THE GOOD FIGHT

It's time to push back against the economic and social violence of Paula Bennett.

For far too long this  government of and for the wealthy  - spearheaded by the excretable Paula Bennett  - has been hurting and destroying the lives of  beneficiaries. No one has been safe from Bennett's violence - the unemployed, young mothers, children, the physically disabled, the mentally ill.  Safely ensconced within the Beehive, Bennett hasn't  been forced to see any of the damage she has inflicted.

Instead she has been encouraged by comments like this on her Facebook page: ' the majority of our benefit bludgers are bitches on DPB and pricks on Dole and both live together and its very easy to go from dole to invalids as i know a few. i personally dont mind people that get benefits if they are genuine BUT majority of them abuse the system which makes my blood boil....these bastards buy drugs,alcohol etc and neglect their kids by starving them and expect foodbanks to feed them,wtf is with that????? closer monitoring or dawn raids on their homes would catch the thieves out then blacklist them from ever committing fraud again....spend money on staff to physically do this so that the genuine beneficiaries are not treated badly and our economy would look better aswel'.

This piece of political wisdom comes from one Zaklina Harvey who is 'happily married with  four beautiful daughters'.

Bennett can often be heard spewing  nonsense about  having people 'sitting at home' does nothing for  the employment rate. But this is nothing  more  than an argument  against state intervention to tackle the  rapidly rising unemployment figures and in favour of blaming unemployed people for being too lazy and feckless to get a job.

Her reactionary  view is that the poor are less deserving than everyone less - so we can just kick them around. The hypocrisy of Bnnett and her government colleagues is that they have presided over the decline of the economy but still blame the unemployed for their inability to find work.

But now Bennett is going to find life a little bit more difficult because a new protest movement has emerged to fight Bennett's 'reforms'. Occupy WINZ  has a  national day of action scheduled for October 5.

Occupy WINZ , like other movements around the world , has been born on Facebook and is now organising meetings around the country.

Occupy WINZ stresses that this isn't just a fight for beneficiaries.

As Olive McRae of Occupy WINZ  says 'It needs pointing out that what we are facing is a war on the poor. We have working poor now, on minimum wage needing food parcels from food bank. We need to really plug a united front. Its not just beneficiaries, its all of us. Low paid workers included.'

I might add it is also a fight that an increasingly impoverished middle class also needs to fight. No one's job is safe anymore - the Government's austerity measures are biting deep into the fabric of New Zealand society.

Occupy WINZ is a group with limited resources but is reaching out to other organisations for assistance and solidarity. Organisations that are backing Occupy WINZ  include Mana, Socialist Aotearoa and the Unite Union. 

They will be the naysayers who say that Occupy WINZ has little chance of success but we have to start somewhere. The strength of Occupy WINZ is that is a grassroots organisation and free of the sectarianism that has  hampered many progressive movements in the past.