Kia ora koutou

I don’t know about you but around this time I always get a bit tired of the electoral cycle. The commentators are desperate for something new to say, the candidates are stepping very carefully and promising me chocolate and bubbles for breakfast every day if I’ll vote for them. Spring starts up with its gales and storms, its thunder and lightning, as if in parallel with the gusts of words, thunderclaps of denials, the heavy showers of promises if I’ll just vote for them…but what I’d like to say to them is … when will the streets be safe?

I have voted ever since I could. Not only because women marched and trudged and swam so I could vote but more importantly (to me) because while those women marched shouted and yelled for the vote, other women washed and cleaned and ironed and cooked for them so those women’s husbands wouldn’t complain about their lives being disrupted while their wives (in clean and nicely ironed clothes) were out marching to get the vote. Like I say adinfinitum…its always middle class educated women who lead movements for social change – and so they should – working class women are too damn busy working at shit jobs for shit pay.

If you’re going out each day to clean and scrub, dust and polish, so you can feed your kids, or working night shifts cleaning offices or wards, then some of the urgency the petitioners and marchers feel gets a bit smudged by tiredness and hunger. We can see the clash of principles now when people march to wake us up about climate change and when this voice says ‘We need to make the streets safe‘ it is brushed aside by comments like – ‘That will happen when we get this – or when we do that.’ The fact that it has not happened in the past when we got this or did that is not mentioned.

 

Wahine Maori kept working to salvage what land they could from the greedy hands of land sharks and government annexations when on November 5, 1881, the land grab, rapes, deaths and imprisonment of innocent people at Parihaka took place. The iniquity of the action against the people of Parihaka was completely ignored by the petitioners for the vote – we all make our own judgements about which of our rights we’re prepared to march for and these judgements are dictated by race, class, education, opportunity and experience but when will the streets be safe?

There’s always an urgency as this or that cause takes precedence in the minds of people and they are irritated by these reminders because everything will be all right once we all agree on climate change or clean water or stopping mining or keeping farm animals safe or providing lunches in schools or shelter for the homeless or looking after people with mental health problems or…but when are we going to make the streets safe?

I’m sure the candidates will tell me (if I’m silly enough to ask) that the streets will be made perfectly safe if I vote them in. Farmers, nurses, teachers, unionists, will tell me it will all be okay but just at this moment they’re so busy shouting for their cause they’re a bit pushed for time – but in a little while… once we’ve achieved our goal…

So tell me, when will a woman of any age, race or class, be able to walk down a street at night in safety? However she’s dressed, whether she’s had a few drinks or not, whether she’s simply going home from a late shift – when will it be safe?

I’ve been asking this question for forty or more years, others were asking well before then. We had the Reclaim the Night marches but the question remains and I’m sick of it…you’re probably sick of it too – is it too much  to ask? Is it?

When will the streets be safe?

Renée