rule. Except they picked the wrong target group. School kids. Had this been about meals delivered to rest homes, we would have never heard about the problems. The residents would have complained to the staff, some staff may have complained to management and management may have written a strongly worded letter to the food company. But the rest of us would never know and the government could have claimed the money savings as a success. But kids are different, in particular teenagers, who are very good at two things: complaining about how tough they have it and posting things on social media, especially pictures of food. Amplified ...

The fightback that erupted in the usa after the murder of George Floyd didn't just come from nowhere. There had been resistance before and there had been many, many deaths before. One of these deaths was in 2012 when Trayvon Martin was killed, it was after the acquittal of his murderer that #BlackLivesMatter came into being. The usa has never been the ‘land of the free’ or the democracy it ever claimed to be; the usa is founded on slavery and genocide of First Nation peoples. It is a settler colonial nation & a hyper-consumer capitalist country based on super inequality and racism. Freedom is a Constant Struggle Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement The fightback that erupted after the killing of George Floyd is a response to the dehumanisation of people. It is a reaction to the violence of capitalism. Killing Trayvons: An Anthology of American Violence BlackLife Post-BLM and the Struggle for Freedom We Want Freedom A Life in the Black Panther Party Writing on...

The fightback that erupted in the usa after the murder of George Floyd didn't just come from nowhere. There had been resistance before and there had been many, many deaths before. One of these deaths was in 2012 when Trayvon Martin was killed, it was after the acquittal of his murderer that #BlackLivesMatter came into being. The usa has never been the ‘land of the free’ or the democracy it ever claimed to be; the usa is founded on slavery and genocide of First Nation peoples. It is a settler colonial nation & a hyper-consumer capitalist country based on super inequality and racism. Freedom is a Constant Struggle Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement The fightback that erupted after the killing of George Floyd is a response to the dehumanisation of people. It is a reaction to the violence of capitalism. Killing Trayvons: An Anthology of American Violence BlackLife Post-BLM and the Struggle for Freedom We Want Freedom A Life in the Black Panther Party Writing on...

"I stopped by Commonsense Organics on the way home and a woman in the queue - desperate for a conversation with someone other than her husband - started chatting from 2 metres away. At one point she leaned in and said 'You know, I'm not even wearing a bra. Because no one cares anymore.' Small revolutions happening every day."

"I stopped by Commonsense Organics on the way home and a woman in the queue - desperate for a conversation with someone other than her husband - started chatting from 2 metres away. At one point she leaned in and said 'You know, I'm not even wearing a bra. Because no one cares anymore.' Small revolutions happening every day."

By Peppertree There is plenty of writing out there that stresses how the COVID19 pandemic is different from other disasters because “it affects everyone”. Even on the left, people are writing about how the compliance with lockdown is an example of what we can achieve if we all pull together and put human life before profit. They then build a picture of how this crisis can lead to a revolution of sorts that results in a different economic system that doesn’t leave people in poverty and the planet in ruins. That is a nice thought but unfortunately it’s based on a lie, just like any other time when the privileged claim that “we’re all in this together”. Because we’re not. For some, mainly middle class white people like myself, the virus threat and the lockdown has been an inconvenience. I still have my job, I have a home that I can work from, I have access to communications technology that allows me to stay in touch with friends and family. I am reasonably healthy and am not reliant on he...

By Peppertree There is plenty of writing out there that stresses how the COVID19 pandemic is different from other disasters because “it affects everyone”. Even on the left, people are writing about how the compliance with lockdown is an example of what we can achieve if we all pull together and put human life before profit. They then build a picture of how this crisis can lead to a revolution of sorts that results in a different economic system that doesn’t leave people in poverty and the planet in ruins. That is a nice thought but unfortunately it’s based on a lie, just like any other time when the privileged claim that “we’re all in this together”. Because we’re not. For some, mainly middle class white people like myself, the virus threat and the lockdown has been an inconvenience. I still have my job, I have a home that I can work from, I have access to communications technology that allows me to stay in touch with friends and family. I am reasonably healthy and am not reliant on he...