Holidays: plotting, scheming, and drinking

Well, the school year's pretty much over. Only one mutual education class really got off the ground, and although it quickly dropped in membership, the theory talks have produced a very interesting model for political analysis and strategy. I'll be buffing it over the summer break and it'll be available for use by activist groups and students sometime next year.

On the subject of next year, I plan to start a group called the Progressive Weekly Retrospective, just because the name is amusing and because it's an absolutely vital link missing from the campus. I envision it as very much part of the mutual education project; in fact possibly the fundamental thing that should have been done first. Basically, the idea is to get together on a weekly basis and discuss campus events, things learned, things coming up from a progressive angle, and use that as a networking space to build interest in other groups and projects. Sort of like re:define but broader and with a different sort of mission.

The obvious question that arises is, will PWR conflict with re:define's meetings? The simple answer is yes: they both take time, and probably have a fair degree of overlap in their constituencies. PWR will also conflict with any other progressive groups on campus that meet weekly. To get around this, I am imagining attendance at those other groups as something that is just as valuable to PWR as attendance at actual PWR discussions. Ideally, I'd like to see PWR group discussions happen fortnightly, giving people space to attend other meetings in the off-weeks. Sort of one week for specific issues, one week for broad themes and networking.

Get in touch and let me know what you think. And if you want to sit on a desk on Clubs' Day with me.

Te Tau Mauri/Breath of Peace

I (and a bunch of other MutEd ppl) went to the launch of this documentary on Sunday. It is basically a collection of interviews with eight New Zealanders active on peace and anti-nuclear causes since World War 2. It's quite a good potted history of Aotearoan peace activism in the last few decades, giving a good picture of the issues and motives that propelled these activists. There are several repeat screenings this week at the Southern Ballet Theatre (right by the Cloisters cinema in the Arts Centre):

Thurs 11 Aug 1:00pm; Friday 1.00pm; Sat 6.00pm AND 8pm. .
Ph. 3660167

"Sedition" screenings

Apologies for the formatting. I'll deal with it later.

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“SEDITION: The Suppression of Dissent in World War II New Zealand”

A Documentary by Russell Campbell.



This is screening twice in Christchurch as part of the International Film Festival.



Both screenings will be at the Rialto Two Cinema.

Thursday August 11, 2.15 p.m.

Sunday August 14, 1 p.m.



Russell Campbell will be speaking at the Sunday screening.



Screenings in Auckland and Wellington sold out, and extra sessions had to be held. So book early and avoid disappointment



Synopsis



In 1916, at the height of World War I, Labour Party activist Peter

Fraser condemned military conscription, declaring: ‘It rests with the

people to say how long they will stand for it.’ He was imprisoned for

twelve months for sedition.



By 1940 he was Prime Minister. World War II had broken out, and Fraser

headed a government which introduced conscription as a means of

combatting the Nazi threat. But in the meantime many New Zealanders,

outraged and horrified by the carnage of the battlefields, had formed a

movement committed to rejecting war as a means of settling

international disputes. Government and pacifists were on a collision

course; and Communists, too, were actively opposed to New Zealand’s

involvement in the war.



Intent on assisting Britain in its hour of peril, the government would

brook no dissent. The state machine pressed down relentlessly on any

opposition to its war policy. Three batches of emergency regulations

were passed, each more draconian than the last. Dissenters were

stringently fined or imprisoned for speaking on street corners or

publishing anti-war statements.



When conscription was introduced, conscientious objectors went before

appeal boards. Some appeals were allowed, but many were not, and eight

hundred men found themselves incarcerated in detention camps for the

duration of the war. Many c.o.’s in the camps, especially men who had

been members of the Christian Pacifist Society, took their protest

further by refusing to co-operate with the authorities, and were

subjected to harsh penal regimes as a result. The men remained in the

camps or in prisons as the war escalated into a conflict which killed

six times as many as World War I, culminating in the massive firestorm

of Dresden and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.



“Sedition”, a feature documentary, is the story of those who stuck to

their passionate anti-war commitment through thick and thin. It’s the

story of Ormond Burton, decorated World War I soldier turned Methodist

minister and staunch pacifist, imprisoned four times during the war for

speaking up against the slaughter; of A.C. Barrington, leader with

Burton of the CPS, a former company secretary whose gift for

organisation and stubborn dedication to the pacifist cause made him a

formidable opponent of the government; of Connie Summers (Jones), a

young member of the CPS, given three months’ hard labour for attempting

to speak publicly against the war; of Chris Palmer and Merv Browne, who

escaped from their detention camp in 1944 and trekked to Wellington to

bring their call for peace to the notice of the New Zealand people.



Incorporating precious interview material (filmed in 1990) with many

World War II conscientious objectors, newsreel footage and radio

recordings from the period, and commentary by historians and political

scientists, “Sedition” is a sobering account of the lengths the state

went to in an effort to silence those who repudiated war as an

instrument of policy.



Director’s Statement



I have a great respect for outsiders and rebels, especially people who

stubbornly make a stand for progressive social change. My partner in

Vanguard Films, Alister Barry, had filmed many interviews with World

War II pacifists and conscientious objectors back in 1990, but had not

then been able to obtain funding to make the documentary he planned.

When the opportunity arose to revive the project, I seized it. In

watching the tapes and researching the history of the period, I became

increasingly impressed by the steadfast integrity of those who

repudiated warfare as a means of settling international disputes, and

increasingly disturbed by what I learnt of the New Zealand government’s

determination to stifle all dissent. There was a story here to tell. My

object in Sedition has been to pay tribute to those who had the courage

of their anti-war convictions and spent months or years in detention as

a result, while analysing the actions of a wartime government for whom

civil liberties counted for little. It is a story told by historians

and political scientists, but more importantly by those who were there

at the time and fought for what they believed in, and who recollect

their experiences vividly, with anger and sadness but also more than a

touch of self-deprecating humour.



Biography



Dr Russell Campbell is a senior lecturer in film at Victoria University

of Wellington and a documentary filmmaker with Vanguard Films. Among

his films as director or co-director are “Rebels in Retrospect” (about

the Progressive Youth Movement of the Vietnam War era), “Islands of the

Empire” (on New Zealand’s military relationship with the United States),

and “Wildcat” (the story of a struggle for democracy in the Timberworkers

Union). He has written widely about film, and his book “Marked Women:

Prostitutes and Prostitution in the Cinema” will be published by the

University of Wisconsin Press in December. He is also a script

consultant and screenwriter.

Screening: the war game

The War Game - a free screening followed by an open forum on nuclear issues in New Zealand.
4pm, Tuesday, August 9 (Nagasaki Day)
S5 Lecture theatre (Science block, Canterbury University)

Please print and distribute flier:

Project page: developing theory

With theories we explain why and how things occur as they do. We predict what is going to happen given the way things are. And we choose ways of acting to make things turn out in some way we desire.

Some theories are better for one or more of these purposes, worse for others. Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection, for example, explains very well, predicts barely at all and allows intervention of only a quite limited sort. Theories of the solar system, based on Newtonian gravity, not only explain but also allow us to prediction example where a planet will be on some day and even hour 50 years from now. Social theories generally explain, predict, and permit intervention, all to a degree, not with perfect confidence, but with enough to be much more useful than just winging it

--Michael Albert, "Radical Theory Instructional"

I am currently running regular workshops following the general structure of the Radical Theory Instructional. It's basically a course on developing theory from the ground up. The general goal is to raise all participants' ability (including mine) to develop and use theory to help them plan and act. The focus will be on developing theory for political/social activism but the skills involved are quite generally useful.

I'm no expert on these things, though I do have some experience I intend to share. The format will be a series of one- or two-hour meetings of a lecture followed by discussion and planning (the workshops will be planned through participant decisions).

Location: Room 1106 - Level 11, Central Library
Time: first meeting Wednesday, 3rd of August at 2 pm. Subsequent meetings to be arranged with interested parties.
Readings/other requirements: nothing required, but if you keep up with the notes it'll go much easier.

Website basics: communications links

It is now possible to receive updates from this site automatically. I've done this to make it easier for people to work it into whatever communications network they're in. Yes, I know none of the options below make it easy to take the content off the internet and put it somewhere more generally accessible. Printers are the only solution that comes immediately to mind.

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If you like email, you can receive new blog posts in your inbox by subscribing to the updates list: mutualeducation-update-subscribe@lists.riseup.net.

If you have a feed reader you can access our Atom feed at http://mutualeducation.blogspot.com/atom.xml. Alternatively, if you have Firefox or a similarly Atom-enabled browser, it can handle subscription for you, somehow.

If you run a website and would like to add Mutual Education headlines to your site, there are several coding options available:

• Javascript (for normal HTML and XML pages):
  <script language="JavaScript" src="http://ns2.bigbold.com/digest/95d080c29f0e/15f6a4a48be3.js"></script>


• PHP (for PHP pages):
  <?php
  include 'http://ns2.bigbold.com/digest/95d080c29f0e/15f6a4a48be3.html';
  ?>


• IFRAME code (creates an inline frame, whatever that is):
  <iframe src="http://ns2.bigbold.com/digest/95d080c29f0e/15f6a4a48be3.html"></iframe>

Thanks to RSS Digest for the excellent code-monkeying.

Project: links for webpage

The blogspot default links are to Google news and to instructions for changing them. I would like to change them to direct people to places where they can learn important information and strategies.

Please discuss pages you would like to us link to from the front page, using the comments link at the bottom of this post.

Website basics

At this stage, there has been one meeting to talk about the mutual education projects. I'm busy typing the minutes, but I should mention now that one thing that came out of it was the need for a robust communications network capable of reaching people who don't like email (or phone, or website etc). The more methods of communication you have, the more different sorts of people you can meet. So, this website is only a small part of an intended network of thinkers and doers. It was originally conceived as a bulletin-board, but obviously it provides a good archive too and more possibilities can always be explored.

To clarify what's going on, until the full minutes are posted, here's the email that got everyone together for the meeting.

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The basic idea is to break down the silence that exists between the university and the rest of the community, and within the academic body between different disciplines. There are so many very clever people doing very important work on poverty, war, oppression and exploitation and all the rest of it, and the only people who read their work are a small circle of people in their department. I would like to get a group of progressive students together, not just activists but certainly including them. The idea would be for us to educate each other on the progressive stuff we learn in our disciplines, and steadily widen the circle of people involved and teach in more and more varied ways. The first meeting is going to be introducing ourselves, our interests, and figuring out how this whole mutual education thing might work. If you let me know you're interested, I'll give you place and time details.

Getting a bit more speculative, I think that mutual education can work in as many different ways as people have learning and teaching styles. We can work through lectures, discussions, summary notes, whatever. Public lectures, study groups, pamphlets, articles and so on can all be built quite naturally out of the work we do in the first few months of activity. Anyone can call a meeting through the network, say what topic they're calling a meeting on, ideas on format etc.

Simply informing each other and the rest of society about the issues of the day is not the only thing this group will achieve. We will also steadily build up our own skills as educaters and thinkers. I intend this group to start off as slowly as it needs to and just constantly build, and every step of the way think how that step can contribute to the next.

Purely as a hypothetical example, one person might deliver a talk to the group about the relationship between third-world debt and the opening of economies. A few listeners decide to get together with her, do some research and get together again in a week for a study session. They pool their notes, do a few meetings' worth of polishing and voila, the mutual education network has a new improved version of the original talk, probably with links to the other peoples' interests blended in. It is probably of high enough quality for someone to base a public talk on.

And so on. Every step positions them for another (as do all the steps people are taking on other projects).

Perhaps get some lecturers interested. As I said, this is all speculative.

I'd also like to think that in the long run, it'll inform our more physical activism and give us some guidance in the serious task of winning this thing.