From passive citizen to active protester

By CATHRIN SCHAER

What makes a mild-mannered businessman leave his desk and start a protest movement to stop a highway being built? And what makes a normally calm housewife contemplate lying in the runway of a crop-dusting plane?

Most of us probably hear something every day that makes us angry, upset or annoyed at life's injustices. But few of us start organising public meetings, orchestrating letter-writing campaigns or trying to come up with a good acronym for a protest group.

So what was it that tipped the good citizens behind some of Auckland's most high- profile civic campaigns off their couches and on to the streets?

Mostly it seems to start with something personal - combined with the belief that you can make a difference.

"It was happening right on my back doorstep, right at the bottom of my street," says Helen Wiseman-Dare, the woman behind West Aucklanders Against Aerial Spraying, or Wasp. "Yes, like the insect," says a laughing Wiseman-Dare, who wears yellow and black to protest meetings.

Wasp is opposed to the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry's aerial spraying of the pesticide, Btk, over residential areas in an attempt to eradicate the painted apple moth. This insect invader threatens to devastate our forestry and horticulture.

But it wasn't the spraying that got Wiseman-Dare off her couch eight years ago. It was a council plan to cut down the trees along a main road in Waterview, where she lived.

"I got really angry about it," recalls the woman who used to go on anti-nuclear marches as a student. "I used to love those trees because I walked to work that way." After protesting to the council to no avail, Wiseman-Dare and others started a 24-hour vigil around the trees, eventually forming a human shield against the chainsaws.

"A lot of the trees were cut down," she says regretfully. "But we did save a few. And I guess that's what really started me off on this activist thing. After that I got involved in other things."

Such as saving other endangered green areas, standing in the local body election and joining the Green Party.

"Sometimes I think people feel powerless when they hear about these things. But having been part of these other movements, I know you can have an effect on what happens - and that's really motivating. I think [the spraying] is a gross violation of people's human rights."

For Hana Blackmore, it started with a sore eye. She was living in East Auckland when MAF started spraying Btk to eradicate the white tussock moth six years ago.

When MAF held a meeting to tell the community about aerial spraying it was already doing, she went along.

"I was interested but I thought I hadn't really been affected. The house was closed up, the family were away," she explains. "At this meeting there was a doctor. She was telling us there was nothing wrong with this spray. And then she said, 'Oh, there's just the one recorded effect. If you get splashed directly it can cause a corneal ulcer'."

She was referring to the case of one farmer who splashed his eye directly with the pesticide and immediately developed a corneal ulcer. It was treated with antibiotics.

Guess what? Blackmore had just had a corneal ulcer which she now believed was linked to Btk.

"I realised I'd probably been covered by the stuff when I'd dashed across my deck one morning. By the same evening my eye was really sore, but because I wear contacts I didn't make the connection. I just went to my optometrist."

She offered her medical records and her specialist's phone number to the doctor there but to this day, Blackmore says "they never followed it up. I was horrified. People were complaining of headaches and nausea but when they do the statistics they only look at admissions to hospital. I felt this wasn't right".

Blackmore then went to another public meeting where she heard more stories of illness and fear.

"I don't think you make a conscious decision to, you know, right this wrong," Blackmore says. "At the meeting they said they were going to set up a committee and I asked if there was anything I could do to help.

"I suppose I have been doing this kind of thing all my life," she says.

Blackmore's father was a pacifist and one of the founding members of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in Britain. As a child she would go on marches. That left the Green Party member with an interest in environmental issues and local politics.

"You have to ask yourself whether you're leaving the Earth in a better state than when you arrived?"

As a member of Stop - the Society Targeting Overuse of Pesticides - she is part of the community advisory group consulting with MAF on the new round of spraying for the painted apple moth in West Auckland.

"You know how kids sometimes wail, 'It's not fair'," she explains.

"Well, for me it's always been a case of wailing, 'It's not right. Why should people do this to other people?"'

For Martin Poulsen it was also something in his background that got him involved in campaigning. He is a spokesman for Stem - Stop The Eastern Motorway.

He has early protest credentials - standing up against the whaling lobby when he was at university and, unlike the archetypal merchant banker, he catches a bus to work because that's environmentally friendly.

But to those about to ask whether Poulsen is one of those rich property owners with a good view of Hobson Bay that would be ruined by a big motorway running through it, yes, he is.

"But I don't think it's just a personal issue. It's an Auckland issue," says the bonds trader and father of three."We're just shifting the problem from one part of Auckland to another. To raise standards of living in this city we don't just need another motorway. We need a better public transport system."

Seven years ago Poulsen read an article in the community paper telling how long-shelved plans for an eastern highway were again on the council's agenda.

"It was just the basic principle that annoyed me. I don't think we should develop our harbour by filling it in. It's precious.

"If you could convince me this was the best solution, then yes, sure. But I think we can do much better than a scheme that was dreamt up in the 1960s."

The thing that stuck in Poulsen's craw most about the eastern highway was the lack of attention to detail. As a previous employee of Banker's Trust, which was to become one of New Zealand's most successful investment banks, Poulsen was taught to challenge the status quo and question anyone who tried "to gloss over the details".

"So I want to know who's going to pay for the toll roads? Where does all the traffic go once it gets to Tamaki Drive? Where's the funding coming from? And why are we using some of this country's most valuable commercial real estate to park second- hand Japanese cars on?

"I have always lived around Hobson Bay and I think the area is really special. I want my kids - and all Aucklanders - to be able to experience the things I did, like fishing for eels or sailing."

All of those feelings inspired his submission to the council.

Shortly afterwards he discovered local businessman Terry Gould was holding a public meeting. Between 20 and 30 people turned up - and they became the nucleus of Stem.

None of them had organised a public meeting before, but they went and spread signs and posters around their neighbourhood.

"And hundreds of people turned up," Poulsen recalls. "Guys in Mercedes, guys on pushbikes, a guy from Ngati Whatua, people from the Greens, all sorts. I suppose we all gravitated toward each other because we had this thing in common. And it's grown and grown since then."

Dan Chappell, a publisher of wine and art magazines, is another member of that original group. A Parnell resident of several years, he too had read about the proposed motorway.

"It just didn't seem like a very good idea," he explains. "I went along to the first council meetings to try and get a handle on the whole thing. But it seemed like a bunch of old men making decisions for future generations. They seemed to lack an understanding of what the city needed. It was infuriating."

And although he too owns a house overlooking Hobson Bay, Chappell dismisses Mayor John Banks' claim that he and other members of Stem are Nimbys - Not In My Backyard-ers.

"He says we're only opposed to it because we are worried it's going to affect our property prices," says Chappell. "But that just doesn't cut the mustard. We're a group of like-minded people who had a gutsful of being told what to do by people who are either out of touch with reality or fronting up for vested interests. And it's not just us either - there are thousands of Aucklanders opposed to this."

Poulson concludes: "So yes, what may start off as a personal issue becomes something much bigger over time. I am much more fluent on these issues than I was seven or eight years ago."

Now we know what got them waving placards and shouting at protest meetings. But once they've decided to act, how do our friends and neighbours know what to do? How do you organise a public meeting, know what to write to your local MP or community newspaper? Is there a guidebook called "How You Can Best Annoy Local Politicians", complete with a chapter on coming up with good acronym for your protest group?

It's just common sense really, they all say. And the main costs are time, energy and the danger of boring the odd guest at dinner parties. While it appears that Stem probably has a better financed membership than most protest groups, both campaigns are run largely on donations.

"We divide ourselves up according to our skills," Poulsen says. "For instance, there's a website designer who's done that for us. And then there are the people who knock on doors, and there's a couple of us that act as spokespeople. And so on. I just wish I had more time to devote to it," he sighs.

Adds Chappell: "Having been in the publishing business for a number of years I was aware of how to get information in front of people and how to approach the media.

"It's all about getting ordinary people to say, 'Why can't I make a difference too?"'

Says Blackmore: "I don't think you can do this and a fulltime job. And there's never enough money for all the fax paper, the calls to Wellington, that kind of thing. So often, rather than organising the campaign you have to spend time raising money. It does take over your life. It becomes all-consuming."

Wiseman-Dare says she works on her Wasp campaign almost every day.

"I used to hand-write a lot of letters because I didn't even have a computer when I started. But now I have a huge list of email addresses. I suppose my husband might get a bit annoyed sometimes when he comes home from work and I'm still in the middle of organising something.

"But what's really upsetting is hearing all the stories from people who have been affected by spraying - that's what keeps me going."

It was one of Blackmore's daughters, now grown up, who used to complain.

"My second daughter used to wail, 'Why can't I have a normal mummy?'

"I guess she meant a mummy that doesn't have MPs coming around to the house. Or having to be quiet because there were TV cameras here."

With all the effort that goes into a private citizen running a public campaign, perhaps it's no surprise that people do get burnt out and "retire" from the cause. A seasoned campaigner, Blackmore has seen it happen before.

And Wiseman-Dare has had moments where she's wondered whether it's all worth it.

"I definitely get to the stage where I think it would be nice to have my life back," she sighs. "I am just hoping that, now they are extending the spraying zones, there might be other Aucklanders who want to get involved, people with fresh energy and new ideas."

Because it's true. MAF is carrying on spraying regardless of Wasp and Stop while John Banks is doing his best to ignore Stem. So how far would these good citizens go in the name of their cause? Would they sabotage a pesticide-loaded helicopter?

Although she's not one of them, Wiseman-Dare suggests there are some angry people out there who just might. And when it comes to civil disobedience Blackmore has been there, done that. She once barricaded herself into a small maternity hospital to stop it from closing.

But she's not planning on going there again any time soon. Both Wiseman-Dare and Blackmore see their roles as informing the public and co-ordinating other campaigners.

And what about the folk from Stem? Will they be chaining themselves to the mangroves?

"I prefer not to," quips Chappell. "It's incredibly muddy down there. But in all honesty I am confident it won't get to that stage."

And Poulsen adds that he prefers to work strictly within the law.

"I know some people who might want to lie down in the path of the bulldozers but I'm hoping it won't come to that," he says.

"I think the most radical thing I would do is have to explain to my wife why I've just written out a reasonably large cheque to fund a court action."

Further reading
Feature: Getting Auckland moving

Related links

Further reading
nzherald.co.nz/environment