Posts Tagged ‘maori’
On selling revolutionary papers in Dunedin
Dunedin is a good place to do paper sales. This has always struck me as being quite interesting, considering the relatively low level of political activism and class struggle here compared to other centres. Whenever I hit the streets in my Karl Marx t-shirt (with the words “I’d rather have a revolution than a Labour government” written on it) and a stack of Sparks, I end up selling quite a few and getting a lot of positive responses.
I did a paper sale today with a comrade from Christchurch called Phil, who’s in town for a week or so. After a few initial probems (I always get messed up on Saturday thanks to the bus timetables being different to during the week… I have no excuses, I’m just bad with stuff like that!), we met up in the wee alleyway between George St and the New World shopping centre to sell our papers, hand out leaflets with the Workers Party election manifesto on them and generally preach the good news to people walking by.
No justice for victims of police brutality
On June 25th, a white jury in Tauranga found Police Sergeant Keith Parsons, Senior Constable Bruce Laing, Constable John Mills and Sergeant Erle Busby not guilty of brutally assaulting Rawiri Falwasser, a young Maori, in October 2006.
With police like these, who needs criminals?
Rewi Falwasser suffered a mental breakdown on Labour Day 2006, and was not in control of his own actions. This is accepted by the police. He was arrested after stealing a neighbours car and driving erratically, endangering both himself and other people on the road.
The police took him to Whakatane police station, and put him in a holding cell. When they later came to remove him from the cell and take him to be photographed, he refused to leave the cell. According to Crown Prosecutor Fletcher Pilditch, Mr Falwasser was “stressed, confused and agitated”.
Following Falwasser’s refusal to leave the cell, Sergeant Parsons repeatedly sprayed him in the face with pepper-spray, and when he put up his hands to protect himself from this attack Parsons lashed out at his head with a baton, striking him on the hand and the wrist and leaving him with a 6½-centimetre cut to his arm.
