'DISAGREE WITH IT IF YOU WANT, BUT DISAGREE WITH WHAT'S ACTUALLY HAPPENING'

A visitor to Wellington took a stroll through the occupation yesterday. This is his report.

ME AND B walked through every inch of the protest camp this afternoon. Didn’t see any evidence of white supremacy whatsoever. Didn’t see anything threatening violence to anyone, and I spent an annoyingly long time inspecting the chalk on the wall to try and find it. Whatever was brought along initially by some attendees has clearly now been removed. 

Some will no doubt say that’s just the Nazis covering their tracks and continuing to operate from the shadows… but isn’t it at least equally possible this shows the non-Nazi protesters (i.e. more than 99% of them) have taken action to remove this stuff from their ranks? 

We didn’t feel uncomfortable or threatened for a second, except perhaps aurally by the roving band of happy clappy Hare Krishnas. Nobody spat at us, nobody threatened us, everyone was friendly. 

What I did see was a disproportionately Maori gathering made up of people who clearly don’t work through a laptop and clearly wouldn’t fit in at most Wellington dinner parties. There was a wide set of sometimes wacky ideas on display, but 90% of it was about the mandate... the rest is a mixture of Christians, rastas, ban 1080, anti fluoride, etc. I didn’t see anything I hadn’t seen on plenty of protests before. It was the least obviously mostly middle class political event I’ve attended in years, outside of a handful of stop work meetings and pickets. 

There are children running around or playing basketball everywhere. Lots of old people too, sitting around on sun chairs and yarning away. 

They’re well organised. Food was being served while I was down there, orderly queues forming for both meat and veggie options. I didn’t see any rubbish on the ground, let alone human waste. There are signs everywhere saying it’s an alcohol free zone, though I did walk past a couple of groups of people smoking weed. Shocking stuff! 

There are libraries, a kids play area, prayer rooms, cleaning rosters and a dedicated women’s space which gives away free tampons and other sanitation products. Saw plenty of men washing dishes etc. Not quite the rigidly enforced gender roles the usual suspects on Twitter were ranting about. 

There are United tribes and Tino flags everywhere. Most common political symbol on display. Fewer NZ flags than I expected, but a few. I saw nothing imported from the American right wing milieu aside from one yellow ‘Don’t tread on me’ snake flag, a small piece of chalk scribble which said “Trump won”, and a couple of examples of WWG1WGA. 

I’m disgusted by the way so many on the ‘left’ have responded to this. Not only because it’s disgraceful, short sighted and stupid for so-called lefties to call on the state to violently disperse protesters… but also because people are saying things which are simply not true. It is not a skinhead rally. Disagree with it if you want, but disagree with what’s actually happening.