Trowe, the Socialist Workers candidate for U.S. vice president, and Jacob Perasso, the SWP candidate for U.S. Senate in New York, were visiting New Zealand to meet with working-class militants, Maori rights fighters, and others. They were accompanied by members of the Communist League here.

Hosting the marae meeting were local Maori leaders and elders who are fighting for justice for Steven Wallace, a young Maori who was shot and killed by a cop here on April 30. A recent police report declared the cop had acted lawfully and would not face charges.

The meeting began with formal welcoming speeches in the Maori language. "We join with you in your stand for the underprivileged," was the greeting she received.

Trowe expressed her campaign's full support for the Steven Wallace fight and for the struggle by Maori for land and language rights, saying that working people in the United States can learn and draw inspiration from them.

She linked these struggles to the growing resistance by working people internationally. These struggles provide growing opportunities to build a revolutionary working-class movement that eventually will be capable of overturning capitalist rule and establishing governments of workers and farmers.

Trowe pointed to some of the brutal conditions--speed-up of the production line in meatpacking plants, unsafe conditions in coal mines, attacks on immigrant workers--that have led many workers in the United States to organize through their unions to defend their rights. The conditions breeding this rebelliousness are generated by capitalism itself.

"We need to put an end to the capitalist system, where everything is treated as a commodity--food, land, human relations, whatever," she explained.

The candidate brought greetings on behalf of James Harris, her running mate for president of the United States. Harris was among those attending the August 26 march on Washington against police brutality, and Trowe made a special presentation to her hosts of a T-shirt produced for this demonstration.

Discussion then ranged back and forth. A number of people recounted experiences that added to the political picture Trowe had presented. Some asked her questions about the United States, particularly about the fight against racist discrimination. Jacob Perasso and Michael Tucker, a leader of the Communist League, spoke for the visitors also. In traditional fashion on a marae, a song was sung after each speech.

One of the hosts, Peter Moeahu, explained that speedup of the line at work was not a major issue they faced today--a large meat works had been the major employer in this town of 6,000, but had closed in 1997. "Here they sped up the line so much the plant moved," he said. Now half the working-age population is unemployed, with Maori being a high percentage of the jobless.  
 
Fight against cop violence
Moeahu pointed to the police harassment of young people. He related a recent incident of two young women who were arbitrarily handcuffed and roughed up by cops in a nearby city.

Much of the discussion centered on the current stage of the fight to bring to trial the cop who killed Steven Wallace. Another speaker, Tom Hunt, pointed to the importance of the meeting in linking this fight to others internationally and breaking down isolation.

Hunt explained the strength they had when they stood firm, giving as an example the fact that the killer cop, despite officially being declared innocent, has been unable to return to Waitara to live because a significant part of the community has made it clear it is unacceptable. He said they would regard it as a provocation if the cop tried to come back.

After the meeting, discussion continued over a delicious lunch, with stories swapped of union experiences and how to take struggles forward. One retired unionist said she was pleased that union people were supporting justice for Steven Wallace.

The newspaper for the region, The Daily News, came to the marae at the invitation of the hosts to interview Trowe and Perasso. The journalist asked why they had come to a country on the other side of the world instead of staying in the United States to campaign.

The article in the next day's issue reported: " 'We are running a very serious campaign,' Ms. Trowe replied. 'It doesn't recognize any boundaries. We feel like we have won already, in the sense that we meet the kind of folks that these brothers and sisters [those at the marae] represent.'" Quoting Perasso, the article concluded, "We get the same response wherever we go--the United States, Australia, and here."

Tamawaru Hunt and Tom Hunt then took the visitors on a tour of the area, relating the history of the battles between Maori and British colonizers in the mid-19th century, and the fight since then to regain the land stolen. "The whole town of Waitara is built on the theft of our land, which has been perpetuated ever since through racism," Tom Hunt explained.  
 
Racist anticrime campaign
One subject discussed was the current campaign being waged by ruling-class politicians and officials, and sensationalized in the bourgeois media, that presents Maori as naturally more violent and more "criminal," and claims they abuse their children more than others in the population.

Those present rejected these assertions. It was noted how statistics on violence were selectively highlighted to justify the "anticrime" campaign and the disproportionate victimization of Maori by the government. One person observed that laws against violence were enforced in a racist way, and that cops are a major source of violence against the oppressed.

Tom Hunt answered the myth that Maori are naturally violent either from their supposed genetic makeup or cultural upbringing. Prior to colonization Maori did not have standing armies. They tended crops and carried out other tasks as a community at the required times. Warfare between Maori was subordinate to this. The number of wars fought among Maori is fewer than those that successive New Zealand governments have committed troops for.

Some remarked that today violence by working people against each other, youth suicide, and drug abuse were real social questions.

Trowe explained how capitalism itself promotes dog-eat-dog values, as the bosses and their government seek to divide and atomize working people in order to weaken our capacity to struggle. She pointed out how reflections of capitalist alienation lessen as working people join in solidarity with each other against different manifestations of the capitalist system.

"We raise the level of social relations among us through struggle," she said.

The brutality inherent in capitalism cannot be legislated away; a society based on solidarity and human dignity can only be built by making a revolution that overthrows capitalist property relations.

Similarly, the discussion also took up how in human history racism is a relatively recent phenomenon, rooted in the rise of capitalism and the development of chattel slavery, colonialism, and imperialism, and how ending racism was intertwined with overthrowing capitalism.

The socialist candidates addressed a class of 40 at a polytechnic (college) in Waitara the next day. In Auckland, Trowe and Perasso addressed a meeting hosted by the Militant Labor Forum. An interview with the two socialists appeared in the New Zealand Herald, the daily paper in Auckland.

Janet Roth is a garment worker in Auckland, New Zealand.  
 
 
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