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Comment: Article needs cleanup and copyedits, along with additonal references. The Herald (Benison) (talk) 06:45, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
Comment: Please see the tutorial at WP:INTREFVE. Qcne(talk) 21:43, 15 November 2023 (UTC)
Environmental Activist
Susi Newborn was a founder of Greenpeace UK who oversaw the purchase of the ill-fated ship Rainbow Warrior. She is pictured protesting ferry prices on Waiheke Island New Zealand in 2023, a few months before her death.
Susi Newborn (May 20, 1950 - December 31, 2023) was a New Zealand author, documentary film-maker, environmental activist, a founding director of Greenpeace UK and co-founder of Greenpeace International. She campaigned professionally for Friends of the Earth and Oxfam, and served on the Boards of Greenpeace New Zealand and Friends of the Earth New Zealand.[1][2] She was also an executive director of the New Zealand non-for-profit group Women in Film and Television.[3][4][5]
Early Life and Education
Newborn was born in London to Argentinean parents who had won scholarships to study in the UK. When her mother was pregnant, her father took a job at the Argentinean Embassy as Press Attaché. Her first environmental protest was as a five-year-old when she successfully stopped her father from chopping down an old growth fir tree in order to let light into an otherwise gloomy living room. Her father was an early social justice advocate and her godmother was one of the founding members of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament spearheaded by Bertrand Russell.[6][7][8][9]
Newborn attended Northwood College. She went on to a Swiss School in Genoa while doing British university entrance exams by correspondence. Her parents were living in Italy at the time. In 1990, she earned a Bachelor's degree in Human Ecology from College of the Atlantic and in 2023, a Diploma in Proofreading and Editing.[5]
In 1974 when her father died under suspicious circumstances, Newborn decided she would lead a life of activism. Her father had received a telegram demanding his immediate return to Buenos Aires and she has always been certain that his death was somehow connected to his refusing to return. Prior to his death, he had written the following to her: “Whatever you do from now on, it will be for the good of the world. You will dedicate your life to protecting Creation and you will be involved in great change. There will be people, however, who will wish you harm, who will not want you to succeed and those who will be jealous of you.”
Activism and work
Soon after her father’s death, Newborn became involved with Friends of the Earth in London.[5] Her first direct action took place on the ice fields of Newfoundland, interfering with the Norwegian commercial seal hunt.
Newborn co-founded Greenpeace UK in 1977 having decided that the then small grassroots organization needed its own ship to be truly effective campaigning against nuclear bomb tests and the slaughter of whales, seals and dolphins. After her friend found an old fishing trawler being sold for scrap, Newborn led the campaign to raise the money to purchase it, and gathered friends to help bring it back to life, turning it into the colorful and legendary ship, the Rainbow Warrior. She gave the ship her new name and designed the rainbow and dove motif painted on his hull.[4][5]
In 1978 Newborn and its all-volunteer crew, except for the Captain, First Mate and Chief Engineer, set sail to the North Atlantic to confront the Icelandic Whaling fleet. One of few women crew members, Newborn rode in a rubber Zodiac across punishing waters to place her body between the harpoon guns and the fleeing, endangered whales.
In a later anti-nuclear campaign and as the only woman in the crew of the Rainbow Warrior, she tried to stop a massive docking cargo ship carrying nuclear rods and radioactive waste. The captain seemed intent on crushing her Zodiac against a wharf, an incident Newborn describes in her 2003 book A Bonfire in my Mouth.[6]
Becoming disillusioned with the UK branch of Greenpeace, Newborn resigned as the British director in 1979.[10][6]
After the 1985 bombing in Auckland Harbour of the Rainbow Warrior by the DGSE, the French secret service, Newborn moved permanently to Aotearoa / New Zealand and lived on Waiheke Island until her death in December 2023.
In 2015 interview, Newborn remembers her shock at the bombing, one which claimed the life of her colleague photographer Fernando Pereira, and came close to killing her husband, Martini Gotje.
“Not in a month of Sundays would I ever have expected a major European country to come in and blow up a peace boat. We must have been doing something right to upset them that much.”[4]
After the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior, Newborn worked in mental health,[11] maternal mental health, and delivered programs in the maximum-security prison for at-risk inmates.
Newborn was a member of the advocacy group Stand with Palestine Waiheke, which successfully petitioned the Waiheke Local Board to fly a Palestinian flag from its roof, and call for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in December 2023.[12]
In her later years Newborn also campaigned for affordable housing and public transport. She also took part in widely reported protests to ban double-decker buses on Waiheke Island and to oppose a marina development.[13][14][15][16]
Death
Newborn was often seen picketing at protests on a range of issues on Waiheke, despite developing breast cancer and undergoing open heart surgery. In her later years her battle with ill health was combined with a struggle to find long-term rental housing on Waiheke Island, a tourist destination with an extreme scarcity of affordable rentals. Newborn used her experiences to campaign for affordable housing as a human right.
After being admitted to the ICU in Auckland City Hospital, Newborn died of pneumonia on New Year’s Eve, 2023.[5]
Published works
A Bonfire in my Mouth: Life, Passion and the Rainbow Warrior (HarperCollins, 2003) ISBN 10: 1869504682
Kit & Maynie: Tea, Scones and Nuclear Disarmament: a 48 minute documentary film co-directed with Claudia Pond Eyley[17]
Personal life
Newborn has three children and one grandchild, all of whom are living in Aotearoa / New Zealand.[18][4][5]
Comment: Article needs cleanup and copyedits, along with additonal references. The Herald (Benison) (talk) 06:45, 15 February 2024 (UTC)