Review of The Anarchist conference, held October 20-21 2001, Christchurch

2001: an anarchist odyssey

2001: An Anarchist Odyssey was the first national anarchist conference held since 1997.
The conference was organised by the Christchurch based Anarchist Round Table, and was attended by about 50 people from all over the country. The conference started with a few speakers talking about the state of the world and the state of the anti-capitalist movement, and then a whole lot of smaller talks and workshops happened.

topics for discussion

Leigh Cookson from ARENA gave a talk on the WTO, the IMF and the World Bank and how these institutions fit together and how they affect the economy. Teanau and Evan from Aotearoa Educators talked about tino rangatiratanga. Murray Horton from CAFCA filled us in on many of the corporations that dominate this country's economy. Bill Rosenberg, also from CAFCA, talked about the proposed NZ-Hong Kong Free Trade Agreement. Scott from the Auckland based Third Eye collective gave a talk analysing NZ history.
Other topics discussed included the IndyMedia network, the IWW radical union in Dunedin, anti-capitalist revolution, and direct action. A big topic of discussion was the anti war movement and our response to the latest US war. A lot of us also talked about the planning for the November 9th day of action against capitalism which was only a few weeks later.

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

please write for us says thrall

The final session was a discussion on what people thought of the conference and what practical things we could do after the conference. Everyone generally agreed that the conference was well organised and worth coming to, and a lot of useful contacts were made. The people at Thrall made a request for more people to get involved in writing stuff for the only nationwide anarchist magazine in NZ (they even forced me to write this review). People recognised there was a need for more structured regional anarchist groups. There were a lot of people from Dunedin present which showed that anarchism is alive and kicking there.

a more outgoing anarchist movement

. For me, the main contrast between this and previous anarchist conferences was that this conference had a lot more politics in it. Most of the conference goers were involved in activist groups and political movements. This was in contrast to conferences in the 90s that were often dominated by lifestyle topics and only a minority of people there were politically active.
The anarchist movement is a lot more outgoing than it was several years ago. For the first time, several respected activist speakers from outside the anarchist movement took part in the conference, and most of the anarchist speakers were active in wider political movements. The whole conference felt like a conference of political activists, which is how it should be.
The Anarchist Odyssey was one of the better activist conferences I have been to in the last few years, and I hope there is another one as soon as the organisers have recovered.

- Mark Eden