fuck the bypass!
 Opposition
to a proposed inner-city bypass is hotting up in Te Aro, Wellington. Recently,
a number of eviction notices have been issued to about 20 dwellings and
businesses along the proposed route (the eviction day for most is February
26).
Ever since the bypass was proposed 35 years ago there has been widespread
community opposition to it. The bypass, which is projected to cost $24
million dollars, would cut right through the heart of a densely populated
and historic inner city neighbourhood. It would also cut off much of the
neighbourhood from the city itself. Almost all local residents, who are
a mixture of mostly young Pakeha workers and students and older residents
(many of whom are middle class liberals), oppose the bypass. Unfortunately
it has support from many outer city residents in largely rich suburbs
because it has been sold to them on the (false) claim that it would enable
them to travel to the hospital and airport a lot quicker. The bypass would
allow a 60 second shaving of travelling time for a few years, but would
become rapidly congested in a few years, and thus wouldn't cut travelling
times at all. This is admitted by Transit (the government's national roading
body who are behind the bypass and own most of the buildings along the
proposed route): "All we do is move one congestion point to another"
(Transit quote).
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CONTENTS
from argentina to aotearoa
anti-capitalist uprising
in argentina: an analogy
organising against capitalism
in the 21st century
conference report
anarchy in the r.k
bac to smog
the 24 milion dollar minute
war is terrorism
aotearoa news round up
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community based direct action
The bypass highlights the undemocratic nature of capitalism today. A
local community which almost unanimously opposes the bypass can have it
imposed on them by capitalists, planners and politicians regardless of
their wishes. But the bypass hasn't been built yet, and the time has come
for a prolonged campaign of community based mass direct action, centred
around occupations of the evicted dwellings. Signs exist that this might
happen. Already an independent direct action group has been formed to
oppose the bypass, composed of a number of affinity groups who specialise
in things squatting of evicted buildings, media, food support and so on
(to get involved ring 385-6728). As well, there has been promising instances
of reclaiming unused Transit owned land for communal use, such as the
large "Kensington Gardens". People have planted native trees
and vegetables on disused patches of land along the proposed route. One
shop that has been issued with an eviction notice is the local anarchist
bookstore, the Freedom Shop (estab. 1995) on Upper Cuba St, has become
a node of resistance.
Unlike Maori, Pakeha lack a tradition of taking mass direct action against
the schemes of those in power, so we need to learn from the tino-rangatiratanga
movement on how to build a successful occupation. In particular, we need
to create a community of resistance which has widespread local support
if we are going to stop the bypass. And we shouldn't overlook the fact
that a road cannot be built without the consent of construction workers
themselves. The most effective form of direct action under capitalism
is not an elite group of activists locking themselves on to buildings
or bits of concrete, but instead workers simply downing their tools and
refusing to work! Drivers placed a ban on building equipment destined
for Bastion Point in 1978, and this was a very effective act of solidarity.
roads, cars and capitalism
.Let's partake in a very brief analysis of the links between roads and
capital. We need to get beyond a simplistic rejection of roads or cars
as "evils" in themselves. Sure, more cars and more roads cause
more pollution, worse health, more accidents, waste valuable space and
so on. But roads and cars are not a simple ecological or moral issue but
a product of this awful capitalist society. Both roads and the car have
become essential to modern capitalism. And we need to see them in this
context.
Community based anti-roads struggles should be seen as a new form of class
struggle. The anti-roads movement is not just an ecological movement,
but also is another expression of class antagonism and therefore an attack
on capital. Anti-roads actions (occupations of land and buildings, sabotage,
wasting construction companies' time and money etc.) are direct attacks
on the intended expansion of a crucial capitalist industry.
Why are more roads being built all the time? Roads are deeply implicated
in the maintenance of class exploitation. From the capitalist's perspective,
one way of creating profit more quickly, and hence speeding expansion,
is to reduce turnover times; the capitalist always seeks a way of producing
goods more quickly and getting them to market more quickly. Expansion
and faster turnovers require efficient transport of things like raw materials
and finished commodities. Hence building the Te Aro community throughpass
to allow quicker transport to and from the city to the airport predominantly
reflects the needs of capital, not us! And capital needs more roads simply
because the motor industry still represents a key locus for its expansion.
Huge sectors (plastics, steel, oil, chemical) of the economy are dependent
on the continued sale of cars and the expansion of the road network.
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the contradictory freedom of cars
The ever growing numbers of cars and roads represent a class compromise.
For the individual, car ownership does offer a leap in freedom and opportunity.
The freedom to go where and when you want, a freedom undreamt of for working
class people of earlier generations. But the personal partial freedom
of the car is premised on our enslavement as a class member in the workplace
and in the social factory: this is the essence of the class compromise.
That is, capitalists force us to work for a wage in order to live, and
in return for accepting this wage-slavery we have won certain limited
benefits, such as the private automobile.
But these benefits are contradictory. The increase in individual freedom
offered by cars serves to reduce the freedom of everyone else. The car
promises to liberate us but actually ends up destroying our spaces, polluting
our environment, and enslaving us in work and in leisure. The car has
become a symbol of our alienation: a bubble, a sealed self-contained environment,
a barrier to direct social relationships, an obstacle to working class
solidarity and community. Have you noticed as the volume of traffic grows
at a rate faster than roads are constructed cars have nowhere to go -
except to take their owner to work?
Overall, if these partial, reformist struggles against capital (like the
anti bypass struggle) are gonna lead anywhere, we need to link them up
with other struggles against capital (especially in the workplace) to
create a more widespread resistance to the capitalist beast.
- Fydd. This analysis has been stolen from the article "Auto-struggles"
in Aufheben 3 (1994) at http:/lists.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/aut_html/Aufheben/auf3road.htm
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