Nothing about us without us

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Nothing about us without us in wake of Christchurch disaster

By Gabriela Flores

On 4 September 2010 a 7.1-magnitude earthquake hit Christchurch, New Zealand’s third biggest city. The tremors never really stopped. There have been about 56 earthquakes reaching higher than 5 in magnitude since that first quake, including the devastating earthquake of that fateful 22 February in 2011, which is now remembered as Christchurch’s “darkest day”, killing 185 people.

LOVE artworkAs the city cleared the debris and mourned its losses, many of its residents were inspired to do more than rebuild their own properties. Thousands of students volunteered to help clear the rubble. Community spaces and gardens began to emerge. Messages of encouragement were painted on damaged buildings.

“The thing about a disaster is not just what it does to your landscape. It’s also what it does to your democracy and to your social and economic community,” says Dr Bronwyn Hayward, a senior lecturer at the University of Canterbury. “Democracy has a wonderful way of flourishing despite the odds. In the aftermath of the earthquake the community came together in the thousands not only to help recovery but to replan and share ideas.”

Despite this outpouring of grassroots activity and an initial call for ideas about what needed to be done to rebuild Christchurch, Hayward argues that the New Zealand government opted to “control” the decisions needed to kick off reconstruction projects. Citizens were told that they were too “tired and decisions too urgent” to participate in discussions about city planning, housing and education. “We need a way to make sure that after every disaster, natural or financial, the community is heard and that they feel they have a right to a sustainable future,” says Hayward.

But this didn’t stop the people of Christchurch from trying to be heard. Suffra-jests, a youth-led group, and the UNESCO Youth Voices project are two examples.

“We care about what happens to our city after the earthquake. We want to let people have a voice and let them know about what’s happening in the city and what the plans are for the future,” says Rebecca Gibbs, a former primary school teacher and a member of the Suffra-jests.

Rebecca Gibbs 2“We are making issues accessible through humour and fun,” adds Gibbs. Suffra-jests have produced several YouTube videos and delivered “a few harmless pranks” to let others know “how our voices have been silenced by the bigger powers and how the actual citizens of Christchurch are being left out of really important decision-making,” adds Gibbs who is also a political cartoonist and activist.

“I was involved in the UNESCO Youth Voices project,” says Claire Waghorn. The project collected views from young people from high schools, church groups and political parties about the kind of city they wanted to rebuild. “It was our job to read the thousands of submissions received. We spent hours reading and making tallies, like ‘oh there’s another tree hut request’. We were trying to capture what these voices collectively were saying.”

The project has found that young people want to keep up the momentum of the community movements that have emerged as a result of the earthquake. “We now share a collective history. We’ve been through 11,000 aftershocks together and this creates community. People look out for each other more. You check on your neighbours often. People want to embrace that,” says Waghorn.

Christchurch SVAThe disaster might also lead to more profound changes, according to the young people who took part in the project. As Claire Waghorn puts it: “There was a sort of rejection of parts of the old Christchurch that they didn’t like. It used to be very important which suburb you lived in or what school you went to. Now everyone wants to have an equal voice. People want to have an equal inclusive society.”

Text by Gabriela Flores, based on video footage by Giuliana Tucker

 

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