Another TPPA protest was held today. Starting at noon in Nelson’s Queens Gardens, the group, which included around 50 or more people, made its way down Hardy St to Trafalgar St, where both the Trafalgar St market and Nelson Buskers Festival were taking place.
First, at least 100 people started out from Queens Gardens, and I would guess that at least another 50-100 joined along the way.
Second, the main event was not the march itself, but rather a face-to-face “discussion” with a very perplexed and nervous-looking Nick Smith at his caravan in the market square. Unfortunately (but all too predictably) he refused to even acknowledge, let alone address, the legitimate concerns of the marchers that the TPPA subjugates all New Zealanders to an international cabal made up of the heads of corporations dedicated solely to exploiting not only resources, but also people for profit.
His main response was that he’d rather have 1:1 meetings (probably behind closed doors) than address a well-informed and feisty crowd that disagrees with his neo-liberal philosophy agenda, which sounds a lot like the secretive TPPA negotiations themselves!
Nick Smith and John Key are nothing but hand-puppets of the Americans and the 1% of the worlds population that controls the vast majority of its resources, and they need to go.