They were standing on the shore one day
Saw the white sails in the Sun
Wasn't long before they felt the sting
White man, white law, white gun
(Shane Howard)

On the day Aziz died, I remember looking at my CD collection and realising that in 30 years he had recommended or sent me pretty much all my favourite music. Music has always been an inspiration for Aziz's work for justice and liberation. It formed one of the core foundations of his activist, educational and then academic work. He wrote that "it spoke to our hearts, minds and spirits to sustain and nourish the work and hunger for justice in ways that articles, books and speeches perhaps don't".

He maintained a habit of starting articles with a song lyric and the Shane Howard lyric above was a favourite. Shane, Goanna and Bart Willoughby were often his choice. In writing about their impact on his political consciousness he said: "Living in Aotearoa (New Zealand), another white colonial settler state, working for social and economic justice, and in support of struggles for Indigenous Peoples' self-determination, they have been touchstones for much of my activism".

Aziz was an educator, writer, activist, academic and friend. His sharp intellect and deep analysis of neo-liberalism, global economic domination, colonisation, racism and social justice pulled no punches and left few unscathed. He was also the most generous and powerful networker. He shared his knowledge and contacts and brought people together so they could know and understand each others' work. Colleagues, students and activists have written of their deep feeling of loss and grief since his death.

Writing about Aziz is a long trek back through 30 years of history, some shared in person and some told as stories in our frequent conversations. I would need Aziz to make sure all the dates are right - chronology is not my thing. Obituaries only tell a snapshot of a person's life story and so this snapshot will start in Aotearoa, not in London where he was born, and end in Montreal not in Johannesburg where he lived for a few months in 2021. Others have spoken eloquently about his academic life so my focus is on his activism, community education and campaigning work.

Activism In Aotearoa

The activism he is known for in Aotearoa started in 1990 when he met David Small at a peace movement meeting about the (first) US invasion of Iraq. David invited him to join the Christchurch Corso Committee and he became part of a dedicated team working in solidarity with partners overseas and committed to anti-colonial struggle and indigenous rights in New Zealand. Aziz worked tirelessly for Corso, he wrote for the magazine Overview, ran campaigns, spoke on Marae and at public meetings and organised events and meetings in Christchurch. He hosted visiting activists from Palestine, the Philippines, and Mexico.

He represented Corso locally at beneficiary meetings, anti-war committees, stop privatisation events, just to name a few. He was a key member of the Christchurch Corso committee who were expelled en masse from the national organisation in 2001. That is a whole other story of course and not for the telling here. But after ten years of activist and social justice work within Christchurch Corso, Aziz and the rest of us experienced it as a hard and thoroughly undeserved blow.

GATT Watchdog

In 1992 I invited him to join GATT Watchdog, (a coalition formed in 1989 by Marie Venning, myself and others to research, educate and campaign on economic and free trade issues. One of the early groups in what became known (somewhat inaccurately) as the "anti-globalisation" movement). Aziz and I became Co-Convenors for the next decade and a bit.

He launched the GATT Watchdog quarterly magazine The Big Picture in 1995 and was its Editor until he left New Zealand at the end of 2002. Although he was strongly involved in a number of groups and organisations GATT Watchdog became his base until he left Aotearoa. (GATT Stands for General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and in 1995 was folded into the World Trade Organisation).

Aziz was responsible for GATT Watchdog's strong education focus, for much of the writing of articles, fact sheets, submissions and much of its media profile. He participated in setting up international networks against free trade and globalisation and kept a focus on indigenous rights, tino rangatiratanga and Māori anti-colonial struggles at the centre of our work. He, alongside others, was responsible for connecting GATT Watchdog to the union movement, environmental groups, academics and social justice organisations in Aotearoa. These connections and way of working contributed to his academic work on social movements and learning activism later on.

Aziz's very dry humour was at the centre of many GATT Watchdog's campaigns. We dragged a large blow-up dinosaur called Gattasaurus around the country to many public meetings opposing the set up and then agreements of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). And on the WTO's second birthday, in 1997, he made a giant card and sent Gattasaurus to Geneva to hang out with the other free trade neo-liberal dinosaurs.

When the New Zealand government nominated momentary ex-Prime Minister Mike Moore* for the position of WTO Director-General Aziz ran the GATT Watchdog-led support Mike for the Job campaign. He backed the Shipley government's support of Mike figuring his fanatical support of free trade and inability to articulate any reasonable fact for this view would help undermine the WTO internationally faster than any campaign we could come up with. The campaign slogan was "Support Mike, it will all be over soon". Moore was elected and was responsible for the 1999 WTO meeting in Seattle - which famously collapsed. * Jane Kelsey's obituary of Mike Moore is in Watchdog 154, August 2020. Ed.

Aziz was an international leader in the successful campaign against the 1990s' proposed MAI (Multilateral Agreement on Investment). His work was shared in many countries and by countless activist and community organisations. He worked alongside Jane Kelsey and Bill Rosenberg to analyse and write about MAI alerting people to its dangers. GATT Watchdog, Corso and CAFCA all participated in the campaign. Aziz had that knack for the detail of complex agreements and an understanding of the interconnectedness of capitalism and colonisation.

APEC Monitoring Group

When Jane Kelsey set up the APEC Monitoring Group during an APEC meeting in Indonesia Aziz and I both found out we were members when a journalist called us to ask for more information. Figuring Jane had a plan we just ran with it and over the years the APEC Monitoring Group played a significant role in his economic and social justice work. (APEC is Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation - a free trade and investment grouping of nations).

Aziz began attending the activist meetings/conferences/protests which took place around APEC Leaders' Meetings. He went to the Philippines, Japan and Vancouver strengthening the network and sharing his sharp analysis of what was going on, laced with his usual wit. When the Leaders' Meeting came to New Zealand in 1999, he did much of the work putting the programme together and inviting international and local speakers to the conference and protests the Monitoring Group (alongside GATT Watchdog, Radical Society, CAFCA, Christian World Service) organised in Auckland to coincide with the Leaders' Meeting and held education events throughout the country.

People came because they knew Aziz, had heard of him or met him, or read his work and trusted him. He had an amazing ability in networking. Throughout his life he brought people together, knew everyone and introduced people who were working in similar areas in different countries making lasting connections. He remembered everyone and was generous in sharing information. If he read something he thought you might be interested in you would discover it in your inbox at 3 a.m. Aziz joined the committees of AFIA (Action for An Independent Aotearoa), Philippines Solidarity Network of Aotearoa, the East Timor Campaign and many others.

In the mid-90s Aziz ran a weekly radio show on Plains FM called Sounds Subversive. He interviewed Noam Chomsky, Moana Jackson, Alejandro Villamar, Annette Sykes, Vandana Shiva and dozens of other leaders in indigenous rights, environmental, justice and international campaigns. It also had the best music track of any show on radio. He would play music from Pakistan to Alaska introducing Leftist music to the local audience.

Roger Award

When Christchurch Corso organised a meeting with GATT Watchdog, CAFCA, Christian World Service and others in 1996 to strategise and plan for the next five years David Small came up with the idea for the Roger Award, an annual competition for the worst foreign controlled transnational corporation. Aziz was instrumental in organising the judges, making sure Māori and women were represented on the panels and putting together the report in the early years, after which Murray Horton and CAFCA took the lead and Murray took on much of the work.

Aziz wasn't really one to be "proud" of any "achievements" but he was genuinely honoured to receive a taonga from Nga Kaiwhakamarama I Nga Ture for work in educating non-Māori to support the WAI 262 (Treaty of Waitangi Tribunal) claim on flora and fauna, traditional knowledge and intellectual property. He wrote extensively on the dangers of GATT/WTO agreements which commodified and privatised indigenous knowledge into the hands of powerful transnational corporates.

The SIS - Security And Surveillance

In Aotearoa, Aziz is probably most famous for his entanglement with the SIS. The story has been well canvassed and Murray is updating an earlier article he wrote about it in this issue so there is no need for a long piece here. The event where this story begins (although of course it began a few years before) was the GATT Watchdog organised Trading With Our Lives Conference, which was our response, alongside some very noisy protests, to the APEC Finance Ministers' meeting being held in Christchurch in July 1996.

David Small caught SIS spies in Aziz's house on the Saturday night of the conference. The basics of this story and subsequent court cases are on public record elsewhere. The Choudry vs Attorney-General case has become essential reading for New Zealand law students. What I remember most strongly is how quickly Aziz and David understood the opportunity to campaign about State surveillance and question who was spied on and why. They both spent much of the next four years writing, speaking and organising protests on the surveillance, harassment and infiltration that pervade the lives of activists, organisations and movements and how the State criminalises dissent by treating some as "threats to national security".

While Aziz and I were in Auckland preparing for the 1999 anti-APEC conference an email came from the Crown Solicitor that the State was offering a settlement in the case. I read the email to Aziz over the phone. He arrived back to the small office we were working from in the Methodist Mission dressed like one of President Clinton's security detail.

He had been at a rehearsal of a street theatre piece opposing the law change in New Zealand allowing Clinton's security to be armed on Auckland streets during APEC. We walked out past the snipers sitting in the Town Hall upper windows (there to shoot anyone who got too close to any APEC country leaders, especially Bill Clinton) and had an exhausted semi-celebration with coffee from a café next door.

Aziz continued working on issues of surveillance and State repression of activists and indigenous peoples during his time in Canada. He edited the 2019 book "Activists And The Surveillance State: Learning from Repression" (reviewed in this issue by Jane Kelsey. Ed.). He was relieved to leave the case behind in Aotearoa and although we talked about him writing a book telling his story he never really wanted to put it back in the public arena. After 9/11 with a Muslim name, as an activist and academic and a prolific traveller he had no desire to be the centre of such an event again.

After Aotearoa - Life In The North

Aziz left New Zealand in September 2002, to undertake a PhD with the Concordia University Community Economic Development (CED) programme in Montreal, Canada. He was accepted into the programme without an undergraduate degree because of the breadth and depth of his background in advocacy and social justice movements. After he finished, he moved to McGill University (also in Montreal) as an Associate Professor in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education. While there he wrote, edited or co-edited ten books. He was motivated by his powerful belief in sharing knowledge and this led to him becoming Canada Research Chair in Social Movement Learning and Knowledge Production.

In 2000 he met Orin Langelle and Anne Peterman from the US at a conference in Wellington. He invited them home to Christchurch for a few days and they became great friends. Orin and Anne co-founded the Global Justice Ecology Project and when Aziz moved to Montreal which was just two hours away from their home in Vermont (US) he became a founding Board member of GJEP. Aziz was also on the board of the Montreal Immigrant Workers' Center and he stood in solidarity with many other organisations including the BDS campaign (the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement is a Palestinian-led movement promoting boycotts, divestments, and economic sanctions against Israel).

Over many years Aziz had built a relationship with GRAIN, (a small international non-profit organisation that works to support small farmers and social movements in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems). He was a vital part of its work to put together and run the very successful Website bilaterals.org. It was his idea to build a single platform on the Internet for groups fighting free trade agreements and bilateral investment treaties on their own - whether the farmers in Colombia, the alliances in Korea, the unions in South Africa or the students in Canada - could connect with each other and global activity. He supported and worked with bilaterals.org for over 15 years.

Learning Activism

Much of Aziz's work in Canada was about social movements, activist learning and knowledge production. He wrote a book in 2015 called "Learning Activism: The Intellectual Life Of Contemporary Social Movements" which has become a must read for those studying social movements in universities around the globe. His expertise was widely known and sought after. He travelled extensively, speaking at universities, conferences and activist meetings.

Although he took the idea of activist and social movement learning into the academic world, and was recognised as a leading thinker in this area, Aziz acknowledged that the roots of his experience and understanding of "Learning Activism" started here in Aotearoa. With the people he worked alongside or stood in solidarity with, like Syd Jackson, Annette Sykes, Moana Jackson, Jane Kelsey, David Small, AFIA, Robert Reid, Maxine Gay, the former Trade Union Federation, Radha D'Souza, Christchurch Corso, Kotare, to name just a few. Learning from the ground up; figuring out how to work together; learning through action and experience; sharing research, generating knowledge through reflection and shared work. These concepts remained the core of his activist and academic life.

And 2020 - Activist Archiving

For the last few years Aziz had been leading conversations about the knowledge produced by activists and organisations: How is it organised, where does it live and, most importantly, how does it inform ongoing campaigns and education? Through 2020 we talked about setting up an Activist Archiving project up in Aotearoa. And we had made a tentative start.

In the weeks after his death, I talked with Radha D'Souza and others from organisations he was involved with internationally about creating a joint project around this concept. These conversations are ongoing and the first steps towards working together are starting. Aziz was the best networker I knew, so it seems a fitting project to continue. (If you are interested in this project, you can contact me at leighcookson21@gmail.com)

Aziz spent the past 35 years working tirelessly for change, for justice and liberation for all. He believed passionately in supporting anti-colonial struggles, migrant rights, economic equity and social justice. His energy, intellect, passion and even his anger is a great loss. As activists said from Canada to South Africa when he died, "Rest in Power" Aziz.

Books

Aziz wrote prolifically and is the author and co-editor of the following ten books between 2009 and 2020: "Organize! Building From The Local For Global Justice" (2012); "Activists And The Surveillance State: Learning From Repression" (2019); "Learning From The Ground Up: Global Perspectives On Social Movements And Knowledge Production" (2010); "Learning Activism: The Intellectual Life Of Contemporary Social Movements" (2015); "Unfree Labour? Struggles Of Migrant and Immigrant Workers In Canada" (2016); "Fight Back: Workplace Justice For Immigrants" (2009); "NGOization: Complicity, Contradictions And Prospects" (2013); "The University And Social Justice: Struggle Across the Globe" (2020); "Just Work? Migrant Workers' Struggle Today" (2016) and "Reflections On Knowledge, Learning And Social Movements: History's Schools" (2018).