Dr. Melani Anae and Prof. Stephen Winter have both fought for their respective causes with such fervour that one would expect they had always intended to work in those areas. However, Anae recounts arriving almost unintentionally at the boiler-room of equality activists, having gone to the first meeting without knowing what it was about. Her desire to help grew from there. Likewise, Winter was unaware of his future in state foster care reparations before he entered the field. Perhaps that is only natural; Anae and Winter chase justice, whether social or rectificatory, and the worst injustices have a habit of seeming difficult for the average citizen to fix. (After all, if every citizen thought they had the power to do so, they would have by now.) The two researchers shared a common serendipity that they had the tools to affect their problems, although those tools and problems are rather distinct.
Winter enumerated some of the means he uses to effect change, such as the privilege of education. Not everyone can get an audience with commissioners without having a prestigious qualification. He also credits persuasive skills and data analysis. In other words, the standard scholar skillset. Scholars were not the standard for Polynesian Panthers’ members, so Anae used other tactics. Winter referred to another ability: the ‘freedom to speak’, to bear the public eye. A humble archivist would put their job in jeopardy to speak up about their employer’s failings, but for Winter, the inverse is more true: his occupation is publicising information.
‘Freedom to speak’ underpins both speakers’ ways of bringing about change. Anae and the Polynesian Panthers did not use qualifications to ask for an audience; they demanded one. The main purpose of the group was to be recognised by those in power. Information and publicity were critical to the Polynesian Panthers, such as lawyer David Lange’s legal aid pamphlet combatting police misconduct. Provision of the document to the average passer-by on the street is just like inducting a disgruntled citizen into a party: both have the power to make change, but only with the proper information.
Lange’s reputation as a lawyer granted him and the Panthers power. His position of relative privilege granted him an audience that trusted his legal advice. Awareness is the trade commodity of a social movement, so it’s easy to see why the Polynesian Panthers devoted so much attention to being trustworthy. They adjusted the revolutionary handbook by replacing firearms with community service. Anae exudes pride in her role among the Panthers.
In a certain sense, Winter is David Lange without the booklets. There is no cohesive collective for survivors of state child abuse, and no bottom-up grassroots voices to affect policy in the area.
Winter’s recourse is to make ‘top-down’ contributions, persuading legal officials to reform the monetary redress system. I can’t argue one style is more useful than the other, because it seems like combining both yields a more effective message. It becomes difficult to justify actions when an independent investigator or a lawyer’s pamphlet tells you that you have no moral high ground, and unjustifiable practices end when the community demands better of their perpetrators.
Justification is a central component of campaigns. Winter points to examples of foreign generosity to prove that New Zealand should follow their lead, just as Anae’s party turned dawn raids on the politicians that sanctioned them in order to demonstrate their inhumanity. Justification is as important to maintain as trust, and Dr. Melani Anae shared a quote underlining how essential it is to act with love. If your activism is not on the side of love, the quote claims, you will have no justification even to yourself to support it.
Anae and Winter found themselves in a serendipitous confluence of the resources they needed to help improve New Zealand. They champion causes that have compassion and justice on their side, and are unafraid of being visible to the public. Anae’s speech implies that the first two are the important ones. After all, if one has a worthwhile cause, one should be prepared to brave hardship for it, including societal backlash. Anae differentiated causes like equality from those like climate change. Unlike equality, she expects no one is willing to put their lives on the line for climate change. There is a subtle irony to that expectation, but the distinction is still valuable. Causes thrive on trust, and trust relies on ardent advocates. Therefore, a movement needs people who will support it tooth and nail.
What is special about trust, just causes and love? What makes an ideal seem worth risking your prospects for? As resources go, trust and co. are rooted in emotional connections with people (rather than for instance military might or economic wealth). Compared with other causes, climate change has less emotional heft because less people are visibly suffering right now. Managing people is the crux of activism. It is obvious how pointless it would be to try to humble The Crown using military or economic pressure, with its army and mint. Popular support is the primary tool for changing policy from outside an establishment — and for changing it from within its ranks.
Taking a practical example, imagine you had strong convictions about the importance of thwarting climate change. There exist academics already who outline what path public policy should take, in effect rolling out the red carpet for the government to follow. What is missing is the clamour of screaming fans and flashing cameras. It would be prudent to publicise tangible, heart-wrenching effects of climate change to inspire people, in the same way all can empathise with survivors of child abuse, and like how the residents of Ponsonby saw with their own eyes the harm of racism in the 60s and 70s.
Important-looking mural edited from original image taken by Narenchalla, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (link)
