“At the University of Auckland, right next to the city campus library, is a large stone wall. At eighty-five meters long, the stretch of basalt rock is the remnants of the Albert Barracks, a British military installation constructed by Waikato Māori and British engineers during the late 1840s and finished in 1852 to assuage the fear of settlers in Auckland of an incursion by Māori of the North. Within ten years, the British crossed over the Mangatawhiri River with an army into the King Country and butchered the people of the Waikato for fear of Māori acting outside the interests of the state, outside the interests of bureaucracies and companies.
We note a decisive moment in history where who, why, when, and how lose meaning. The number of dead rises everyday. Hundreds of thousands killed in Gaza, dying in Sudan, murdered in Iran, butchered in Ukraine. We are measured not by our courage or love, but instead in the weight of your dead, the cost of rockets used to flatten your home. The value of life is measured by the wages of destruction. There in the borderlands sits only the settler and the native. The police and the criminal. The soldier and the terrorist.
When we think of that wall, all the history there, we do not know of the families and people involved, the stories about the stonemasons and the whānau that fed them. The relationships between the many traders and iwi that exchanged food, company, and histories with each other before a fence was placed between them, on the land in their memories. We won’t know about the tea houses flattened in cities older than countries that ruined them, the homes and generations lost. The darkness swallowing the spirit of humanity, while the monsters hunt in the dark.
We are left with only what is in front of: Us and them, with the land separated, alienated, and exploited, while we, isolated, are taken piecemeal, food for the crows. Countries around the world burn, from the beating heart of Africa awashed in blood, to the ruins of cities older than the countries that wrecked them. People struggle against the titanic forces of empire, where men die with children at home for paedofiles and profiteers alike. We are those people, where money jumps from our accounts to feed a war machine. Where our country spends billions to feed a monster of steel, and oil, dripping from head to toe in the blood of our whanaunga, our cousins around the world. Sudan, Palestine, Iran, Bolivia, Venezuela, Cuba, Pakistan, India, the whole world is under occupation, besieged by greed, battered and bruised by the old world, the cruel world of national interests, profit margins, gold for bodies, and bodies for the mines.
So we must reach across the distance, the no man’s land between us. The tree split is only food for the fire. Our neighbours, our friends, our enemies, with the love and compassion that thrives in spite of the hate that is sold to us every single day. We take, hand in hand, a step towards a future where brothers, sisters, siblings alike can look in the face of the stranger and see a friend, a future regardless of our languages, our histories, and instead take up our shared struggles, our shared grief, and demand action of power, or take power ourselves. To do this, to achieve a friendship universal, to unite the family of nations, tribes, peoples of the whole world, we must take up what arms we can. We arm ourselves with determination to struggle through, we arm ourselves with love to keep us warm in the cold nights out here in the wilderness, we arm ourselves with solidarity to carry the struggle forward, and we arm ourselves with the clarity to do what needs to be done. No longer do have to build walls, for the states and companies, the powers of the world that unite to screen each and every thought on your phone, trying to understand our minds. You look at every single face here and know that we struggle not against people, but the systems beyond them. And we struggle together. Where do you work? Who do you work for? What are you buying? What are you selling? Who owns you?
Ask yourself these questions, and find yourself in terror knowing there is always a connection, from Rocket Lab’s contracts with the US Imperial Machine to our government bending over backwards to accommodate the butchers of the world. Trump, Netayahu, false saviors, and cruel men there have always been. The Empires, from around the world, crueler systems that will always rot. Though the struggle seems massive, their walls high and a world enslaved behind them, know this. You are not alone, we are never alone. Educate yourself of where you stand, agitate others to stand with us, organise each other to achieve bigger and better!
The Italian workers blocked the Mediterranean, the Bolivian workers have been striking for six weeks, bringing their government to their knees. The Palestinians and Sudanese, Iranians and Lebanese organize to feed themselves, to teach their children, they live and love despite thunder of guns and bombs, they struggle onwards! What will we do? Stop all wars is not a dream, it isn’t a far off aspiration to a future that’s nice to look at when you’re old, and grey and regretting every single death you saw on your feed. It is a demand of the present, a calling to drop your tools, take up your love, hope, fears and rage, and tear down the wall of ignorance. You will be told to wait for elections, but know that the struggle has no end date. They are the referendum on your demands, so make them clear! Break the bloody machines of tyrants. Clog up the trade lanes, boycott the parasites, divest from cruelty, sanction hate, rebel with the outmost love for each and everyone lost and to be found! Stop all wars! End all hate!”