[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are it behooves you. This HR Reader is about who is making decisions for whom and why this matters for the (non-)fulfillment of HR. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Traducir/traduire los/les Readers; usar/utiliser deepl.com
–…But beware of what is participulative! (Raff Carmen)
1. Just think about how others are making decisions for you and your community and reflect on what you ought to do to claim your and others’ right to be involved in those decisions. (United Edge) The type of struggle you choose to become active-in depends on the kind of person you are.
2. Activists telling workers/people what they should do is no different from bosses telling workers what they should do. This type of exclusion now seems as archaic as a steam locomotive. Workers/people have the right to make their own choices: Need this be said…?
3. There are no recipes for the active, responsible participation of claim holders in decision making that affects them. Many young people give us daily lessons of commitment in their search for unity and activism (think Greta Thunberg). We must invite the establishment of thousands of small-such-groups-of-deep-dialogue to break barriers, open thrusts, awake collective possibilities of participation and stake demands —here and now. (Luis Weinstein)
Let’s face it: social movements are a minority and can only try to attract attention with some spectacular actions
4. Our social movements have evolved and have organized themselves quite well, although still too often in loose alliances. Their participating in international meetings is certainly useful but, at the same time, the latter are hotbeds of anti-movement drives and drivers, fuelled by the big corporations and their lobbies. We are indeed constantly trying to put more pressure on governments, but no one can claim that we are rapidly getting closer to where we need to be. The so-called citizens’ movements and public interest civil society organizations are quite powerless compared to the muscle of the corporate world. (Francine Mestrum) Under such circumstances, enthusiasm is fleeting, it fades.
It is the political determination of the people that makes and sustains the political will of governments (James Grant, past UNICEF executive director, 1922 – 1995)
5. Participation of the governed in their government is, in theory, the cornerstone of democracy –a revered idea that is vigorously applauded by virtually everyone. The applause is reduced by only receiving polite handclaps, however, when this principle is advocated by discriminated minorities. And when the have-nots define participation as redistribution of power, the haves’ reaction explodes into many shades of outright repression (racial, ethnic, gender, ideological, and political). (S. Arnstein)
6. The question of the rights of those groups being discriminated arises precisely when, as a group, they are excluded from the struggle for community participation thus being left in greater danger to be victimized by the state. In other words, human rights (HR) are a niche of protection when the community acts uniting all shades of the rainbow. Being part of the community is thus needed against the victimization of individuals and groups through exclusion.
7. Ergo, the fundamental economic rights of every individual are cushioned when there is active community participation. The transition to a HR regime is built on such a set of fundamental economic rights for individuals, as well as for communities. In fact, the institution of such rights is essential in order to prevent the abuses of Capitalism and to prevent the historical elite-led subversion of the process of transition to a HR-based development. One such fundamental economic right must be the right to employment. (Prabhat and Utsa Patnaik)
8. Another set of my (fitting?) iron laws here
- Claim holders may get voice, but not influence, so beware of participation that does not give influence.
- While we fight separately, we are defeated together.
- Empty promises and sand castles in the air make those rendered poor angry. This is why participation is about releasing, about restoring, about renewing, about empowering and about transforming; it also is about co-management.
- Democracy is not merely a system of governance, but a lived experience of justice and widespread collective participation. (United Edge)
- Genuine participation is basically an acceleration of community processes that already exist! (Urban Jonsson)
- There is a gap between available participation opportunities and those that are actually proactively accessed.
Bottom line: From non-participation to tokenism to citizens’ power
9. We have to move beyond tokenistic engagement to delegated public power so that citizen participation becomes citizen power. Without an authentic reallocation of power, participation merely allows the powerholders to claim that all sides were considered, but makes it possible for only some of those sides to benefit. It maintains the status-quo. (Sherry R. Arnstein, “A Ladder of Citizen Participation,” Journal of the American Planning Association, 1969)
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com
Postscript/Marginalia
Why do we think that the end of NGOs means the end of community organizing?
—This assumption co-mingles NGOs with public interest civil society, as if formal, donor-funded organizations are the main vehicle for collective action. But community participation and organizing long predates modern NGOs. From anti-colonial struggles to workers’ movements, most mass mobilizations in history were led by informal or loosely structured groups of committed citizens becoming passionate activists. The NGO ‘experiment’ that started in the 1970s and boomed in the 1990s may be in decline, but grassroots activism is much harder to destroy. It thrives in the cracks between systems and springs up where injustice is most cruel. Movements may not have the communications teams, offices and formal reports of NGOs, but who cares? Their goals are bigger and broader and resources more diverse for a few policies or funders to destroy on a whim.
The end of the NGOs does not mean the end of humanitarian, human rights, development, social justice, and environmental work. It just means the-paradigms-about-how-change-happens are being reset away from visions of charity and towards a DNA of justice; away from centralized institutions and towards local action. History gives me hope, because it shows that when formal structures weaken, informal, networked, and locally driven organizing surges. In fact, this year we have already seen some of the largest mobilizations in decades!*
*: -Kenyan and Nepalese young people protesting against police violence and inequality; -Slovakian students defending democracy and human rights; -Australia citizens marching for Palestine in epic numbers…
These are not isolated spikes. Mass protest have more than tripled since 2006. But protests are just the visible tip of the iceberg of real community organizing that happens in the care and mutual aid that neighbors give each other, the community kitchens where meals are shared, the villages that manage their own affairs, the compassionate circles that welcome diversity and anyone who is downtrodden and in need. These are promising visions of our future –and if that is what civil society will be defined-by in the new era, then let us welcome it like a desert rain. Institutional NGOs may face headwinds, but grassroots activism and the community capacity to mobilize outside of NGO frameworks are stronger than ever –stronger than any headwind. (Matt Kletzing)