The Personal is Political

Is the personal political? I think it is, well that's what we used to say in the 70s and 80s when I was involved with people who said that sort of thing. And you know those times and the people I hung around with were pretty fantastic. I'm really interested in the mood and energy now of the current group of young people who are the age I was when I first became aware of politics.

From the mid 70s I became aware that working alongside other people was an effective way of bringing about change, a combined voice is more powerful when you're wanting to be heard than trying to make yourself heard on your own.
From the mid 1970s cultural, social and political change was part of the fabric of life for many of us. I was at home with young children for much of this period and when I think back on the shear number of groups I was involved with and the changes I witnessed and was part of helping to bring about I feel priviliged to have been swept up in this tidal wave of reform.
There were so many ways the world around us was changing. In New Zealand we opposed New Zealand soldiers fighting in the Vietnam War, we supported the anti-nuclear fight, opposed the Springbok tour; we supported the Homosexual Law Reform Bill,  the fight for Maori land rights, we thought about, learned about and supported honouring the Treaty, we joined groups and tried to protect the land in Northland from forestry companies, especially overseas ones, and then above all this all during this period there was our support and commitment to the women's movement.

Where I lived we agitated for and got funding for Rape Crisis, Women's Refuge and Resource Centres. We helped start consciousness raising groups, self-defence groups, assertiveness training, facilitators training, leadership training, dance groups, music groups, conferences, health collectives, law collectives, publishing collectives, and probably others that I can't remember. I was at some point involved in all of these as well as the Women's Electoral Lobby and the NZ Labour Party. We wrote phamplets about many of the issues I've mentioned, some published in the local paper, we marched when there were both national marches and protests, we took other forms of action when causes with national offices asked us for help. We had regular meetings to discuss all of these causes and regular meetings of many of the organising committees of these groups. The amazing thing is that I think we were all swept up in the feeling that we did have the power to help change things, that collectively we could make a difference in New Zealand.

This was the period that a lot of foundational theories and philosophies about the things we had been taught at home at school and university and the way we had been taught came under our scrutiny and we challenged it. Teacher's College in the 70s was a fantastic and exciting breeding ground for radical thought and action. Auckland University was charged with new wave thinkers and activists. It was here that we all came across Tim Shadbolt and others passionate about changing our conservative politics and New Zealand's old alliances. I remember the joy we all felt in 1972 when Labour got in. I also remember later when David Lange forged his way into office then headed New Zealand onto a path on the international stage with his wonderful grasp  and understanding of the power of rhetoric and the new discourse that he helped develop around New Zealand as a Pacific country with it's own mandate and way in the world.

I think now there's another opportunity for young people to help make change. Many of the ones I teach have a real understanding of what's going on in New Zealand. They have a gut instinct borne of experience growing up in different marginalised sections of society, that is changing as they become informed to a realisation that they need to be actively involved in making decisions that will affect their lives. They have a desire to have their say and to take part in the actions that will bring about necessary changes. Many of them are politicised through their personal experience. Politics for them is not just the space occupied by politicians but is a place that is accessible through the sharing of ideas and new discourses. Politics describes for them a broad plane, it is not just a group of people who have laid claim to controlling and running our country as though it's a business; I'm interested and sometimes amazed that young people are not overwhelmed by the rhetoric and susequent actions taken by the current government but have a desire to challenge them, and seem to consider this possible, just as we did. They consider what is happening in light of what they see and it continually undermines any credibility this government may have or anyone who is not challenging current government policy.

Young people I think may insist that they are part of this broad political landscape, that it is accessible and available to them, not just through their rights as voters but because the politics of our country is part of the fabric of their lives, it's part of the way they see their own families struggling to pay for clothes and food, it's part of the way they have to struggle to get a higher education because of the cost, it's part of seeing the media portray their home towns as depressed and uninviting, it's part of the knowledge that unlike the 70s and 80s when young people were rebelling against their families and communities, these younsters have families who are proud of them who expect them to bring about changes not just in their own lives but in the lives of others. They are young politicians, they do represent constituencies that have power and mana, and I for one wish them well.