Against this System, a Real Choice rises.

Despite the doomsayers on the Right, Left and in the Media, the city of Auckland was shut down by non violent direction action on February 4th 2016 as the TPPA was being signed. A strategy of tension, predicting "violence" and condemning radical groups such as Real Choice, did not deter a movement of 2,000 or so people from marching on Skycity and blockading the TPPA ceremony. The support given to the Blockade from a wide spectrum of activist groups shows there is now a vibrant, extra parliamentary, radical movement in Auckland searching for streetwise strategy and a stronger, anticapitalist politics. The canny and creative activist leaders of Real Choice are to be applauded for their superbly coordinated action on the day.

This is not the time to forget those who attacked this movement and wished it ill. Chris Trotter wrote-

"Real Choice’s stated intention of “shutting down the surrounding area and stopping entry by blocking some surrounding roads – effectively creating a TPPA free zone” completely ignores the fact that the signing of the TPPA, featuring the representatives of twelve nations, is already the subject of a major security operation. The idea that anyone is going to be permitted to block roads or stop entry is simply delusional."

He then went on to say-
"This will be done not because the group represents an actual threat to the signing ceremony, but simply because, through its actions, Real Choice has provided New Zealand’s security apparatus with a golden opportunity to “test drive” its new powers and resources. (Always assuming that Real Choice is not what’s known as a “false flag” operation: a group set up by the security services themselves - often to establish a case for government to give them even more powers and resources!)

Real or fake, Real Choice has delivered to John Key exactly what he was hoping for by staging the TPPA signing ceremony at Sky City. In doing so it has placed at jeopardy all of the work done by Jane Kelsey and Barry Coates at “It’s Our Future”. Entirely parasitic to the mass movement others have created, this tiny group has embarked on a course of action that threatens to undermine what tens-of-thousands of New Zealanders have researched, argued, organised and marched for."

Today, he quotes Mario Savio, radical 60s student leader-

" Tribute is also due to Real Choice. By their extraordinary actions throughout the morning and afternoon of 4 February they proved just how sterile theoretical debates about tactics and strategy can be. Somehow, in growing older, I had forgotten the words of the young student activist, Mario Savio, spoken 50 years ago on the steps of Sproull Hall at the University of California’s Berkeley campus. In my teens and twenties I had sworn by them, and, to my older self, they certainly bear repeating:

There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious—makes you so sick at heart—that you can’t take part. You can’t even passively take part. And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all."

No, Chris, not this time. You deliberately stoked the Strategy of Tension and lied about people you knew. The French would generously call you a Soixante huiter. Some in Auckland may now call you an 81er. Take your apology and go slither back under a microbrewery rock. And here's a quote for you when you next ponder infantilism on the left.

"It is not difficult to be a revolutionary when revolution has already broken out and is in spate, when all people are joining the revolution just because they are carried away, because it is the vogue, and sometimes even from careerist motives. It is far more difficult—and far more precious—to be a revolutionary when the conditions for direct, open, really mass and really revolutionary struggle do not yet exist."