I live in New Zealand, an island nation of 5 million people next to Australia. I have run and been involved in many political campaigns. My areas of research are in political communication and public broadcasting as part of a Masters in Communication programme, still to be completed.
When I was 21, I was in a head on collision which resulted in my getting a brain injury. I have learned many things during my road to recovery and one of them is to never give your power away. I am a trained disability advocate and this has been rewarding, however, since the Covid 19 Pandemic has begun, I have seen the disability rights movement in New Zealand (mis)lead the public and many disabled people into acting against the best interests of the disabled community.
All the disability advocacy organisations in New Zealand have been strongly in favour of lockdowns, masks, vaccine mandates and segregating the vaccinated from the unvaccinated. This has not only resulted in them acting against the bodily autonomy rights of the disabled community at large, but also may have played a hand in many disabled people being refused vaccine exemptions on medical grounds.
Many New Zealanders have acquired vaccine injuries and I know a lot of them personally. There are people who have acquired disabilities from the vaccines, people who were already disabled and then got worse from getting vaccinated and then there is the saddest group of all, the people who are disabled who believe what their leaders are telling them and cannot believe that their newly acquired illnesses are as a result of the vaccines.
Additionally, New Zealand is the home of our former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. She was the poster woman of similar campaign lines as the US, but with local cultural twists. During the pandemic, New Zealand saw unprecedented levels of censorship and social division. We are a single state country, i.e. there are no places you can go to live under different laws. New Zealand is in the process of introducing internet content regulation. We need to fight to keep our power.
Jo Bond
Host of The Kiwi Rocket
+64211801754
jo.bond@thekiwirocket.com
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