I have seen the boulder lifted 
From the back of the tribe. I have heard their singing voices. 
I have felt their hands like the wind on the grass 
Stroking my cheek when it seemed all hope had gone
James K Baxter

This is a love story. Its the first bulletin of work still in progress, a story from the edge; from Aotearoa, the world's geographical edge; and from our country's social edge - from within the two major Maori street gangs, the Black Power and the Mongrel Mob. Just to add a squirt or two of adrenalin and a bit of unpredictability, the context of the narrative is a quest to reduce the community demand for crystal methamphetamine, 'Kiwi-crack' or 'P' as it is called, by enrolling the leadership of both gangs in a movement towards a better future for their people.

Let me introduce myself. My name is Denis O'Reilly. I'm a Pakeha New Zealander with the curious distinction of being a life member of the Black Power. Life-member is a polite term used by present members to refer to the living fossils of the gang's past.

In my youth, politically inspired by notions of social justice and temperamentally attracted to the possibility of a fight, I accepted a gang patch and joined up as a member of Black Power, Wellington. I came to play a significant role in the gang and for a decade or so I was the national organisor and spokesman.

In the mid-1970's I met with the then Prime Minister, the late Sir Robert Muldoon. He became my mentor and encouraged me to get off my arse and do something positive for the world. I reckon I've done so. I ended up working in the Public Service for over twenty years, first in frontline community and economic development, then as a senior manager in the Labour Department, and then in Internal Affairs.

I resigned from a director's position in Internal Affairs in 1999 and these days I run my own business, O'Reilly unLimited - I fancy myself as a resultant, that is, a consultant who produces a result - and I have clients across private, public, and third sectors.

Life was cool, busy, and pretty low stress until when, two years ago, a friend, a Black Power leader, in a bout of methamphetamine induced psychosis took a knife and gutted himself. His death was a shock, both in manner and cause. When the news reached me I drove through the night and arrived at dawn at the gates of his ancestral marae where he lay, in state. There, beside him I stayed, in the Maori way, with his family and child and relatives and friends, and gang brothers, for the days of mourning, speeches and prayers, haka and song, until the time came to return him to his mother papatuanuku, the earth.

And the emotion of these days fired my desire for action, kia whakarite, the desire to put things right.

So, at 51 years of age, dad of six, grand-dad of 14, potbellied and balding, I'm back working alongside my old crew the Black Power, as well as with their traditional opponents, the Mongrel Mob, cajoling and persuading a new generation of gang leaders to make pro-social change.

The New Zealand Police contend that New Zealand gangs are currently responsible for 95% of the street supply of 'P' within Aotearoa. If market laws hold true the consequence of demand reduction should also lead to supply reduction. At the start of the quest some six months ago, the project team assessed that a majority of the members of the two gangs were regularly using methamphetamine. Demand reduction amongst this population might sound like an improbable objective - and the consequential impact on supply reduction is similarly a 'big ask' in a risky and extremely complex environment.

But nothing is impossible, and some things, despite their difficulty and complexity are absolutely worth doing. 'P' has already fucked a lot of Kiwis up, and even if we managed to turn off the tap tomorrow the damage domino-effect has already been triggered.

Customs assess that about 35,000 Kiwis are currently using 'P' and extrapolating the country's ensuing contingent liabilities in terms of the human and financial costs family violence, mental illness, policing, and imprisonment, will bring a shared conclusion that doing nothing is not an option.

NZ Police and Customs are driving a supply oriented strategy aimed at interdiction at the border and neutralizing clan labs and distribution channels. Customs though have publicly stated that they are only intercepting a small proportion of P or its precursors coming into our country.

In that case demand reduction is the only sustainable community wide strategy (with supply reduction then being the complementary 'enforcement' strategy).

So this is why we're heading to the edge with a demand reduction proposition and taking responsibility for our own.

Our challenge is on to find a 'value proposition' strong enough to engender change; strong enough to counter the allure of 'P' and the seemingly easy money associated with making and selling it. Einstein held that a problem can't be solved at the same level at which it is created. In that case we're not considering same-plane substitutions or alternatives.

We need a proposition with stronger pull, a proposition with emotion enough to catalyse personal breakthrough action.

Even amongst these hardened gang men, who may well not presently be able to love themselves, the possibility of delivering loving action on behalf of their kids and grandkids, is enough to bring a tear to the eye and fire to the belly; enough to build the will to take that critical first step towards creating a better future for themselves, family, and Aotearoa.

We call our project Mokai Whanau Ora

Whanau Ora refers to family well being.

Mokai is used in the sense that poet James K Baxter used it to describe 'the tribe of nga mokai' during the outbreak of amphetamine use in New Zealand in the late 1960's and early 1970's

May Christ have mercy 
On us when we die 
The tribe of nga mokai 
Who can do nothing well 
May he keep us out of hell

For this project, the 'tribe of nga mokai' includes methamphetamine users and distributors, their families and their communities. It includes gang members, prisoners and people who have been in prison. It includes the mentally ill, the longterm unemployed and those who are on the margins of society, alienated and alone.

Our overall approach is one of "I'm on your side".

Our ethos is positive, optimistic, and future centered.

We've built on three insights, the first of which is drawn from the Maiden Speech of the first Maori to speak in the New Zealand Parliament, Tareha Te Moananui MP (1868), that is to focus "on that which is good".

Secondly, on the basis that the notions of tino rangatiratanga and self actualisation are synonymous, we reaffirm Maslow's primary rule of Euspychian management, that is, to "assume the best".

Finally, for dark days when the going gets tough and disappointments abound we take inspiration from Saul Alinsky's "You'll see it when you believe it".

As a project team we have only one rule between us. There is zero tolerance to anyone working on the project using methamphetamine

We appreciate P is not the only issue concerning use of recreational drugs licit or illicit - 4,700 Kiwis a year die from smoking cigarettes and booze is still the biggest damage creating recreational drug around - but for a number of reasons P has created a discontinuity and has presented a gap through which we believe we can lever a change proposition.

  Pita Sharples campaigns against P at a 
Hastings meeting with the Mongrel Mob

We're trying to encourage people to figure things out for themselves, and to self identify the behaviours that impede a positive future for themselves and family. We want to promote hope within a whanau - that is, a future that makes sense - across the areas of education, housing, health, employment, and recreation.

Our aim is to work through others, through organisational leaders, through opinion leaders, through gang leaders.

We're trying to create a virtual workforce by nurturing and mentoring people, coining a common language, and eliciting shared strategies across a range of groups and organisations.

Folks, we aim to build a future focused go forward movement

In the 1930's New Zealand was the social laboratory of the world. In the 1980's the laboratory for fiscal management of a national economy.

The philosophy underpinning our particular quest aims to engage those on the social edge both socially and economically so as to enable them to fulfill their potential and add value to the nation. We're building a street-side laboratory for the fusion of both. A solution amongst nga mokai here in Aotearoa may provide a model for elsewhere in the world.

There are a number of barriers and impediments, some of them personal, some of them institutional.

At an institutional level, for one reason or another, New Zealand seems to have adopted a North-American approach to criminal justice. The profile of Aotearoa's imprisoned population is disproportionately over representative of Maori (4:1) and mimics the black to white racial skew of the USA's penal population.

New Zealand also seems to have adopted a North American 'war on' approach to dealing with street gangs and with illicit drugs. In doing so we have shoehorned the indigenous New Zealand gangs to fit into a North American defined 'global crime group' model.

Yes there is crime committed by New Zealand gang members, but not by all gang members and not all the time.

I think that, P aside, it's a common reality in most New Zealand towns and cities that a gang or someone associated with a gang may have a cannabis-selling 'tinnie-house' running. But, in the main, in my experience, this is of a different form and degree than what we might generally expect to describe as organized crime - at least in any international context.

Again, from time to time, or in response to criminal proposals or opportunities, individual gang leaders may take their crew down a highly criminal path, and clusters of gang leaders may conspire together and may indeed link in with international operators. But, generally these phases have been of limited duration and have concluded as a result of effective Police action.

In the quest to change the gang member attitude towards P we're seeing different views and different behaviours from within the same crews. Some gang members have become steadfastly anti-P and want to promote whanau development, the move from brotherhood to familyhood. Others however want to do the gangsta thing and to continue using and selling. Schisms have occurred, and will continue to occur, and it's highly likely there will be some intra-gang aggro and struggles for leadership. In some ways it's a bit like the split by the Nomads away from the Black Power in 1977, for much the same divergence in beliefs.

My view is that the underlying issues around Maori gangs are more sociological than criminological. For sure, issues fall along a spectrum of behaviours. But its the behaviours that we need to focus on, rather than the population grouping.

Its apparent though that the NZ Police have generalized behaviours amongst certain populations. They've focused on Maori gangs and their affiliates (read any young Maori), and have begun to use sledgehammer tactics. One result is that the size of our prison population and the proportion of Maori within it are all rapidly trending upward.

We need our cops to be on top of their game when it comes to building community resilience against P.

It's no good my crew pushing a lovey dovey 'go forward' message when one of the bros is parked up around the corner pumping P. It may be that he's rejected the positive kaupapa but that, between one and other, old conventions hold true enough to prevent direct peer group action against him. On the other hand there will be no direct support and the cover that a community chooses to afford the certain illicit activities its prepared to tolerate gets removed, and the dude is out there stark and alone.

Policing harder though might well mean policing smarter, and being able to differentiate between criminality of circumstance as distinct from criminality of intention.

Now, in my view, this sort of crime is of a different type, both in scale and complexity, than organized international crime. I have no doubt that the current problem with P has lots to do with international organized crime and I'm damned sure that we've now got criminal crime groups, real gangs who do fit the international model, at work here in Aotearoa.

They don't necessarily run around wearing patches.

I accept, that the indigenous gangs have recently been more or less colonized to serve as the donkeys, the channels and distributors for P. But, if they are part of that 95% of the supplier market what happens if a majority of them cut the substance out of their lives, production, distribution, self use?

If they did that would we allow them to give a value adding lifestyle a go?

Can they become citizens rather than be declared outlaws?

One problem that we currently face is around the ambiguity of gang based or gang member intensive enterprises and workforces. If I set up a work enterprise and get a number of gang members off P and off the dole I might think that's a good day's work. But a policeman, working for exactly the same safe and achieving New Zealand that I want to help build, may see my actions differently. He may well see a criminal organization.

Hopefully, this month even, this very matter will be the subject of discussion between street and police leaders, and I'll say no more about that at present.

I'll keep you up with play about the battle against P and the Mokai Whanau Ora project.

If you want to dip into more information have a look at the Phight website (www.phight.org.nz) and have a scan of my scoping paper the AntiPodean Community Resilience Model.

A sample of newspaper stories about the current scene are: 

'Five gang associates admit drug charges' 
- Dominion Post 16.07.04 

'Scorge of P no quick fix: Mob Member' 
- Hawke's Bay Today 6.07.04 

'Mob urged to turn off 'cash cow" drug' 
- Hawke's Bay Today 5.07.04 

'Deadly labs in your street' 
- Hawke's Bay Today 29. 07. 04

Arohanui - in the love of the many.

Denis O'Reilly 
September 7, 2004

  
Nga Kupu Aroha | Transmit | Pasifika Styles | Peter Jackson   
Brain Exchange | A Brand New Zealand? | Re-Entry | Moko  
KR on Rugby | Alan Gibbs | JaneInside | Global Newzmakers

Home | Blog | About | Top 10 | Heroes | Features | Gallery | Media | New 
Contact | Updates | Links | Mailbox | Speeches | Shop