Progressive culture since 1954
Many of us immigrants have heard in the last few days that ‘this is not New Zealand.’ It’s meant to be a comforting sentiment. It’s understandable where it’s coming from. What can you possibly say about unspeakable horror, without needing to disavow it?
Even as the country was grieving with its Muslim community, a quiet process of revision began.
We are in shock and mourning, so I’ll keep this brief as I can.
On Friday we learned, in the most horrific way, that we live in a country where a man can walk down the street in broad daylight fully armed and livestream his massacre of Muslims at our place of worship.
It isn’t hard to imagine an Australian Green New Deal, or how it might help us transform moral force into political power. If it seems a long way off, consider this: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez isn’t much older than the students who are striking today.
Power is not a blunt instrument. It doesn’t get applied evenly, and it doesn’t operate uniformly, in accordance with clearly identifiable categories and factors that each person fits into. Power traces invisible and barely conscious networks of bias built around prior knowledge, unexamined or underexamined assumptions, desires and practices.