he Front Bench: Thos. Forde's Irish Bar

Thomas' bar is in behind a Malaysian restaurant in Anzac Ave. (just opposite the High Court and down a bit—in the building which used to be the Station Hotel) and you're unlikely to find it unless you're looking for it. Even if you are, it can be elusive.

It's worth the effort. Among the attractions: a growing library of political books, a pile of Irish Times, a good house ale (Voters'), a couple of tournament size chess sets set up permanently, a blazing fire in winter, a grand view of the Waitematā Harbour all year round.

Thomas is a genial host and a friend of many of his clients. He will drop almost everything to play a fierce game of blitz with whoever, with a sturdy clock to ensure that there's always a chance of losing a won game on time.

On the wall, there are a number of engravings and posters which reflect Thomas' passion for the history of both Aotearoa/New Zealand and Ireland. (He shakes his head in amazement at the patience of the Maori in the face of colonial injustice. )

The Front Bench seemed too good to last when I first found it a couple of years ago. It has lasted though and is quietly thriving as the regular stopping off place for a whole range of politicos...perhaps not the whole range, but a range which extends from Irish nationalists, through the Princess St. Branch of the Labour Party to the union left.

If you're after a game of relaxed chess, Friday is a good night since there are several enthusiasts who come in from Ranui , bringing their own sets and clock.

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Notes from Angela Davis' talk in Auckland

The following is a paraphrase of Angela's talk, based on notes scribbled in a notebook as I was listening. It is meant to supplement my previous post about the talk.

"The Prison Industrial Complex"

("When I talk to my students about remembering the sixties or seventies, they look at me as if I'm crazy. But I'm not talking about personal memory but rather collective, historical memory.)

The past few decades have seen the continuous strengthening of the "security state", whose ideology is based on the production of fear in the general population: fear of crime, fear of evil people who will invade our space.

Why don't we feel the same fear of narco-capitalism? of homophobia? of George Bush? of the redefinition of democracy by privatisation? of war? of disaster capitalism?

(Halliburtion... Cheyney's company... was installing themselves in New Orleans almost before I had darkly imagined that they would exploit the situation.)

of the profitability of the punishment process?

The overwhelming proportion of the prison population is made up of people of colour.
The prison system is the most effective affirmative action programme ever instituted by the the U.S. government.


(People glorify "diversity" as if it were a primal social goal. I have problems with the concept...We do after all have one of the most diverse governments in American history with the Bush cabinet. )


When I saw Condaleeza (Rice) , when I listened to her, I thought "That sounds like my life."

She imagined herself as an individual victory against racism. What a victory! She is even more bellicose than her boss.

The difference between her and me is the difference between an individual and a community struggler. My survival of capital charges was the victory of thousands, of millions of people.


When I compare our situation with the 60s, I think racism is even worse now; now it is a racism that hides behind the structures that dominate our society.

The prison system is the poisonous heart of that racist system. Because poor people cannot afford attorneys, the vast majority of black people in prison are there without having had even the ghost of a trial, much less a fair trial.

White people do more drugs and deal more drugs than coloured people, but who gets put in prison? [She backed that statement up with some refereneces.]

In a society transformed by globalisation and de-industrialisation, the prison system is the dumping ground for all those who do not have a role in the emerging status quo.

Prisons remain the ghost of slavery.

There is a constant escalation of the intensity of the prison system, with super-maximum security prisons being a foretaste of ever more grotesque caricatures of tough institutions.


Women are the fastest-growing section of the prison population.

This is an era when the social programmes, which have historically helped poor people, are being systematically disestablished, while the army and prisons remain.


One black soldier who joined the army to escape from the gang culture of L.A.:

"I joined Uncle Sam's gang to get out of the L.A. gangs."

Prison functions as the default solution for people considered at the "refuse of society".

[Angela got into a long riff about gender classification in the prison system which she had trouble getting out of.]


If it were not for the disenfranchisement of black males through the criminal justice system, Bush would never have won in Florida.


We should aim to abolish imprisonment as the dominant form of punishment.

The vast majority of prisoners do not need to be in prison. Many prisoners retain the potential for brilliance and love which is unrealised in the system.


Questions:

What about the kupapa (collaborators) who support the building of prisons on waahi tapu (sacred ground)?

Indeed. The "participators" will always be with us, in every community.


What about all the heroes of the struggles of the past? How have they survived?

Many didn't. The results of struggles are never the ones you think they'll be.

[A reference to the GDR? ]


The best way to abolish prisons is to crowd out the need for prisons by answering the human needs of the prisoners and they communities they live in.

We need to start using a new vocabulary: "decarceration", or "excarceration" for instance.


What about the really bad bastards?

Indeed.

Angela Davis in Auckland

There hadn't been much publicity, but forty-five minutes before start time, there were already forty or so people in the lobby of the Maidment Theatre. I decided to stay and make sure I got a good seat, instead of wandering off for a drink at the "Front Bench".

John M. showed several of his friends a slide show of photos from a Polynesian Panther demo in Auckland in 1972(?). There was a picture of Albert Wendt sitting in the Panthers' office with a poster of Angela Davis on the wall behind him. It was a pity that the slides could not be shown before the lecture.

Joe Te Rito welcomed Davis in Maori. Linda Smith from the Education Faculty at Auckland U gave a disappointing introduction, emphasizing only Davis' hair achievements and saying she looked "extremely young" in the posters. Davis winced as graciously as she could. I whispered to a friend that I had seldom heard a less sensitive welcome.


Smith might have said that Davis looked even better than thirty five years ago. She had the beauty of a life well lived, lithe and assured.

I had known nothing of her since the days of her fame, when she had survived imprisonment on several capital charges. I was unconsciously apprehensive that she might have retreated into born again, academic obscurantism, or perhaps some kind of battered acquiescence in the powers that should not be. My fears were unfounded.

She spoke eloquently of the similarities and contrasts between her life and Condaleeza Rice's. While Rice sees her life as the triumph of an individual over racism, Davis sees her own life as one linked to her community. There could be no individual salvation apart from that community.

The theme of her talk was the politically oppressive nature of the system of imprisonment in the U.S. and, by extension, in New Zealand. She argued that imprisonment was the reflection of institutional racism and that being black was as much a factor as being a criminal in determining one's chances of ending up behind bars.

It was a bracing change to hear such a radical and eloquent indictment of the use of prison as a response to crime. Prison was a kind of rubbish bin where those who had no role in the age of the "globalisation of capital" and "de-industrialisation" could be kept out of sight.

In New Zealand, few attack imprisonment and there is little to counter the fear and revenge based arguments of pro-prison pressure groups like the Sensible Sentencing Trust. There is little questioning of the appalling statistic that NZ is second only to the US in the rate of imprisonment.

Davis saluted Syd Jackson, one of the founders of Nga Tamatoa, the defining group of modern Maori radicalism. Syd was in the audience.


Davis spoke eloquently, reminding me of the tradition of speaking that she shared with so many black American leaders, including Martin Luther King, who worked in her home town, Birmingham, Alabama. She listened as she spoke and was able to keep in touch with her audience in spite of her jet lag and her unfamiliarity with Aotearoa/NZ.

French market at French Bay, Titirangi

We saw a flyer for the French market at Titirangi at the Eiffel cafe in Mt. Eden Rd. French Bay, one of the small bays on the Manukau Harbour below Titirangi seemed an unlikely place for a market but we decided to call in on the way to visit some friends.

It was almost mid-day when we arrived. A confident tricolour flying outside the yacht club reigned over the ducks bobbing about in the choppy bay, and the people making their way to the yacht club.

There were a number of food stalls... with long queues for the bread and pastry (mille feuilles and "cherie tarts"--not as many cherries as in their rivals at the Eiffel but cheaper) and for the "chicken basquaise" at an outside grill.

The Alliance Francaise were selling off some of their yellowing paperbacks, redolent of French curricula from the 60s... Camus, Sartre, De Beauvoir. I got talked into buying a Giono novel after confessing I had never read anything of his.

The ice cream seller was fairly busy, in spite of the weather, scooping out authentic looking chocolate cones.

As we left, we say a tall French woman walking up one of the drives on the bay. Y asked, "Is it called French Bay because of all the French people living here?" Maybe once, but not in the 50s and sixties when the painter Colin McCahon was living up the hill a bit,

I'm guessing the market is every third Sunday.

Bloomsday at the "Front Bench" in Anzac Avenue

Thomas Forde turned off the television once the final whistle had blown on the football, jumped up on the billiard table and announced the Bloomsday reading.

Joe Carolan read the chapter with the racist nationalist; Daphna read two bits from Molly's solliloquy, Lyn Lorkin and Hershell sang a Yiddish song. A few of the people in the pub were there for that, and those who were there for birthday party, or just for a beer, were happy enough to listen, even if there were bits that demanded Dublin ears.

It was a modest Bloomsday--compared with the performances that Dean Parker and the Jews Brothers had organised in the Dog's Bollix over the years--but the power and the humour of Joyce's words were not diminished.

Puhinui Reserve

This Reserve, within a few minutes of Auckland International Airport, is well worth a visit if you want to walk through some beautiful countryside, breath some good air, meet native birds, and enjoy vistas of the Manukau Harbour , in its blue magnificence.

You can find the reserve at the end of Prices Rd., which is off Puhinui Rd., one of the main routes from Manukau City out to Auckland Airport.

My wife and I went for a walk there today. The sky was as blue as the Manukau when we parked our car at the end of Prices Road and realised that we had found a reserve that we didn't know existed. A sign told us it was about 190 acres, which promised more than the word "reserve". We used the flash, almost vandal-proof loos and headed off through the gates. There was a road which we'd seen marked on the sign, but we took a footpath heading off to the left. It took us through some farm land, a slow, eel-friendly creek, and past patches of bush planted three years ago by volunteers. Swallows dive bombed us in a friendly way; piiwakawaka (fantails) followed us along past a patch of manuka, and a kootare (kingfisher) gazed at us as she gazed at everything else. Y said, "Look! There's a hawk!" but looked again and saw it was a small plane taking off from the airport.

There were some jumps for horses which looked like sculptures, and some sculptures which looked like jumps for horses: rustic and solid enough to kill anything that failed to make the height.

We passed a pedestrian version of a cattle stop and went from the farm land into an area that seemed more parklike. Off to the left, the bruised remants of Matukurua (McLaughlin's Mountain) and, between us and the mountain, a quarry, which may have once been its twin mountain, Matukureia (?) (Wiri Mountain. A bird, (a bittern?), rose from the bush beside the ghost of Matukureia.


The wind was biting, so we went no further than some wood sculptures reminiscent of a whare nui (Maori meeting house), a paataka (store for valuables). There were no words, of course.
The sign at the entrance had told us that Maaori had been living here for a thousand years. We met no people at all, anywhere during our walk.

"Maa wai raa e taurima, te marae i waho nei,
Maa te tika, maa te pono, me te aroha ee?"

/Who will speak here, on this marae, for right, truth, and for love too?"