Leaving Home

I sit on this verandah come wind rain or shine...

I sleep looking at my books, a treasure for when the asteroid hits...

 The tree out my window moves through its moments of bud, flower, leaf and bareness...

But the world calls....and there are never-to-be-seen-again sights

In Spite of the Feathers of Peace - Defence Industry at OUR Stadium in Wellington

The paths that lead each of us into activism are uniquely rooted in personal and historical ground.

My two grandmothers suffered losses and ruptures through war; one grandfather was severely traumatised by being a medical officer in France in the first world war; the other was profoundly deaf for the rest of his life as a result of practising with guns to defend the shores of NZ.  My children’s four grandparents contain one who was an escaped prisoner of war in Italy in 1944 (who woke us with nightmares all of my childhood), one who was widowed by the death of her first husband in Cairo at the end of the second world war; one who survived Auschwitz and one who came through the ghetto in Budapest.

So, to find the stadium in the city to which I had returned with relief  after decades away in the brash north commandeered in October this year for the Defence Industry Association was horrifying to me.

 Even more so was what seemed like a media blackout about what was happening. 

So a group of us gathered at the Wellington Station in the days before the DIA gathering at Westpac Stadium to give out information. Most people we spoke to had not heard of the DIA gathering nor that Lockheed Martin was one of the sponsors.

We sang in the presence of the Gandhi statue in front of the station.   

Then on the day of the blockade, I joined a group of a few hundred people on the Fran Wilde concourse outside the Westpac Stadium, under the protection of the Feathers of Peace displayed above the pedestrian entrance.

My tiny part was to guard a staircase leading up from the car park – so I was in a position to see people running down to support the group on the street and later coming up shocked from the encounter with the police.

I had been at the Peace Picnic organized by “Grannies for Peace” in Auckland the previous year and had this year been worried ever since hearing that the DIA conference was to be held at Westpac Stadium.  Specifically, the way it is hidden from the public eye leading to a lack of citizen witnessing meant to me that the police might not have the kind of public profile that is needed to keep state power in check.  

And so it proved to be:  people who had been at both Auckland and Wellington noted the difference in police behaviour:  Liz Remmerswaal wrote on Facebook:

“We were shocked at the aggression shown by the police to the protesters, who were I think pretty much carrying out the instructions re passive resistance. I found out later that around a dozen protesters were injured, maybe more. This was such a contrast to the Auckland police at the blockade last year, who were mostly very disciplined, although the venue was also very different.
What also shocked me was how dangerous it all was, taking place on two lanes of the quay, and quickly spilling over onto the other two lanes, which hadn’t been blocked off. In fact, the police showed no interest in protecting the people or even enabling the traffic to get past, or to stop people actually falling or being pushed into oncoming traffic. It was very lucky that no-one was hurt or killed and I was greatly disappointed in the lack of police action in that regard. Their focus was on getting the delegates into the venue at any cost, not on public safety.”

I had read online that the Westpac Stadium Trust has an AGM usually in October,  that is open to the public.  I put the notice of this meeting online and asked colleagues but no one could attend: so in the end I decided to go by myself. 

I drove up the ramp (where the week before the brave mountaineers had strung rope across to stop vehicle access and had themselves balanced on the end of the rope on lamp posts so that if the rope was cut it, it would have sent them plummeting to the road below).  A genial security man in mirrored sunglasses ambled out to tell me that I could not park up there.  When I told him I had come to the AGM as a member of the public, he rang through to someone inside -  but the person he spoke to said “tell her to go away it’s an hour too early.” 

So I parked at the station (where we had had a Peace Picnic in the rain the week before and boiled the thermette under the pohutukawa trees).  I rang the Stadium reception and the woman I asked about parking for members of the public coming to the AGM said “Oh I’ll have to ask.”  Then she told me, yes to drive up the ramp and park on the Inner Plaza - where the same man in sunglasses beckoned me in and this time welcomed me! 

 Inside there were two pages where we the public had to register but at that point I was the only name.  I was taken up two escalators to a Level Three Meeting Room and waited… when two men arrived I asked one if he was chairing the meeting and asked to put an item of General Business on the agenda.  He said yes and asked me what it concerned and I said the Defence Industry Association Conference.

Here is a painting my sister Angela  Day did some years ago of Rugby  players on a field at dawn.

About 20 people arrived in dribs and drabs (but all in suits except for the three other women who were spic and span too.  I learnt more about the Stadium than I had ever dreamt of (including how they had grown the new turf somewhere else and replaced it last December.) 

When it was my turn I spoke of how my Dad loved rugby  and when he was in hospital and  thought he might die, he asked me to bring a paper and pen next time I came to see him so I could write down all the rugby teams he’d played for.  As little kids my sister and I would be taken to watch his practices for Otahuhu – it would be dark:  they played with a white ball and they were like dragons with their steamy breath way down on the field bellowing out to one another with incomprehensible calls. 

I spoke too of other family members – my mum’s love of cricket and watching days of TV cricket from this stadium; my kids at the sevens; my grandchildren going to their first big rock concert here.  My love of seeing the Feathers of Peace on the entrance way… and then how shocked I was about seeing what had happened last week.  I asked the trustees to please think about the decisions that had been made – I wanted to know if they had known about the DIA conference? The chair said that they actually had discussed it and decided as it was mainly procurement that they would go ahead with it.  I requested that they don’t have the conference back – let them find their own premises…'

I referred to NZ’s lamentable record on overseas aid – which after all is the way to create the more just world which is the ultimate defence against conflict.  We currently give 0.25% of GNI where the aim since the 1970s has been for countries to give 0.7% - we are a shameful eighth from the bottom in the OECD countries.  Then too the most recent National government gave 3% of its budget to defence.  What an unpleasant contrast of priorities.

Anyway – I spoke for four minutes or so; emphasizing the request that WE the citizens not be asked to valorize or glamorize defence by having to host them in our stadium – a kind of temple!  They listened; a couple smiled and nodded.  The CEO came up afterwards and thanked me.  I packed up my stuff slowly (so that someone would have time to come up and talk if they wanted to but no one did so off I set to my friends’ place, leaving the other meeting attendees having the refreshments!!) 

Gandhi reckoned non violence is believing that people can change.  

I reckon it’s worth writing to the Trustees of the Westpac Stadium – they hold it in trust for US, the citizens of Wellington and Wellington Region.  

The address of the Trust is:

Wellington Regional Stadium Trust                  Email:   info@westpacstadium.co.nz

PO Box 2080
Wellington 6140
New Zealand

You can find a feedback form to tell the trust what YOU think here

https://www.westpacstadium.co.nz/about-us/contact-us/