Archive for category Citizens
“Civilization and Its Discontents” Revisited: The French Interior Minister Condemns People of Civilizations other than His Own
Posted by biornmayburylewis in Citizens, Cultures on February 12, 2012
By Dominique Bénard
The Interior Minister of the French Government, in an outlandish and peremptory statement, has directly attacked people of foreign origin living in France by saying:
”There are patterns of behavior that have no place in our country, not because they are foreign, but because they do not conform to our worldview, particularly regarding the dignity of women and men. Contrary to the relativistic ideology of the left, for us all civilizations are not equal. Those who defend humanity seem to us more advanced than those who deny it. Those who stand for freedom, equality and fraternity appear to us superior to those which accept tyranny, oppression of women, and social or ethnic hatred. In any event, we must protect our civilization.“
The minister’s objective is clear: in this campaign period (presidential elections will be held in France next April), attacking people of foreign origin, particularly those with Islamic backgrounds, can attract extreme right votes.
Mr. Guéant has his certainties, particularly that Western civilization protects freedom, equality, fraternity. It is therefore superior to others … How may me remind Mr. Guéant that the civilization about which he boasts gave birth to the Crusades, religious wars, mass slavery, colonization, genocide of Native Americans, racism, the world wars, the Holocaust, Hiroshima and Nagasaki … not to mention other smaller massacres?
Would a reminder of the judgment of American Indians (people who are victims of European genocide) on Western civilization, put the minister’s ideas in their proper perspective?
Wise old Wintu (California Indians)
“White people make fun of the earth, the deer, or bear. When we Indians seek roots, we make small holes. When we build our teepees, we make little holes. We only use dead wood. The white man, he upends the earth, cuts down trees, destroys everything. The tree says, ‘Stop, I’m hurt, do not make me ill.’ But blindly he charges on. He hates the spirit of the earth. He tears the trees and shakes up their roots. He saws the trees. This hurts them. The Indians never do wrong, while the white man ruins everything. He blows up the rocks and scatters the leaves. The rock says, ‘Stop, you’re hurting me.’ But the white man does not pay attention. When the Indians use the stone, they are small and round for lighting their fires … How could the spirit of the earth love the white man? … Whatever he touches, he leaves a wound.”
Sitting Bull, Hunkpapa Sioux chief, 1875
“See, my brothers, the spring has come, the Earth has received the embrace of the sun, and we will soon see the fruits of this love. Every seed is awakened and even the animals come to life. We owe our existence to this mysterious power, which is why we grant to our neighbors, even our animal neighbors, the same rights as we have to live in this land …Yet hear me, you all, we are now dealing with another race, one that was small and feeble when our fathers met for the first time, but today is large and arrogant. Strangely enough, they have the idea of cultivating the soil and love to possess it, which is a disease.
”These same people have made many rules that the rich may break but not the poor. They levy taxes on the poor and weak to maintain the rich who rule. They claim our mother, Earth, for their own use and barricade themselves against their neighbors, and they disfigure it with their buildings and refuse. This nation is like a torrent of melted snow that overflows its banks and destroys everything in its path. “
Pachgantschilhilas, chief of the Delaware
”The white men proclaimed loudly that their laws were made for everyone, but it immediately became clear that, while hoping we would obey them, they did not hesitate to break them themselves.
”Their elders advised us to adopt their religion but we quickly discovered that there were a great number of them. We could not understand them, and two white men rarely agree on the need to follow them. This embarrassed us until the day we realized that the white man did not take his religion any more seriously than his laws. They kept their laws close at hand, as instruments to use at will in their dealings with outsiders.”
Kondiarionk, Huron chief, addressing the Baron de Lahontan, French lieutenant in Newfoundland.
”You are already so wretched that you can hardly become more so. What kind of man is the European? What kind of creature does he choose to be, forced to do good while having no real motivation for this other than fear of punishment? (…) In truth my dear brother, I pity you from the depths of my soul. Take my advice and becomes Huron. I see clearly the profound difference between my position and yours. I am the master of my condition. I am the master of my body. I have myself at my disposal, I do what I like, I am the first and last of my nation, I fear no man absolutely, and I depend only on the Great Spirit.
“It is not the same for you. Your body as well as your soul is condemned to depend on your great captain, your viceroy who commands you. You have no freedom to do what you have in mind. You’re afraid of thieves, murderers, false witnesses, etc. And you depend on a multitude of people whose place is situated above yours. Is this not true?”
Brotherhood of man.
Perhaps we might also remind Mr. Guéant of this passage from the Gospel of Luke (6, 41): “Why do you see the speck in your brother’s eye and do not you see the plank in your own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Brother, let me take the speck in your eye, you who do not see the plank in your own? Hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye and then shalt thou see clearly enough to remove the speck in your brother’s eye.”
At Indaba-Network, we believe that there has only been one human family since the appearance of Homo Sapiens on earth, and that each particular civilization is a symphony in the concert of humankind that we must discover and enjoy to allow us to grow as Humankind. Thus, any civilization progresses when it looks at another fraternally and regresses when the other is stigmatized or excluded as an enemy.
What is gender?
Posted by Dominique Benard in Citizens, Education on January 16, 2012
By Harriet Bjerrum Nielsen, professor at Centre for Gender research, University of Oslo.
Some weeks ago, Indaba-Network published an article on gender and gender prejudices. A large discussion started. Today, Harriet Bjerrum Nielsen, professor at the Centre for Gender research, University of Oslo, tells us more on Gender. Let us hope that this will sharpen our debate and encourage youth groups to challenge gender prejudices and engage on issues related gender equity.
What is gender? Girls and boys, women and men, of course! Certainly, but is it so simple? Not all women are like each other, nor are all men. Different ways of being and behaving often cut across the gender divide. It is also a common observation that men and women may appear and behave in ways that do not match the different cultural expectations of what is seen as appropriate in relation to biological classifications. So to what degree does gender belong to the body, to self-presentation – or to the eyes of the beholder? The question arises because gender has many facets. It is a dimension of bodies and physical reproduction, individual identities and personal experience, social relations and everyday interaction. It is central to divisions of labor, to the structuring of institutions such as families, schools, markets, and states. Last, but not least, it is also a forcefull frame of interpretation in our minds that imposes hierarchical dichotomies on differences that are actually much more varied and distributional. The personal, symbolic, social relational, and structural dimensions of gender are deeply entangled with other lines of difference and inequality, such as age, sexuality, social class, nationality, and racialized-ethnicity. These entanglements contribute to shape the organization, salience, and meanings of gender in specific contexts.
Gender differences are distributional rather than categorial
A source of confusion is that gender as a concept is used to signify two quite different things: a categorical difference (meaning either/or) and a distributional or statistical difference (meaning more or less of something). The only close-to-dichotomous observable gender trait - often named as the core of biological sex – is genital difference. All other gender dimensions — whether they are biological (hormone levels, secondary sex attributes, brain structure, motor performance), psychological (differences in motivations or cognitive capacities) or behavioural (differences in preferences, and ways of being and behaving) — involve complex variation, not dichotomy. In most cases the variation within each gender group is bigger than the average difference between the two groups. Thus, almost all gender differences are distributional rather than dichotomous or categorical, most gender traits seem to be socially influenced and changeable over time, and they do not come in neat and one-dimensional packages in the person. A boy or a girl may be “typical” in some respects and “atypical” in others. So what is gender if what we see as “masculine” and “feminine” traits can be found in both girls and boys? Questions like these have led gender researchers to conclude that divisions and hierarchies of gender do not follow from the difference between women and men. It is rather the opposite: when gender is constructed as a difference empirical variation in its many dimensions becomes reduced to a simple dichotomy (Magnusson and Marecek 2012).
This does not mean that gendered patterns of behaviour are a mirage or that the patterns that do exist have no sort of biological basis (even if we do not know exactly what that basis is). The point is that there is no clear or straightforward connection between near-dichotomous dimensions of biological sex and the complex, multi-dimensional and context-dependent nature of gender differences. Gendered patterns — with or without a biological basis — inform cultural norms and expectations about what is seen as typically feminine and typically masculine. Instead of recurring arguments concerning more or less biological determination, it has been suggested by Simone de Beauvoir and Toril Moi to view the body as part of our situation in the world. It means something what bodies we are born with – as it would mean something if I were born with one arm or eyes in my neck – but what it means depends on how it is interpreted in a given culture and society, and on my own actions. Biology does not have any meaning in itself.
Gender as cultural norm
Distributive gender patterns are found both on structural, symbolic and personal levels although they may vary both between and within societies and social contexts. Different cultures have different norms for what counts as desireable masculinity and femininity. However, also within the same culture there will often be several ways in which one can be masculine or feminine. Different social classes, ages and ethnic groups, for instance, will often have different ideas about what a real man/boy or a real woman/girl is. Within a society there will be ongoing symbolic struggles between such masculinities to gain hegemony, for instance by ridiculing or morally criticising each other. Some become dominant, while others are subordinated or marginalized.
Personal gender concerns the ways we fit into, identify with or protest against available cultural models of gender. Gender is a personal matter and a reality for each and every one of us, but it is also a dimension of social relations created between people and shaped through processes of interaction. While the individual perspective frames gender as something we “are,” the interactional perspective emphasizes gender as something we “do”. This perspective calls attention to the dynamics of power in social constructions of meaning. Gender as doing and gender as difference are not mutually exclusive perspectives; when children learn to “do” gender in their families, in schools, and with peers, they also “become” gender in certain ways and this will again form their responses to new social situations.
Gender as hierarchy
What characterizes gender as a frame of interpretation is not only the tendency to split and dichotomize phenomena into two distinct groups, but also the tendency to read this dichotomy as a hierarchy: Things defined as feminine also tend to be seen as secondary or even inferior to things defined as masculine. This is also sometimes called the male norm: Men and boys represent the universal norm from which women and girls deviate. Gender as framework of interpretation may lead to gender stereotyping. This is the case if a gendered pattern of distribution is interpreted as a categorical distinction. Here the variation within each group and overlap between girls and boys is ignored.
People often tend to believe that the specific gender system their culture endorses is natural and even biologically founded. Why do we have this inclination to naturalize our own norms of gender? One reason could be related to the fact that in all known societies, structural and symbolic gender play an important role in the stability of the society. To question the naturalness of a society’s gender system challenges the stability, power distribution and values of that society. Gender arrangements are also important elements of cultural and personal identity – and thus also invested in emotionally. But ideas of desirable gender orders belong to the normative field, not to nature. There is a world of difference between saying ‘this is natural’ and saying ‘this feels natural to me’.
If you have been interested with this blog article, you can discover more about gender in a brilliant resource developed by Harriet Bjerrum Nielsen: Just click on this link.
The world is fat
For better-off families, the December/January Holiday Season is a period of traditional overeating, while the millions of people who suffer from chronic lack of food and the millions of children who die of malnutrition, worldwide, remain forgotten. Yet paradoxically, diseases once associated with opulent societies and wealthy people increasingly affect both rich and poor countries.
A worldwide epidemic
Being overweight and obese (fat) are among today’s leading health risk factors throughout the world, causing 4 million deaths every year. Obesity is often associated with high blood pressure, high blood glucose (diabetes), cardiovascular diseases and cardiac failure.
Until a few decades ago, obesity was considered a condition associated with high socioeconomic status. Indeed, early in the 20th century, most populations in which obesity became a public health problem were located in the developed world. Beginning in the United States and then spreading to Europe, obesity is now fast emerging as the new pandemic (or worldwide epidemic) of the XXIst century. It affects both sexes and all age groups and has a disproportionate impact upon disadvantaged population groups. By 2030, for example, more than 50 per cent of the adult population in the USA will be obese.
Dramatic increases in some developing countries
Now, however, the most dramatic increases in obesity are occurring in some developing countries. In poor countries, initially the higher socioeconomic strata of the population were primarily affected but a shift is taking place from the higher to the lower socioeconomic levels. So, while low childhood weight is still responsible for the death of over 2 million children every year, mainly in low-income countries, it is not uncommon to find households with an undernourished child and an overweight adult, often a woman. In 2010, the World Health Organization reported that more than 42 million children under the age of five were overweight or obese, and, of those, 35 million lived in developing countries. In addition, obesity goes hand in hand with inequality. In any country, the higher the level of income inequality, the higher the numbers of obese people.
What is the cause ?
In the long run, the rise in obesity will reduce overall life expectancy, while it is already increasing short- and long-term healthcare expenditures, contributing to making such expenditures unsustainable in national budgets.
What is the cause of this catastrophic global rise in chronic diseases related to obesity?
If you think that fat people are solely responsible for their condition because of their individual behavior, or that their obesity is not your problem, you are wrong!
Indeed, at the individual level, obesity is basically the consequence of the imbalance between energy consumption (physical exercise) and energy intake (what and how much you eat): individual choices. Yet choices are strongly influenced by and increasingly dependent on powerful external factors. Let’s analyze them briefly.
Change in the global food system
The process of globalization has transformed the global food system: traditional food production, feeding practices and behaviors have been abandoned or have profoundly changed. Local agricultural production has become increasingly dependent on resources (such as fertilizers, pesticides, genetically engineered seeds) controlled by powerful transnational companies at the global level.
To maximize their profits those companies, which often control the entire production and distribution cycle, push for increased consumption of food by offering their consumers ample opportunities to eat throughout the day. Global fast food chains are strategically positioned everywhere offering low cost, palatable, high-sugar, high-fat, high-salt food. Sugar is possibly addictive and salt causes thirst which pushes people to consume increasing quantities of sweetened beverages which are of no nutritional value. Highly processed food is pervasively and persuasively marketed.
Industrially processed foods
Globalized diets based on industrially processed foods (with added sugar, fats, salt, and chemical flavor enhancers) have progressively substituted traditional diets based on locally produced and individually home prepared foods. Such diets are at the root of the dramatic increase in chronic diseases and obesity. Concurrent causes are urbanization (with reduced distances and availability of transport) and new technologies, which have revolutionized work and entertainment and dramatically reduced physical exercise: think of children and young people sitting many hours a days in front of the TV or computer, typically consuming popcorn, sweet snacks and beverages!
In addition, the production and distribution cycle of industrially processed food is not environmentally sustainable and implies enormous environmental costs, adding additional long term consequences to health, including unpredictable genetic effects.
Food waste
Obesity in the industrialized world goes hand in hand with food waste. Rich and fat societies are also squanderers. Yearly, at the level of the consumer, rich countries throw away 222 million tons of food, an amount which is slightly less than the total net food production in sub-Saharan Africa (230 million tons), where malnutrition because of the lack of food is still widespread causing the death of millions of children.
In synthesis, obesity is a very serious global problem increasingly affecting populations everywhere which is linked to disease, high mortality, unfair distribution of resources and destruction of the planet! But the trend can be reverted and we can do a lot both individually and as organized groups, acting locally, nationally and globally through appropriate networks.
Let’s reverse the trend!
Let’s start by modifying our individual nutritional behavior. Avoid as much as possible industrially processed food, including snacks and sweetened beverages. Avoid fast-food and adding sugar to your food. Privilege natural food rich in fiber, such as fresh vegetables and fruits, locally produced and prepared at home. Increase the quantity of vegetables and reduce the amount of meat in your diet (meat consumption is related to cancer and meat production implies enormous consumption of water; furthermore, to produce a kilogram of vegetable protein costs far less in inputs than production of a kilogram of meat protein). Keep active and do physical exercise on a regular daily basis.
If we organize ourselves in groups we can do more. Those who live in rural areas may engage in local production of food and apply the rules of biological cultivation and farming (avoiding chemical fertilizers and pesticides, using instead dung and compost and organic repellants!).
Those who live in an urban area can create a consumer association to buy directly from farms in the region that use biological agriculture and farming techniques. This will grant both to consumers and the farmer fair prices and reduce for the latter the higher business risks of biological agriculture.
By networking nationally and globally we may engage in advocacy for public health nutritional education campaigns. We must especially push for public policies that regulate the production and marketing of unhealthy food. Scientific literature shows that health promotion programs do not address the underlying social and economic drivers of the obesity epidemic and that policy-led approaches (such as banning high fat and sugar food in canteens, strictly regulating unhealthy food marketing, or using fiscal leverages to reduce incentives to consume and produce unhealthy food) generally show greater cost-effectiveness than health promotion.
No corporate social responsibility without a strong social control
Transnational companies control much of what we eat. Exercising social control on the food industry, for example participating in watch-dog networks, is another possible way to engage in a movement for public health. Industries are extremely sensitive to social pressure which may put their profits at risk, and they may respond to public health concerns and consumer demands to change their products and portfolios.
Nowadays, companies often point out their Corporate Social Responsibility policies, but without strong social control from civil society organizations, that claim may remain just another way to attract consumers, showing the company’s good face, while perpetuating malpractice and the marketing of inappropriate and unhealthy food. Too often, food industries resists national and international public health attempts to modify current practices through legislative changes. Companies eventually by-pass regulations governing marketing strategies, or simply sacrifice their profits in industrialized countries and turn to developing countries where both institutional and civil society responses are often weaker, whereas social damage may be even greater.
The overall model of development is the threat
As you can see, obesity and chronic diseases share an underlying cause with many other threats to humanity: namely, the overall model of development in which we live. Young people are those most capable of embracing a future-oriented vision but, to be effective, they should take advantage of the experience of previous generations and lessons learned. Obesity is another good indicator of the urgent need for a paradigmatic shift from today’s development model. To that end, let’s reduce inequalities, maximize health rather than profit, promote and sustain local knowledge, local production and local consumption, while enjoying our experience and sharing it with others!
Eduardo Missoni
Politics from Markets or Politics from Values?
Posted by biornmayburylewis in Citizens on November 24, 2011
The Parthenon (Ancient Greek: Παρθενών) is a temple on the Athenian Acropolis, Greece, dedicated to the Athena, the goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, warfare, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, justice, and skill
“For we are all small powers now, and once again Greece is in the forefront of the fight for the future.”[1]
Professor Mark Mazower, the New York Times on June 29, 2011
Greeks have been feeling really bad during the last two years, after the “crisis” took hold, along with the newly elected prime minister. Greeks feel bad, in the first place, about themselves because they really messed up everything, and secondly because of their loss of interest in politics during the last few decades. This has led to a political situation lacking in leaders and solutions. Greeks will never express this view in public, but it is common knowledge and on everyone’s mind. Now, the reaction is riots and fire: like a heavy smoker who suddenly learns that he suffers from cancer after 30 years of cigarettes. Greeks find themselves in the worst phase of democracy – a democracy run by an ex banker nowadays. Anger and Fear.
But what are ‘the facts’ commonly accepted in northern Europe concerning what is happening today in Greece, giving us a glimpse of the fight for the future to which Professor Mazower refers? The ‘facts’ include this scenario: It is almost a ‘given’ that Greeks—mostly because of the sunny Mediterranean weather that they enjoy (remember Apollo?)—are more or less lazy, accustomed to just having fun and spending (their) money. It is also almost ‘certain’ that if you move a Swedish or a German family to live in Greece, after three generations, the result is the same: a lazy German family, lying in the sun and looking at the blue sea, spending time eating fish and enjoying cold coffee.
What is depicted, above, is a cruel stereotype of contemporary Greece. Despite the “lazing by the sea” imagery so popular in some northern European circles, Eurostat statistical tables report that the Greeks work more hours per year than both the Germans and the average European. Now, to ‘fix’ the economy, they are effectively being asked to work more and earn less than they already do, while surviving with far fewer government services.
So why all this mess in Greece and European unhappiness with it today? Because its unproductive people simply spend money unwisely? No, unfortunately it’s not that easy. The root of European anger with the Greeks is because of values.
The Greeks invented real values and taught them to the West. When and how? These values came via ancient Greece and the Greek colonies, passing through the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the French and Greek Revolutions…democracy, concern for the common good, loyalty to institutions, trust and mutual respect, as well as the belief in the openness and honesty of people elected to public office…. Culture is the expression of a society’s ideas and values. Values are why the ancient Greek culture (and its protagonists) is considered among the top cultures, not only in the West. Values brought global respect and acceptance (as well as tourist revenues, of course!). Greeks now are blamed, actually, because, in less than thirty years, they have lost their own ancient values. Europe, especially, will never forgive them for that. Values are the reason why Greece joined the European Union, in 1981, not because of its labor force or huge market.
The future? Greeks have to find their lost values again and come back. Will it be easy? Nobody knows… it may amount to a struggle between humanity and vanity. I’ve met many people (non-Greeks) who tell me that you have to come to Greece in order to learn who you are and search inside you… I don’t know whether I would agree or disagree. I was born Greek, so my opinion doesn’t really count. But what I can do is to try to bring all these people to my homeland who want to live and experience the Olympic spirit, philosophy, and democracy and share it with them. Greeks just have to fight their only real and biggest enemy: their bad side – a side that has totally vanquished them in the last few years—and remember who they were in their glorious past. After all, the 2004 Olympics are recent. This is what Europe really wants, what the rest of the world really needs. Real values, from real humans, for real people.
A possible change (a change, that is, for the better: change, in its original conceptualization, is not necessarily, in itself, a positive word) will come from inside of Greece. Everyone knows that modern institutions may embrace appropriate values (just like the oracles did for the ancient Greeks: remember the Delphi Oracle). They are the ones that can make change happen. Such institutions would include the Orthodox Church, the schools, the universities and of course contemporary families. Unfortunately, these institutions, like the Orthodox Greek Church do not support this much needed values-based change, even though, for example, Greek Orthodox employees (the priests) are paid from the Greek State budget, actually making them public servants… Greece’s ex-prime minister promised a separation of church – but did nothing.
What Greeks need now is extroversion: something that the famous wealthy Greek ship owners experienced some decades ago. This would mean overseas education, a kind of cultural and economic Enlightenment. This is because Greeks cannot really understand WHY but mostly HOW the crisis happened to them. Besides, Europe’s philhellenism movement (“the love of Greek culture”), two centuries ago, with heroes like Lord Byron, actually made Europeans really interested in Greece. History just repeats itself. Both the Greek people and its leaders just need to make this circle again and again (for better or worse).
In short, Greeks must accept that they will need to look inward and outward to make right their country in the coming years: particularly with regard to being more interested in and reforming their political system. Yet, at the same time, the European community should also look at the rate at which Greeks work—much more than the average European—and the extraordinary burden most Greeks are now being forced to bear, despite their above-average annual work rate. If the planned austerity measures go through, these same Greeks will have to pay for the very costly mistakes that their leaders in business and government have made with Eurozone banking and state partners: errors regarding financial agreements that in no way benefited ordinary Greek citizens who will now be forced to pay for them.
Themistocles Papadimopoulos
El sistema, music for social change
Posted by Dominique Benard in Citizens, Cultures on October 29, 2011
- We are living in a period in which culture is not given sufficient importance. Art is not just a game, it is an opportunity for personal, social and even economic development.
The Austrian government, in 2011, gave an award to Maestro José Antonio Abreu, a Venezuelan musician, economist and politician. Abreu is the founder of a project that has proven to be one of the most important examples of incentives for socio-economic progress in any country. J.A. Abreu was awarded the ‘”Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art” for his work making culture a means to forging social integration. A model created through cultural spirit has become one of the most important social development models worldwide.
Known as “El Sistema”, it was born in Venezuela in 1975 as a foundation comprised of several children’s and young people’s orchestras. Its mission is to draw them away from violence, delinquency and drugs.
In Venezuela there are serious problems such as truancy, violence, petty crime, drug addiction and unemployment. In this context, “El Sistema” has managed to reduce such social distress and encourage the determination, among its participants, to pursue a goal and to acquire the tools necessary to get a better chance for personal, social and professional development.
In this way, the growth is not only understood as a means to gather together and reconcile several strong wills, but also as an organizational synergy that gives voice to individuals. ”El Sistema” is rooted at the base of the social pyramid because many of the participants are from the poorest strata of the population. Playing in an orchestra, in fact, is not a mere performance exercise. It contributes to the emergence of a dynamic similar to the one found in broader human society, where individuals’ thoughts are listened to, shared or disputed by the rest of community.
“El Sistema” is a project based on a number of strengths, making it unique. First, the system of orchestras is organized in a Central Foundation, which controls the performance circuit as well as the many sets of orchestras, choirs and local musical centers, spread out across Venezuela’s territory. In addition, since 1979 the project has continuously grown along with the emergence of a strong leader, with a multifaceted education: the Maestro J. A. Abreu. Finally, the Government is the main project underwriter: on one hand, this is definitely an incentive for gaining more intense support from private individuals, while on the other, it means that the program has never been left to the mercy of fragmented supporters.
“El Sistema” began to expand beyond the borders of Venezuela from the year following its foundation as a cultural and social institution, beginning with the building up of an orchestral system in Latin America. Now, there are programs borrowed from the Venezuelan approach in over 25 countries including many beyond the Latin American region: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, South Korea, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Scotland, USA, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, England, Italy, Jamaica, India, Mexico, Nicaragua, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Trinidad and Tobago, and Uruguay.
“El Sistema” offers experiences accessible to every human being, regardless of ethnic, cultural and social diversities, by implementing the processes of social integration through music. Furthermore, it contributes significantly to the socio-economic opportunities available to a country. It has proven that music is and can be an instrument of social integration and communication, invaluable from the individual community to the global levels.
In fact, in other parts of the world new music projects with a social-development purpose are being born, as is happening now in Afghanistan and Argentina. The common denominator of these initiatives is the ability to share a mission and to join resources from ethical, institutional and financial points of view. In this way, each community can reach the common goal of socio-economic integration and development, through the sharing of music.
This theory is also an invitation so that everyone may try to achieve something useful for more equitable global development, increasing the value of culture and, in particular, music.
Maria Francesca Ghellere
New York Youth Like “Rebel Diaz” Are Making Their Presence Felt in the Wall Street Occupation
Posted by biornmayburylewis in Citizens, Economy on October 10, 2011
America has been a slumbering giant but recent events in the streets are showing us signs that the country may be awakening. The Arab Spring, the atrocities in Syria and Bahrain, the urban unrest in France and London, the economic meltdowns in Greece and southern Europe, the threats to the Euro-Zone, and the ongoing, grinding, and bloody warfare in Afghanistan and Iraq… all these America has observed in its living rooms, on television — each person, each family, seemingly in timid isolation from each other.
Not any more. Now, everyone knows that the American middle class has had no increase in its real wages for thirty years, that the poor grow desperately poor, with poverty in America reaching historic levels, that the Democrats and the Republicans are in the hands of those who have grown extremely wealthy in the past three decades, paralyzing the political system with what is known in the USA as “special interest politics.”
What’s more, the Great Recession is having a particularly cruel impact on America’s youth. Young Americans have bleak job prospects, even if they are lucky enough to obtain a decent education. Education costs are now so high that young people can ill afford to pay back the debts that they must obtain to pay for school. Plus the youth of today will be saddled with the task of paying back the enormous debts of contemporary America’s political system: debts for which they are not responsible. The French statesman and activist Stéphane Hessel, thinking on similar problems in Europe, is calling on the youth of today to peacefully “get indignant”! Three million copies of his book have been sold so far.
Americans of modest incomes have seen their wages go nowhere while millions of them have also lost their homes in an unprecedented frenzy of “predatory” lending that unscrupulous banks and mortgage companies inflicted on them. During the 1990s and early 2000s, underprivileged neighborhoods, particularly of Latinos, were targeted for high interest mortgages, even though lenders knew that these people owned few assets to fall back on should there be any problem, such as the head of the family losing his or her job. These types of bank and mortgage company representatives received their salaries whether or not the mortgages were paid. Then, such badly made mortgages were “bundled” into financial instruments and sold on the open market to towns, pension funds, and other organizations who depend on the ratings agencies, like Moodys and Standard & Poor, for guarantees on their reliability. Yet the larger banks pay the agencies’ fees for their ratings research! The crash came in 2008. Bush and now Obama saved the failing super-banks with the famous “bailout.” But the economic turmoil goes on: people losing their homes, jobs, and income, with a very limited welfare state to fall back on.
Millions of Americans are asking, “Where’s the bailout for the rest of us?” Youth groups, unions, peace activists, greens, middle class professionals, members of neighborhood associations, students, intellectuals, journalists, small businesspeople, and artists are finding their voices and have occupied Wall Street, the heart of America’s big bank system, for over three weeks. This occupation, complete with working groups handling donations, finance, outreach, internet, sanitation, medical assistance, direct action, and food, as well as producing the “Occupied Wall Street Journal,” has no plans to end soon. Ordinary citizens are sending them food and support from all over. Similar occupations are now happening in financial districts across America.
Last weekend, one of the largest mass arrests in U.S. history occurred when New York City police handcuffed over 700 peaceful demonstrators who were walking, in a protest of solidarity, across the Brooklyn Bridge:
(Photo: Jessica Rinaldi/Reuters)
On Wednesday, October 5, hip-hoppers ”Rebel Diaz” analyzed the unfolding story in real time, “busting a rhyme” in a video recorded near Wall Street on Youtube.
Exactly like the anti-Vietnam War protests of the 1960s and 1970s, this autumn American street movement has a number of tendencies. Now, in its first stages, many mainstream media observers either trivialize the protesters or complain that they don’t seem to have a clear, unified message. Meanwhile, the official response in the cities is quite different. In New York, for example, Mayor Bloomberg’s police force has arrested hundreds and beaten peaceful protesters with police sticks while spraying them with pepper spray. In Boston, by contrast, Mayor Menino’s police force has taken a more tolerant approach in its handling of peaceful street protest. After all, American cities are in a financial bind because budgets for public workers, including police, firemen, and ambulance workers, are being slashed everywhere as the recession drastically diminishes tax revenues. It will be interesting to watch how these crucial public servants will behave should the protests grow larger and spread to more cities. The protesters want the jobs and salaries of such workers protected too.
Perhaps one may read too positively the new street reality. Many questions remain. Where will this new movement go? How can older people join and support the bright, creative, and energetic young people whom they see in the newspapers and (finally) on commercial TV? How can we break the impasse between the Republicans and Democrats in Washington and stop the flood of money corrupting the political system with a street movement that, so far, is not united behind a clearly articulated cause or list of demands? How can we “sack” the ratings agencies and curb the excesses of the super-banks that are “too big to fail”? What is the relationship between what’s happening in the streets and the long needed effort to move America in a more positive direction?
In these dark days of the Great Recession, however, I am personally heartened. There are signs of sophisticated, peaceful, youth protest coming from America’s streets, and there is no doubt that it is important.
Biorn Maybury-Lewis
Marching for Peace and Brotherhood
On Sunday the 25th of September about 200,000 people – all young in either age or attitude – joined the 50th edition of the “March for Peace and Brotherhood among Peoples.” They walked together from Perugia to Assisi, the well known medieval town where St. Francis founded his religious order, filling the 25 Km distance with their colours, their songs, and especially their will to build a different world – one of social justice and peace.
At the end of the event, the marchers launched a new appeal for peace and brotherhood among all peoples, invoking the first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”
The brotherhood of nations is based on dignity, fundamental rights, and on equal universal citizenship of the people who form the nations. Human rights are equivalent to the vital needs of every person. They challenge the policy agenda which is meant to take concrete actions to ensure “all human rights for all,” nationally and internationally. The challenge is to translate into practice the principle of interdependence and indivisibility of human rights – civil, political, economic, social and cultural – and redefine citizenship in the name of inclusion.
The March for Peace and Brotherhood Appeal was based on six principles:
- Abandon the idea of military security, replacing it with one of human security. Convert the current U.S.$ 1.6 trillion, spent on war, to fight against poverty and starvation, climate change, unemployment, organized crime, and corruption.
- Stop prioritizing economics. Prioritize instead people and populations with their dignity, rights, and responsibilities.
- Embrace nonviolence for Italy, for Europe, and for everyone as the main way to combat all forms of injustice, and work for the best possible society.
- For peace, we must invest in solidarity and cooperation at all levels. The perverse logic of the so-called “national interests” of the market, profit, and global competition is impoverishing and destroying the world. Solidarity between peoples, nations and generations: if at first it was desirable, now it has become indispensable.
- There is no peace without a policy of peace and justice. Italy, Europe, and the world urgently need a new policy and a new non-violent political culture based on human rights. The more serious the political crisis, the more you need to develop an awareness of shared responsibilities: a new civic and political courage.
- If we really want peace, we must build and spread the culture of positive peace. For this, first of all, we must educate for peace.
Based on these principles the marchers made the following commitments:
- Ensure for all the right to food and water. It is intolerable that financial speculation on food or the privatization of water imposes suffering on people.
- Promote decent work for all. One billion two hundred million people toil under sweatshop conditions. Another 250 million have no job. 200 million have emigrated to seek one. Over 12 million are victims of crime and are forced to work in inhuman conditions. 158 million girls and children are forced to work. It is necessary to restore the dignity of work to workers, young and old, around the world.
- The world should invest in youth, education, and culture. A country that does not invest in and give creative space to young people is a country without a future.
- Disarm finance and build an economy based on justice. Finance, without any international controls, is undermining urgent political priorities and causing a dramatic increase in poverty. Primacy of politics over finance must be reestablished. To reduce social inequalities, financial transactions should be taxed, corruption and tax evasion curbed, and wealth redistributed.
- Repudiate the war and cut military spending. Instead, promote and defend human rights, invest in conflict prevention, find non-violent solutions, promote disarmament, combat trafficking, reduce the arms trade and military expenditures, and then re-tool the arms industry. This is the best way to ensure our security.
- Defend the common good and the planet. If we do not learn to protect and properly manage the global commons that we have, such as air, water, energy, and the earth, there will be no peace or security for anyone. There is an urgent need to reduce dependence on fossil fuels while introducing new green technologies and new ways of life no longer based on individualism, commodification, and consumerism.
- Promote the right to free and pluralistic information. Provide objective, comprehensive, impartial, and various views that focus on the lives of individuals and the people; this is an indispensable condition for freedom and democracy. Freedom of pluralistic information calls for participation in the life and choices of the community, it promotes understanding of the complex phenomena of our times, it enhances dialogue, it helps build bridges between civilizations, cultures and different world views, and it contributes to disseminating and consolidating the culture of peace and human rights.
- Make the UN the common home of humanity. All for the United Nations, the United Nations for all. Governments must agree to democratize and strengthen the United Nations by pooling resources and knowledge to address the key social and environmental emergencies worldwide.
- Invest in the development of civil society and participatory democracy. Without an active and responsible civil society and cooperation between civil society and institutions at all levels none of the major problems of our time can be solved. Strengthening civil society and promoting participatory democracy is one of the most concrete ways to overcome the crisis of politics, democracy, and institutions.
- Build inclusive and open societies. The future is in our encounters with others and in relationships based on the principles of equality and the common good. Practicing respect and dialogue between faiths and cultures enriches and improves the cohesion of our communities.
These principles are very much the same that we defend in Indaba-Network, so let’s spread the word and convert it into everyday practice in our communities and our common struggle as active and responsible citizens of the world.
Eduardo Missoni
Generation Y – The Millennials
They were born after the Cold War and the liberalization of morals, they saw Earth from space, they know how fragile the planet is, they are the most broadly educated, they navigate through virtual globalization, they know how many people are desperately poor while others are extremely wealthy, they see that the economy limps from crisis to crisis and is suffering, but they believe that society can be more democratic and generous.
We see them everywhere come together to move societies in their creaky old sclerosis, becoming the fathers and mothers of a new world. They have asked to be heard.
Yet who is listening to the message?
Is the deafness of men (and some women?) in power similar to that of the famous three monkeys who cover their ears, eyes, and mouths but see nothing, hear nothing, and say nothing? Such attitudes hardly reflect the wisdom of those who run the world. Rather, they evidence unconsciousness – dancing while the Titanic sinks!
The Millennials may not have the solutions but they pose the real problem: we need to change the world. Models of the last century have run out of gas and all vestiges of logic when billions of dollars, in a nanosecond, waltz uncontrolled across the globe, when a board of directors sitting on top of a tower maims thousands of lives, when millions of acres, in a few months, are rendered deserts, and while the country doing these things thinks the world, like a dumb bronze statue, sees nothing.
Who will reinvent the world?
Where are the intellectuals, those who in the past convinced people of the need to educate, the strength of human rights, and the importance of global institutions? Maybe there is no longer a solitary intellectual with a prominent voice, but instead a collective intelligence which is parading through the streets, camping in the squares, debating openly, observing the world with open eyes.
It is crucial that we help build a new world, with new borders, new structures, unknown arts, born from these major upheavals.
Do not worry, my seventy years are not suffering from a senile cult of youth. But if I believe in the Indaba project, it is because we must spread the message, so that which has now been invented may be diffused and shared, possibly for my fellows to hear (as well as the later generations), amplifying the voice of the Millennials. They see another world in the indifference of those who have the power and who sometimes are real thugs.
Hey Millennials, yell louder! Sometimes my voice runs out of steam …
Michel Seyrat
Lessons from the Utoya tragedy
Posted by Dominique Benard in Citizens, Organizations on September 12, 2011
People lay tribute after a memorial service at Oslo cathedral (The Guardian Eyewitness)
On July 22, 2011, in Norway, an unbalanced man, infected by the ideas of the extreme right, murdered 77 people, including 69 young members of Norway’s Labour Party who were gathered for their summer school on the island of Utoya. Seventy-seven victims out of a population of 4,800,000 inhabitants is a proportion that would be equivalent to a massacre of more than 960 people in a country of 60 million inhabitants, like France, or more than 4900 people in a country of 306 million like the United States of America. Proportionally, Norway lost more of its citizens than did the USA on September 11, 2001.
The force of moderation
One could expect that the Norwegian people would react violently or even hysterically but this did not happen. Norway has offered the world a lesson of moderation and democracy. The country is on the campaign trail: the municipal and regional elections will be held on September 12. After losing 69 of their own, killed on the island of Utoya, young members of the Labour Party, the main targets of the killer, are back. And they thirst for revenge. But a very Norwegian kind of revenge, wanting to be exemplary and oriented towards others, not against them. Norwegians are campaigning to defend the spirit of tolerance, a key feature of their democracy.
Le Monde, the French Newspaper, quotes Asmund Aukrust, the 26 year-old vice Chairman of the AUF, the federation of Norway’s Labour Party youth, and a survivor of Utoya:
“The killer wanted to stop recruitment to the AUF. It is therefore important to make a point of voting and engaging in politics or in whatever organization,” he said calmly. “This is the only answer for us “. The goal is to have a record turnout, a sign of a surge of democracy.
The strength of democracy
When terrorism strikes a democracy, the only intelligent answer is that which the Norwegian Prime Minister, Jens Stoltenberg, called for on the evening of the attack: “More democracy, more openness.” That’s the lesson of Utoya which the world should take from admirable Norway: when confronted with problems of any kind, a democracy does not close or abandon its principles, it responds with more democracy as the search for solutions requires freedom of thought, freedom of opinion, freedom of the press, democratic debate, and the gathering together of people who share democratic values.
The strength of public-spiritedness
In Norway, all parties have experienced a wave of membership after the attack on July 22, especially among young people.
That’s the point which we should take to heart: in the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Greece, Chile, and in Arab countries, “outraged” young people are waiting for their voice and are protesting against an unjust and corrupt economic system, incapable of offering the new generations a worthy and stable future.
The protests are necessary, indispensable, but not enough. What will count in the coming years is the commitment of young people in political parties to bring about innovative and just solutions. Stop with the denial of politics! Political parties are necessary; if honest people, determined to change things do not engage in them, they leave room for the corrupt, the careerists, and the stupid, while democracy remains stymied. The schools and all youth organizations should train young people in democratic debate and encourage them to engage in political parties as soon as possible. Evil comes less from the harmful action of criminals than from the inaction of good people.
Dominique Bénard
After the BP Oil Spill and the Fukushima Near Meltdown: Is the Amazon Next?
The news from all over the world, these days, on one hand, is not good. But, on the other, it helps us to focus our understanding and plans of action. I want to focus, here, on social and environmental questions that are related in interesting, yet dangerous, ways. They all involve huge energy projects.
Will this young Indian's family be allowed to maintain their way of life in the Amazon? (Photo: B. Maybury-Lewis)
The nuclear near meltdown in Fukushima, Japan indicates an extraordinary lack of care. How could such an advanced nation, like Japan, build a series of nuclear power plants on a beach where, just off the coast, throughout history, huge earthquakes have occurred with tsunamis coming ashore right after?
The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico: how could a major oil company, with the permission of the USA, drill in incredibly deep water, with no plan, technology, or protocol in place for capping a spill if mistakes happen? And mistakes always happen.
And finally, the Three Gorges hydro-electric hydro power project in China on the Yangzi River, and the Belo Monte hydro-electric dam in Brazil, on the Xingú River (a major tributary of the Amazon), also are troubling. The Three Gorges dam is already built within a dangerous earthquake zone, and the environmental and social costs are already very high. They are being borne by people, in the region, who are not benefiting from the electricity. On the contrary, they have become victims of what planners and economists often call “the exernalities”: the outside, indirect costs of the project.
Meanwhile, the Belo Monte project, a huge dam against which indigenous peoples and Brazilian rural workers have fought since the 1980s, is now on its way to being approved by the Brazilian government. It will flood over 500 square kilometers of virgin forest and dislocate over 50,000 of these traditional peoples, creating a social and ecological disaster of huge proportions.
We must find ways to protest against the Brazilian government’s narrow focus on what it calls cheap energy. It is not cheap because the huge social and environmental costs of hydro power are not borne by the companies that build them nor the urban and industrial consumers of electricity. Weaker members of society — Indians and rural workers — will pay the devastating social and environmental costs.
We need to write the president of Brazil, Ms. Dilma Rousseff, to tell her that the youth of the world is watching what she plans to do to the Amazon’s original peoples; that the Amazon rain forest, rivers, animals, and biological resources are far too precious to simply flood and drown; and that we understand that people do need energy, but that they and we prefer energy that comes from renewable and sustainable projects built on a much smaller scale.
With the smaller scale, we can make mistakes, as human beings always do, and then correct them. If you have a huge project that goes wrong, the mistake becomes virtually impossible to remedy. Then, the big investors will not want to lose their capital. Furthermore, mass destruction is really not “manageable.” It just becomes dumped on ordinary people and the environments that they inhabit as we have seen in Japan, China, and the Gulf of Mexico.
Gather your friends and write emails to the President of Brazil asking her to reconsider the dangerous Belo Monte project! Educate yourselves on the Amazon, on hydro-power, and alternative sources of energy: especially solar. There is, after all plenty of sun in Brazil. Do so before we have another Fukushima, or BP, or Three Gorges-like disaster: but this time on Indian land in the Brazilian Amazon.
[Here is a link to a news story on the impact of dams on women: they suffer the most from dams in Brazil. As President Dilma Rousseff is the first female president in Brazilian history, this is clearly an important point.]
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