Coming events: Antiwar forum, Action for Pay equity, Cabaret

Friday, May 4, 1-2pm, St Andrew’s Conference Centre, 30 The Terrace, Wellington
Welfare or warfare? A pre-Budget lunchtime forum on government spending priorities
Link to share: https://www.facebook.com/events/202797460335587

Join us for a discussion on:

Military spending – Edwina Hughes, Coordinator, Peace Movement Aotearoa

Social spending – Paul Barber, Policy Advisor, New Zealand Council of Christian Social Services
Spending on children’s wellbeing – TBC
RSVP: your RSVP is essential because space is limited, please RSVP at pma

A4 poster: attached, and available online at http://www.converge.org.nz/pma/gdams18,wgtn.pdf
~ BYO lunch, tea / coffee available ~

A 2018 Global Day of Action on Military Spending (GDAMS) event organised by Peace Movement Aotearoa, contact pma Further information available at http://www.converge.org.nz/pma/gdams.htm

National day of action for pay equity – Saturday 5 May.

You are invited to join with educators and other women workers on May 5 as we say "Fair’s Fair" and call on the Government to do the right thing by funding pay equity.

Plans are coming together for the nationwide Mana Taurite activities and events – Fair’s Fair Fairs around the country on Saturday May 5, as we work for action on pay equity across every industry and profession.

· We’ll be in Cuba Mall in Wellington at 11am

· And at Aotea Square in Auckland at midday

· See the full list of events for other areas

Early Childhood Education teachers, Ministry of Education Support Workers and teacher aides and school administrators are connecting under the Mana Taurite banner with women in every sector who are fighting for equal pay. Those of us who appreciate the essential and valuable work these women do will be alongside in support—because Fair’s Fair.

We need the support of all those in the community who support gender equality, who value quality public services, and raising the pay and status of the people who do this work.

There are many events around the country, which will be family friendly, with activities everyone can participate in. Details are still being finalised in some areas. Check out the schedule.

We would appreciate you sharing this invitation with your networks. If you have any questions or need additional resources to do this, please contact NZEI Te Riu Roa Community Campaigner Rebecca Matthews-Heron on rebecca.matthews-heron or 0274717411.

If you think it’s time for the women in our community who work with children and young people to be valued, please do everything you can to get your members and supporters to one of these events. By working together we can keep the issue of Mana Taurite pay equity in the public eye.

7pm, Saturday, May 19, Limelight venue at the Aotea Centre, Auckland

Cabaret show as part of The Auckland Writers’ Festival which takes place at the Aotea Centre over 15-20 May.

STALIN WASN’T STALLIN’

Bookings are now open for an Auckland Writers’ Festival cabaret that features the labour number Which Side Are You On?, the Italian communist anthem Bandiera Rossa, and the Popular Front war-time classic, Stalin Wasn’t Stallin’ (later famously recorded by Soft Machine’s Robert Wyatt).

Stalin wasn’t stallin’
when he told the beast of Berlin
that he’d never rest contented
till he had driven him from the land.
So he called the Yanks and English
and proceeded to extinguish
the Fuhrer and his vermin
this is how it all began…
Calling themselves “The Men Alone—down from the Kaimanawas,” Linn Lorkin, Hershal Herscher and Peter Scott will be performing songs that feature as a background to Dean Parker’s recent novel, Johnson.

Parker will intersperse the songs with brief readings from the novel’s electrically-charged love affair.

Johnson is a sequel to John Mulgan’s classic 1939 New Zealand novel, Man Alone.

Man Alone was the story of a loner who migrates from England to New Zealand in the 1920s, gets caught up in the Queen St hunger riots of 1932, is involved in the killing of a farmer in the central North Island, goes on the run in the Kaimanawas, flees the country and ends up heading into Spain to fight with the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War.

Its sequel Johnson takes the story on from Spain into the Second World War with episodes in Crete, Cairo and central Greece, then back to New Zealand and the 1951 waterfront lockout.

Other songs sung are a tremendous variety from the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s.Red River Valley, Heart and Soul, Lili Marlene, Night and Day, Rum and Coca Cola, Red Red Robin, September Song are all popular favourites from the past, stalwarts of radio listeners’ request sessions.

An interlude in a Cairo hotel means a floor-show of In a Persian Market and Sheik of Araby.

The consummative meetings of the lovers in war-time Athens brings At Last, recorded by Glenn Miller in 1942 and then in 1960 a massive hit for Etta James.

At last
my love has come along
my lonely days are over
and life is like a song…