Human rights: Food for a no-quitting thought ‘HR and weathering the storm’
HRR 764
[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are you care about HR. This Reader calls for collective actions that put people first in the process of overcoming systemic political stumbling blocks. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Traducir/traduire los/les Readers; usar/utiliser deepl.com
–Only one hurdle more for activists to stumble-over to open a path?? The struggle is not single issue.
–It always seems impossible… until we do it! (Nelson Mandela)
This is no time to sit back, close our eyes and ears and try to weather the storm
1. “This too will pass” is not a response. Passive sympathy, commiserations and condolences means defeat. [So, shoot down all those fools that say “that is not realistic” or “it is very idealistic of you”. (Jan Oberg)]. But what does active resistance look like? Among other, it is about confronting disinformation wherever we encounter it –including within our own ranks. Above all, we must not just stay in our disciplinary or geographic lane (silos). Give it a touch of human rights (HR), however they apply to what you do!
2. “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppres”. (Frederick Douglass, 1857) If we lose ‘power over’, we need to draw on our ‘power within’, our ‘power with’ and our ‘power to’ respond. One big mistake in responding to authoritarian shutdowns is to fight amongst ourselves (to play their game), to compete for dwindling resources and to take the path of least resistance. Audre Lorde (American writer and feminist 1934-1992) said: “There is no thing as a single-issue struggle, because we do not live single-issue lives”. We need to break out of professional and disciplinary silos and build coalitions”.* (Stuart Gillespie)
*: Mushrooms emerge from the soil after the rain, but their growth would not be possible without the vast network of mycelia that connects the ecosystem. (Antonio Gutierrez et al)
Collective action in addressing systemic issues is strategically vital
3. Strategies to effectively respond to HR violations include the tactical step to form or to join existing progressive networks and coalitions that can provide essential support, enabling activists to share resources, strategies, and experiences. Indeed, learning from each other is one of the most powerful ways in which solidarity is built. Even when staking demands are currently so restricted by political challenges, these exchanges provide new perspectives and avenues for action. These insights are crucial as we continue to demand justice in our respective communities.
4. This work is, not only key in challenging adverse political contexts, but also key when it comes to demanding social justice** where the public opinion is sharply divided, such as in the case of the rights of LGBTQIA+ persons and of refugees. [Not to forget here is the urgency of activists additionally seeking psychosocial support through counseling and mental health services to help activists manage the stress associated with this kind of (often frustrating) work. (Shiela Formento)].
**: Justice issues are complex, and the need must be emphasized for training and support to ensure that activists can be effective in the longer term –including work with judges, parliamentarians and trade unionists. Remember: Nothing resembles injustice so much as delayed justice. (attributed to Seneca)
We can either keep pretending everything is fine, or we can face reality and start building a future that puts people first —not just profit and power (Mozilla)
5. On this note, there is a need to sound the alarm about scholars whose work on the social determinants of health and of other domains is often limited to presenting empirical data without addressing practical, actionable insights.*** (Lee Sangyeon) It is thus key to argue for the importance of praxis –the thoughtful effort to unify theory and practice, an approach developed by Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) and many others influenced by him. [I have tried to follow that principle myself, sometimes failing, but usually with a clear intention to link intellectual work with an activist praxis]. This understanding of praxis also is roughly along the lines of Marx’s Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach that says we need to go beyond interpreting the world, to at least trying to change the world …in the direction of HR and justice.
***: George Bernard Shaw is known to have said that too many scholars tell us the world is what it is, and set out to explain to us why, when they ought to be asking why is the world not what it ought to be, and then tell us why not.
6. I recently watched a webinar between a German and a Swedish scholar. They addressed some of what I am talking about here in memorable one-liners:
- When scholars speak of ‘political realism’, are they not really speaking of a type of ‘political theologism’?
- Visionary thinking has disappeared; nobody wants to hear anything but the main narrative propelled by the media.
- There is no thinking about the future in the West; no more utopian thinking; we are in an intellectual no-man’s-land. [Actually, they/we ought to be practicing ‘eutopian thinking’, i.e., the thinking about a desirable future that is realistic and possible].
- Great minds think alike and it is great minds that like to think. (Jan Oberg and Ulrike Guerot)
7. Mind you, there have been some progressive homegrown social-political programs in the South that genuinely put people first. But, too often, they have been re(su)ppressed by authoritarian governments. As activists, we therefore, need to always analyze more deeply the processes by which discrimination, domination, and oppression happen in the ‘social determination’of, for instance, preventable ill- health, malnutrition and preventable deaths. We can call this ‘the-hidden-injuries-of-class’ that involve the unhealthy day-to-day indignities that emerge from hierarchies of power and wealth. (Howard Waitzkin)
Activists must live as they think or, sooner or later, they will end up thinking as they live (Paul Valery, French philosopher, 1871-1945)
—Activism has as its raison d’être to organize and mobilize claim holders. The first thing, then, is to create consciousness; once created, multiple possibilities open up. (Humberto Maturana, 1928-2021)
—One is not an activist when one lets pass what others decide without voicing a plausible argument and reacting accordingly. (Juan Rivano, Chilean philosopher,1926-2015)
8. The political aim we are pursuing is, not to give a finished assessment of what explains an unattained progress, but to assess all the upstream causes contributing to the present socio-political situation and to separate from it the progressive and the reactionary influences so as to reveal their interactions and to foresee the different scenarios that will carry–forward or slow-down the political process of fulfilling all HR. This, to find in this foresight a window and a direction for the right action. (Trotsky) [Yes, but how many of you/us have, over the years, outgrown such a political aim and drive for action?].
If youth is the time of inexperience, what is the connection between inexperience and revolutionary fervor?
—It is easy to be a revolutionary at 20, but it is difficult to be a revolutionary for 20 years.
9. If revolution and youth are closely allied, this begs the question: What can a revolution promise to adults? To some, it brings disgrace, to others, favor. But even such a fervor is questionable, for it had affected them only the first half of their life. In addition to advantages, revolution also entails uncertainty, exhausting activity and upheaval of settled habits. Youth is substantially better off for this: it is not burdened by guilt so that the revolution can accept younger people in toto.****
****: But beware of a revolution that has no desire to change the world. Quite the contrary: when it aims to preserve the most reactionary spirit of history –the spirit of bigotry, discipline, dogmatism, faith and conventionality. There is no dilemma. As true revolutionary activists we cannot agree with this betrayal of revolution. [We cannot, but do we?].
10. The uncertainty of revolutinary times is an advantage for the youth, because it is the world of the fathers that is challenged. How exciting is the entry into the age of maturity over the shattered ramparts of the adult world! If revolution has to secure its influence it has to give power to students. But beware: if their voices of protest start having an impact, they are contradicted by the propaganda spitted out by CIA computers. (Manuel Rojas, Chilean novelist, 1896-1973)
Bottom line
–In the end, our political struggle is one of interests and forces, not of mere arguments. (Charles Wright Mills, US sociologist, 1916-1962)
11. The dangerous time of transition in which we find ourselves-in, and which we have not yet learned to name, looks like a satanic irony of history to me. We experience it with despair and, somehow, still keep faith that a new world is possible.We thought that, as leading activists,***** we were playing our customary part in the glorious world drama and had no inkling that the theater manager had changed the program at the last moment and substituted it with a trivial farce.
*****: The attitude of activist leaders cannot be indifferent to the expected outcome of our struggle. (Trotsky)
12. The whole system of values we considered sacrosanct has simply, suddenly, been shaken and upset. Nothing is certain any longer. Everything turns problematic, questionable, subject of an analysis and doubt. Is this progress? or rather a call to revolt?****** Did not we swear eternal allegiance to radical transformation of the world? (Milan Kundera, Life is Elsewhere)
******: Alongside all our painful doubts is the future with its unknown realm beyond the horizon in which a hazy idea of revolution seems more and more inevitable. So, what does this mean for our youth (and for you)?
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com
Postscript/Marginalia
–Graffiti, or graffiti on murals, most of the time are intelligent phrases born in the heat of a combat… To educate yourself, sometimes you have to read the walls where you will find the salt and pepper in the graffitis. Therefore, be attentive to the literature offered by the walls. We have not invented anything, graffiti already existed centuries ago. A sample: “God does not exist. Alexander.” “Alexander does not exist. God.” “The barricade closes the street, but opens the way”. In addition, there are famous phrases to quote that may not have been painted on a wall: “A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.” (Oscar Wilde) “Osad! (Dare) This word sums up the whole policy of our revolution.” (Saint-Just). “Is politics the art of lying on purpose…?” (Voltaire).