New Lest We Forget flags and ANZAC military and poppy propaganda have sprung up around Lambton Quay and Courtenay Place for this year’s ANZAC campaigns. I think we should change the “L” in Lest to a “B” in that old slogan: make it Best We Forget. Not because we shouldn’t remember World War One – on the contrary – but because …
White Ribbon is an organisation that owes a great debt to women. White Ribbon is a group of men who recognise that male violence is epidemic, and have come together to take responsibility for and to do something about it. Multiple White Ribbon ambassadors have promoted or perpetrated violence against women before themselves, or still do – either at …
Committee Secretariat Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Parliament Buildings Private Bag Wellington 10 March 2016 Submission to Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee International Treaty Examination of the Trans-Pacific Partnership We (Pala Molisa and Renee Gerlich) are making this submission to the above committee as individuals. We request that MFAT, or a Ministry facilitated …
Submission on the TPPA – Request for assessment of the likely impacts on women Read More »
Earlier this year, on February 6, hundreds of protesters gathered at an “anti-misogyny” demonstration held in Wellington’s Glover Park. It was Waitangi Day, but the park had been that night’s planned meeting spot for local followers of Return of Kings, an online network of “neomasculinists” lead by U.S.-based Daryush Valizadeh. Valizadeh wishes, among other things, to …
This is a press release that was sent to media on Thursday, 4 February 2016. Images of the banner and its production have been added, as well as images of the previous night’s protest at the war memorial. On Thursday 4 February, an art intervention will take place inside Te Papa. An 8 metre square banner …
Anti-propaganda banner drop at Te Papa's Gallipoli exhibition Read More »
FRASER: 1935 is a watershed in New Zealand education. It marks the beginning of a long period of Labour government, a government with a very different education policy from its predecessors. By 1935 as well, we’d started to move out of the Great Depression. How would you describe the education landscape before 1935? BEEBY: …
Ian Fraser's 1983 interview with Clarence Beeby: an excerpt Read More »
This article was co-written with Dr. Pala Molisa. In 2003, New Zealand passed the Prostitution Reform Act, which decriminalized prostitution. In doing so, a new set of public policies was created that extended to sex workers the provision of social services, access to healthcare, and recognition of employment rights that historically had been denied …
Why Wellington Needs a Safehouse for Women Leaving Prostitution Read More »
This article was first published in Salient magazine, October 4, 2015. * “…no school system can claim to be just which is organised in such a way as to favour children who have been socialised in one, rather than another part of the social structure of the community that nourishes them. Wherever a school system …
This article was first published in Salient, September 27, 2015. * The current refugee crisis has many times been framed as the “worst humanitarian crisis since WWII”. It seems this framing functions to counteract numbness in the West, much like the viral sharing of that gut-wrenching photograph of Aylan, the three-year-old boy taken from this …
The World’s Worst Humanitarian Crisis Is Still the West’s War on Brown Children Read More »
In March this year, Victoria University (VUW) launched its new student ‘hub’ complex in Kelburn; the following month champagne flutes were raised in celebration of VUW’s ranking as the number one New Zealand university. Among fraud allegations, a departing vice-chancellor and a struggling student union, Renée Gerlich discovers plenty of toil and trouble beneath …
