“Meddling in the affairs of the nation”
Aurora Garner-Randolph gets abuse.
The 18-year-old was once called a “tedious bolshie activist” by someone online. She enjoyed that description because it’s mostly true.
“I'm not afraid to call myself a socialist,” she says. “I'm unashamedly anti-capitalist.”
As for the activist side, she is a key organiser of School Strike for Climate Ōtautahi, and led the three-hour occupation of the city council headquarters in early April.
The students refused to leave until mayor Phil Mauger fronted. Garner-Randolph led the jeering when he left fewer than 15 minutes later.
In January, she spoke to the full council on behalf of Restore Passenger Rail Group. In February, she insisted that councillors fund a cycleway along busy Aldwins Rd that will pass Te Aratai College, formerly Linwood High School.
On Waitangi Day, she participated in a proPalestine protest in Lyttelton because a ship tied to Israel was in port. Police used pepper spray to break up the crowd, and Garner-Randolph says she gave first aid to an 80-year-old man who got sprayed in the eyes.
In April, Garner-Randolph used a megaphone to inform cruise ship passengers – tourists exploring the CBD – that cruise ships emissions are four times higher than those from passenger jets, and their behaviour should change.
The first-year University of
Canterbury student got “belligerent abuse” in return.
Her rhetoric can flare. Rocket Lab, the Kiwi space company, helps the “American imperialist machine”, she told The Press.
The university has become a “capitalist business”. Some people join the police because “it gives them power to enact violence”. Prisons should be “abolished”.
She has a vision of a “world beyond capitalism”. Poverty will be eradicated because “poverty is a political choice”. Sexual harm and domestic violence will be eliminated because the patriarchy can be changed.
Te Tiriti o Waitangi will be respected, and we will have a “genuine respect for indigenous ways of living and coexist in a way that’s not this awful, reactionary ... current political environment”.
She allows that this socialist utopia looks unrealistic. Her answer: “If we don’t fight for things to get better, they will get worse.
“As an activist, it is very easy to fall into anger, and anger can be a motivating force, and it has been for many movements, but actually to achieve lasting change, you need to have compassion for people.”
She learned this from Bell Hooks, the Black American activist and author.
The average person – whether they’re a leftwinger or a right-winger “who drives a ute and yells swear words at teenagers” – doesn’t have much influence on their environment, GarnerRandolph says.
There’s only change from the collective.
It’s why she’s perplexed and frustrated that more people aren’t marching in the streets. “It’s something that everybody should be doing.
“We’ve lost that spirit of collective activism, and we’ve lost a vision that our society could be different and that we have the power to change it.”
John Minto and others have been telling her about the good old days – nuclear-free, Rainbow Warrior, Springbok tours, the Tūhoe raids and all the hīkoi.
Garner-Randolph arrived in Christchurch after the earthquakes. Hers was an “environmental family”. Her grandfather, in particular, taught her to love nature. While at Avonside Girls’ High, she came to national attention for fronting discussions and a documentary on consent in high schools. She was interviewed by Kim Hill. Anecdotally, little has changed, GarnerRandolph says.
She’s vegetarian, favours vintage clothing, has a large CD collection, and has never been to a rugby game. Her LinkedIn page states her educational ambitions: a doctorate in law.
She admires folk such as Mike Smith, the One Tree Hill chainsawer who is now suing New Zealand’s top seven carbon emitters – Fonterra, Z Energy and Genesis and the like
– for damaging the environment. She likes people who use the legal system to their own advantage. It’s too soon to say if a career in politics beckons.
Fair or not, this sort advocacy brings abuse. For Garner-Randolph, that’s mostly been hurled swear words. But protesters can face violence.
Is she worried? “The violence that I'm most scared of ... is police violence,” she says.
She’s been picked up by her arms and legs and chucked to the ground by police, she says. One officer gave a friend a serious concussion. The cop was soon monitoring another environmental protest, she says. “You don't see the fossil fuel CEOs, who are knowingly killing people by producing pollution, being violently arrested.
“I’m a fulltime uni student with two jobs, and I meddle in the affairs of the nation.
“Things are in the works, let me tell you.”