"Party Party" - The Launch Of A Global Movement | 500 Words

Monday, 21 July 2014, 10:35 am
Column: Alastair Thompson

The Launch Of A Global Movement

The "Party Party" Tour (July 23-26 - AUCK CHCH WGTN DUND ) Interviews With Tommy Ill & Beat Mob Artur

By Alastair Thompson

On Friday I had a brief talk to two Kiwi musicians in Wellington. They are two of the artists on the bill for the "Party Party" tour starting on Wednesday in Auckland, playing Christchurch Thursday, Wellington Friday and Dunedin on Saturday.

Headlining the tour is Kim Dotcom himself with his Good Times crew. He is joined by a stellar lineup of Kiwi talent including Beat Mob Artur and Tommy Ill who met me at the Southern Cross.

I asked them about music, politics and youth voting. While neither plans to vote for the Internet Party, both say they feel that politics is broken and that effectively nobody represents them.

And this is fundamentally what The Internet Party & "Party Party are all about. Fixing democracy for a younger sub-30 demographic. The people who have both the most to win and the most to lose from the decisions made now by our political system, but who all over the world do not vote in massive numbers. ( In NZ 42% of eligible voters aged under 24 did not vote while 95% of eligible voters aged over 60 did. )

I asked each artist what their favourite political song was and also what song of their own they would point to as expressing something deeply felt.

Tommy Ill's favourite "political track" was..

"Reagan" from Killer Mike

…and the song he felt expressed a political view of his own.

Second Hand Concorde - Tommy Ill

Beat Mob Artur 's favourite "political track" was..

"New Slaves" from Kanye West

Kim Dotcom's Internet Party "Party Party" Tour which is being held 23rd - 26th July in Auckland (23rd) Christchurch (24th) Wellington (25th) and finishing in Dunedin (26th).

• For details see the facebook event pages ( North Island / South Island )

The Original "Party Party" was to have been held on the second anniversary of the Megaupload Raid on 20th January and the 1st birthday of the encrypted cloud storage service MEGA. It was planned as an event to celebrate Kim Dotcom's 40th birthday and as the official launch party his Good Times album.

In 24 hours after tickets were released to the public onTuesday 14th January 25,000 people signed up to attend.

Then On Thursday January 16th the "Party Party" was cancelled. The decision followed receipt of an opinion from the Electoral Commission that even though no political party had yet been registered and the election date had not been announced, and even though the "Party Party" was not being held to launch a political party the planned free birthday event might still be construed as "treating" under New Zealand's electoral laws. Their opinion was largely based on several tweets that Kim had sent.

On Friday January 17th The Internet Party registered its logo with the Electoral Commission.

Since then there have been lots more Internet Party developments.

The website was launched and membership registration began on 27th March. The announcement of the Mana Party discussions and alliance followed and completed two months later. Closely followed by the "surprise" announcement of its leader Laila Harré . A Candidate selection "political idol" day. The announcement of its candidates (who look very Blake Seven).

Most recently on Sunday Ben Urale the father of South Auckland Pacific Hip-hop King Kapisi announced Disrupt & Mobilize a Get Out The Vote initiative targeting South Auckland which looks unusually cool so far as these things go.

However in all the activity there has not really as such, been a party launch event. There was a picnic at the mansion. But no celebration the purpose of which was to say this is what we are doing.

And to my mind this makes this, the "Party Party" tour, the real deal launch of the Internet Party.

It costs $20 (to students) $30 (general admission) to attend and in addition to seeing Kim Dotcom perform a Good Times Set it will include some of the coolest NZ Acts around.

From the POV of this seasoned political hack it looks set most def to the coolest political party launch ever held.

Here on Scoop where we have been advertising the gigs we couldn't help but notice that the Internet Party "Cat" advertising creative as set a new bench mark for the most click-worthy advertising creative we have ever run.

As for The Internet Party ( #InternetParty it has been busy disrupting the NZ political establishment for most of this year and thanks to its tie-up with Mana is a virtual certainty to win Parliamentary representation in its first outing.

But NZ is just the beginning. The long game for The Internet Party is to become a global movement.

The Internet Party was conceived as a global movement a response to both corporate and government attacks on the freedom of the internet, and to attacks on us as citizens of the world by corporations and governments using the internet.

And with the eyes of the world on it and the attention of Internet superstars like Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and Snowden journalist Glenn Greenwald, it has the signs of becoming one.

It is a movement which seeks two main objectives 1) to preserve internet freedom and 2) to re-create a democracy that works and serves the people not money and power.

It plans to do so by mobilising young voters (who everywhere in the world don't vote) and by doing so fix democracy using democracy.

It’s intention is to give the World's political system a Reboot. Ctrl. Alt. Delete stylez.

And based on my interviews with these two Kiwi Hip Hop artists on Friday. I'd say there is a broad constituency for this point of view among the young people that it seeks to reach.

- 500 Words | Alastair Thompson 21 July 2014

© Scoop Media

Alastair Thompson

Scoop Publisher

Alastair Thompson is the co-founder of Scoop. He is of Scottish and Irish extraction and from Wellington, New Zealand. Alastair has 24 years experience in the media, at the Dominion, National Business Review, North & South magazine, Straight Furrow newspaper and online since 1997. He is the winner of several journalism awards for business and investigative work.

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