Pōneke Anti-Fascist Coalition

13/06/2026

Pōneke people you are SO beautiful. What an awesome turnout today! 2500 people marched against the government's ongoing culture war bu****it that serves as a distraction from their massive theft from ordinary people and ecological destruction on behalf of their capitalist friends while scapegoating and targetting vulnerable communities.

10/06/2026

Wahoo! Some good news for Everlee and her whānau!! 💓💞

NZ Citizen Everlee Wihongi was detained by ICE in April, using a 2014 cannabis possession charge as an excuse. Everlee has lived in the US for decades, and has held a permanent residents’ Green Card since childhood.

Today the 2014 charge was vacated since she had made a plea deal with “ineffective counsel”. She was 25 at the time.

Trump’s fascist regime has increasingly been using historic and minor charges as a pretense to detain innocent people. Everlee is one of hundreds of innocent people moved from state to state, keeping them and their families in constant fear.

Everlee’s sister-in-law Courtney Wihongi said “This is a HUGE win because this is the reason that Everlee was detained. Having this charge vacated ICE legally has no grounds to have Everlee detained.”

As of right now, Everlee has an immigration court date set for 12 June. Her lawyer hopes she could be released in “a matter of days, if not weeks”.

Courtnay said “We have to be ready for the different tricks that ICE will play. We are now in the driver seat, but we just have to get through traffic. If things go smoothly on Friday, then we can have her out by next week possibly.”

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Follow on Webworm for the story so far and updates as they unfold.

07/06/2026

Elliot Ikilei, the former leader of the New Conservative Party, will stand as a candidate in this year’s election for NZ First.

04/06/2026

One view from Stuff article: Super-intelligent AI—the kind vastly more capable than any combination of human beings across virtually every field—cannot be safely controlled.

Humans have never interacted with anything smarter than us, but if our track record with every other animal species is anything to go by, any such interaction won’t end with human flourishing.

Regardless, creating such an AI is the stated goal of every frontier AI company, and most expect to do so within years, not decades.

Full interview is on Stuff. The book is by Nate Soares and Eliezer Yudkowsky, and its titled ‘If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies’

A counter-statement from a PAFC member: The concept of "superintelligence" is vague and controversial. It appears to have been created to fool potential investors and create an economic bubble. The experiments quoted in the Stuff article are unscientific and were designed to raise venture capital.

In the words of Paris Marx, "The AI industry wants us to believe AI superintelligence is the real threat from generative AI. But that narrative was crafted to distract from the many ways genAI is being used to tear our societies apart, as we saw this week when a deepfake video rocked the Irish election. It must be reined in." You can read more about this in Paris's blog post here : https://disconnect.blog/generative-ai-is-a-societal-disaster/

NZ’s coalition government has promised to replace enormous numbers of civil servants with "AI". This technology mostly doesn't exist yet and will lead to a downgraded and incompetent civil service. The half-baked systems promised at MSD will likely compound the problems of racist decision-making and missing entitlements, which will then lead to more people being forced to sleep on the streets.

For further reading on AI we recommend the recent books by Shannon Vallor, Emily Bender, Petra Molnár, Karen Hao, Andrew Guthrie Ferguson and Dan McQuillan.

31/05/2026

This week the Government asked thousands of low-income homeowners, including families with children, to find on average another $42 a week before the state would help with their housing costs. In the same week, we learned that the minister responsible claims $1,000 a week from the taxpayer for a Wellington apartment she jointly owns and on which she lists no mortgage debt.

27/05/2026

Budget Day should be a government telling us what great public services and infrastructure they will provide, especially for those most in need. Not how they are going to kick those already at the bottom even harder & reward their donors more. There is real anxiety about the budget today: about massive austerity (cuts to services) that will lead to even more of the extreme hardship many are already facing. This is class warfare: this is the rich stealing from the poor, from working people again and again and again. It has been going on for 40+ years in this country with the massive deregulation, privatisation and financialisation of the economy.

26/05/2026

Amazing work from Emily Writes - thank you! Please ensure you do YOUR bit too and make submissions where you can. Ngā mihi

Unfortunately, because of this government's ongoing commitment to attacking Aotearoa's most vulnerable people, we all have to spend our Monday making submissions against various awful bills they're pushing through under urgency.

There's no time to spare, unfortunately - we have to get started right now. Here's a submission guide for all of the awful stuff we have to stop right ASAP.

📝 https://www.emilywrites.co.nz/subs/

The D*List is hosting submission writing sessions:

Wednesday 27 May 6pm - 7pm online - RSVP with this form

Thursday 28 May 11am-1pm The D*List Community Hub (322 New North Road, Kingsland)

Friday 29 May 6pm-7pm at two/fiftyseven (I'll be hosting this one, and I'll be bringing my editor - he's 11 and he has very strong opinions lol).

Come one! Come all! Bring your friends! Bring your laptop! Or use mine! Meet nice people!

📝 https://www.emilywrites.co.nz/subs/

Submission guides and templates for:

Disability Support Services (nightmare bill targeting disabled people and those that care for them)

Changes to access to diabetes medication (nightmare bill removing diabetes medication access from vulnerable people)

Deepfakes and digital exploitation (an actual decent bill! but it needs a lot of work.)

Definitions of Man and Woman (deeply stupid, unworkable, unscientific nightmare bill designed by bigots specifically to destroy the lives of trans people)

Move on orders (nightmare bill targeting people without homes as young as 14)

📝 https://www.emilywrites.co.nz/subs/

Please share 💻📮❤️

25/05/2026

More than $1 million in political donations linked to fast-tracked projects have been made since 2022. The government announced on Tuesday it would amend climate laws to prevent companies from being sued over damage caused by greenhouse gas emissions. Farming lobbyists meet with the Prime Minister about 20 times each year and with the Minister of Agriculture or public servants hundreds of times. They receive a huge range of handouts and other assistance. Ministers repeat regurgitated talking points from the to***co lobby while changing the law for their financial benefit. The list of corruption from NACTNZ literally goes on and on and on.

19/05/2026

NZ's biggest losers briefly emerge from their bedrooms.

Over the last few months, there has been a nationwide campaign by a tiny group of neo-N***s to popularise calls for an ethnic cleansing operation in New Zealand. They have performed brief banner photo-ops in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, and then videoed them. Each performance will have lasted a couple of minutes, and it's unlikely any were witnessed by members of the public. The videos and photos were uploaded to Telegram and picked up by influencers across the political spectrum. All of the photos and videos you may have seen on social media were taken by the N***s themselves.

The NZ groups have been trained in this tactic by members of the Australian NSN neo-Nazi group, and they rely on anti-racist activists to spread their message. Their goal is to shift the Overton window of acceptable discourse in society.

The Wellington and Christchurch stunts were performed by the re-branded branches of the neo-Nazi Action Zealandia group. The Auckland stunt was performed by a newly branded group that relied on the Action Zealandia network to disseminate its posts. The Auckland video contained a pro-Hitler dog whistle. The stunts used neo-N***s travelling from Te Papaioea and Kirikiriroa, and involved long-time bigots, Sam Brittenden and Gavin Anderson.

Some of the social media posts we’ve seen have been shared from “The Noticer”. The Noticer is a website set up by neo-N***s to launder their ideas and campaigns, and relies on unsuspecting social media users sharing their content. It is not a pro-Palestinian website, but sometimes masquerades as one.

We already know that social media companies rely on outrage to keep people hooked onto their product. Before sharing something, it's good to think about whether it unintentionally amplifies a small hate group--and what effect seeing this content has on the mental health of minorities online.

These right-wing stunts form part of a recent increase in organised hate campaigns against South Asian communities. We offer our love, support and solidarity to South Asian communities.

TTāmaki Anti-Fascist ActionAAntifascist ŌtautahiAAntifascist Waiheke AAnti-fascist Papaioea

18/05/2026

Inequality will destroy us if we don't destroy it. It will destroy our ability to survive - to buy food, clothing and shelter, to pay our power bills, to pay insurance, will destroy our health system, education system, arts & culture. Our politics are already captured by BIG MONEY in the to***co, banking, grocery, waste, oil and gas, mining and farming sectors.