Why you should oppose the prison construction at Waikeria
The government has only one response to the booming prison population: more prison beds. Over the next few years, it plans to expand prison capacity by 1,800. The main way it will try to do this is by building a whole new prison on the same site as the existing Waikeria Prison. That prison would be the largest in New Zealand, housing more than 1,500 people.
The government’s response is absolutely futile. It impotently locks away people who have committed crimes, unwilling to address the social problems which cause crime itself. Instead of dealing with the fundamental inequalities, it abandons thousands of people to a prison system that is riddled with violence. Prisons subject very vulnerable people to an environment that makes them more mentally unwell, more likely to attempt suicide, and more likely to be sexually assaulted. Increasing the prison capacity increases the total number of people who will become victims of the violence of prisons.
Building more prisons also costs billions of dollars. Those are billions of dollars that could be spent on education, housing and healthcare. Instead of building more prisons, the government could be spending money on healthcare services for people who struggle with mental illness and drug problems. It could be addressing the drivers of crime, especially entrenched poverty and unemployment.
To make matters worse, the land that the new prison would stand on was stolen from the Ngāti Maniapoto hapu Ngāti Kaputuhi. In 1910, the Governor-General stole by proclamation the land known as the “Tokanui Block”. This land included Ngāti Kaputuhi’s marae Waiaruhe. As Te Runanga o Ngati Maniapoto notes, “Kaputuhi have been displaced from their lands for well over 100 years while corporate shysters enrich themselves by the cultural genocide of Ngati Maniapoto hapu.” We support the right of Ngāti Maniapoto and Ngāti Kaputuhi to mana motuhake over their rohe. We oppose the construction of the new prison at Waikeria, and support returning the land that it sits on.
If the government’s only solution to the overcrowding crisis is to build capacity, we suggest another solution. Instead of building more prisons in response to increasing numbers of prisoners, we should be reducing the number of prisons. As we have argued elsewhere, the overcrowding crisis is caused by a change of policy that meant more people on remand ended up in prison. We can significantly reduce the number of people in prison by demanding the repeal of this policy.
Rather than building another prison at Waikeria, the land should be returned to Ngāti Maniapoto. Rather than increasing the prison population, we must do everything we can to reduce it. Action is needed now to make this happen. In the coming months and years, the movement to stop the Waikeria prison expansion will require your involvement. That starts with the 10,000 Too Many hīkoi on the 11th of February at Aotea Square in Auckland. Your action is needed now to stop the government from spending billions of dollars on new prisons. We have to stop this prison construction project now. Not one more cell!
New Zealand’s prison population hit a record 10,000 for the
first time in November 2016. New Zealand has never had more people
in prison than it does today. This booming prison population, and the
overcrowding crisis it has caused, did not happen by accident. It did not
happen because of increasing crime rates.[1] It did not happen because
cops are catching more “bad guys”. It happened because the government just
decided to imprison more people.
On September 4, 2013, the Bail Amendment Act came into effect. The
purpose of this law is simple: to lock up more people on remand. Remand is the
period of time between being charged with something and being sentenced. The
majority of people imprisoned on remand have not been found guilty of anything
and may never be found guilty. The law made it much harder to get bail, which
has led to many more people being remanded in prison.
According to data I’ve collated between December 2013 and
December 2016, the remand population has skyrocketed since the Bail Amendment
Actcame into effect. Before the new
law, the prison population was actually falling for the first time in decades.
Since the law came into effect, the prison muster has increased by about 1,700
people, an increase of 20.6%. This has been almost entirely due to an increase
in the remand population. The number of people in prison on remand alone has
risen by more than 1,200, a 78.4% increase.
These law changes haven’t affected all parts of the prison
population equally. The changes have disproportionately impacted women and
Māori prisoners. The women’s prison population has increased at twice the rate
of the men’s prison population. The number of women on remand has more than
doubled, now 112.4% higher than it was before the Act came into effect.
While both Māori and Pākeha prison populations have
increased substantially over the past three years, the Māori prison population
has grown about one and a half times faster than the Pākeha prison population.
There are approximately 900 more Māori in prison since this law came into
effect, increasing by about 22%. The majority of the increase in the prison
population has been Māori, and Māori now make up a larger percentage of the
total prison population than three years ago.
More people are now being imprisoned for poverty-related
offences of dishonesty, which includes solo mums who are convicted of ‘benefit
fraud’ just for trying to put food on the table for their kids.[2]
While the Bail Amendment Act isn’t the sole cause of New Zealand’s astounding
imprisonment rate, as we were already locking up a ridiculous number of people
before it, it has contributed to a massive increase in the prison population.
This has led to more poor people, women and Māori in prison than ever before,
making this law a racist, sexist law that serves the interests of the rich.
The Bail Amendment Act needs to be repealed immediately.
Although there are many drivers behind New Zealand’s booming prison population,
including harsh parole and racist drug laws, the repeal of the Bail Amendment
Act is the first step toward undoing the worst of the violence of prison
overcrowding and mass incarceration. This government policy will not be changed
on its own. It requires a groundswell of people who are willing to say that
they’re not going to put up with this any more. You can be a part of this
movement. Join us at noon on February 11 at Aotea Square for the 10,000 Too
Many hīkoi. We will be demanding the immediate repeal of the Bail Amendment Act
and an end to the injustices it has produced. Make your voice heard now. Stand
up for justice and demand the repeal of the Bail Amendment Act.
By Ti Lamusse
[1]
Crime rates are lower than they were three years ago.
[2]
As the Child Poverty Action Group notes, ‘benefit fraud’ is a broad category that is used to
criminalise solo mothers, regardless of whether they intended to commit ‘fraud’
or if the ‘fraud’ occurred because of bureaucratic incompetency.
Why New Zealand prisons are in crisis and what you can do about it
New Zealand’s prisons are in crisis. Plain and simple. There have never been more people in prison at any point and it is only expected to get worse. Late last year, for the first time, the prison population hit a whopping 10,000 and is expected to remain above 10,000 for the foreseeable future.
This means that the government is planning to spend billions of dollars on imprisoning thousands more people than it did even four years ago. It is planning a $1 billion spending spree to pay for a new prison at Waikeria and massive expansions elsewhere. Meanwhile, it is housing more prisoners in double-bunked cells, where there are two or more people in a cell overnight. Data released to No Pride in Prisons shows that a quarter of all cells are now double-bunked. Many of those cells were never built for two people and the prisons cannot cope with the huge increase in prisoner numbers.
This overcrowding crisis has had a very serious impact on people in prison. Internationally, double-bunking has been consistently shown to increase rates of misconduct, self-harm, suicide, and violence, including sexual violence. Prisoners who have contacted No Pride in Prisons confirm this. They have told us how in double-bunked cells all of your privacy disappears. You often have to eat, sleep, and defecate in the same room as another person and you are rarely, if ever, allowed moments just to yourself.
To make matters even worse, two prisoners have contacted No Pride in Prisons saying that their cell-mates raped them. Double-bunked cells put people at incredible risk of intimidation, exploitation, and violence at the hands of their cellmates. Instead of making plans to reduce and eventually end the practice of double-bunking, the Department of Corrections every couple of months increases the number of double-bunked cells in response to the booming prison population.
The overcrowding crisis is one of the core drivers of worsening conditions in New Zealand prisons. Prisoners have reported that levels of violence are increasing. In a recent survey, 46% of prisoners at Manawatu Prison told the Ombudsmen they had been assaulted while in prison. Prisoners have also reported extremely poor healthcare. Across the board, prisoners have said that they experience long waiting times to see doctors and dentists, and that the care they receive is often poor. One prisoner told No Pride in Prisons that she has waited months in pain to see a doctor. She asked to see a doctor in August 2016 and as of February 2017, she has still not seen one!
Because of the overcrowding crisis, prisoners are spending more and more time in their cells. Many prisoners are kept in their cells for upwards of 20 hours per day, and a large number spend 22-23 hours per day in their cells. Many prisoners do not get access to fresh air every day. Corrections justifies this mistreatment, in part, by saying that the extremely high prison population makes it practically impossible for all prisoners to get a decent amount of time out of their cells and time in the fresh air.
These problems did not come out of nowhere. In September 2013, the Bail Amendment Act came into effect. The Act made it much harder for many people to get bail. As a result, the remand prison population, or that part of the prison population which has either not been convicted or sentenced for any crime, has skyrocketed. Prisoners on remand made up approximately 72% of the total increase in the prison population since the Act came into effect, and the remand population alone has risen by more than 1200 people.
Given its current trajectory, we can expect that this problem is only going to get worse. If something doesn’t change now, there will be thousands more people in prison. There will be thousands more people who will have to go through the violence and mistreatment that the overcrowding crisis has produced. Urgent action is needed undo the worst of this crisis. This is a crisis caused by government policy – by the Bail Amendment Act. With enough public pressure, policy can be changed.
We must do everything in our power to get the Bail Amendment Act repealed. We need to make our voices as loud as possible. We need a huge mass of people to show that we won’t stand for the government’s policy of mass incarceration anymore. Tough on crime means tough on people and this government has locked away more people than ever before. If you believe that we need to end the overcrowding crisis as soon as possible, then join the movement calling for the end of the Bail Amendment Act. Turn up at noon on February 11 for the 10,000 Too Many hīkoi from Auckland’s Aotea Square to Mt Eden Prison. We need to urgently send the message that enough is enough and it is time to stop this injustice.
Learning the Political Lessons of Homosexual Law Reform
In 1858, the English Laws Act was enacted by the occupying, British colonial forces in Aotearoa. This made male homosexuality illegal in Aotearoa by way of the imposition of English law as it stood in 1840. Sex between men, regardless of consent, was made punishable by death. The severity of the punishment changed over time, ranging from flogging to imprisonment, as social attitudes to both punishment and homosexuality shifted. By the time the movement for Homosexual Law Reform (HLR) emerged, the punishment was 5 years imprisonment for anyone who “committed an indecent act on another male, or allowed another male to do an indecent act on him”.
The campaign for the decriminalisation of gay sexualities attracted people from various walks of life, bringing with them often conflicting interests. One of the few points of political unity among the gay community was the decriminalisation of what a white, heteropatriarchal, and colonial society deemed “indecent acts.” Gay conservatives through to socialists pushed for reform. This often led to bitter divisions over what kind of action to take. Regardless, the campaign was successful.
We owe a lot to this huge step in the decriminalisation of queer sexualities. We owe it to every activist who was arrested, to every gay person who lost their life or some of it to the prison, and ultimately to every person who campaigned against the law. We are in their debt, not just for this key step in queer and trans liberation, but also for the strength and lessons it provides us now. The success of the push for HLR shows us, 30 years on, that even though the demand that queer and trans people should live free from oppression is consistently resisted, it is not a demand that we should be afraid to make.
In its early days, the central tendency of the movement and campaign was working in secrecy, out of a desire “not to upset… parliamentarians”. However, as soon as homophobic forces became aware of the increasingly organised movement for decriminalisation, a counter-campaign of petitions was mobilised, along with meetings telling gay people to “get back in the sewers”. Visibility then became a necessary precondition of reform, and so visibility was thrust upon the movement. It seemed the only options were to be harassed in silence or, as the slogan goes, to stand up and fight back. Marches, paste-ups, stalls and leafleting by gay and lesbian organisations were a common feature of politics in 1985 – the year before the passing of the Bill.
There are some people who live on the periphery of what is acceptable in society. That is to say, these people are marginalised, and their very claim to humanity is made suspect through things like the comparison of homosexuality to a disease. When this marginalisation is the case, any move, legislative or otherwise, to improve the conditions of their lives will be contested. The very act of gay people daring to speak out about the violence done to them under the English Laws Act and Crimes Act invited hatred and bigotry. So they spoke louder. Our task must always be to uplift those whose uplifting seems impossible under our current circumstances – to break boundaries.
HLR and the campaign that achieved it teaches us something important. It offers us a lesson about the current state of queer and trans politics. The lesson is this: we need to continue to shout from the margins and we need to continue to shout when people are being silenced. Responding to the state’s violence, enacted in large part through the criminal injustice system, should be an aspect of our community’s legacy that we choose to continue.We should feel compelled, in fact, to respond to state power because it is against our community. We have to choose a response and this response can be one of two things: leaving our most vulnerable to suffer in silence, or to fight with and for our most vulnerable.
If the fight for HLR teaches us anything, it is that silence is not peace. Silence is the condition for violence going unnoticed, unopposed, and therefore unstopped.
The Overcrowding Crisis and the Rape of Trans Women in New Zealand Prisons
On the 14th of April, RNZ reported that New Zealand has, once again, surpassed its record for the number of people it incarcerates. The prison muster hit an astonishing 9405 people and is expected to reach above 10,000 people in the near future. According to Institute for Criminal Policy Research, New Zealand now locks up 202 of every 100,000 people in this country. This means that New Zealand has one of the highest rates of incarceration in the world. As No Pride in Prisons has argued in the past, New Zealand’s prisons are currently experiencing an overcrowding crisis. The state is now locking up so many people that “plans are afoot to house men in a jail’s gym”.
The government’s primary response to the overcrowding crisis is to increase the number of people it places in double-bunked cells. Double-bunking is where two or more people are held in a single cell. Contrary to advice from human rights groups and prison advocates–including No Pride in Prisons–to abandon the policy, Corrections has announced, on twoseparate occasions in the past two months, its intention to expand the use of double-bunking. This should be seen as nothing less than a desperate attempt to respond to successive waves of increasing prison numbers, which are a result of the National government’s criminal law reforms.
Through information revealed to No Pride in Prisons through Official Information Act requests, we can see that the overcrowding crisis is even worse than is immediately apparent. The Department of Corrections reports that 2773 people are currently being held in double-bunked cells, or approximately 30% of the total prison population (using data from March 2016). Nearly all New Zealand prisons (14 of the 19) use double-bunking. Let me be clear: every single double-bunked cell is a cell that is holding more people than it was built to hold. Every double-bunked cell is an overcrowded cell. That means Corrections can say it is not operating at above capacity, as it can endlessly increase the number of double-bunked cells. However, Corrections is really just masking the fact that it is currently incarcerating thousands more people than it has the capacity to house.
Of the 20 transgender women that Corrections can account for in its custody, 3 of them are currently in double-bunked cells. The reason this is important is because overcrowding leads to a more dangerous prison environment for all incarcerated people, especially those incarcerated people who are already vulnerable. We know from international studies that trans women, in particular, are far more likely to experience abuse of all kinds than the general prison population. A 2007 study found that trans women are thirteen times more likely to be sexually assaulted in a men’s prison than other prisoners. Double-bunking only increases the risk of this kind of violence occurring. Countless studies have demonstrated that overcrowding generally, and double-bunking specifically, leads to increased rates of suicide, violent assaults, murder, as well as physical and psychological illnesses. With every double-bunked, overcrowded cell, the Department of Corrections shows that it has no regard whatsoever for the health and well being of incarcerated people.
In October last year, No Pride in Prisons’ worst fears about double-bunking were realised. The New Zealand Herald reported that a trans woman being held in Wiri prison, a men’s prison, had been raped by another prisoner. When she made contact with us and gave us details about what allegedly occurred, we were furious. This woman was being held in protective segregation, which is supposedly the safest space in the prison for vulnerable people. She says that she was, against her will, moved into the general population of the prison and then violently assaulted by other inmates. Instead of then moving her back into protective segregation, officers chose to place her in a double-bunked cell overnight with a man. That man then allegedly raped her.
To make matters even worse, according to Corrections’ policy on the housing of transgender prisoners, trans prisoners can be bunked with “Transgender Prisoners or Single Accommodation Cell only (unless the prisoner chooses to cell with another non transgender).” In other words, Corrections’ policy says that trans people should be either in single cells or housed with other trans people. They can only be placed in a cell with a cisgender person if they choose to be. This woman did not choose to be moved into the general population of the prison. She did not choose to be violently assaulted. She did not choose to be placed in a cell with a man who allegedly raped her. In other words, even when Corrections lays out policies to supposedly keep trans prisoners safe, it doesn’t follow them. The larger overcrowding crisis and Corrections’ general disregard for the well-being of incarcerated people means that these people are treated like human livestock to be managed.
However, this problem is bigger than just Corrections. This government has a thirst for mass incarceration. With soaring rates of imprisonment, double-bunking was its solution to the overcrowding crisis. This decision directly resulted in the violence that this woman endured. If the policy of double-bunking did not exist, this woman would not have been raped by that man. This government is complicit in and institutionally facilitates the rape of incarcerated people. Until the government addresses the underlying overcrowding crisis in New Zealand’s prisons, the blood of incarcerated people will be on its hands. To be clear, there is only one solution to this crisis: decarceration. It is only when we stop locking people away in cages and deal with the issues at hand that justice can be found.
In Solidarity With Aiden Katri, a Transgender Woman Currently Being Incarcerated by the Israeli Defense Force
PINKWASHING (NOUN):
the promotion of mainstream ‘gay rights’ by corporate or political entities as a veil to excuse or hide unethical practices, particularly where those practices ignore basic human and workers’ rights.
On Tuesday 29th of March 2016, Aiden Katri, a 19 year old Mizrahi trans woman was sent to an IDF men’s prison for refusing to serve in the occupational military.
My name is Aaliyah Zionov. I am a 19 year old Mizrahi trans woman and a member of No Pride In Prisons. Were it not for my family’s migration from Israel to Aotearoa, this could have been me.
The Israeli Defense Force is often cited as a clear example of an organisation which utilises pinkwashing – being increasingly accommodating of LGBT soldiers and needs not for the cause of queer liberation, but for strengthening and obscuring the true purpose of a violent occupational force. Presenting itself as a supposed bastion of queer rights, the IDF diffuses legitimate criticism and gains positive international attention as a progressive organisation whose genocidal practices are to be admired.
However, pinkwashing does not result in material improvement in queer conditions. In fact, it is often actively harmful. For example, in 2013, the IDF began to allow transgender women to openly serve on the front lines. Usually, transgender women are permitted to opt out or seek alternative forms of civil service; this change did not exist to advance transgender rights but rather served only to expand the pool from which people could be conscripted.
Katri’s current situation highlights some of the largest contradictions of pinkwashing. The fact that we as Israeli trans women now have the ‘privilege’ of serving in the IDF means that we now also have the accompanying ‘privilege’ of being imprisoned in men’s prisons if we conscientiously object. The IDF took care to emphasise that, as she did not disclose her status as a trans woman while objecting, Katri’s imprisonment was “nothing to do with her being transgender”; this is impossible.
Firstly, the fact that the IDF requires one to disclose one’s status as a member of a vulnerable or “deviant” class to the state in order to be treated with dignity, effectively “outs” them and puts them potentially in danger. This means that the “trans-friendly” status of the IDF is nothing more than a farce.
Secondly, in Katri’s words: “I struggle against my oppression – my gender oppression as a trans women and my ethnic oppression as a Mizrahi Jew, and if I turn a blind eye to an oppression of another people, this would be hypocrisy.” In other words: since her decision to conscientiously object was made as a trans woman, her imprisonment for said decision cannot be separated from her identity.
Thirdly, she was incarcerated in a men’s prison: there were immediate material consequences to her resistance as a trans woman.
Aiden Katri recognises the importance of resisting colonisation and incarceration for queer and trans liberation; for her, the hypermasculinity of Israel’s military culture is an imperial force that is also directly violent against gender non-conforming persons. Allowing trans women to participate in this culture does not liberate them, rather pressuring them to conform to toxic constructions of gender. No group can achieve true liberation through the oppression of another group.
Decolonisation is integral to the achievement of queer and trans liberation. The modern gender binary was imposed by Western colonisation upon peoples and cultures across the world; in the Israeli state, we see not only a colonised understanding of gender that neglects traditional Jewish genders but an extension of this colonisation to Palestinian queers, through the occupation of their land. The ‘right’ of Israeli trans women to participate in the IDF directly erases the right of Palestinian trans women to self-determination and indeed to survival.
Similarly, the ‘right’ of New Zealand LGBT people to work at prisons or in the New Zealand Police directly erases the rights of whakawāhine and takatāpui Māori to self-determination and sovereignty. No carceral and military system in the world can be separated from its creation and purpose as a tool of state oppression and colonial settler occupation. Queer and trans liberation can only be realised through global prison abolition, for which international solidarity is absolutely vital.
Incarcerated transgender people are often put in solitary confinement “for their safety”, which the United Nations considers torture. In Aotearoa, incarcerated transgender people are generally offered the choice to enter protective segregation, which sometimes results in complete isolation for up to 23 hours each day. In Israel, they are subject to solitary confinement by default. Statutory provisions for “choice” and for “case by case” consideration are meaningless in the context of a system which is necessarily coercive and designed to disregard the needs of queer and trans people. Many trans women of color in Aotearoa “choose” to be placed in protective segregation to minimize exposure to sexual and physical violence, and are assaulted in segregation nevertheless.
The Israeli Defense Force decides how to treat trans soldiers with regard to gender on a “case by case” basis: it retains full power to disregard any person’s gender identity or needs. The admission that they do not “really know what to do” with transgender people does not bode well for any material improvement in conditions. The modern military, as Katri recognizes, is built on patriarchal and white supremacist conceptions of gender and gender roles, and can never be safe for trans people, be they soldiers, civil servants, inmates or victims of its violence.
Aiden Katri’s objection to serving in the IDF and her subsequent imprisonment contradicts Israel’s pinkwashing narrative where it attempts to present itself as an LGBT friendly face to colonial settler occupation and apartheid. Israel’s Pinkwashing is an attempt to distract you from the violent ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, the stark inequality between Israeli settlers and Palestinians, ongoing illegal settlements, and mass incarceration of Palestinians, including children under the age of 16 years old. In Katri’s statement, she described witnessing some of the daily violence in the lives of Palestinians:
6,072 Palestinian security detainees and prisoners were held in Israeli prisons, 342 of them from the Gaza Strip. An additional 873 Palestinians were held in Israeli Prison Service facilities for being in Israel illegally, 27 of them from Gaza
In the Auckland Pride Parade 2014, the Israeli Embassy was given a platform to pinkwash Israel’s oppression of Palestinians. But we see with their treatment of trans conscientious objectors, this narrative quickly falls apart. As queer and trans people committed to the liberation of all people, we need to stand with those who are most marginalised and support the resistance against military occupation, genocide, colonisation and apartheid. We can do this by standing with Aiden Katri and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement in Aotearoa and internationally until there is justice for Palestine.
No Pride in Prisons stands in solidarity with the people of Palestine and in full support with Aiden Katri’s decision to conscientiously object to participation in the IDF. There are no statistics on the sexual assault of trans women in the IDF. However, given that 1 in 8 women and 1 in 5 gay men have reported being sexually assaulted and given that, where data exists, transgender women are assaulted at a far higher rate than cis women and gay men, it is not unreasonable to assume that Katri would have been placed in an unsafe situation even if she had not conscientiously objected.
Katri was put in a position where she had two choices: to be at risk of sexual assault and participate in a violent imperialist occupation, or to be at risk of sexual assault in a men’s prison because she refused to participate. No Pride in Prisons recognises that many trans women are placed in similarly impossible situations in Israel, Aotearoa and around the world, and maintains that the advancement of transgender rights therefore cannot happen without the global abolition of prisons and of military forces.
Written by A. Zionov, with assistance from K. Foster and MZ for No Pride in Prisons
A personal account of one woman’s experience of incarceration in Aotearoa.
I was arrested on the
15th of October, 2007 in the so-called “anti-terror raids.” By 6pm
that evening, I was incarcerated in Arohata Prison just north of Wellington. At
the time, our situation was somewhat unusual: generally, even for serious
crimes, people would be bailed (often with quite strict conditions) until trial.
The state said we were terrorists and the court agreed it was too dangerous to
let us out.
Today, however,
changes to bail laws mean that it is much harder for people who have been
arrested for a crime to get bail pending their hearing. The implications for
this are significant, because people who are in jail have much less access to
justice: it’s hard to talk to a lawyer, to talk with witnesses, to get
documents together or simply organise your life for a long court proceeding. Once
in prison, it is much harder to get out.
Earlier on that day,
my friend Emily and I had been stripped of our own clothing and given blue
boilersuits. We were placed in the general holding cells downstairs in the
Wellington District Court, a quite old fashioned set up with steel barred cells
adjacent to each other, and with a toilet in each nominally covered by a waist-high
wall.
We were taken to the
prison and subjected to a full body strip search. A screw (corrections officer)
watched me undress, then made me squat to my ankles to ensure that anything
concealed in my anus or vagina fell out. This was just the beginning of day-to-day
searches, day-to-day degradations.
We were initially
placed in segregation (solitary confinement) “for our own good” where we had no
contact and were only allowed out of our cells for 1 hour per day. On October
16th, I got to make my first phone call. I was in shock and despair
and could hardly form words. Also done for my “own good” was a 15-minute check-up
throughout the night: a screw would come shine a light in my face to wake me up.
We demanded to be moved
to general population and, when we arrived, we were searched. Then, we were warmly
greeted by the other prisoners who had all heard about the case on TV. At the
time, all of the women in the Tizard Wing (Remand) were Māori save for one other
Pākehā.
The routine was mind
numbing, isolating and degrading: we were searched whenever we went anywhere.
We were taken to the gym for a sad game of volleyball every morning and
required to play with a flat ball. We were searched before we left the wing; we
were searched when we returned.
We were searched when
we went to get clothes from the prison repository. We were searched when we got
back.
Our rooms were
searched. We were let out into the yard for an hour in the afternoon; we were
searched.
By the end of the
second week, we finally got some visitors. We were searched leaving our wing.
When we arrived at the visitor area, we were searched and put into orange
jumpsuits (so they know who the prisoners were) with zip ties on the wrists and
ankles (so we couldn’t stuff anything up them). I thought those jumpsuits only
existed at Guantanamo Bay; how little did I know that they are standard prison
gear in New Zealand. We were searched again when our visitors left. We would be
searched again when we returned to our wing from the visiting area.
When we went to court,
we were searched. Our legal documents would be read by screws before we were
locked into tiny transport cages.
One day, a guard came
to my cell and said, “Pack your stuff.” Everyone else had just gone to
volleyball. I had no idea where I was going, but I was expecting some visitors
that day so I guessed that I was being transferred to another wing. I was
worried I would be separated from Emily.
We were driven to the
airport and put into shackles: we were locked into a cell at Wellington
Airport. We were subsequently dragged around the airport by a chain.
Eventually, we arrived
at the Auckland Women’s prison at Wiri. Of course, we were searched again. The
new prison has cameras in every cell so the guards can watch you all of the
time. Ostensibly the camera doesn’t film the shower or toilet area but I felt exposed
and vulnerable, watched in bed or at the desk all day, every day. The person in
the cell next to me had an amazing voice; she was 17. They didn’t know what
else to do with her so they put her in an adult prison.
Each day, we went
outside for an hour. We all got searched. When we returned to the wing we got
searched.
We had regular
visitors by the time we got to Auckland. The bureaucratic process for getting
visitors takes ages, and I was thrilled to see my mum and friends.
Within a few days of
arrival, my lawyer told me that the police were trying to bring charges against
13 of us under the Terrorism Suppression Act. If they succeeded in bringing the
charge (which required the consent of the solicitor-general), he said we would
never get out.
After that, I remember
sitting in the common area of our wing, looking out the window and starting to
cry. When the other women saw me, they immediately said, “Don’t cry.” They said
that it would be worse for me if I cried. The screws would send me back to
segregation to “help” me.
It was horror. I
thought I would be there for 14 years.
The thing about prison
that most people don’t understand is that it is an institution that teaches
violence. The powerful in our society say, “we want to create a safe, secure
community” so people should obey some guidelines about how to behave. But the
reality is that the state operates by violence and coercion. Most of that
violence and coercion is the small, day-to-day degradations of strip searches
or night time patrols, with guards waking you up to “make sure you’re alive”,
or having to beg to use the phone or get medical treatment or just get a tiny
bit more food. One day I counted I was searched seven times.
There are far more
violent activities, of course, such as sexual assaults and rapes. There were
stories of a prisoner who was pregnant to a guard when I was there. Prison
teaches the lesson that the powerful have the right to use violence and force
to get what they want, and to get you to do what they want.
I was really lucky. I got out after a month. There was a whole lot of
community support and solidarity that mobilised around the case. But I will
never forget what the dread of that locked door felt like, and the utter sense
of powerlessness I felt at the hands of people who clearly took pleasure in making
supplicant beggars of us all.
Why Does a Pride Parade Need Public Relations Advice?
Following this year’s corporate Pride Parade and the protests against it, we noted a change in tone from the Auckland Pride Board. It seemed the Board had shifted its public-facing attitude to protest. Whereas after the Pride Parade protests of 2015, the organiser said he was “disappointed” that No Pride in Prisons “chose to use the Auckland Pride Parade as an opportunity to broadcast their message”, this year the Director almost praised us for our actions. Perhaps realising that the tide of public opinion was turning against them, and the Department of Corrections, the Directors decided not to completely disparage the protesters.
[U]nderstands No Pride in Prisons [sic] aim to “give a voice to a very small minority, who would likely otherwise fall between the cracks” however, he says he is not sure the protest helped their cause.
“We prepare for many scenarios and work closely with the city, the Police and our stewards on measures to keep people safe and allow everyone to enjoy the event,” says Davion. “A group chose disruption rather than co-operation as their means of communication, I’m not sure it helps their cause.”
This is a marked shift in the Pride Board’s approach to protesters. Whereas in 2015, the Board and its allies were willing to hark on about how “rude and reckless” the protesters were, the 2016 Board’s response is more complex. First, Davion backhandedly praises us for our actions. He recognises that if it weren’t for our actions, the issues of incarcerated trans and queer people may never have come up for discussion. However, in the same breath, he chooses to criticise the protesters’ tactics, and minimise the legitimate concerns of marginalised queer and trans people by referring to them as a “very small minority.”
He then goes on to say that he isn’t sure that No Pride in Prisons’ protest “helped their cause.” This is where we get to the heart of the Pride Board’s spin tactics. The Board assumes, because No Pride in Prisons interrupted the corporate pinkwashing event that tries to pass itself off as a pride parade, that we lost support or that our tactics didn’t work. This is part of the beauty of spin: you can make a lie sound like the truth.
The truth of the matter, however, is that No Pride in Prisons has never garnered more support from the queer and trans community across Aotearoa and abroad. We have received countless positive messages, comments, likes and shares and started a discussion about the precarious situation of trans and queer incarcerated people, as well as the necessity of prison abolition. The Pride Board and the pinkwashers more generally may want to believe that our action was a failure, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Davion also insisted that the protesters had chosen “disruption rather than co-operation.” We are calling bullshit. There have been multiple hui between No Pride in Prisons and the Pride Board over the past year. Surely Davion was aware of these meetings, as Parade Director. No Pride in Prisons was patient. We went to the meetings. We had discussions and we tried to convince them that Police and Corrections should never be in the parade. However, their minds were already made up. If anything, it was the Pride Board who refused to co-operate. The disruption of the corporate Pride event was necessary because the Board refused to listen.
So as you can see, while Davion is sprinkling glitter in front of our eyes, telling us he respects our protest, he is simultaneously stabbing us with lies and slander. This is a much more thought out approach to public relations than what we saw in 2015. It is clear that this newfound sophistication in the Pride Board’s ability to spin a story comes as the result of public relations advice.
We know that the Pride Board has hired at least one public relations company, because No Pride in Prisons received an email from that company. Prior to the 2016 Pride Parade, groups and organisations who made a submission to participate in the parade were contacted by Elephant Publicity. “We’re the publicists for the 2016 Auckland Pride Parade and I’m touching base ahead of the parade about possible PR opportunities,” the email read.
With offers from Elephant Publicity for media to “film the creation of your float,” covering “background on involvement (story angle),” “background on your company/organisation or reasons for wanting to be involved,” and “what you want your organisation/group or float to communicate to Aucklanders (story angle),” it became clear that the parade organisers were keen to formulaically present this year’s parade as a cheerful and diverse festival of community participants.
The fact that all potential participants received this email from Elephant Publicity speaks directly to the nature of Auckland Pride. Why is it that the Pride Board is now so intent on having a complex public relations campaign around its parade? The answer is quite simple: this is exactly what the Auckland Pride Parade, and corporate pride events everywhere, have become. Pride parades are no longer for struggling queers to display righteous pride and righteous anger in the face of marginalisation. Pride parades are for public relations. They are for the public promotion of banks, universities, hardware stores, oppressive governments, and their security forces.
This means that most of the groups contacted by Elephant Publicity were corporations and institutions, being offered a no-strings-attached opportunity to advertise their diversity and open-mindedness. So why does Pride need a PR company? It doesn’t. As we argued elsewhere, there was only one Auckland Pride 2016 and it started on Karangahape Road. The parade put on by the Pride Board was not Pride. That event was a walking billboard for capitalist exploitation and queer assimilation. It is for this reason that the 2016 Auckland Pride Parade needed a public relations company and spin doctors on the job. The Pride organisers cared more about public image and advertising potential than the marginalised members of our community. That’s nothing to be proud of.
*This is the second part of a two-part series of speeches delivered at No Pride in Prisons FUCK PRIDE rally on February 20, 2016.
The prison system in Aotearoa is a tool of the racist settler colonial state. This is demonstrated by the extremely disproportionate rates of incarceration of Māori. Māori are only 15% of the general population but approximately 51% of the prison population. For Māori women, this marginalisation is even starker. Māori women are 58% of the women’s prison population and I have heard, at least anecdotally, that sometimes in Christchurch women’s prison up to 90% of the prisoners are Māori.
A 2009 Ministry of Justice report found that Māori are more likely to be apprehended, prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned than non-Māori for the same crimes. At every stage in the criminal injustice system, Māori are structurally discriminated against.
In terms of the rates of incarceration of trans women, international studies have shown that trans women, particularly trans women of colour, are similarly disproportionately criminalised. Although there are no comparable studies in Aotearoa, we can assume that there are similar rates of incarceration, given higher rates of homelessness, unemployment, victimisation and social marginalisation experienced by trans people here.
I am briefly going to outline three areas which either directly lead to violence or are violent in and of themselves. First, as you would have seen in the news, New Zealand recently hit a record for the number of people it locks away in cages. According to the International Centre for Prison Studies, New Zealand prisons are at 106.1% of official capacity. This is a crisis and should very much concern you. Beyond the fact that New Zealand is choosing to criminalise more and more people, overcrowding for incarcerated people leads to increased rates of suicide, violent attacks, murder, physical and mental illnesses as well as disciplinary infractions. The most vulnerable subset of the prison population is also most likely to bear the brunt of this crisis.
One of the specific ways that Corrections has tried to address the overcrowding crisis is by introducing a policy of double-bunking. Whereas before 2009, prisoners were almost always housed in single cells overnight, a surge in the prison population in 2011 meant that prisoners, in many prisons, can now be kept overnight, two to a cell. Of course, prison officers are not constantly surveilling these cells overnight, providing potential for someone to assault a cellmate.
Last year, No Pride in Prisons got word of a trans woman who had been raped at Wiri prison, south of Auckland. The woman had been taken from protective segregation, against her will, and placed in the general population. Within minutes, she was severely assaulted and needed medical treatment. Instead of leaving her overnight in a hospital or medical bay, the officers decided to place her in a ‘double-bunked’ cell. She was then allegedly raped overnight by her cellmate. Instances like these are not possible without the overcrowding crisis in NZ prisons and the National Government’s policy of double-bunking. This government and the Department of Corrections is directly responsible for the rape of this woman.
Second, international studies have shown that transgender women are thirteen times more likely to be sexually assaulted in a men’s prison than the general population. However, I’m about to demonstrate that every single prisoner in the NZ prison system has been, by law, required to be sexually assaulted upon entering prison. This assault is in the form of a strip search.
As required by law, a strip search in NZ can include opening the mouth of the prisoner, lifting and “rubbing” their hair, forcing the person to spread their legs and squat naked. The officer also has full authority to “lift or raise”, or more accurately fondle, “fat, genitalia, and breasts”. By default, male guards conduct strip searches in men’s prisons, and women guards in women’s prisons. For trans women in men’s prisons, this means they are usually searched by male guards.
Under the Act, every prisoner undergoes a strip search when they enter and leave the prison. There are a wide set of other instances in which they can be searched too. Assuming that very few of these people would have given consent to have their body invaded by someone in a position of authority if they weren’t incarcerated, this is a clear instance of sexual assault, and something which needs to be ended immediately. Today. Because there are people in the Pride Parade who have sexually assaulted prisoners.
I’d just like to make one further comment before I conclude. Sexual and other violence occurs against criminalised populations at every stage of the criminal injustice system. We have received information that a Māori trans woman, was raped on two occasions in a police holding cells, once in Hamilton when she was a minor and later in Whangarei. There were cameras in the cells and the police could have intervened at any stage. After the first time in Hamilton, the woman said and I quote “I wanted to complain but they weren‘t interested”.
And so I say to all of you here today who defied the homonormative outcries of disgust that anyone would protest a Pride parade: Thank you. Thank you for you have sent a message to the queer community that this kind of violence is not acceptable. Your actions today will send a message that we as a community of marginalised peoples demand a new world, a world beyond the structures of racist imperialist cisheteropatriarchal capitalism and a world beyond prisons.
Pride reaction to Queers Against Israeli Apartheid 2014 Protest
*This is the first part of a two-part series of speeches delivered at No Pride in Prisons FUCK PRIDE rally on February 20, 2016.
At Auckland Pride 2014, the Embassy of Israel announced 3 days before the Pride Parade that they would be marching in the Auckland Pride Parade. They said in their press release: “Whilst BDS campaigners have fled in their minivan to Wellington to protest against the performance of the world renowned Dance Company Batsheva… the Embassy of Israel will be participating in Auckland’s annual Gay Parade.” It was clear to both the Embassy of Israel and BDS campaigners that their presence in the march was inherently political and contested. Many of us were enraged by this news and decided to do something about it. A group of us queers who recognised this as an attempt at pinkwashing quickly got together to organise as Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, which is a global movement of queer-powered resistance against Israeli apartheid and pinkwashing.
Israeli pinkwashing is a cynical strategy to mask the colonial settler violence, genocide and apartheid against Palestinians by showcasing an image of the State of Israel as gay-friendly, progressive and caring about LGBT human rights. By allowing the Embassy of Israel to march in the Pride Parade, Auckland Pride Festival organisers were complicit in this violence.
As queers we could not allow this to happen without demonstrating our dissent. We decided to directly draw attention to their pinkwashing by jumping the barriers and marching in front of them with a banner saying “No rainbow big enough to cover the shame of Israeli apartheid” and a “Pinkwasher” performed satirical street theatre telling people to “Just think pink” to distract people from the 50 + laws that discriminate against Arabs and the illegal occupation of Palestine. We explained our intentions in a flyer that we distributed to the crowd. We had a mixture of cheers and boos from the people on the sidelines. One person jumped the barrier to join us and gave us hugs.
Security guards were on the scene quickly and herded us to leave. But as far as we were concerned, as queers we had every right to be there and challenge this shit. Pride security guards assaulted and carried people out. They tried to ram some of us through the barriers and were threatening to break people’s arms. Legally security guards are not allowed to touch you, it’s assault. So last year wasn’t the first time Auckland Pride security guards assaulted queer protestors at the pride parade.
Members of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid were eventually physically removed from the parade, but the disappointing thing was the reaction afterwards where members of the “rainbow community” thought pride should just be a celebration and not to mix it with global politics. But you know what, fuck that, we shouldn’t let our oppression get used to prop up other forms of injustice and it is never going to be apolitical.
We made a statement to GayNZ after the protest to explain our motivations:
It’s out of a desire to support Palestinian queers, and in the tradition of intersectional queer politics, that we decided to take a public stand against the Israeli Embassy’s float at Auckland Pride. We know that some of our fellow queers think that Pride is not the appropriate time or place to make a political statement about Middle East politics. The argument that we shouldn’t mix pride parades with global politics sounds an awful lot like the 1980s argument that anti-apartheid protesters shouldn’t mix rugby with politics. We were not the ones who chose to use Pride as a platform for discussing Israel. The Israeli Embassy are the ones who decided to hijack a gay pride event and exploit to uphold a progressive image of a state that subjects its Indigenous inhabitants to apartheid.
Our queer politics are rooted in the principle of ‘no one left behind’. We do not accept the advancement of gay men at the expense of lesbians, or of cis queers at the expense of trans people. We also cannot accept the advancement of any queers at the expense of Palestinians.
Since we took this action in 2014, the Israeli Embassy has not marched in another Auckland Pride Parade. Let’s keep it that way! Instead of giving the Israeli a platform for pinkwashing, the queer community should be answering Palestinian (including queer Palestinian organisations’) calls for Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions on Israel until it recognises the right of return for Palestinian refugees, until Israel ends its occupation of Palestine lands and until Israel grants full equality to Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel.
As queer people, we should give a fuck about global and local politics because governments, and oppressive arms of the state are using our struggles and oppression to become more effective agents of social control and violence. The Israeli state, the Police, the military and Corrections officers can now “pink out” the violence they perpetrate and represent. These people as representatives of oppressive institutions have no fucking place in a Pride Parade.
Written by members of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid Aotearoa
There was only one Auckland Pride 2016 and it started on Karangahape Road
On Saturday February 20, hundreds of members of the Auckland queer and trans community erupted onto Ponsonby Road to disrupt an event celebrating institutional and corporate pinkwashing. These dissenting members of the queer and trans community embodied the meaning of Pride. Their rallying, marching, chanting, shouting, and barricading was the only true Pride that night. The other event was co-opted by exploitative corporations and institutions as an advertising opportunity and a public relations stunt.
Auckland Pride 2016 began on Karangahape Road with a cry of “Fuck Pride!”. Those in attendance were proud to reject the corporations and institutions shimmering with glitter on the adjacent street. Pride disrupted traffic as it moved along Karangahape Road towards the gentrified centre of Ponsonby. It flowed towards the barricades protecting banks, universities, and other institutions as they marched with rainbows integrated into their logos and slogans. It broke those barricades with what Pride was always supposed to be and, for some, continues to be: queer anger, from struggling queers. It was spontaneous, uncontrollable, loud, and fundamentally political.
Those hundreds of community members brought the officially endorsed pinkwashing event to a grinding halt for at least an hour. Once that event started back up again with a diverted route, the protesters conducted rolling blockades with the intent of shutting it down. They were the ones displaying pride: enough pride to reject corporatisation and institutional violence.
Those attending the corporate event, like the queer community more generally, were divided. On the one hand, there were those who, realising the purpose of the protest, supported the protesters and cheered them on. The vast majority of attendees, on the other hand, hurled verbal abuse, juice bottles, and sometimes fists at the protesters. They loudly informed the blockaders that they were a disgrace to the community. But the blockaders were not part of the same community as those who booed them from the sidelines. Whereas the blockaders were from a community of marginalised peoples, the booers represented a community that condones institutional violence.
And so there was an event that unquestioningly accepted the oppressive behaviours of police, prisons and corporate pinkwashers, and there was an event that demanded something more of the queer and trans community. But there was only one Pride. It was in the spirit of Pride’s legacy: the spirit of queer struggle, passion, and the rejection of oppressive power. Pride clashed with the officially endorsed corporate event flowing through a wealthy, gentrified suburb. It clashed with exploitative corporations and institutions bedazzled in their superficial support for ‘gay rights.’
So how exactly are these violent institutions and exploitative corporations attempting to pinkwash their behaviour? First, let’s take the example of ANZ, who introduced ‘GayTMs’ for the first time during last year’s Pride. Prior to and during the rollout of the GayTMs, ANZ workers were conducting ongoing strikes against their employer’s attempt to enforce casualised contracts and unlivable wages. Similarly, the University of Auckland marched in this year’s corporate event, hoping we would forget that it does not pay a living wage to all its employees, or guarantee secure contracts. Just like police and Corrections, they tried to excuse their behaviour by co-opting a queer cause without taking on queer issues. These queer issues include the fact that there are queer and transgender workers who are not being paid a living wage by ANZ or UoA. They include the fact that queer and transgender people are being abused by police and corrections officers.
The Auckland Pride Board, which organised the corporate event, is prepared to excuse this behaviour. No Pride in Prisons is not. If we stay silent, we are effectively condoning the actions of institutions like Corrections who would attempt to use a queer event to invite us to forget their consistent human rights abuses. If we accept things as they are, or ask nicely for things to change, nothing will change. Nothing will change as long as privileged members of the community cosy up to those who would use them as a shield from necessary attack. Silence is the enemy of emancipation.
As we now know, there are members of the queer and trans community who are no longer willing to stay silent. No Pride in Prisons activists were willing to put their bodies on the line in order to send a message: “Violence wrapped in a rainbow flag is still violence. Racism covered in glitter is still racism.” They were not willing to accept that those who, on a daily basis, sexually assault prisoners in the form of intrusive and unnecessary strip searches should be allowed to march in the corporate event, while trans women stuck cages are hidden from view.
This rejection of the status quo maintains the spirit of Pride and continues the work of those rioting trans women of colour who demanded freedom of gender identity and sexuality, and an end to sexual violence. However, No Pride in Prisons’ actions do not only re-call a not-too-distant past; they also call-forth a future. The future called-forth is a future in which the indigenous people of this country aren’t being incarcerated at a rate five times that of the colonisers. It is a future in which incarceration is no longer the solution to social issues, and it is a future in which the violent forces of cisheteronormativity do not reign supreme. And so the real Pride event was put on by those calling forth a future without the violence of police and prisons. Theirs was the only Pride 2016.
The queer community in Aotearoa is at a turning point. It is fundamentally divided. Some of us are happy with the status quo and some of us demand more. On the one side, there are those who are complacent with the astounding rates of incarceration of Māori, with the violence of police officers and with the rape of incarcerated trans women. On the other side, there are those who stand in solidarity with all the queer and trans people who have been left behind by a community more concerned with rainbow-coloured flags at Pride parades than the suffering of their people.
Pride started with a moment of rupture, where our predecessors stepped out of the shadows and rioted against police brutality. At its emergence, Pride was nothing if not political. Those proud rioters demanded an end to violently policed norms of gender and sexuality. They fought in the street against anyone who thought they had the right to tell them not to.
Shamefully, Pride has become something else. It has become a corporatised pinkwashed event where institutions like the police and corrections, which do untold violence to the most vulnerable members of the queer community, can show themselves off as so-called beacons of gay rights. Organisations like ANZ and the University of Auckland, both of which impose unfair pay and conditions on their workers, appropriate pride in a lolly scramble for pink dollars. Theirs is a hollow beacon of progress built from the co-option of our struggle.
There are some comfortable queers who say “things have really changed” and that police and prisons are better now, that the police is not the same institution that used to round up suspected homosexuals in nightclubs and throw them in jail. Unfortunately, the police and prisons are still racist, homophobic, transphobic and misogynistic institutions. According to their own 2015 report, which is likely to under-report rates of violence, New Zealand Police used force against Māori at a rate nearly eight times that of Pākehā. The New Zealand Police also used tasers against Māori and Pasifika at a rate higher than it used tasers against Pākehā.
In the last four months alone, No Pride in Prisons has been in touch with two of our incarcerated trans sisters who have been raped in custody. Corrections hasn’t done a thing to end this sexual violence. It continues to place two people in a single cell overnight, putting those incarcerated people at extraordinary risk of sexual and other violence. In fact, it plans on exposing more prisoners to violence by expanding this practice of double-bunking. Why should we pretend that Corrections is anything but a racist and rape-facilitating arm of the state? We see through the pinkwashing, we acknowledge the suffering these institutions cause - do you?
Queers in Aotearoa have a legacy of insurgency. It is our responsibility to continue this struggle and perpetuate it - to destroy those things which are destroying the lives of the most marginalised members of our community. In Aotearoa, in 2016, the prison system is destructive. Police are destructive. We bear responsibilities, as those who carry on the work begun by those radical queers who came before us and who are with us still, not to be fooled. Violence wrapped in a rainbow flag is still violence. Racism covered in glitter is still racism.
Some say that Pride is just a celebration, that it’s supposed to celebrate how far ‘we’ have come. We ask, who is this ‘we’? When we celebrate, who are we leaving behind? When we invite these institutions to the party, we are siding with the forces who have wanted us in the closet, in a cell, or dead. How ever far we may have come, it has been in spite of police and prisons. These institutions always have been and always will be the enemies of queer liberation and universal liberation.
We look around and see soaring rates of homelessness and unemployment among young trans and queer people. We see daily acts of discrimination and violence against those who do not fit into a colonial gender model. We hear of rape and other violence done to incarcerated queer and non-queer people. This is not a time to celebrate. This is a time to demand action.
Our argument is simple: you can choose to side with corrections and the police or with the marginalised; with the oppressors or the oppressed; with the status quo or with change; with the institutions that hurt people or with the people they are hurting. The Auckland Pride Board has chosen its side, so what about you?
Over the past couple of weeks, No Pride in Prisons has placed increasing pressure on the Pride Board, and the Auckland queer community more generally, to ban uniformed police officers from the pride parade. As we now know, the Pride Board chose to disregard legitimate concerns with that institution being included. A common response to these concerns, from uncritical members of the community, has been: “What about the gay cops? Aren’t they a part of our community? Who are you to ban members of the community?”
To that, we ask: What is the queer community? The decision as to whether police can march in a pride parade is the kind of decision which determines what kind of community we are. Are we a community of marginalised peoples? Are we a community which cares about other marginalised peoples? Or, are we more concerned with consolidating the privileges of the most privileged within our ‘community’?
Cops have no place in any queer community made up of marginalised peoples. This is because it is the role of the police to uphold the privileges of the powerful, and maintain the marginalisation of the oppressed. How do they do this? As an institution, the New Zealand Police has admitted that it has an ‘unconscious bias’ against Māori. This is played out in the New Zealand Police apprehending and charging Māori at a rate that far surpasses that of Pākehā for the same crimes.
Police target and oppress other and overlapping marginalised peoples as well. You may have seen police harassing homeless people or people they suspect of being sex workers. No Pride in Prisons has received reports from trans women who have been violently assaulted by police and arrested for the supposed crime of “walking while trans”. The police’s targeting and criminalisation of certain groups is part of what makes and maintains their marginalisation. Community is required so that those on the margins can continue to survive. In other words, the police’s actions make the community necessary. As a result, cops are not and never will be part of a community of marginalised peoples.
You may be thinking: “not all cops are bad! I’m sure the vast majority of them aren’t racists!” We are sure that not all cops think that they are actively racist as individuals. All cops, however, work for an institution which has been proven time and time again to be racist and oppressive. Cops put on a uniform every day. That uniform is a symbol of the side that they have chosen, and that side engages in racist and oppressive violence on a mass scale. An individual cop may not think that their actions are discriminatory in any way (‘they are just doing their jobs!’), however, when you add up all the individual actions of individual cops, they amount to an institution that maintains racist colonial cisheteropatriarchal capitalism.
It is for this reason that it is offensive and complicitly oppressive to allow uniformed police to march in any pride parade. In doing so, the queer community becomes a group of historically marginalised peoples taking the side of an oppressive institution which targets marginalised peoples. Those ‘other’ marginalised peoples are also a part of our community: Māori queers, homeless queers, queer sex workers, only to name a few. In allowing the police to march with us, we are siding with an institution which oppresses our people.
“But you’re banning gay cops, who are part of the community!”. To this, we say: if banning representation of police and Corrections is to be understood as unfairly excluding members of our community, what of the queers suffering in custody right now? What of the trans women who have been beaten or raped by uniformed members of these organisations? What of the Māori who are targeted at every stage of the criminal justice system, which includes Māori queers? Is Pride not for them?
So, which side are you on? You can either stand with the marginalised, or with the oppressors; those subject to violence, or the violent. Gay cops, although they are gay, are still cops. If you stand with them, you’re standing with the oppressors.
Written by S Morgan, T Lamusse, and E Rākete
No Pride in Prisons is holding a “Fuck Pride” rally in protest to the inclusion of uniformed police and corrections officers in the 2016 pride parade. For more information, click here.
Violent Police Officers are ‘just doing their job’, and that’s why they should be banned from Pride
On Thursday 4th February 2016, tens of thousands of people from across Aotearoa marched, chanted, sang, rallied, and blockaded, putting their bodies on the line in opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA). It was, hands down, one of the biggest and most successful days of civil disobedience in this country for decades. Auckland was on lockdown. The people’s message was clear: TPPA? No way.
The protesters’ agenda for the day was also clear: non-violent civil disobedience in a display of unforgiving opposition to the trade deal. It seems that the New Zealand Police did not get the memo. As protesters have explained to media outlets, and on social media, the only violence they experienced that day was at the hands of the police.
That police violence included pulling protesters by their hair, throwing them on the ground, and beating them with batons and fists. It involved twisting arms and, in one instance, pushing a protester’s neck at such an angle that it seemed they were trying to break it. Police have also been pictured choking protesters with illegal holds.
While this violence is significant, it should in no way detract from the organised and impressive work of the protesters who unapologetically conveyed their message. That violence should also not be taken to be exceptional: police violence is commonplace at peaceful demonstrations. This instance wasn’t as bad as the extremely brutal crackdown on students protesting the 2012 budget, for example.
Those brave (or perhaps foolish) enough to read the comments on news websites, Facebook, and other social media about the TPPA protests were pummeled with misogynistic, racist, homophobic, and generally bigoted comments. Amongst these was one recurring comment that is particularly important to the Auckland queer community as it decides whether to include police in the 2016 Pride Parade. As many noted, the police were ‘just doing their job’.
The commenters are correct: this is the police doing their job. It is the job of the police to serve the state, no matter how corrupt or undemocratic the practices of that state. This protection is carried out with whatever aggression deemed necessary. On Thursday, it was the job of the police to deal violence to those protesting the absolute evasion of the democratic process in signing the TPPA. This is because it is the police’s job to unconditionally protect and serve the state.
The majority of police violence, however, does not occur when the people stand up in organised public demonstration. It occurs out of a lot of people’s sight. Police violence is ever-present and concentrated in brown and black communities, indigenous communities, and poor communities. For the people in these communities, police violence is never out of sight. It is no mistake or coincidence that these constant instances of violence go largely unreported. They reveal the true function of the police in a colonial, capitalist society: to repress the oppressed.
If we accept that the police’s role in this society is to maintain public order, then the maintenance of that order is inherently violent. In the current order of things, there is a small elite who benefit largely from an economic and social system that structurally privileges the few at the expense of the many. Actions against the dominant order, such as the demand for tino rangatiratanga, require a fundamental re-ordering of Aotearoa. As such, the maintenance of the current order is achieved partly through the incarceration of Māori at a rate almost five times greater than the colonisers.
If the world we live in is racist, misogynistic, transphobic, and homophobic, then those who are responsible for maintaining order in this system are also inherently racist, misogynistic, transphobic, homophobic, and undeniably violent. If Pride is supposed to be an event that challenges the entrenched cisheterormativity of everyday life, then the inclusion of the police is absolutely incompatible with Pride.
So, we have some questions for the Auckland Pride Board and the queer community more generally: is it over? Now that marriage ‘equality’ has been won, is that the end of queer politics? Do the lives and oppression of the poor, indigenous, and other people of colour not matter? Do you not care that there are members of the queer community who are disproportionately targeted by the police and incarcerated? Do you not care that it is the job of the police to sustain the system which oppresses the vast majority of us?
Ongoing issues of racism, transmisogyny, systemic inequality and poverty cannot be ignored by a community that was, not too long ago, feeling the full weight of police and societal violence. The fact that a rich gay couple can now have a ‘normal’ life in the gentrified suburb of Ponsonby doesn’t mean that the fight is over.
In fact, it is far from over. The only reason that the police are no longer systematically beating and jailing people for engaging in non-normative sexuality and gender practices is because thousands of people took to the streets and demanded the decriminalisation of sodomy. It is not because the police have ethically evolved. If you choose to include cops in the parade, you are siding with the oppressor.
