North & South

Protest Power

WHATEVER ELSE you might think about the state of the nation, our willingness to make ourselves heard through protest seems in pretty good shape.

In recent months, we’ve had teachers and nurses on the streets demanding better pay, school students marching over climate change, crowds descending on Parliament over abortion and the End of Life Choice Bill, and a pair of anti-oil activists trussing up in climbing gear to scale Wellington’s tallest building and hang banners in support of their cause.

Most recently, Māori groups have been making themselves heard in protests against Ōranga Tamariki’s removal of Māori children from their whānau, and in the occupation at Ihumātao, near Auckland Airport, opposing a housing development on land next to the heritage landscape of the Ōtuataua Stone-fields Historic Reserve.

Having bubbled along in the current affairs

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from North & South

North & South16 min read
The most Outspoken Man In Sport
JIMMY NEESHAM was in purgatory — the blandly comfortable kind of purgatory to be found in high-end international hotel chains. The simple act of eating breakfast was to be oppressed by the familiar. It was late 2021 and over the past two years he’d b
North & South5 min read
Waimārama
In one of the first photographs ever taken of me, I’m in a paddling pool with my chubby arms outstretched, grinning happily. My mother sits beside me, watching. It’s 1970 and we are at Waimārama Beach in Hawke’s Bay, at a bach owned by the Catholic C
North & South2 min read
Four Corners
John Wotherspoon is feeling a bit conflicted. The Department of Conservation’s Nelson Lakes operations manager has no love lost for the Douglas fir — he’s spent the past 20 years removing the invasive pine from St Arnaud as part of a wider programme

Related Books & Audiobooks