tena koutou katoa call Taranaki t+ Inoue
Katie no ho okay with
and Nene arrow tomorrow okay Tahoe
kakapo nugget and manga quarter wide
over to our Kunichika new new lower
corner cheaper Oh naughty we kata-kata
Mucha Walker call kaha new new teeth I
gotta call Scott barbarians are who
tonight koto Tendo koto gender Coto
Kaltura my name is Scott I was born in a
wee town called Stratford up in Taranaki
where all the streets are named after
bits of Shakespeare I come from Natick a
nooner kid to wait or an airway on the
east coast of New Zealand’s North Island
and today I’m going to tell you all how
my life got flipped turned upside down
and totally politicized and March 2010 I
opened the door of my maths classroom
and I stepped inside it was a lunchtime
it was a beautiful sunny day
and my friends and I sat around a table
and listened in on a meeting I was a
student at Otago girls high school yeah
we all still thought I was a girl back
then and that day I joined my high
school’s amnesty international group it
was my first ever extra curricula that
wasn’t the choir and I throw myself
straight into helping to organize and
learning the ropes
every year in schools across New Zealand
Amnesty International groups work
towards one common goal
freedom challenge week and 2010 we were
protesting for the release of a group of
youth activists in Myanmar who had been
imprisoned our group somehow got
permission from our really conservative
school principal it’s been the whole day
dressed in black and we got to school
early and we stood facing the school
gates and I remember standing near the
music department dressed totally in
blacks totally still in silently and I
think I had masking tape across my mouth
and we stood there until the bell rang
and then in our form classes we did the
spiel on where we were participating
that day and then we repeated that
feeling every single class we had that
day and did a speech in there simply to
since that day in 2010 I can count over
70 individual demonstrations that I have
participated in they’ve all had that
general human rights direction to them I
went from Amnesty International to the
marriage equality movement in Australia
that’s still going today to protesting
against reclaim Australia a neo-nazi
group – coming home and protesting for
better dunedin hospital food and for
access to mental health care and for the
Dunedin hospital to be rebuilt –
protesting the TPPA because only five of
the 29 chapters were actually about
trade and that’s not much of a trade
deal more of a trade off – working
behind the scenes in advocacy and
lobbying and volunteering and pastoral
care and the social services sector and
working with former refugees and I’m
even training to work as a volunteer and
the emergency response sector – and I
don’t think I’ve ever really sat down
since that day in March 2010 and had a
break and I wouldn’t have it any other
way
throwing my entire life into looking
after other people was the easiest
decision I’ve ever made and most of what
I do is because I’ve had all of these
really horrible experiences and I refuse
to allow the health sector the social
sector the justice sector the government
for anyone else’s lives at risk like
they did mine I want to use my really
horrible experiences and to make them
into something good for other people
because I can handle those feelings and
other people’s emotions even when there
are so so many of them when not many
other people can I definitely recognized
that as a gift that I’ve been given
somewhere in the trajectory of my life
and I’m really proud of myself for
recognizing that I have these tools and
I can make a difference even as a
terrified 22 year old disabled
marginalized martyr mentally ill
transgender takata per week when you’re
a divergent person who survived rape and
abuse and somehow suicide attempts to
past my skin colour I am NOT privileged
and circumstance or wealth or health and
in a lot of sectors I have very little
credibility
due to these identities that I cannot
actually shed ever but I’m fighting for
that credibility every single day last
year 2016 I ran for Dunedin Marion
Council
I had a $85 campaign budget and most of
it went on $15 Facebook ads the odds
were stacked against me and I was
running against some long-established
community leaders some who had had over
20 years my whole lifetime to build
their networks and backgrounds
I came 180 votes away from election to
City Council and somehow I was hundreds
of votes closer to election than some of
these incredibly well-established
community leaders I was 14 places an
entire city council ahead of the only
other person my age who had run whose
politics for polar opposite to mainly to
learn his privileges I did this at the
same time as I graduated from a
certificate and human services
specializing in mental health and
addiction support from right here at
Otago politic with a merit endorsement
[Applause]
21 was an amazing year for me and I
don’t think I’m ever going to forget it
at the same time 21 it was pretty tough
and really rather isolating I left
here’s another relationship that had
turned toxic
I finally formally lost my eating
disorder diagnosis only to regain it I
had to learn how to handle the media
with no training and other than my best
friends driving me to candidate forums I
had no one else in my campaign team
Facebook groups like Dunedin news and
the Otago Daily Times comment section
and even the blog whale oil became
breeding grounds for hateful comments
that were directed at me
and I have a bloody thick skin but some
of her really started to sting what got
increasingly difficult and actually
ironic for me
homes but the accusations of identity
politics are termed no one on the Left
could or would explain for me and the
very centrist or right-wing community
leaders who would try to claim that my
politics are entirely self-serving and
that I was in it to make my own life
better no one else’s after dedicating my
life to making other people’s lives ok
working myself to the bone despite mess
of fatigue and several months of
compassion burn out – it’s a slap in the
face to be told that somehow you were
capitalizing out of serving everybody
else and yeah I capitalized off my own
identities to push my politics but that
was never and has never been about me I
still don’t really have an understanding
of what identity politics is supposed to
be and I’m not convinced that anyone
else does either if you talk to someone
on the left wing as political expression
that comes purely from your experiences
with a marginalized identity and it’s
bad because some women aren’t feminist
some gay people are racist essentially
being up a diverse identity does not
guarantee that you can deal with the big
issues and – left-wing folk against
identity politics the big issue is
classism and that isn’t wrong look at
Caitlyn Jenner or Paula Bennett but that
doesn’t mean we should be dismissing
identity politics 100% as bad it’s still
got its place and to the right-wing
identity politics is apparently bad –
its PC gone mad as the Millennial
generations mimimi obsession selfies a
bad or something something to the right
wing identity politics as seen as
selfish which is bizarre because the
right wing stands for a very
individualist sort of a political agenda
that privileges the upper classes and
takes away the safeguards for
marginalized identities
it’s almost like we’re damned if we do
damned if we don’t but I think there’s a
solution
our Westminster system of government
comes from the days where white people
were seen as genetically and
intellectually superior to all people of
color and men were the only people
allowed to own property or vote it comes
from the time of spinsters who were seen
as queer because what woman in her right
mind wouldn’t want to marry a man and
have children and more children and more
and devote her entire life to her
husband until she dies in childbirth
it’s outdated and our social approaches
to government are – we still have a
predominantly male predominantly parky
high government we still have people and
cabinet who represent issues they have
never been affected by in their lives
and while that happens kids with autism
are struggling to access education
people with mental illnesses are totally
unheard unless neurotypical people speak
on our behalf
migrants who work harder every single
day than citizens do just to keep afloat
and keep their communities going are
facing racist policy after racist policy
perhaps somehow there’s an opportunity
to change the situation in a democratic
society it is imperative that we have a
diverse representation and a political
sphere just an offhand example but 15.2%
of New Zealand’s population are Maori
yet we are significantly
underrepresented and local body
government you can’t represent issues if
you’ve never been affected by them in
your life I want ministers for health
and mental health who have first-hand
experience of the systems that they want
to manage I want a Minister for
disability who actually has a disability
imagine their help just a few years ago
the Australian Government had Tony
Abbott as the
for woman watch does Tony know about
being a woman do you know why I became
interested in politics I realized how
much of a difference I can make every
single day I still get thanked by
strangers on the street for work that I
do I still have the philosophy in my
life that to survive and for others to
survive I need to use these really
horrible experiences and turn them into
something good and I cannot do that
without using my own identities in my
politics my queerness my poverty my
transness my euro divergency my
disabilities my youth made me to illness
my modernist I cannot change any of
these things about me I cannot erase the
experiences of marginalization that I
have gathered and make it ease in so as
a child when these identities of mine
get inconvenient I cannot just take them
off like a can of Jersey on a hot day I
am stuck wearing that Jersey of mine
every single day no matter how hot it
gets and the Jersey gives me
perspectives that those of you wearing
t-shirts just don’t get consider Metiria
Turei who I am privileged enough to have
sitting in the audience here with me
today as a young Maori woman a single
mother on the domestic purposes benefit
working tirelessly to feed her baby
daughter and get her law degree Metiria
had it pretty tough she had family
support but it doesn’t stretch as far as
it needed to
so Metiria tries not to tell work and
income that she had flatmates because if
she did she would lose the financial
ability to feed her child and ten years
later she became a member of parliament
a member of parliament who until this
year
no one knew had committed benefit fraud
New Zealanders were divided by the
revelation there was fury that she had
committed benefit fraud and there was
the avalanche of people who understood
and
you what it was like to be on a benefit
in New Zealand and understood that
materia didn’t just break the law for
shits and giggles
she broke an unjust law because if she
didn’t she wouldn’t be able to feed her
child she was recently forced by the
media to resign from her position as
co-leader of the Green Party because 25
years ago she fed her child when materia
and I have spoken about identity
politics she as I responded to the idea
of her being bad with derision materias
experiences have been shaped by both
identity and class and much like myself
she has brought her experiences into her
politics to great success Metiria made
her public statement about what she did
to keep her daughter alive because of
the same conviction that compelled me to
become a publicly know and mentally ill
and transgender person statistically
those of marginalized identities are
significantly more likely to live in
poverty
the youth 12 report a report on which
wellbeing of transgender youth in New
Zealand
used the 2006 New Zealand deprivation
measure to identify that forty 2.8
percent of transgender youth live in
high deprivation so that’s forty 2.8
percent of transgender youth and New
Zealand living in poverty that is an
absolutely alarming statistic I am a
transgender young person and I live in
poverty – I know and understands the
complications that come with being a
trans person and poverty with high
medical needs and the reduced ability to
get a paying job and even if my class
miraculously changes and they become
financially stable I will never be able
to erase the experiences of
marginalization that I
through now I am a walking intersection
of marginalized identities living in the
poverty class to boot
statistics show that my poverty and my
transness and my identities are
intrinsically interlinked I will proudly
and fiercely stand in this world with my
identities on my Jersey sleeve and I
cannot drop them at whim I want to leave
this world better than when I arrived
here and the best way that I know how to
do that is to use my experiences to make
things better to make a difference as
local Dunedin heroes sexxxy always say
don’t forget your roots thank you
[Applause]
you
Katie no ho okay with
and Nene arrow tomorrow okay Tahoe
kakapo nugget and manga quarter wide
over to our Kunichika new new lower
corner cheaper Oh naughty we kata-kata
Mucha Walker call kaha new new teeth I
gotta call Scott barbarians are who
tonight koto Tendo koto gender Coto
Kaltura my name is Scott I was born in a
wee town called Stratford up in Taranaki
where all the streets are named after
bits of Shakespeare I come from Natick a
nooner kid to wait or an airway on the
east coast of New Zealand’s North Island
and today I’m going to tell you all how
my life got flipped turned upside down
and totally politicized and March 2010 I
opened the door of my maths classroom
and I stepped inside it was a lunchtime
it was a beautiful sunny day
and my friends and I sat around a table
and listened in on a meeting I was a
student at Otago girls high school yeah
we all still thought I was a girl back
then and that day I joined my high
school’s amnesty international group it
was my first ever extra curricula that
wasn’t the choir and I throw myself
straight into helping to organize and
learning the ropes
every year in schools across New Zealand
Amnesty International groups work
towards one common goal
freedom challenge week and 2010 we were
protesting for the release of a group of
youth activists in Myanmar who had been
imprisoned our group somehow got
permission from our really conservative
school principal it’s been the whole day
dressed in black and we got to school
early and we stood facing the school
gates and I remember standing near the
music department dressed totally in
blacks totally still in silently and I
think I had masking tape across my mouth
and we stood there until the bell rang
and then in our form classes we did the
spiel on where we were participating
that day and then we repeated that
feeling every single class we had that
day and did a speech in there simply to
since that day in 2010 I can count over
70 individual demonstrations that I have
participated in they’ve all had that
general human rights direction to them I
went from Amnesty International to the
marriage equality movement in Australia
that’s still going today to protesting
against reclaim Australia a neo-nazi
group – coming home and protesting for
better dunedin hospital food and for
access to mental health care and for the
Dunedin hospital to be rebuilt –
protesting the TPPA because only five of
the 29 chapters were actually about
trade and that’s not much of a trade
deal more of a trade off – working
behind the scenes in advocacy and
lobbying and volunteering and pastoral
care and the social services sector and
working with former refugees and I’m
even training to work as a volunteer and
the emergency response sector – and I
don’t think I’ve ever really sat down
since that day in March 2010 and had a
break and I wouldn’t have it any other
way
throwing my entire life into looking
after other people was the easiest
decision I’ve ever made and most of what
I do is because I’ve had all of these
really horrible experiences and I refuse
to allow the health sector the social
sector the justice sector the government
for anyone else’s lives at risk like
they did mine I want to use my really
horrible experiences and to make them
into something good for other people
because I can handle those feelings and
other people’s emotions even when there
are so so many of them when not many
other people can I definitely recognized
that as a gift that I’ve been given
somewhere in the trajectory of my life
and I’m really proud of myself for
recognizing that I have these tools and
I can make a difference even as a
terrified 22 year old disabled
marginalized martyr mentally ill
transgender takata per week when you’re
a divergent person who survived rape and
abuse and somehow suicide attempts to
past my skin colour I am NOT privileged
and circumstance or wealth or health and
in a lot of sectors I have very little
credibility
due to these identities that I cannot
actually shed ever but I’m fighting for
that credibility every single day last
year 2016 I ran for Dunedin Marion
Council
I had a $85 campaign budget and most of
it went on $15 Facebook ads the odds
were stacked against me and I was
running against some long-established
community leaders some who had had over
20 years my whole lifetime to build
their networks and backgrounds
I came 180 votes away from election to
City Council and somehow I was hundreds
of votes closer to election than some of
these incredibly well-established
community leaders I was 14 places an
entire city council ahead of the only
other person my age who had run whose
politics for polar opposite to mainly to
learn his privileges I did this at the
same time as I graduated from a
certificate and human services
specializing in mental health and
addiction support from right here at
Otago politic with a merit endorsement
[Applause]
21 was an amazing year for me and I
don’t think I’m ever going to forget it
at the same time 21 it was pretty tough
and really rather isolating I left
here’s another relationship that had
turned toxic
I finally formally lost my eating
disorder diagnosis only to regain it I
had to learn how to handle the media
with no training and other than my best
friends driving me to candidate forums I
had no one else in my campaign team
Facebook groups like Dunedin news and
the Otago Daily Times comment section
and even the blog whale oil became
breeding grounds for hateful comments
that were directed at me
and I have a bloody thick skin but some
of her really started to sting what got
increasingly difficult and actually
ironic for me
homes but the accusations of identity
politics are termed no one on the Left
could or would explain for me and the
very centrist or right-wing community
leaders who would try to claim that my
politics are entirely self-serving and
that I was in it to make my own life
better no one else’s after dedicating my
life to making other people’s lives ok
working myself to the bone despite mess
of fatigue and several months of
compassion burn out – it’s a slap in the
face to be told that somehow you were
capitalizing out of serving everybody
else and yeah I capitalized off my own
identities to push my politics but that
was never and has never been about me I
still don’t really have an understanding
of what identity politics is supposed to
be and I’m not convinced that anyone
else does either if you talk to someone
on the left wing as political expression
that comes purely from your experiences
with a marginalized identity and it’s
bad because some women aren’t feminist
some gay people are racist essentially
being up a diverse identity does not
guarantee that you can deal with the big
issues and – left-wing folk against
identity politics the big issue is
classism and that isn’t wrong look at
Caitlyn Jenner or Paula Bennett but that
doesn’t mean we should be dismissing
identity politics 100% as bad it’s still
got its place and to the right-wing
identity politics is apparently bad –
its PC gone mad as the Millennial
generations mimimi obsession selfies a
bad or something something to the right
wing identity politics as seen as
selfish which is bizarre because the
right wing stands for a very
individualist sort of a political agenda
that privileges the upper classes and
takes away the safeguards for
marginalized identities
it’s almost like we’re damned if we do
damned if we don’t but I think there’s a
solution
our Westminster system of government
comes from the days where white people
were seen as genetically and
intellectually superior to all people of
color and men were the only people
allowed to own property or vote it comes
from the time of spinsters who were seen
as queer because what woman in her right
mind wouldn’t want to marry a man and
have children and more children and more
and devote her entire life to her
husband until she dies in childbirth
it’s outdated and our social approaches
to government are – we still have a
predominantly male predominantly parky
high government we still have people and
cabinet who represent issues they have
never been affected by in their lives
and while that happens kids with autism
are struggling to access education
people with mental illnesses are totally
unheard unless neurotypical people speak
on our behalf
migrants who work harder every single
day than citizens do just to keep afloat
and keep their communities going are
facing racist policy after racist policy
perhaps somehow there’s an opportunity
to change the situation in a democratic
society it is imperative that we have a
diverse representation and a political
sphere just an offhand example but 15.2%
of New Zealand’s population are Maori
yet we are significantly
underrepresented and local body
government you can’t represent issues if
you’ve never been affected by them in
your life I want ministers for health
and mental health who have first-hand
experience of the systems that they want
to manage I want a Minister for
disability who actually has a disability
imagine their help just a few years ago
the Australian Government had Tony
Abbott as the
for woman watch does Tony know about
being a woman do you know why I became
interested in politics I realized how
much of a difference I can make every
single day I still get thanked by
strangers on the street for work that I
do I still have the philosophy in my
life that to survive and for others to
survive I need to use these really
horrible experiences and turn them into
something good and I cannot do that
without using my own identities in my
politics my queerness my poverty my
transness my euro divergency my
disabilities my youth made me to illness
my modernist I cannot change any of
these things about me I cannot erase the
experiences of marginalization that I
have gathered and make it ease in so as
a child when these identities of mine
get inconvenient I cannot just take them
off like a can of Jersey on a hot day I
am stuck wearing that Jersey of mine
every single day no matter how hot it
gets and the Jersey gives me
perspectives that those of you wearing
t-shirts just don’t get consider Metiria
Turei who I am privileged enough to have
sitting in the audience here with me
today as a young Maori woman a single
mother on the domestic purposes benefit
working tirelessly to feed her baby
daughter and get her law degree Metiria
had it pretty tough she had family
support but it doesn’t stretch as far as
it needed to
so Metiria tries not to tell work and
income that she had flatmates because if
she did she would lose the financial
ability to feed her child and ten years
later she became a member of parliament
a member of parliament who until this
year
no one knew had committed benefit fraud
New Zealanders were divided by the
revelation there was fury that she had
committed benefit fraud and there was
the avalanche of people who understood
and
you what it was like to be on a benefit
in New Zealand and understood that
materia didn’t just break the law for
shits and giggles
she broke an unjust law because if she
didn’t she wouldn’t be able to feed her
child she was recently forced by the
media to resign from her position as
co-leader of the Green Party because 25
years ago she fed her child when materia
and I have spoken about identity
politics she as I responded to the idea
of her being bad with derision materias
experiences have been shaped by both
identity and class and much like myself
she has brought her experiences into her
politics to great success Metiria made
her public statement about what she did
to keep her daughter alive because of
the same conviction that compelled me to
become a publicly know and mentally ill
and transgender person statistically
those of marginalized identities are
significantly more likely to live in
poverty
the youth 12 report a report on which
wellbeing of transgender youth in New
Zealand
used the 2006 New Zealand deprivation
measure to identify that forty 2.8
percent of transgender youth live in
high deprivation so that’s forty 2.8
percent of transgender youth and New
Zealand living in poverty that is an
absolutely alarming statistic I am a
transgender young person and I live in
poverty – I know and understands the
complications that come with being a
trans person and poverty with high
medical needs and the reduced ability to
get a paying job and even if my class
miraculously changes and they become
financially stable I will never be able
to erase the experiences of
marginalization that I
through now I am a walking intersection
of marginalized identities living in the
poverty class to boot
statistics show that my poverty and my
transness and my identities are
intrinsically interlinked I will proudly
and fiercely stand in this world with my
identities on my Jersey sleeve and I
cannot drop them at whim I want to leave
this world better than when I arrived
here and the best way that I know how to
do that is to use my experiences to make
things better to make a difference as
local Dunedin heroes sexxxy always say
don’t forget your roots thank you
[Applause]
you
Please follow and like us: