Category Archives: Book reviews

The Working Women’s Charter was a manifesto which united feminists in Aotearoa to achieve major victories in the 1970s and early 1980s.  Although it was just 17 sentences long, the campaign to have it adopted as policy in 1980 by the Federation of Labour (predecessor of today’s Council of Trade Unions Te Kauae Kaimahi), andContinue reading “Book review: ‘Women Will Rise! – Recalling the Working Women’s Charter’, edited by Gay Simpkin & Marie Russell”

It was January, 1997 when I first joined the Public Service Association.  Starting as a new grad nurse at Auckland DHB with nearly a decade of student activism under my belt, as well as a Nursing degree, there was never a doubt that I would join the union. The following year I would become aContinue reading “The PSA & me: A review of ‘White-collar Radical – Dan Long and the rise of white-collar unions’, by Mark Derby”

The climate emergency existed long before the Government declared it.  It’s been present not only in distant places, as rising seas gradually swallow low-lying cities like New York and London, and entire Pacific nations. It is present in New Zealand here and now, in the more frequent water rationing seen in Auckland and Northland, moreContinue reading “Book review: ‘On Fire – The Burning Case for a Green New Deal’, by Naomi Klein”

Our Revolution – A Future to Believe In is the book written by Bernie Sanders at the end of his campaign to be the 2016 Democratic Party nominee for president of the United States. For his supporters, the months leading up to his eventual loss to Hilary Clinton in July that year were a time ofContinue reading “Book review: ‘Our Revolution – A Future to Believe In’, by Bernie Sanders”