In the midst of a second convoy protest, Herald senior journalist John Weekes looks at the humanity and depravity, lowlights and highlights of the original event and its violent end.
It was Day 23
when he lumbered around a few seconds' sprinting distance from police outside Parliament and reached for a plastic bottle. He launched it at the cops but his aim was off and you could see the trajectory likely end point, and that point was an oblivious elderly woman.
The wind and spin and vessel's emptiness made it soar then fall in strange ways before it collided with her head. She was a protester too, and the act appalled a section of the mob and they seemed about to turn on the bottle-thrower.
A policeman must have noticed the internal dissent and made a break, inspiring his colleagues to also charge, setting off an animalistic rush in the crowd as instinct or imprinted fear sent us on a flight to the steps that led to Bowen St.
One or two people wary of getting caught in a concrete stampede leaped from the steps over a railing into bushes nearby. A teenager who must have just walked off the street was posturing. "Who's got petrol?" he asked.
Inside Parliament
the formal wear and face masks and decorum continued.
Outside Parliament was a carnival with tents where live music and inflammatory speeches jostled with peace signs and the scrawlings of imported fringe theories.
Online, people fumed about Government overreach and collusion between regimes and enemies of freedom. You'd think conspiracies were an easy thing to pull off, a commonplace occurrence. Maybe nobody had heard of Ockham's razor.
Offline, everybody was still online or waiting to get online, with phones out for every low-tech pitched battle and drawling stare-off between cops and protesters.
Online, Donna, age 36, wrote in her Tinder bio: "Nothing sexier than a maskless man". Maybe she found love in one of the tents.
Offline and online at the same time, the tropes and droning speeches were repetitive, with appropriated World War II and Churchillian rhetoric about never giving up and never giving an inch to Nazis and never forgetting that if you don't stand up for what's right today then the nefarious forces will come for you tomorrow, or some other time, and you have to make a stand and you have to make it now.
The 1pm press conferences had been repetitive too, just as almost every day of the earlier Delta lockdown had been. The only interesting thing in the stale late-stage pandemic was Omicron and its looming displacement of Delta and some people wondered how that might displace the rules and the compulsory masks and vaccine mandates.
One side yelled at the other but nobody was really talking and each side thought the other side was crazy. It was hard to tell which side was more paranoid.
It was Court Day
because a man in a car had allegedly driven at police and been arrested. He appeared on a murky video screen in the courtroom. His lawyer had a lot to say about why his client should get bail.
It turned out the driver was homeless. For some, the camp must've been a transcendent experience, part of something significant and defiant. The driver sounded like a terrorist a few hours earlier but now he just seemed like a sad, desperate, broken old man.
In the convoy camp, some were dreamers, meditating by a chalk-covered wall scrawled with messages of peace and love. Others were schemers, talking of coups or revolutions, happy to use the masses to advance their plans and funnel money into bank accounts. Some were believers. They believed the pandemic was a scam, or mandates a globalist plot and maybe believed as sincerely as some 16th Century Mesoamericans believed Hernan Cortes was the reincarnation of feathered serpent-deity Quetzalcoatl.
One sign strung between trees in the occupation's halcyon days had two red hearts on a white background with black lettering saying: "Thank you for keeping out Delta. Omicron is the game changer. End mandates now."
It was Forklift Day
and a long line formed for a Hare Krishna stall where the smell of cooking drifted from multiple tents. Some people sang Tutira Mai Nga Iwi and a man walked into the gardens carrying a wooden cross much bigger than him. Some signs and stickers around the site emphasised harmony and unity, such as "Vax Unvax standing together".
Others referred to the Prime Minister as "Pfizer's salesperson of the year" and said "Make Ardern Go Away". One SUV had signs referencing the Three Waters reforms and Pike River Mine. A common motif in stickers was "single source of truth", parodying a March 2020 statement from the Prime Minister.
A monk in long black robes sat on steps in front of the Beehive with a pair of nuns. He reckoned the occupation would stay until Ardern was removed from office. He distrusted newspapers but trusted Facebook and Telegram and thought mandates were not only unfair and inhumane, but a globalist distraction from the Government's real problems, which somehow included First Man Clarke Gayford.
There was an eschatological feel to the monk's words. He spoke of high stakes and the last chance to stop tyranny.
Near the Cenotaph was Nicole, who drove from a far-off city with her son. She opposed mandates and the vaccination of children and had safety concerns about the vaccine for kids. She was vaccinated but her partner was not and the couple just agreed to disagree.
Nicole said the Government was competent in 2020 but then lost its way. She said some unvaccinated kids were excluded from events and that was wrong. Nicole was sweet and calm and didn't want to give her full name because she worried her parents would disapprove of the jaunt.
It was less calm on the Bowen St tarmac where police formed two lines to escort a forklift truck and what must've been the bravest forklift driver on Earth that day. The machine's precision movements carried concrete blocks and the reputation of the State and one misstep and who knows how stupid the cops would look. The blocks were on pallets so the forklift lifted them before police snapped up the pallets. The blocks were dropped onto the asphalt, making it harder for protesters to move them.
"Love and peace," the protesters chanted.
Dogs wandered about. Kids ran around. Move three blocks away and none of this was visible or audible. It felt like derealisation, when something so strange happens you step back and just ask: why?
One woman in the protest approached a man near the Cenotaph and asked: "Have you seen a 12-year-old boy?"
I was leaning against a fence trying to look generic and impartial in a sea of screaming and staring people, wondering Why? when a guy from Blenheim or Nelson or Palmerston North or somewhere turned up in turmoil. He'd come to visit the convoy and said he hated mandates, but also disliked the protesters who were a hodgepodge of hippies and weirdos. But he said the mandates seemed disproportionate or at least divisive. But maybe he also just didn't like the idea of camping. For a while, he spoke like a normal person. But then, like the monk, he insisted on talking about Gayford.
Across the barricade, police faced protesters and onlookers watched from outside the Supreme Court as the forklift slowly manoeuvred. The chanting continued.
"Love and peace, love and peace, love and..."
It was Fireworks Day
when dozens of police lined up on Bowen St with dozens more people looking on as a stand-off ensued over a white station wagon in the road. Another brief standoff on Bowen St, then another at the Cenotaph. A bus driver heading to Karori with bemused passengers waited to get through. A protester ignited a firework after police must've removed a protester from a car. Other protesters furious at Firework Man's recklessness seemed to hand him over to police.
"Please clear the road, and police will have no reason to advance," a protester with a loudspeaker said. "There is no confrontation unless we make a confrontation."
Walking up Bowen St and fired up, a young dark-haired man with a beer bottle in his hand started posturing and yelling "Warriors" but a protester berated him.
"Are you here to mess it up for us all?"
Beer Bottle Man was chastened. It was too soon for that kind of carry-on and he was clearly an interloper, an agitator.
It was Day 23 again
and long before sunrise people sat on camping chairs around the protest perimeter. If anyone else was awake to read the news, it could be reported that nothing was happening.
It seemed rumours of a big police operation might be a ruse, counter-misinformation or disinformation about disinformation, or something equally devious. By about 5.30am, it seemed nothing was going to happen. But it did start happening soon after and at first it looked like just another concrete block movement episode, another standoff near the Cenotaph as cops escorted a forklift. And this time, a helicopter circled above.
Ahead of the forklift, dozens of police jogged to the intersection of Bunny and Featherston Sts.
"All we want is our lives back, our normal lives back," a woman in the crowd said. She yelled about the World Economic Forum and told police: "Your children will live with your decisions".
It was still dark when about 80 police moved up Mulgrave St towards Aitken St. Soon another three or four dozen joined them as a man on the pavement kept yelling: "Shame on you, shame on you".
The shaming had no impact. It wasn't 6.30am yet when police moved down Aitken St, crossing the line and its concrete barriers.
Police played a message on loudspeaker to "occupiers of Aitken St". It sounded like Police Commissioner Andrew Coster's voice. Two officers outside the National Library held some kind of megaphone, saying anybody getting in the way could face arrest. Soon police took the Molesworth-Aitken-Hill St intersection and the National Library. It took a few seconds to realise cops had sliced multiple protest groups off from each other.
An adult human dressed in a yeti onesie, something grey and shaggy, clasped their hands in front of the new police line.
"Parliament grounds are closed," another message blared from Parliament House. Outside the Cathedral of St Paul tents were down and everyone was trespassed. A policeman built like an Abrams tank pushed you back if you tried getting through and he treated every non-cop with equal suspicion. The bishop at the Cathedral said with some apology that everybody had to leave.
Further up, a truck was parked across the road, sprawled indecently with its front wheels on the pavement. But by 8.49am the defiance and permanence of the camp felt shattered. Again with the World War motifs, somebody played the The Last Post on loudspeakers.
Near the bus station a block away a man broke up a pallet to fuel a fire in a brazier. On Kate Sheppard Pl opposite a pub, tiny tents were packed on a piece of earth near a pile of black rubbish bags. It must have been the least desirable real estate in the whole occupation site.
Some protesters on Molesworth St winced after getting pepper-sprayed. Some were on the ground, heads up at a 45-degree angle as they were tended to. A guy who looked like Iggy Pop held a camera on a stick and spun around saying this was what the mainstream media never showed you.
In the camp, a few people coughed and others sat on chairs looking worn-out. At the Hare Krishna stall, a woman said the cook fell ill and fainted. People at a medical treatment unit were packing up and putting goods into a shopping trolley. "Stay there, boys," a man pushing a trolley away said to two small children opposite the Backbencher pub.
Some people weren't ready to give up. At the barrier near the Cenotaph, a man in an orange high-vis vest yelled into a road cone the same colour and berated cops for using excessive force.
"This is not okay. This is disgraceful behaviour by our New Zealand Police Force."
A man on a pushbike gave him the thumbs-up and a woman yelled "bullshit".
It was still Day 23
when police moved onto Parliament's big lawn keen to keep the momentum and build on the morning's breakthrough.
"What would people think if we'd just stopped after the morning?" one of the police bosses said later.
The best vantage point outside was packed, where dozens of people stood on a wall overlooking the lawn. The crowd and the mob co-existed and their relationship and numbers kept changing as police advanced and people decided how to react and whether to be with the crowd, with the mob, or leave. One old man raised his arms and shook his head when the first tent went up in flames. He wanted no part of it. A few metres away a young woman begged for a lighter.
"Get out, it's all on fire," one protester yelled.
Some protesters threw chairs and chunks of wood at police. Explosions broke out and the air stank. Closest to Parliament's main entrance, a few young men swaggered across the forecourt. The guy with the plastic bottle did his thing that set off the cops and the race for the steps.
A young guy darted his head about, reached under the steps and was astonished to find what looked like a wooden jewellery box, the kind your grandmother might've had. He opened it and flipped it round but nothing fell out. Its only value was as a single-use missile.
Near the tents, fire spread to a children's slide and a big tree. The smoke moved west, across the Seddon statue and towards the House. The police advance sometimes halted under a barrage but each time they went forwards again, no batons but with riot shields. The advance pushed the crowd towards the streets lower down.
It was the Day of The Fence
and by now a cannabis seedling planted in the occupation had been found and taken away. The steps and walls were clean. It seemed incredible how many people were crammed into this place a few weeks earlier. The chalk art was gone and new grass grew on the fenced-off lawn.
The monk and Nicole and droning speakers and rioting youths and drunk Warriors guy were gone. Hundreds of people had died from or with Covid, vaccine passes were dumped, remaining mandates were contested in court, and other restrictions were increasingly dismantled.
You could say the Government won. You could say the protesters won. You could say Day 23 was sad and ugly and nobody won. Or you could say nobody died on Day 23 and everybody won.
It seemed like the only thing left to think about was the new grass and when people might be able to walk over there again. The tree set on fire in the riot still stood.