RED & GREEN to lead the Left renaissance

July 28 2003
Left Journal Launch: RED & GREEN to lead the Left renaissance

A journal being launched today [Monday, July 28] will play a leading role in the regrouping of the Left in New Zealand.

RED & GREEN, The New Zealand Journal of Left Alternatives, will challenge the many preconceptions and misconceptions about what it means to be “on the Left”, says editor Jill Ovens. As a theoretical journal, it will maintain high standards of scholarship, as well as encouraging debate around selected themes – anti-war, pro-worker, anti-capitalist, environmentalist.

“The journal will provide space for the debate needed to combat the sterile pragmatism that has dominated politics in New Zealand,” Ms Ovens says.

The idea of a “Left alternatives” theoretical journal came out of a meeting of the Left, anti-war faction of the Alliance held in January 2002 before the Party split. However, it does not follow a “Party” line. As the journal’s introduction makes clear, RED & GREEN will be an open-minded, open-ended publication that will take on a life of its own.

RED & GREEN is drawing wide support from Alliance and Green party members. It is also attracting interest from members of other socialist groups, the Labour-Left, trade unionists, anti-capitalists and anarchists.

The 160 pages of political and theoretical analysis in the first issue of RED & GREEN has been enthusiastically received since it went on sale last month and the original print run has already been supplemented by two subsequent printings.

The issue contains articles from leading investigative journalist Nicky Hager, anti-globalisation campaigners Jane Kelsey and Aziz Choudry, Green MP Keith Locke, and anti-war activists John Minto and Mike Treen.

Treen is one of the founding members of the editorial board, along with Auckland University post-graduate student Len Richards and Cathy Casey, AUT researcher.

Political commentator Chris Trotter, who is speaking at the launch, says the journal will be a welcome addition to publications on the Left of which, he says, “there once were many and now are so few”.

Keith Locke and Professor Jane Kelsey, who is a member of the journal’s consulting editorial board, will also be speaking at the launch, which starts at 5.30pm, in the Four Seasons bar at AUT’s Hotel and Restaurant Studies building, corner of Wellesley St and Mayoral Dr.

-end-

For further information:

Jill Ovens
kairos@actrix.gen.nz

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