KEY POINTS:
We were young, we were reckless, arrogant, silly, headstrong and we were right. I regret nothing!
Thus spoke Abbie Hoffman recalling the 1960s, 20 years after he was the radical face of protests in the United States against the Vietnam War and other causes du jour.
Hoffman -
like Tame Iti - deliberately used theatrical tactics to publicise the causes that united the '60s generation which in New Zealand included student radical leaders such as Helen Clark.
One such tactic was a mass demonstration in which 50,000 people tried to use psychic energy to levitate the Pentagon until it turned orange and began to vibrate, at which time the Vietnam War would end.
It was a nonsense, of course, but comic. But what wasn't so funny was Hoffman's arrest and trial for conspiracy and inciting to riot as part of the Chicago Seven after violent confrontations with police during the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
Clark and her co-protesters like Phil Goff (who like her went on to build a political career) might care to pay a trip down memory lane as they consider where to go from here after this truly frightening week.
This is the first time New Zealanders have been rounded up by police citing the Terrorism Suppression Act.
It will either prove to be justifiable in the interests of public safety, or be the basis for a debate on just how close we are to an Orwellian society.
Clark - long tresses flowing - was an inspirational sight to the group of Victoria University students to which I belonged who travelled to Auckland for Jumping Sundays weekends and the liberation of Albert Park in 1969.
We, like Clark and Goff, later lost our virginity as protesters when police baton- charged thousands of us outside the Intercontinental Hotel in January 1970 as we protested against US Vice-President Spiro Agnew's visit and the Vietnam War.
The photos of Clark and Goff at the front of the protest marches still endure. But the spirit does not.
Clark's labelling of Maori protesters against the Foreshore and Seabed Act as "haters and wreckers" may well have played a part in the radicalism of today's Maori activists in much the same way as former Prime Minister Sir Robert Muldoon's clampdown on the 1981 Springbok Tour protests radicalised legions of New Zealanders.
Those words, distressingly reminiscent of her predecessor's reactionary tones, will have given added weight to Iti's cause.
They certainly helped spawn the Maori Party, which could scoop up all the Maori seats next year if the police suggestions of terrorist behaviour turn out to be alarmist.
Clark may well be reflecting on this as Parliament gets ready for the second reading of the Terrorism Suppression Amendment Bill which will markedly increase her own powers to review for just how long any particular group may retain its terrorist designation.
This power is currently reserved for the courts will concentrate presidential-style powers in the Prime Minister.
We've heard plenty this week about how "one person's freedom fighter is another person's terrorist". It's worth recalling how Muldoon labelled Nelson Mandela a terrorist. And what the upshot will be if Parliament does remove from the 2002 act, a qualification that allowed New Zealanders to support a liberation movement - even if that movement engaged in some terrorist acts - provided such support was used for "the purpose of advocating democratic government or the protection of human rights".
It's something I have been mulling over as I recall my own protesting past. In late 1969, I took over the lease of a student house in Vivian St in Wellington where the bottom floor was already sublet to a socialist bookshop. I've no idea how many of the bookshop's visitors went on to protest, for instance, against US bases in New Zealand.
I gave up the lease after nine months - it was just when Marxist-Leninist doctrine provided plenty of reasons for not helping landlords. But I'm sure that among those who seemed to be in permanent residence would be some who subsequently went on to sabotage the access road to the Mt John US military installation in 1972.
New Zealand did not have anti-terrorism laws then. But in today's climate, the terrorism suppression legislation may well have been used against the Mt John protesters with police citing the proposed general offence of committing a terrorist act to charge offenders.
Those protesters could have faced the prospect of being designated as a terrorist organisation.
The point of this vignette is that under the draconian expansion of the Terrorism Suppression Act now in front of Parliament, I could also have been rounded up for harbouring terrorists - even if I didn't know they were. Like Clark, I've also become more reactionary with the passage of time.
But every once in a while it makes sense to go back to our roots to get a different perspective.
