The March

Should have posted this yesterday but the pic's got lost in the Telecom aether.

Anyway the Tuhoe Hikoi hit town yesterday so I tagged along and got a few shots on the cellphone.



Instead of piling up to Parliament and speechifying, like most protests do, the Hikoi did a quick march down Molesworth St and along Lambton Quay. It kind of took the Police by surprise as it appeared they weren't expecting it.



Now a lot of people have commented on the appearance of some of the marchers. And it is a fair point - if you're pissed off at being represented as terrorists it's probably not that clever to dress like one.

Having said that it was just 30 or 40 people tops that were in the whole Gaza strip militant mode. A fair few of them were activists and not Tuhoe which just goes to show it just takes a few wingnuts to stuff things up.

Anyway the Hikoi made sure it stopped outside the Te Puni Kokiri building so they could give the Maori Affairs Ministry the raspberry.



Then off for a quick bit of a harangue at a nearby park.



The white middle class civil servants were all left a bit bemused. Angry Maori aren't a common occurrence on Lambton Quay (it's just soooo Porirua).

If I had to assess the march I'd say there was a lot of pent up aggression. But their actions by no means came anywhere close to the rhetoric. The language was, in some cases pretty raw, if it had been translated into physicality there's have been mayhem. The fact there wasn't speaks volumes for the vast majority of the marchers.

There were a few numpties behaving like complete plonkers but I couldn't make up my mind as to whether they were doing it for the TV cameras or whether they were complete idiots.

Ballsy call of the day: goes to the white middle aged woman who rolled up with the placard that read "I Support the Police". To front up with that to that crowd took gumption. She got a bit of verbal from some but there were those that actually took the time to go over to talk to her and exchange points of view in a reasonably civil manner.

Dickhead of the day: goes to the civil libertarian that went up to the aforementioned lady and told her she shouldn't be carrying such a placard. Nice to see free-speech only applies when its speech you like eh pal?