tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/social-movements-34148/articlesSocial movements – The Conversation2022-12-16T13:13:27Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1965432022-12-16T13:13:27Z2022-12-16T13:13:27ZMuslim Brotherhood at the crossroads: Where now for Egypt’s once-powerful group following leader’s death in exile, repression at home?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501383/original/file-20221215-22-5t8yv7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C53%2C3994%2C2604&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Members of the Muslim Brotherhood protest at a rally in 2013.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/members-of-the-muslim-brotherhood-and-supporters-of-ousted-news-photo/173509620?phrase=Muslim%20Brotherhood%20flag%20Egypt&adppopup=true">Carsten Koall/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ibrahim Munir, the leader of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/egypt-ibrahim-munir-muslim-brotherhood-acting-leader-dies">died on Nov. 4, 2022</a>, in exile in London. While the news generated few headlines around the world, Munir’s death marks a critical moment in the evolution of a group founded nearly 100 years ago, as a social and religious movement.</p>
<p>Over the years, the Brotherhood grew into the most significant social movement and political opposition in Egypt. Its Islamist ideology – which calls for public policies in line with its interpretation of Islam – <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2010/09/15/muslim-networks-and-movements-in-western-europe-muslim-brotherhood-and-jamaat-i-islami/">became widely influential</a> around the world.</p>
<p>But since a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/world/middleeast/egypt.html">2013 military coup</a> that removed the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate Mohammed Morsi from power, the group has been all but destroyed, with most of its leaders either imprisoned, killed or in exile.</p>
<p>For now, the group has <a href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20221107-muslim-brotherhood-assigns-temporary-acting-guide/">a new temporary leader</a> in Muhyeddine al-Zayet, a 70-year-old senior figure in the movement.</p>
<p>But the stark reality is that the Brotherhood is at a turning point: The movement either will have to reinvent itself or face the prospect of gradually fading into irrelevance.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://www.wesleyan.edu/academics/faculty/imatesan/profile.html">scholar of social movements</a> who has <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-violence-pendulum-9780197510087?cc=us&lang=en&">studied the evolution of the Brotherhood</a> and interviewed both members and defectors, I believe its fate hangs on three issues: how it responds to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s repression of opposition groups including the Brotherhood; which leaders guide the movement during its crisis; and how the group rebuilds in exile. </p>
<h2>Has the Brotherhood run its course?</h2>
<p>The Muslim Brotherhood was <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/egypts-muslim-brotherhood">established in 1928</a> by Hassan al-Banna, a primary school teacher with a vision that piety and Islamic values can help transform the individual, reform society and ultimately bring about an Islamic state.</p>
<p>Appealing to Egyptians disillusioned with the country’s existing religious institutions, critical of its political system and angered by the Western interference in the Muslim world, the Brotherhood <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2013/07/03/world/africa/egypt-muslim-brotherhood-explainer/index.html">grew into a grassroots movement</a> with an intricate network of schools, newspapers and social services.</p>
<p>By the end of the 20th century, the Brotherhood dominated civil society in Egypt and became a prominent source of political opposition. It also established branches and affiliates throughout the Muslim world. </p>
<p>Following the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/12/17/what-is-the-arab-spring-and-how-did-it-start">2011 Arab Spring</a>, which saw popular uprisings in a number of countries across the Middle East, the Brotherhood came to power in Egypt’s first free and fair elections. Its affiliated political party, the Freedom and Justice Party, won the largest parliamentary block, and its candidate, Mohammed Morsi, was elected president. By June 2013, however, disillusionment with the lack of political progress and the poor economic performance of the country led to widespread popular mobilization against the Brotherhood. A month later the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/world/middleeast/egypt.html">military ousted Morsi</a> from power. </p>
<h2>Emergence of two Brotherhoods</h2>
<p>When Brotherhood supporters took to the streets and demanded that the democratically elected president be reinstalled, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/08/egypt-clashes-morsi-muslim-brotherhood-military">police and army forces opened fire on demonstrators</a>. On Aug. 14, 2013, security forces brutally put down the sit-in in Rab’a Square in eastern Cairo, killing over 800 people, in what Human Rights Watch said <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2014/08/12/all-according-plan/raba-massacre-and-mass-killings-protesters-egypt">likely amounted to crimes against humanity</a>.</p>
<p>For some Brotherhood members, the brutality of the security forces sparked a <a href="https://doi.org//10.1080/13510347.2016.1273903?journalCode=fdem20">desire for revenge and justified a violent response</a>.</p>
<p>For the most senior Brotherhood leaders, however, violence was neither politically pragmatic nor ideologically justified. In the absence of a clear vision for how to respond to the political crisis, many young members became <a href="https://doi.org//10.1080/13510347.2019.1630610">disillusioned with the organization</a>. </p>
<p>By 2014, the Brotherhood was not just losing members. Two additional fault lines emerged: the question of leadership and the question of exile. Mass arrests caused a leadership vacuum that led to a <a href="https://doi.org//10.1080/13510347.2019.1630610">new cadres of midranking members</a> taking over activities inside Egypt. </p>
<p>These new leaders adopted a more revolutionary tone and started operating independently of the older leadership. The parallel claims to authority and divergent visions over how to respond to the political repression <a href="https://research.sharqforum.org/2018/09/07/iran-and-the-egyptian-muslim-brotherhood-heading-towards-development-or-simply-repair/">led to a split</a> between the so-called “historical leaders” and the new leadership.</p>
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<img alt="Photo of an elderly man in a black blazer and blue shift." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501384/original/file-20221215-15-i1ei6x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501384/original/file-20221215-15-i1ei6x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501384/original/file-20221215-15-i1ei6x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501384/original/file-20221215-15-i1ei6x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501384/original/file-20221215-15-i1ei6x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501384/original/file-20221215-15-i1ei6x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501384/original/file-20221215-15-i1ei6x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood Ibrahim Munir in 2013.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/secretary-general-of-the-international-organization-of-the-news-photo/173448728?phrase=Ibrahim%20Munir%20Muslim%20Brotherhood&adppopup=true">Ozan Kose/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>By 2016 there were in effect two Muslim Brotherhoods: the original group, under the leadership of Ibrahim Munir as the deputy guide operating out of the U.K., and the <a href="https://research.sharqforum.org/2018/09/07/iran-and-the-egyptian-muslim-brotherhood-heading-towards-development-or-simply-repair/">so-called “General Office,” under the new leadership</a>. The General Office attracted many young revolutionaries, including women, but the group had significantly fewer resources, which led it eventually to dissipate.</p>
<p>I learned from interviews with Brotherhood members that with Munir operating as leader in exile, a deeply contested internal debate emerged over whether to restructure the movement and shift the strategic decision-making to the leaders abroad. Outside of Egypt, the organization established regional consultative councils in most host states with a significant Brotherhood presence, most notably in Turkey.</p>
<p>While this allowed for some semblance of organizational rebuilding, some leaders still insisted that all major decisions about the direction, tactics and strategies of the Brotherhood be made inside Egypt. </p>
<h2>Can the Brotherhood rise again?</h2>
<p>This is not the first time that the Muslim Brotherhood has been nearly destroyed by government repression. In 1954 a militant faction of the Brotherhood allegedly attempted to assassinate Prime Minister Gamal Abdel Nasser, prompting <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-violence-pendulum-9780197510087?cc=us&lang=en&">a severe crackdown on the group</a>. The torture and abuse that Brotherhood members faced in prison inspired a new militant vision for activism and led a small group of Brotherhood members to start plotting attacks on government officials. The government discovered these cells before any plans came to fruition, leading to a <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691167886/making-the-arab-world">second major wave of repression in 1965</a>.</p>
<p>But the circumstances in which the Brotherhood finds itself today are different from these past periods of repression. It is more deeply divided than before. And importantly, the current repression comes after the movement came to power and had a chance to rule but ultimately failed.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.arabbarometer.org/wp-content/uploads/ABV_Egypt_Report_Public-Opinion_Arab-Barometer_2019.pdf">Arab Barometer</a>, a nonpartisan research network, shows that since 2013 Egyptians have been consistently skeptical of political Islam as expressed by the Brotherhood, even as the population remains largely religious. For for many of Egypt’s young people the Brotherhood cannot offer any solutions to the economic hardships facing the country, or the growing human rights abuses.</p>
<p>Faced with these internal divisions and challenging political circumstances, the road ahead will not be easy for the Brotherhood. As some of its former members have admitted, there is a <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/rethinking-political-islam-9780190649197?cc=us&lang=en&">tension between being a social movement and being a political party</a>.</p>
<p>The Brotherhood knows that many Egyptians agree with the group’s religious values at the same time that they are deeply critical of its political ambitions.</p>
<p>If the Brotherhood seeks to become a force of change again and attract a new generation of Islamist activists, I believe it needs to develop a new vision and theory of political agency that inspires both the youth in exile, who speak the language of inclusion, diversity and revolution, and Egypt’s young people, who hunger for freedom and economic opportunities.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/196543/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ioana Emy Matesan has previously received funding from the National Science Foundation. </span></em></p>The Muslim Brotherhood once held the reins of power in Egypt. Now it faces internal splits, government repression and dwindling support.Ioana Emy Matesan, Associate Professor of Government, Wesleyan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1819772022-05-24T15:15:43Z2022-05-24T15:15:43ZClimate change: radical activists benefit social movements – history shows why<p>Wynn Bruce <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/the-reidout/reidout-blog/wynn-bruce-fire-supreme-court-climate-change-rcna25837">set himself on fire</a> on April 22 2022 – Earth Day. His self-immolation in front of the US supreme court was a protest against inadequate action on the climate crisis. He later died of his injuries. </p>
<p>Two days earlier in the UK, climate activist Angus Rose ended his <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/apr/20/mps-to-get-scientific-briefing-on-climate-after-activists-hunger-strike">37-day hunger strike</a> when a parliamentary group finally agreed to host a briefing by the chief scientific adviser for MPs and ministers.</p>
<p>Such radical forms of protest have historically been deployed by social movements to cast a spotlight on desperate situations, when conventional legal and political responses have been deemed woefully inadequate. After decades of international negotiations, the <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGII_SummaryForPolicymakers.pdf">latest report</a> by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change yet again warned that current emissions put countries far off limiting warming to below 2°C by 2100. Severe droughts, intolerable heat, wildfires, violent storms, crop failures, sea-level rise and social turmoil are expected to <a href="https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/1/19/16908402/global-warming-2-degrees-climate-change">spiral</a> once global temperatures exceed that threshold.</p>
<p>As such, some climate activists are likely to deploy increasingly radical tactics in the years ahead. History shows that may be a good thing for the wider movement.</p>
<h2>Bodies on the line</h2>
<p>In <a href="https://theconversation.com/radical-environmentalists-are-fighting-climate-change-so-why-are-they-persecuted-107211">my research</a>, I’ve explored what motivates radical environmental activists to engage in what’s called direct action. Coined by US anarcho-feminist <a href="https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/voltairine-de-cleyre-direct-action">Voltairine de Cleyre</a>, direct action was popularised during Mahatma Gandhi’s opposition to British colonial rule in India. Its use proliferated in civil rights and anti-war demonstrations during the 1960s and 70s, namely in the form of sit-ins, marches and other forms of civil disobedience that challenged state laws. </p>
<p>Direct action is a <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9781403990235_1?noAccess=true">mode of protest</a> that takes place outside of parliamentary politics. It encompasses a range of tactics. Within the environmental movement, <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2018/09/13/europe/germany-hambach-forest-police-intl/index.html">Hambach Forest</a> activists in Germany have used direct action to occupy old-growth forests set for clear-cutting. Extinction Rebellion has <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/climate-change-protesters-blockade-uk-oil-facility-latest-action-2022-04-04/">blocked roads and oil depots</a> across the UK. More controversial tactics include acts of sabotage, such as dismantling machinery. In 1986, for instance, two Sea Shepherd Conservation Society engineers <a href="https://seashepherd.org/announcement/1986-2/">destroyed half of Iceland’s whaling fleet</a> and a processing station in Reykjavik harbour, effectively shutting down the country’s commercial whaling industry for 16 years.</p>
<p>These tactics are designed to disrupt the status quo and halt an antagonistic system or process at its source. They also seek to draw media and public attention to the issue. But they tend to be adopted as a means of last resort, when a situation is urgent and more conventional modes of political participation, like voting and lobbying, are deemed insufficient.</p>
<h2>The radical flank effect</h2>
<p>Wynn Bruce’s self-immolation recalls a similar protest in the mid-20th century. <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/rearvision/the-history-of-self-immolation/7463408">Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Đức</a> set himself on fire in 1963 to highlight the persecution of religious minorities by the US-backed regime in South Vietnam. </p>
<p>Such radical acts of self-sacrifice have often take place where the mobilisation of a social movement is <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14742837.2018.1468245?casa_token=vkcMU_9ZUf8AAAAA:p1JF1447GfwQ4rXQ4sZWvYooAczETMtHdAqS5UkOSL1wyxRL-o-CDqmBH5EW5YI9vO_Pb2YcUCglDA">already underway</a>. This dynamic is known as the <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/9780470674871.wbespm174">radical flank effect</a>. When the efforts of the movement are frustrated, radical segments emerge and deploy more disruptive tactics. These serve to render the demands of their mainstream counterparts more palatable in the eyes of governments and the public, effectively advancing the entire movement’s agenda. </p>
<p>In the late 1950s, alongside the prospects of armed self-defence by Malcolm X and the Black Panthers, Martin Luther King Jr’s calls for dismantling segregation laws appeared less radical. <a href="https://www.bl.uk/votes-for-women/articles/suffragettes-violence-and-militancy">Militant suffragettes</a> destroying property made granting women the vote seem a reasonable concession. And suffragette <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/may/26/emily-davison-suffragette-death-derby-1913">Emily Davison’s death</a> after colliding with a horse at the 1913 Epsom Derby, whether intentional or not, attracted global attention to the struggle for universal suffrage. </p>
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<p>Radical forms of resistance – from property destruction to hunger strikes and self-immolation – serve a similar function in the environmental movement. They highlight the urgency of the climate crisis as well as the reasonableness of <a href="https://www.greenpeace.org/international/story/50125/4-demands-for-cop26-time-now/">demands by mainstream organisations</a>, such as the need to swiftly phase out fossil fuel projects.</p>
<p>Of course, there is always a risk that more extreme tactics might alienate certain segments of the public. But <a href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2019/12/12/environmental-direct-action-may-be-forgiven-by-voters-if-they-can-see-that-conventional-politics-are-not-working/">research suggests</a> that people tend to be more sympathetic towards radical tactics when they see that conventional political solutions are failing.</p>
<p>Sociologists Paweł Żuk and Piotr Żuk <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14742837.2018.1468245?casa_token=Ss_-8-y8VkkAAAAA%3AS5DLBEi9VbUw5a0QhEQjgOnDLsuvwVLUQUC-PBtpjWwgXD2eNmW_hlb49twsnu0C4I-3tv-UvsgvOQ">argue that</a> tactics such as self-immolation are acts of rebellion against a deficient reality: gestures of self-sacrifice which alert observers to an entire community’s suffering. These forms of protest are especially common during times of crisis – like the unfolding climate emergency – when <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-24487-w#Sec6">the lives of millions</a> – human and nonhuman – may be threatened.</p>
<p>These modes of environmental protest are also powerful articulations of grief over the narrowing prospects of a viable future for many of Earth’s inhabitants. In his recent book <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/books/3665-how-to-blow-up-a-pipeline">How to Blow Up a Pipeline</a> scholar-activist Andreas Malm observes that it is “better to die blowing up a pipeline than to burn impassively – but we shall hope, of course, that it never comes to this. If we resist fatalism, it might not.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/181977/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Heather Alberro does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Direct action can make the demands of a mainstream movement seem reasonable.Heather Alberro, Lecturer in Global Sustainable Development, Nottingham Trent UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1757172022-02-03T13:13:52Z2022-02-03T13:13:52ZWhy are people calling Bitcoin a religion?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443516/original/file-20220131-124991-gt2h4m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5636%2C3463&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Some Bitcoin evangelists see the currency as an answer to problems that plague society.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/the-social-solidarity-economy-messiah-royalty-free-illustration/1309244426?adppopup=true">mustafa akman/iStock via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Read enough about Bitcoin, and you’ll inevitably come across people who refer to the cryptocurrency as a religion.</p>
<p>Bloomberg’s <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2021-01-04/five-things-you-need-to-know-to-start-your-day">Lorcan Roche Kelly</a> called Bitcoin “the first true religion of the 21st century.” Bitcoin promoter <a href="https://medium.com/the-bitcoin-times/the-passion-of-the-believers-bf26f3b46315">Hass McCook</a> has taken to calling himself “The Friar” and wrote a series of Medium pieces comparing Bitcoin to a religion. There is a <a href="https://churchofbitcoin.org/">Church of Bitcoin</a>, founded in 2017, that explicitly calls legendary Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto its “prophet.”</p>
<p>In Austin, Texas, <a href="https://austonia.com/crypto-billboards-austin">there are billboards</a> with slogans like “Crypto Is Real” that weirdly mirror the ubiquitous <a href="https://cdn.christianaidministries.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Houston-Texas.jpg">billboards about Jesus</a> found on Texas highways. Like many religions, Bitcoin even has <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/ne74nw/inside-the-world-of-the-bitcoin-carnivores%22%20%5Ct%20%22_blank">dietary restrictions</a> associated with it.</p>
<h2>Religion’s dirty secret</h2>
<p>So does Bitcoin’s having prophets, evangelists and dietary laws make it a religion or not?</p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=4EKx-aoAAAAJ&hl=en">As a scholar of religion</a>, I think this is the wrong question to ask.</p>
<p>The dirty secret of religious studies is that there is no universal definition of what religion is. Traditions such as Christianity, Islam and Buddhism certainly exist and have similarities, but the idea that these are all examples of religion is relatively new.</p>
<p><a href="https://womrel.sitehost.iu.edu/Rel433%20Readings/SearchableTextFiles/Smith_ReligionReligionsReligious.pdf">The word “religion”</a> as it’s used today – a vague category that includes certain cultural ideas and practices related to God, the afterlife or morality – arose in Europe around the 16th century. Before this, many Europeans understood that there were only three types of people in the world: Christians, Jews and heathens. </p>
<p>This model shifted after the Protestant Reformation when a <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Early_Modern_Europe/t6TXB9RbwbYC?hl=en&gbpv=0">long series of wars</a> began between Catholics and Protestants. These became known as “wars of religion,” and religion became a way of talking about differences between Christians. At the same time, Europeans were encountering other cultures through exploration and colonialism. Some of the traditions they encountered shared certain similarities to Christianity and were also deemed religions.</p>
<p>Non-European languages have historically not had a direct equivalent to the word “religion.” What has counted as religion has changed over the centuries, and there are always political interests at stake in determining whether or not something is a religion.</p>
<p>As religion scholar <a href="https://religion.ua.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/mccutchmtsr2007.pdf">Russell McCutcheon</a> argues, “The interesting thing to study, then, is not what religion is or is not, but ‘the making of it’ process itself – whether that manufacturing activity takes place in a courtroom or is a claim made by a group about their own behaviors and institutions.”</p>
<h2>Critics highlight irrationality</h2>
<p>With this in mind, why would anyone claim that Bitcoin is a religion?</p>
<p>Some commentators seem to be making this claim to steer investors away from Bitcoin. Emerging market fund manager <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/03/crypto-is-a-religion-not-an-investment-investor-mark-mobius-says.html">Mark Mobius</a>, in an attempt to tamp down enthusiasm about cryptocurrency, said that “crypto is a religion, not an investment.” </p>
<p>His statement, however, is an example of a <a href="https://owl.excelsior.edu/argument-and-critical-thinking/logical-fallacies/logical-fallacies-false-dilemma/">false dichotomy fallacy</a>, or the assumption that if something is one thing, it cannot be another. There is no reason that a religion cannot also be an investment, a political system or nearly anything else. </p>
<p>Mobius’ point, though, is that “religion,” like cryptocurrency, is irrational. This criticism of religion has been around since the Enlightenment, <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Discovering_World_Religions_at_24_Frames/UVa2KtlPHocC?hl=en&gbpv=1">when Voltaire wrote</a>, “Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense.”</p>
<p>In this case, labeling Bitcoin a “religion” suggests that bitcoin investors are fanatics and not making rational choices.</p>
<h2>Bitcoin as good and wholesome</h2>
<p>On the other hand, some Bitcoin proponents have leaned into the religion label. McCook’s articles use the language of religion to highlight certain aspects of Bitcoin culture and to normalize them. </p>
<p>For example, “<a href="https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/stacking-sats%3A-how-small-weekly-investments-can-offer-decent-returns-2021-03-30">stacking sats</a>” – the practice of regularly buying small fractions of bitcoins – sounds weird. But McCook refers to this practice as a religious ritual, and more specifically as “<a href="https://medium.com/the-bitcoin-times/the-passion-of-the-believers-bf26f3b46315">tithing</a>.” Many churches practice tithing, in which members make regular donations to support their church. So this comparison makes sat stacking seem more familiar.</p>
<p>While for some people religion may be associated with the irrational, it is also associated with what religion scholar <a href="https://bulletin.equinoxpub.com/2013/11/why-atheism-matters/">Doug Cowan</a> calls “the good, moral and decent fallacy.” That is, some people often assume if something is really a religion, it must represent something good. People who “stack sats” might sound weird. But people who “tithe” could sound principled and wholesome.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Hands emerging from clouds holding a bitcoin token." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443521/original/file-20220131-23-y42jyq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443521/original/file-20220131-23-y42jyq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443521/original/file-20220131-23-y42jyq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443521/original/file-20220131-23-y42jyq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443521/original/file-20220131-23-y42jyq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443521/original/file-20220131-23-y42jyq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443521/original/file-20220131-23-y42jyq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Associating Bitcoin with religion could add a sheen of morality.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/funny-cartoon-modern-illustration-on-bitcoin-royalty-free-illustration/1346610226?adppopup=true">Takoyaki Tech/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Using religion as a framework</h2>
<p>For religion scholars, categorizing something as a religion can pave the way for new insights.</p>
<p>As religion scholar <a href="https://womrel.sitehost.iu.edu/Rel433%20Readings/SearchableTextFiles/Smith_ReligionReligionsReligious.pdf">J.Z. Smith writes</a>, “‘Religion’ is not a native term; it is created by scholars for their intellectual purposes and therefore is theirs to define.” For Smith, categorizing certain traditions or cultural institutions as religions creates a comparative framework that will hopefully result in some new understanding. With this in mind, comparing Bitcoin to a tradition like Christianity may cause people to notice things that they didn’t before.</p>
<p>For example, many religions were founded by <a href="https://www.baylorisr.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Charismatic-Leadership.pdf">charismatic leaders</a>. Charismatic authority does not come from any government office or tradition but solely from the relationship between a leader and their followers. Charismatic leaders are seen by their followers as superhuman or at least extraordinary. Because this relationship is precarious, leaders often remain aloof to keep followers from seeing them as ordinary human beings. </p>
<p>Several commentators have noted that Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto resembles a sort of prophet. Nakamoto’s true identity – or whether Nakamoto is actually a team of people – <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/27/bitcoins-origin-story-remains-shrouded-in-mystery-heres-why-it-matters.html">remains a mystery</a>. But the intrigue surrounding this figure is a source of charisma with consequences for bitcoin’s economic value. Many who invest in bitcoin do so in part because they regard Nakamoto as a genius and an economic rebel. In Budapest, artists even erected a <a href="https://www.euronews.com/next/2021/09/17/hungary-s-bitcoin-fans-unveil-faceless-statue-of-mysterious-crypto-founder-satoshi-nakamot">bronze statue</a> as a tribute to Nakamoto.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Bust with gold face wearing a hooded sweatshirt." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/444106/original/file-20220202-27-1tmt84n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/444106/original/file-20220202-27-1tmt84n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/444106/original/file-20220202-27-1tmt84n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/444106/original/file-20220202-27-1tmt84n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/444106/original/file-20220202-27-1tmt84n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/444106/original/file-20220202-27-1tmt84n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/444106/original/file-20220202-27-1tmt84n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A bust of Satoshi Nakamoto in Budapest, Hungary.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bust_of_Satoshi_Nakamoto_in_Budapest.jpg">Fekist/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There’s also a connection between Bitcoin and <a href="https://oxfordre.com/religion/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.001.0001/acrefore-9780199340378-e-125">millennialism</a>, or the belief in a coming collective salvation for a select group of people. </p>
<p>In Christianity, millennial expectations involve the return of Jesus and the final judgment of the living and the dead. Some Bitcoiners believe in an inevitable coming “<a href="https://medium.com/the-bitcoin-times/the-passion-of-the-believers-bf26f3b46315">hyperbitcoinization</a>” in which bitcoin will be the only valid currency. When this happens, the “Bitcoin believers” who invested will be justified, while the “no coiners” who shunned cryptocurrency will lose everything.</p>
<h2>A path to salvation</h2>
<p>Finally, some Bitcoiners view bitcoin as not just a way to make money, but as the answer to all of humanity’s problems.</p>
<p>“Because the root cause of all of our problems is basically money printing and capital misallocation as a result of that,” <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/magazine/2021/07/29/is-bitcoin-a-religion-if-not-it-soon-will-be">McCook argues</a>, “the only way the whales are going to be saved, or the trees are going to be saved, or the kids are going to be saved, is if we just stop the degeneracy.”</p>
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<p>This attitude may be the most significant point of comparison with religious traditions. In his book “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/God-Not-One-World-Differences-ebook/dp/B003F1WMAC/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=prothero+god+is+not+one&qid=1643235046&sprefix=Prothero+god+%2Caps%2C99&sr=8-1">God Is Not One</a>,” religion professor <a href="https://www.bu.edu/religion/people/faculty/bios/prothero/">Stephen Prothero</a> highlights the distinctiveness of world religions using a four-point model, in which each tradition identifies a unique problem with the human condition, posits a solution, offers specific practices to achieve the solution and puts forth exemplars to model that path.</p>
<p>This model can be applied to Bitcoin: The problem is fiat currency, the solution is Bitcoin, and the practices include encouraging others to invest, “stacking sats” and “<a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/hodl.asp">hodling</a>” – refusing to sell bitcoin to keep its value up. The exemplars include Satoshi and other figures involved in the creation of blockchain technology.</p>
<p>So does this comparison prove that Bitcoin is a religion? </p>
<p>Not necessarily, because theologians, sociologists and legal theorists have many different <a href="https://www2.kenyon.edu/Depts/Religion/Fac/Adler/Reln101/definitions.pdf">definitions of religion</a>, all of which are more or less useful depending on what the definition is being used for. </p>
<p>However, this comparison may help people understand why Bitcoin has become so attractive to so many people, in ways that would not be possible if Bitcoin were approached as a purely economic phenomenon.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/175717/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joseph P. Laycock does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>With mantras, a mysterious founder and promises of societal salvation, there are echoes of religious traditions in the cryptocurrency.Joseph P. Laycock, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, Texas State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1692952021-10-17T08:39:09Z2021-10-17T08:39:09ZHow Johannesburg’s suburban elites maintain apartheid inequities<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426438/original/file-20211014-13-1dr49qx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Braamfontein in central Johannesburg has benefited from the city's urban renewal programme in recent times.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Kim Ludbrook</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Days before his <a href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/national/2021-07-09-joburg-mayor-geoff-makhubo-dies-of-covid-complications/">death</a> in July, the African National Congress (ANC) mayor of Johannesburg, Geoff Makhubo, wrote <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2021-06-30-johannesburg-is-not-falling-apart-it-is-in-the-process-of-rebirth-after-the-demise-of-a-white-city/">an article</a> responding to critics of the city’s managers. The critics say Johannesburg is in decline and <a href="https://www.politicsweb.co.za/opinion/joburg-is-dying">falling apart</a>. He emphasised the legacies of apartheid in the continuing inequality in South Africa’s “city of gold”.</p>
<p>His short essay envisioned a future Johannesburg as</p>
<blockquote>
<p>a site where one tax base for one city will be used to ensure that people … know they have as good a chance of success regardless of whether they are from Diepsloot or nearby Fourways.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It would be absurd to argue against the view that apartheid bequeathed South Africa a <a href="https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2021/09/23/unpicking-inequality-in-south-africa">highly unequal society</a>. But to identify the historical roots of injustice is quite different to identifying how it is reproduced or reduced. </p>
<p>Makhubo’s reference to Diepsloot and Fourways, respectively among the poorest and richest areas in Johannesburg’s north, was curious. These neighbourhoods have <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Diepsloot/k_hyuQAACAAJ?hl=en">grown primarily in the post-apartheid era</a>. </p>
<p>What Makhubo did not mention is that the aspiration for <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1995/09/the-struggle-to-govern-johannesburg/376455/">“one tax base for one city”</a> is long-standing. It’s been held by successive ANC governments – and social movements – in the city since the early 1990s, as talks to end apartheid got off the ground. </p>
<p>The idea was for the wealthy and overwhelmingly white areas of the city’s northern suburbs to subsidise the development of the poor, and overwhelmingly black areas of the city’s southern and northeastern peripheries.</p>
<h2>Weapons of the strong</h2>
<p>In the early 1990s, South Africa was considered ripe for transformative change. This meant undoing the racialised structure of wealth and the highly divided geography that rationed access to the benefits of city life.</p>
<p>The ANC government entered power at all levels with <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1995/09/the-struggle-to-govern-johannesburg/376455/">extremely high degrees of political legitimacy</a>. It was verboten to attack the basic tenets of social transformation it placed on the political agenda.</p>
<p>At the national level, there were critical successes in building the kinds of state capacity normally seen as fundamental to reducing inequality.</p>
<p>Tax collection has largely tracked or even beaten averages of countries <a href="https://www.oecd.org/ctp/revenue-statistics-in-africa-2617653x.htm">in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development</a>. A third of South Africans receive <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-social-grants-matter-in-south-africa-they-support-33-of-the-nation-73087">one of three major social grants</a>. </p>
<p>But the structure of apartheid-era cities has largely been reproduced. It is this structure that, in many ways, was the <em>raison d’être</em> of the apartheid state — <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520206519">to serve the white urban minority</a>. </p>
<p>In my <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1535684121994522">newly-published research</a> conducted between 2015 and 2018, I examined why Johannesburg, South Africa’s largest and richest city, has reproduced spatial inequalities since 1994. In particular the distribution of housing, sanitation and transport remains unequal.</p>
<p>I tried to answer this question through 115 semi-structured interviews with local politicians, bureaucrats, activists and private developers in the city.</p>
<p>I augmented the data with hundreds of documents collected through archival research in government and NGO publications, the <a href="https://www.saha.org.za/">South African History Archive</a> and newspaper articles.</p>
<p>I identified two relatively hidden strategies that traditional white elites – property developers and property owners – used to undermine the capacity of Johannesburg’s black majority local government to redistribute urban goods. I call these strategies “weapons of the strong”.</p>
<p>Strikingly, these hidden strategies top the political agenda ahead of the <a href="https://www.elections.org.za/pw/">November municipal elections</a>. They speak precisely to the unfinished work of realising “one city with one tax base”.</p>
<h2>Echoes of the 1990s in 2021</h2>
<p>Mpho Phalatse, the Johannesburg mayoral candidate of the official opposition, the Democratic Alliance (DA), has emphasised her <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2021-09-09-relooking-at-city-improvement-districts-as-a-key-way-to-revitalise-johannesburg/">desire to expand City Improvement Districts</a>. Through these, individual neighbourhoods contribute to funding urban management services that are only for their specific areas.</p>
<p>This echoes the first of the strategies that undermined municipal state capacity. I categorise this strategy as “ring-fencing” – area-based hoarding of taxes for local infrastructure improvement. </p>
<p>By “ring-fencing”, wealthy neighbourhood associations undercut attempts at municipal unification. Revenues are taken out of a general municipal funding stream, and put towards investments that reproduce disparities in the provision of public goods. </p>
<p>The founder of one of the first City Improvement Districts in the suburb of Illovo in the mid-1990s described the motivation for establishing them: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We definitely weren’t going to give our contributions to the city, because there would be no guarantee that it would be spent in the area (p. 200).</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This strategy became a key means by which wealthier suburbs could ensure a much higher standard of urban management than that in poorer areas. The tax payments were held by the <a href="https://archive.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/uu26ue/uu26ue0h.htm">interim municipal “sub-structures”</a> in the first years after apartheid.</p>
<p>Another key strategy I identified was “venue-shopping”. This is a process by which property developers sought construction approvals from the Gauteng provincial government - under which Johannesburg falls - to undercut the <a href="https://doi.org/10.18772/22014107656.8">“urban development boundary”</a> that the City of Johannesburg was attempting to enforce. </p>
<p>The relatively austere capital expenditures of the city throughout the 2000s, and the lack of institutional capacity to enforce both land use regulations and inter-agency coordination, meant that private developers were still able to shape the spatial trajectory of the city.</p>
<p>The terms of this year’s mayoral debate in Johannesburg therefore expose battles that were once subterranean. </p>
<p>The ANC imagines that a redistributive agenda for the city can be built on references to the apartheid past, and top-down delivery through the state. The DA de-emphasises redistribution altogether, adopting strategies for fragmenting urban management. This will only benefit the largely white wealthy homeowners and property developers.</p>
<h2>The missing protagonist: movements</h2>
<p>What is missing is a role for housing movements to challenge the growing power of developers and wealthy property owners. These were once so militant they <a href="https://doi.org/10.3406/cea.1985.1735">helped bring down apartheid</a>.</p>
<p>These movements have been demobilised and cast aside under the ANC. Government is supposed to deliver, and to do so alone. But, without a social movement base, municipal government has struggled to mobilise the bureaucratic power necessary to deliver housing, sanitation, and spatial transformation.</p>
<p>This is because city authorities don’t have political allies who can counter the often hidden power of homeowners and property developers. As a result, this group’s “weapons of the strong” undercut local government authority.</p>
<p>As I <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1535684121994522">found</a> in my research, housing movements are extremely fragmented and localised. To move beyond the highly unequal urban stalemate will require a long-term political project to reconnect movements to the local state in a way that has not happened since the dawn of democracy in 1994.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/169295/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Benjamin H. Bradlow has received funding from the National Science Foundation, American Council of Learned Societies, and the Fulbright Program, for research related to this article.</span></em></p>The city’s government wanted the wealthy and overwhelmingly white areas of the city to subsidise the development of the poor and overwhelmingly black areas.Benjamin H. Bradlow, Lecturer on Sociology, Harvard UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1654922021-09-08T12:26:06Z2021-09-08T12:26:06ZBlack Lives Matter: How far has the movement come?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/417873/original/file-20210825-15-hx1ykt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=88%2C29%2C4816%2C3245&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Many grassroots Black Lives Matter activists are demanding more accountability and transparency from the movement's increasingly centralized and well-funded leadership.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/protesters-marched-on-streets-and-crossed-from-the-brooklyn-news-photo/1233109815?adppopup=true">Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Black Lives Matter has been <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/03/us/george-floyd-protests-crowd-size.html">called the largest civil movement</a> in U.S. history. Since 2013, local BLM chapters have formed nationwide to demand accountability for the killings of dozens of African Americans by police and others. Since the summer of 2020, when tens of millions in the U.S. and around the world marched under the “Black Lives Matter” slogan to protest a Minneapolis police officer’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/31/us/george-floyd-investigation.html">murder of George Floyd</a>, the movement has risen to a new level of prominence, funding and scrutiny.</em></p>
<p><em>BLM has long been seen as a coordinated yet decentralized effort. Lately, the movement and its leading organizations have become <a href="https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/as-black-lives-matter-evolves-some-question-leadership-moves/">more traditional and hierarchical in structure</a>. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/10/upshot/black-lives-matter-attitudes.html">Public opinion</a> is also changing, as BLM chapters call on the movement’s leaders to be more accountable to its grassroots groups. We caught up with two scholars of worldwide African communities and cultures – <a href="https://www.colgate.edu/about/directory/kkonadu">Kwasi Konadu</a> and <a href="https://history.northwestern.edu/people/graduate-students/bright-gyamfi.html">Bright Gyamfi</a> – to discuss BLM as both a movement and an organization.</em></p>
<h2>What was the original structure of the Black Lives Matter movement?</h2>
<p><a href="https://blacklivesmatter.com/">Black Lives Matter</a> started <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2016/08/15/the-hashtag-blacklivesmatter-emerges-social-activism-on-twitter/">in 2013</a> as a messaging campaign. In response to the 2012 acquittal of George Zimmerman for shooting and killing Black teenager Trayvon Martin, three activists – Opal Tometi, Alicia Garza and Patrisse Cullors – protested the verdict on social media, along with many others. <a href="https://library.law.howard.edu/civilrightshistory/BLM">Cullors came up with the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter</a>, which gained widespread use on social media and in street protests. </p>
<p>Over the next several years – as Black Lives Matter flags, hashtags and signs became common features of local, national and even international protests in support of Black lives – this messaging campaign <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305118807911">became a decentralized social movement</a> to demand accountability for police killings and other brutality against Black people. </p>
<p>The movement <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/lcwaN0016241/">remained decentralized</a>, although some significant, formal BLM-related organizations emerged during this time. For instance, in 2013 Cullors, Tometi and Garza <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53273381">formed the Black Lives Matter Network</a> to facilitate communication, support and shared resources among the dozens of locally organized and led Black Lives Matter chapters that were springing up around the United States. </p>
<p>In 2014, the <a href="https://m4bl.org/">Movement for Black Lives</a>, or M4BL, formed as a separate but related coalition of dozens of organizations of Black activist and others, including the Black Lives Matter Network.</p>
<p>In 2017, the Black Lives Matter Network transformed into the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, co-founded by Tometi and Cullors, who was the executive director until <a href="https://apnews.com/article/ca-state-wire-george-floyd-philanthropy-race-and-ethnicity-0a89ec240a702537a3d89d281789adcf">she stepped down in May 2021</a>. This group describes itself as “<a href="https://blacklivesmatter.com/black-lives-matter-global-network-foundation-announces-leadership-transition/">a global foundation supporting Black led movements</a>.” </p>
<h2>What’s changed about BLM’s structure since then?</h2>
<p>While the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation <a href="https://blacklivesmatter.com/about/">says it is decentralized</a>, over time it has followed a pattern similar to other social movements driven by individuals and organizations. It has become more of a conventional hierarchical organization, <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/10/black-lives-matter-organization-biden-444097">centralizing its operations and leadership</a>. Its founders have <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article152232197.html">won awards</a>, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/10/18/924701747/black-lives-matter-co-founder-on-her-new-book-the-purpose-of-power">book deals</a> and <a href="https://time.com/collection/100-most-influential-people-2020/5888228/black-lives-matter-founders/">notoriety</a>.</p>
<p>The BLM Global Network Foundation has not developed any publicly known independent source of funding, nor was a decision ever made to rely primarily on grassroots support or small individual donations. As a result, it is dependent on <a href="https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/black-lives-matter-foundation/">corporate and foundation money</a> to pay for its operations and programs. Amid the George Floyd uprisings in 2020, the BLM Global Network Foundation generated some <a href="https://apnews.com/article/black-lives-matter-90-million-finances-8a80cad199f54c0c4b9e74283d27366f">US$90 million in donations or grants</a> from corporations and foundations. </p>
<p>The Movement for Black Lives, which calls itself decentralized and <a href="https://m4bl.org/about-us/">anti-capitalist</a>, also raised millions in 2020, including $100 million from <a href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/10/11/pers-o11.html">the Ford Foundation</a>. </p>
<p>All told, <a href="https://www.blackenterprise.com/black-lives-matter-corporate-america-has-pledged-1-678-billion-so-far/">corporations pledged</a> close to $2 billion to BLM-related causes in 2020, though less is known about pledges for 2021.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, many frontline Black Lives Matters chapters <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/12/18/948133246/black-lives-matter-movement-is-fracturing-as-it-grows-in-power">have struggled to stay afloat</a>. Some key chapters <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=if_IAZpFm7w&t=2261s">have begun calling for</a> financial transparency and more democratic decison-making <a href="https://www.blmchapterstatement.com/">from national leaders</a> at the BLM Global Network Foundation, as well as a share of the funds the national groups have raised. </p>
<p>Others have <a href="https://www.blackagendareport.com/blm-chapters-demand-accountability-trio-cashed-movement">disavowed the Black Lives Matter Network and defected from it</a>, focusing on local community fundraising and organizing to support their work.</p>
<h2>How is public opinion about the BLM movement changing and why?</h2>
<p>Though the phrase “Black Lives Matter” has become a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/blm-signs-black-lives-matter/2021/06/13/e0aed736-bcdb-11eb-9bae-5a86187646fe_story.html">common sight</a>, the movement is losing public support. According to a new Civiqs survey of 244,622 registered voters, support <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/10/upshot/black-lives-matter-attitudes.html">for BLM</a> fell from <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/06/12/amid-protests-majorities-across-racial-and-ethnic-groups-express-support-for-the-black-lives-matter-movement/">two-thirds of voters</a> in June 2020 to 50% in June 2021.</p>
<p>Some of this shift may be due to growing public awareness of the movement’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/04/us/black-lives-matter.html">internal struggles</a>, such as competing visions and competition over scarce resources, as well as questions about whether <a href="https://nypost.com/2021/07/31/activist-shaun-king-lives-lavishly-in-lakefront-nj-home/">some BLM leaders</a> have used donations for personal benefit. </p>
<h2>Is this evolution of Black Lives Matters typical of social movements? Can you give other examples?</h2>
<p>Tensions and conflicts are part of the evolution of all social movements, including BLM.</p>
<p>Movements for peoples of African ancestry also face a distinct challenge: They often have to appeal for both <a href="https://theconversation.com/after-the-civil-rights-era-white-americans-failed-to-support-systemic-change-to-end-racism-will-they-now-141954">funding and action from</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/707490">the same white power structure</a> and corporate interests that participate in and benefit from the suffering of Black people.</p>
<p>For example, although President Lyndon B. Johnson is remembered for helping pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act, he routinely referred to the 1957 version of that act as the “<a href="https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/lyndon-johnson-civil-rights-racism-msna305591">nigger bill</a>” in conversations with his Southern white supremacist colleagues.</p>
<p>Another example involves the McDonald’s Corp. In 1968, after the death of Martin Luther King Jr., McDonald’s partnered with U.S. civil rights organizations. The company claimed its <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/garystern/2020/07/07/a-new-book-explores-the-effects-of-the-golden-arches-on-the-black-community/?sh=39a5aea07549">African American-owned franchises</a> were carrying on King’s civil rights agenda to empower the Black community. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/01/25/797143165/franchise-tracks-the-rise-and-role-of-fast-food-in-black-america">According to historian Marcia Chatelain</a>, however, instead of enabling economic freedom, McDonald’s has burdened the Black community with low wages, relatively few franchises and high rates of obesity, diabetes and heart disease. McDonald’s has benefited from a devoted African American consumer base, more so because African Americans consume more fast food than any other race, <a href="https://www.restaurantbusinessonline.com/financing/who-eats-fast-food-according-cdc">according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/lasr.12384">Money shaping social movements</a>, such as the civil rights movement, is not new. The civil rights movement, including the summer of 1963’s March on Washington, was funded by <a href="https://resourcegeneration.org/50-years-after-the-civil-rights-act-the-four-key-foundations-who-funded-the-movement/">white liberal organizations and foundations</a>. In the summer of 2020, BLM protests also generated millions in similar funding. Indeed, the Ford Foundation and the <a href="https://borealisphilanthropy.org/project/black-led-movement-fund/">Borealis Philanthropy</a> recently formed the Black-Led Movement Fund, which raises money for the Movement for Black Lives.</p>
<p>Malcolm X, in his analysis of the 1963 March on Washington, brought attention to the <a href="https://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/projects/mmt/mxp/speeches/mxt31.html">influence white philanthropy and leadership</a> held over “black” social justice organizations, especially regarding funding that was controlled by the white power structure. Siding with Malcolm’s analysis, James Baldwin also observed, “<a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Baldwin_s_Harlem/HVWEFPMdtygC?q=&gbpv=1#f=false">the March had already been co-opted</a>.”</p>
<h2>Is it at all clear what structure BLM will or should have in the future?</h2>
<p>Based on our research on <a href="https://dafricapress.com/A-View-from-the-East-p66464170">civil rights-Black power organizations</a> and on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55nmRNt_F_8&t=4s">Black internationalism</a>, BLM would benefit from a “starfish” <a href="https://medium.com/nature-s-way-of-communicating/5-starfish-principles-that-will-empower-your-business-305e461f18cd">organizational structure</a>. </p>
<p>Starfishlike organizations are decentralized networks with no head. Intelligence is spread throughout an open system that easily adapts to circumstances. If a leader is removed, new ones emerge, and the network remains intact.</p>
<p>In the U.S., BLM organizers work through various groups, yet all are tied to centralized hubs, like the Movement for Black Lives coalition. These organizational choices conform to a <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/298214/the-starfish-and-the-spider-by-ori-brafman-and-rod-a-beckstrom/">spider analogy</a>. Compared to the starfish structure, spiderlike organizations operate under the control of a central leader, and information and power are concentrated at the top. </p>
<p>[<em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=youresmart">You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>In the wake of the 2020 mass protests against racism after George Floyd’s murder, many Republican-led states proposed <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/12/republicans-push-anti-protest-laws-blm-demonstrations">a new wave of draconian anti-protest laws</a> to stifle dissent. This suggests that BLM might be more resilient if it followed the starfish approach.</p>
<p>In their desire to appeal to a diverse public to end white supremacy, Black Lives Matter’s leaders fail to consider that pervasive anti-Black violence is “<a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/9781631496141">the very engine that powers</a>” white supremacy and makes broad coalitions ineffective.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/165492/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Like many social movements before it that began at the grassroots, Black Lives Matter is becoming a more conventional organization with top-down leadership.Kwasi Konadu, Professor in Africana & Latin American Studies, Colgate UniversityBright Gyamfi, Doctoral candidate in History, Northwestern UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1577492021-03-30T13:15:14Z2021-03-30T13:15:14ZPower in numbers: Making visible the violence against racialized women<p>Violence and pain change the way we experience our surroundings and the way our bodies move: our eyes become wide in search of potential dangers, our bodies become tense. </p>
<p>What is the power — both negative and positive — of understanding such violence and pain with numbers? There are dangers in reducing our pain to numbers, but at the same time, we can use mathematical literacy for social causes by revealing hidden violence, such as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10508406.2020.1820341">the violence against migrant racialized women</a>. </p>
<p>Mathematical literacy doesn’t just mean mastering mathematics defined by school curriculum; it also means gaining a sense of how to apply mathematical concepts to everyday life, for social causes and gaining insight into how numbers and data have inherently political resonances. It can also provide us with the opportunity to listen to historically marginalized voices to analyze interlocking systems of violence and oppression.</p>
<h2>Intersectionality and violence against women</h2>
<p>The recent mass shooting in Atlanta that violently took the lives of eight people, six of which were Asian American women, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/protests-across-u-s-call-for-end-to-anti-asian-violence-11616273497">sparked demonstrations</a> against <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2013.822620">anti-Asian racism</a> that have long been silenced through <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.12849">the model minority myth</a> — which minimizes and undermines the experiences of racism among Asians.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-model-minority-myth-hides-the-racist-and-sexist-violence-experienced-by-asian-women-157667">The model minority myth hides the racist and sexist violence experienced by Asian women</a>
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<p>The <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1229039?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">intersection</a> of racism and sexism and other interlocking systems of oppression, like <a href="https://search.informit.org/doi/abs/10.3316/INFORMIT.661789796192365">migration</a>, geo-economic politics and the <a href="https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/other-autre/c36faq/">criminalization of sex work</a> are considered to be at play in <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-atlanta-attacks-were-not-just-racist-and-misogynist-they-painfully-reflect-the-society-we-live-in-157389">the violence that happened in Atlanta</a>. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-atlanta-attacks-were-not-just-racist-and-misogynist-they-painfully-reflect-the-society-we-live-in-157389">The Atlanta attacks were not just racist and misogynist, they painfully reflect the society we live in</a>
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<p>A lens of intersectionality shines light on the violence against <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/kimberle_crenshaw_the_urgency_of_intersectionality?language=en">Black women</a>, <a href="https://www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/final-report/">Indigenous women</a> and racialized women at large. And it also reveals the <a href="https://secureservercdn.net/104.238.69.231/a1w.90d.myftpupload.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/210312-Stop-AAPI-Hate-National-Report-.pdf">violence against Asian women</a> who have been <a href="https://msmagazine.com/2021/03/22/asian-women-atlanta-victims-names-violence-racism-massage-parlor/">stereotypically hypersexualized</a> and deemed <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/S0277-5395(98)00004-1">submissive</a>, disposable and consumable. </p>
<h2>The power of mobilizing mathematical literacy</h2>
<p>Understanding intersectional violence through numbers can help make visible the invisible.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/06/24/mathematicians-urge-cutting-ties-police">In an era of protests</a>, the political neutrality of mathematics is being questioned.</p>
<p>The power of mobilizing mathematical literacy for local policy changes became evident in my work with <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10508406.2020.1820341">Virgie Aquino Ishihara, a longtime volunteer and community activist, at the Filipino Migrants Center</a>, in Japan. </p>
<p>The Filipino Migrants Center worked tirelessly with migrant communities to redress violence rooted in human trafficking in the urban entertainment industry. It countered <a href="https://www.gender.go.jp/policy/no_violence/e-vaw/data/01.html">official data</a> on domestic and work-place violence that did not reveal historically marginalized voices and violence against their bodies, through the numeration of hidden violence. Mobilization of mathematical literacy became a powerful tool in the context of <a href="https://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/i_crime/people/pamphlet.pdf">social movements to redress human trafficking</a> associated with entertainer visas. </p>
<p>By analyzing <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2011.04.019">the economic impact of remittance from migrants</a> in relation to governmental policies, the Filipino Migrants Centre was able to contextualize what pushed women to migrate as entertainer visa holders. These big-picture understandings led the activists to see <a href="https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X16645430">historical and macro-economic dilemmas</a> around domestic and workplace violence against migrant women — something that has been historically construed as personal problems.</p>
<h2>Dangers in putting numbers to our pain</h2>
<p>When violence against racialized women’s bodies is reduced to a number (“one” incident), and discussed simply as <em>one more</em> violent act against an anonymous racialized woman, elements and stories that women embody begin to be erased.</p>
<p>In this light, movements such as <a href="https://www.aapf.org/sayhername">#SayHerName</a> are important in centring stories of Black women who have been victimized by racially charged police violence from becoming a number (as seen in the recent killing of <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/how-we-rise/2020/09/25/breonna-taylor-police-brutality-and-the-importance-of-sayhername/">Breonna Taylor</a>). Journalist, Shiori Ito, who led <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/3z44Njyr5wzm3wbVMGZ7tFr/shiori-ito-japan-s-attitudes-to-allegations-of-sexual-violence-are-locked-in-the-past">Japan’s social movement to fight against sexual violence</a> chose to de-anonymize herself in order to challenge media that reports and speaks for these “numbers” whose stories and bodies end up erased through anonymity. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Woman stands smiling and crying while holding two microphones" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392023/original/file-20210326-21-lwd82y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392023/original/file-20210326-21-lwd82y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392023/original/file-20210326-21-lwd82y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392023/original/file-20210326-21-lwd82y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392023/original/file-20210326-21-lwd82y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392023/original/file-20210326-21-lwd82y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392023/original/file-20210326-21-lwd82y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Freelance journalist Shiori Ito talks to her supporters outside a courthouse, Dec. 18, 2019, in Tokyo.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)</span></span>
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<p>Such politics of de-anonymization, however, should also respect the choice of silence. To stay silent and to endure the hardships toward dignity — a notion captured by the Japanese term <em>shinbo</em> — was a choice made by some <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/391033/obasan-by-joy-kogawa/9780735233706">Japanese Canadians</a> and <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/198042/the-art-of-gaman-by-delphine-hirasuna/">Japanese Americans</a> who experienced internment during the Second World War.</p>
<p>Numeration can also risk reducing our intersectional histories and experiences to deterministic categories. Binary and categorical frameworks (e.g. women versus men) inscribed in statistics can perpetuate <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41319563?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">genderism and queerphobia</a> that privileges those who can conform to gender norms, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/07370008.2016.1172436">cisnormativity and heteronormativity</a>. </p>
<p>The complexities of human stories and the voices that deviate from the norm shouldn’t be lost in the process of numeration and mathematization.</p>
<h2>Healing our collective pain</h2>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10508406.2020.1820341">In our study</a>, the Filipino Migrants Centre’s efforts to make visible the invisible by exercising mathematical literacy brought <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/07370008.2016.1172833">consequential</a> changes in the urban entertainment district. </p>
<p>As we walked around the district, we noticed significant changes that took place in the public park — migrant women and allies came together. And as people came together, resident-led safety efforts developed as an alternative to institutional policing and surveillance. Creating a safer outdoor place required changing <a href="https://www.ihollaback.org/bystander-resources/">the actions of bystanders</a> who can intervene in violence.</p>
<p>Mathematical literacy can allow us to listen to historically marginalized voices that are less heard yet powerful and strong to analyze interlocking systems of violence and oppression. However, numeration and mathematization have to be done through <a href="https://americanstudies.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Keyword%20Coalition_Readings.pdf">a non-hierarchical distribution of power</a> with people who are directly impacted by historical oppression with respect to pain that cannot be reduced to numbers. </p>
<p>Intentional design of spaces toward <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-76333-0_4">solidarity</a>, backed up with ethical mobilization of mathematical literacy, could move us toward healing our collective pain of violence.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/157749/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Miwa A. Takeuchi receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. </span></em></p>While the mobilization of mathematical literacy can be a powerful tool in the context of social movements, there is also dangers in numerating violence and pain.Miwa Aoki Takeuchi, Associate Professor, Learning Sciences, University of CalgaryLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1487512020-11-08T09:11:55Z2020-11-08T09:11:55ZUnderstanding violent protest in South Africa and the difficult choice facing leaders<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365540/original/file-20201026-19-uiops5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A police van lies in flames after white farmers went on a rampage in Senekal, South Africa. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tracy Lee Stark/The Citizen.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Protests and social mobilisation are the lifeblood of democracy. They enable the discontent of citizens to be communicated to political elites between elections, and when intra-institutional processes have lost their efficacy. But <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/aug/24/protest-movement-failings-i-dont-believe-in-it-anymore">most protests never lead to sustainable change</a>. They peter out because of one or other reformist measure. Or they lose support because they tend to take on <a href="https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190513-it-only-takes-35-of-people-to-change-the-world">violent overtones</a>.</p>
<p>Most protesters and leaders engage in peaceful mobilisation. But there are always some leaders and activists who are intent on violence. This is because protests and social movements always involve heterogeneous communities with multiple expressions, political factions and leaders. </p>
<p>Some of these expressions and political factions believe in violent direct action and behave accordingly in the protests. Add to this the opportunism of criminals who use the protests as a cover to conduct criminal activity, and it is not hard to imagine why protests can turn violent.</p>
<p>Much of this is reflected in the contemporary protests and social mobilisation around the world. All of the movements - <a href="https://www.adl.org/education/educator-resources/lesson-plans/black-lives-matter-from-hashtag-to-movement">#BlackLivesMatter</a>, the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-49317695">Hong Kong Democracy Movement</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/03/who-are-the-gilets-jaunes-and-what-do-they-want">Gilets Jaunes</a> in France, <a href="https://theconversation.com/feesmustfall-the-poster-child-for-new-forms-of-struggle-in-south-africa-68773">#FeesMustFall</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/mar/16/the-real-meaning-of-rhodes-must-fall">#RhodesMustFall</a> in South Africa - were in the main peaceful. But they nevertheless manifested in violent direct action on occasion.</p>
<p>Protest leaders often expressed disquiet and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VLtWdilSKI">dissociated themselves from the violence</a>. But on many occasions, they also excused the violence, suggesting that it could not be compared to that experienced by protesters at the hands of police or by the victims of oppression and exploitation. This may be true in most cases. But it evades the strategic issue that violence can often undermine and erode the legitimacy of protests. It creates the opportunity for police and security forces to repress the social action itself.</p>
<p>Protest leaders also often blame the violence on criminals or on aggressive police action. Again much of this is true. Criminals use protests to conduct criminal activity including, among others, looting and theft when the opportunity arises. Moreover, aggressive policing and repressive actions by security services can often turn the tide of peaceful protests and prompt violent acts by some protesters. </p>
<p>But these explanations do not account for all forms of violence in protests.</p>
<h2>Why peaceful protests turn violent</h2>
<p>Perhaps the foremost scholar on social movements and political violence is political scientist <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=utI_trMAAAAJ&hl=en">Donatella Della Porta</a>. She holds that violence in protests is a product of two distinct developments: aggressive police action and <a href="https://www.bc.edu/content/dam/files/schools/cas_sites/sociology/pdf/EventfulProtest.pdf">political factionalisation</a>, in which distinct political groups try to dominate the leadership of social movements. The explanation of aggressive policing is uncontested by most progressive intellectuals. They often refer to it to explain the violence. But they often ignore the second explanation because it involves a collective self-reflection and a political confrontation with movement participants. </p>
<p>There is no doubt that in many of these movements, there are individual activists and political groupings who explicitly hold the view that <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2015-08-31-in-defence-of-black-violence/">violent action is legitimate</a>. They use the circumstances to actively drive such behaviour, as I explain in detail in Chapter 9 of my 2018 book, <em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Rebels-Rage-FeesMustFall-Adam-Habib-ebook/dp/B07P626QB4">Rebels and Rage</a></em>. </p>
<p>These proactive commitments from factions within these protest movements suggest that violence is as much internally driven from within the social movements as it is a response to the repressive actions of the police and security services.</p>
<p>This then necessitates a reflection on the strategic efficacy of violence as a means of sustainably achieving social justice outcomes. Of course, this reflection must be contextually grounded. It must be understood in the context of the democratic societies within which the protests occur. After all it is the democratic character of these societies, flawed as they may be, which establishes the parameters of legitimate political action and the consequences for the violations thereof.</p>
<h2>Rage versus violence</h2>
<p>Social mobilisation requires rage but not violence. When the two get confused, the cause of social justice itself may be delegitimised or defeated. Rage is important because it can inspire people, galvanise them, and as a result enable collective action against injustice. It also need not always lead to violence. Neither does it need to lead to emotionally driven acts of impulsiveness.</p>
<p>If there is a lesson to be learnt from the life of the late statesman <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/biography">Nelson Mandela</a>, it is that effective leadership of a social or political struggle requires an understanding of the political lay of the land. It also requires an assessment of the prevailing distribution of power among social forces, an acute grasp of the leverage available to political actors opposed to the social justice cause, and a plan for how to overcome these without compromising on the ultimate social outcome.</p>
<p>Much of the case of young activists for adopting violence as a strategic option is predicated on the presence of <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/structural-violence">structural violence</a>. This refers to the prevailing economic and political conditions which produce not only deep social marginalisation within and across nations, but also the implicit racism that is codified in institutions and daily practices. </p>
<p>If there is such structural violence present, it is held, is there no legitimacy to acts of physical violence that are targeted to address the marginalisation and oppression? </p>
<h2>Social pact in a democracy</h2>
<p>The answer to this lies in the social pact that undergirds democratic society. Citizens <a href="https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190679545.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780190679545-e-13">cede the authority of legitimate violence to the state</a> in exchange for security and rights. The alternative to this is that all bear the right to legitimate violence, thereby making society vulnerable to the rule of the strongest and the most forceful. The real victims of such an environment are the poorest and weakest in society.</p>
<p>Yet what does one do if political factions or individuals resort to violence in a peaceful protest? This after all is one of the major challenges that confront leaders of protests. Most of them are committed to peaceful social mobilisation, but are confronted with individuals or political factions who violate the peaceful character of the mobilisation – either proactively or as a response to aggressive police action. </p>
<p>The protest leaders have to then engage in a rearguard battle in which they have to explain why there is violence accompanying the protest, even though they have expressed a commitment to peaceful social mobilisation. Inevitably the leaders come off as unconvincing or duplicitous or as making excuses for the violence.</p>
<p>Of course those who are committed to violent direct action are aware of this reluctance by protest leaders to identify them. They realise that most protest leaders will not identify the perpetrators of violence because they would not want to be seen as abetting the authorities. </p>
<p>The perpetrators of violence can then behave in a manner that explicitly defies the collective underlying principles of the protest without having to fear any sanction. Essentially the political norms disable the incentive structure for political factions to abide by the strategic principle of peaceful social action.</p>
<p>The only way out of this dilemma is to change the rules. Leaders must either explicitly exclude political factions or individuals who are committed to violent social action. Or they must make explicitly clear that they will identify those who violate the principle of nonviolence that serves as the guiding philosophy of the protest. </p>
<p>Of course the political factions or individuals are unlikely to meekly accept this state of affairs. But leaders are going to have to explicitly manage this political challenge by openly debating the issue with movement participants, explaining why this is necessary for the success of the protest itself. Otherwise, such leaders will forever remain hostage to factions and small unaccountable political groups who serve as parasites on the progressive social cause.</p>
<p>This then is the challenge for protest leaders. </p>
<h2>Exercising leadership</h2>
<p>Political leadership sometimes requires difficult choices. Such difficult choices are not simply required from those leading institutions and governments. It is sometimes also demanded of leaders of social movements. This is particularly true when individual acts of violence can compromise the outcomes of the protest itself.</p>
<p>Protest leaders have a choice: either they allow acts of violence and, therefore, play to a political script not of their own making, or they act in a manner that keeps the social mobilisation on a path that they have explicitly chosen. This is especially important because the alternative path will not only erode the broader legitimacy of the cause. It will also provoke reactions that could undermine the protest and the sustainability of the social justice outcome. </p>
<p>This choice of enabling or containing political violence is, therefore, the central strategic challenge confronting the political leadership of contemporary protests both in South Africa and around the world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/148751/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam Habib does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There are individual activists and political groupings who believe violent action is legitimate and use the circumstances to actively drive such behaviour.Adam Habib, Vice-Chancellor and Principal, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1447112020-08-20T12:18:02Z2020-08-20T12:18:02ZBelarus, explained: How Europe’s last dictator could fall<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353715/original/file-20200819-42831-d1ujy9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C185%2C4588%2C2850&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Deploying riot police to suppress peaceful pro-democracy demonstrators in Belarus turned more people against the country's autocratic leader. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Belarus-Police-Brutality/4cc0b7a02285417484de480d01cc92e8/456/0">AP Photo/Sergei Grits, File</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Belarus’s President Alexander Lukashenko has a reputation as a master tactician. It is well-earned: Since 1994, he has balanced the former Soviet state’s relations with both the <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/lukashenka-says-belarus-must-balance-policies-between-east-west/29804500.html">West and Russia</a>, all while eliminating <a href="https://www.euractiv.com/section/med-south/news/belarus-lukashenko-wins-referendum-to-extend-mandate/">presidential term limits</a> and <a href="https://www.osce.org/odihr/elections/belarus">orchestrating hefty wins in every presidential election</a>.</p>
<p>Lukashenko was declared president with <a href="https://www.robert-schuman.eu/en/eem/0493-re-election-of-alexander-lukashenko-as-president-of-the-belarus-republic-in-an-election-that-was-a-foregone-conclusion">76% of the vote in 2001</a>, <a href="https://www.infoplease.com/biographies/people-in-the-news/2006/aleksandr-lukashenko">83% in 2006</a>, <a href="https://www.europeanforum.net/headlines/dictator_lukashenko_wins_in_belarus_rsquo_presidential_elections">80% in 2010</a> and <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34499387">83% in 2015</a>.</p>
<p>Now, his luck may be changing. Belarus’s Aug. 9 presidential election, expected to deliver Lukashenko a sixth consecutive term, has instead brought on an unprecedented political crisis. He claimed he received 80% of the vote. But that was quickly met with widespread opposition. On Aug. 16, an estimated over <a href="https://www.voanews.com/europe/biggest-crowd-yet-protests-belarus">200,000 people marched</a> nationwide to demand Lukashenko’s resignation – the largest gathering in Belarus’s history.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://www.usf.edu/arts-sciences/departments/school-of-interdisciplinary-global-studies/people/tkulakevich.aspx">researcher on Eastern Europe</a> born and raised in Belarus, I’ve been watching the president’s handling of this crisis closely. I find he made two major mistakes since the contested Aug. 9 vote – errors that may help explain how dictators fall.</p>
<h2>Error 1: Hubris</h2>
<p>Holding elections with foregone results is part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/so-you-want-to-be-an-autocrat-heres-the-10-point-checklist-125908">modern autocrat’s playbook</a>. Venezuela’s unpopular authoritarian President Nicolas Maduro claimed 68% of the 2018 presidential vote, a result <a href="https://theconversation.com/venezuela-is-now-a-dictatorship-96960">international observers considered fraudulent</a>. That same year, Russia re-elected Vladimir Putin with <a href="https://tass.com/politics/995729">77% of the vote</a> and no real opposition.</p>
<p>Lukashenko has long gotten away with improbably high electoral margins. This time was different because of the grassroots activism that took place ahead of the presidential vote.</p>
<p>In the weeks before Belarus’s election, a series of self-organized street protests against Lukashenko’s mishandling of the economy and total denial of COVID-19 – known as the <a href="https://www.voanews.com/europe/slipper-revolution-shakes-belarus">Slipper revolution</a> – spread from Minsk, Belarus’s capital, to at least <a href="https://spring96.org/persecution?DateFrom=2020-05-21&DateTo=2020-06-19">35 cities and towns</a>.</p>
<p>Lukashenko had eliminated his main rivals by jailing the banker Viktar Babaryka and blogger Siarhei Tsikhanouski, who might have reached a broad audience, and forcing the former diplomat Valery Tsepkala into exile. Rather than give up on the election, the opposition united around the seemingly improbable candidacy of Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, a housewife with no political experience.</p>
<p>By July, Tsikhanouskaya was attracting <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/07/tens-thousands-rally-belarus-pre-election-crackdown-200731074941570.html">large crowds at election rallies</a> as a symbol of change, including one that drew <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/belarus-presidential-candidate/30760999.html">at least 63,000</a> supporters in Minsk, a city of 2 million. Still Lukashenko ignored the signs of popular dissatisfaction and underestimated the power of the activism against him.</p>
<p>When election results nonetheless showed an 80% win for Lukashenko, Belarusians poured into the streets to protest what they said was fraud. Tsikhanouskaya, who <a href="https://www.euronews.com/2020/08/17/belarus-tsikhanouskaya-says-she-s-ready-to-become-national-leader">fled the country in fear for her life</a>, has called for new elections.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353717/original/file-20200819-25336-1pj7umf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The Belarusian president at a podium, speaking and pointing" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353717/original/file-20200819-25336-1pj7umf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353717/original/file-20200819-25336-1pj7umf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353717/original/file-20200819-25336-1pj7umf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353717/original/file-20200819-25336-1pj7umf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353717/original/file-20200819-25336-1pj7umf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353717/original/file-20200819-25336-1pj7umf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353717/original/file-20200819-25336-1pj7umf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lukashenko addresses several thousand supporters in Minsk, Aug. 16, 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/APTOPIX-Belarus-Election/38a32dad438b4dd1989617078339e977/94/0">AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky</a></span>
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</figure>
<h2>Error 2: Counterproductive violence</h2>
<p>Lukashenko conceded nothing. Instead, he called in the riot police. </p>
<p>Belarus has seen post-election crackdowns before, in <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2006/03/the-belarusian-crackdown.html">2006</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/20/world/europe/20belarus.html">2010</a>. But this time the police repression was far more violent. </p>
<p>Belarusian law enforcement used flash grenades, water cannons and tear gas to suppress protesters – often injuring bystanders in the process. <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/thousands-flood-belarus-capital-as-detained-protesters-freed/a-54562634">Over 7,000 people</a> have been arrested since Aug. 9, many of them brutally beaten and ill-treated in custody. At <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53760453">least two people were killed</a> – the first time post-election unrest in Belarus has been fatal. </p>
<p>Police violence only triggered much bigger protests. Worker strikes and demonstrations demanding free elections have since taken place at dozens of government-owned and private enterprises across Belarus, including Belaruskali, an international fertilizer producer, and Minsk Automobile Plant, one of Eastern Europe’s largest automotive manufacturers.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353710/original/file-20200819-24722-1xjqf7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Belarusian workers in orange hardhats stand with arms crossed in front of a factory" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353710/original/file-20200819-24722-1xjqf7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353710/original/file-20200819-24722-1xjqf7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353710/original/file-20200819-24722-1xjqf7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353710/original/file-20200819-24722-1xjqf7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353710/original/file-20200819-24722-1xjqf7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353710/original/file-20200819-24722-1xjqf7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353710/original/file-20200819-24722-1xjqf7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Workers at Grodno Azot, a Belarusian manufacturer, on strike.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/workers-of-grodno-azot-a-belarusian-manufacturer-of-news-photo/1228107114?adppopup=true">Viktor Drachev\TASS via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p><a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-belarus-election-women/women-in-white-from-belarus-protest-globally-for-peace-and-new-vote-idUSKCN25D1LI">Women in white</a> holding flowers and balloons began marching daily, defying police with their peaceful tactics and demanding a new vote.</p>
<h2>How dictators fall</h2>
<p>Even the most capable authoritarian rulers are fallible. </p>
<p>Daniel Treisman, a political scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, <a href="http://www.nber.org/papers/w23944">analyzed 218 episodes when autocracy was replaced by a more democratic system</a> between 1800 and 2015 and found that in three-quarters of cases the path to democratization included one or more mistakes by the incumbent. The most common errors are based on faulty information and miscalculating the outcome of a problematic situation.</p>
<p>Despite his strategic mistakes, Lukashenko seems unprepared to relinquish control of Belarus. He calls his opponents “fascists” and “murderers,” blames protests on <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-belarus-election/protests-swell-in-belarus-lukashenko-blames-foreigners-idUSKCN25A0ZU">foreign spies</a> and puts on shows of power, by <a href="https://www.trtworld.com/europe/lukashenko-urges-supporters-to-defend-belarusian-independence-38949">holding rallies</a> with his supporters. He has also <a href="https://www.euronews.com/video/2020/08/18/strike-delayed-at-major-belarus-tractor-factory-after-workers-threatened-with-dismissal">threatened to fire striking workers</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353716/original/file-20200819-16-9g9y3m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Women dressed in white stand in a line and shout while carrying flowers and balloons" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353716/original/file-20200819-16-9g9y3m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353716/original/file-20200819-16-9g9y3m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353716/original/file-20200819-16-9g9y3m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353716/original/file-20200819-16-9g9y3m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353716/original/file-20200819-16-9g9y3m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353716/original/file-20200819-16-9g9y3m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353716/original/file-20200819-16-9g9y3m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The women in white demand a redo of Belarus’s Aug. 9 election, which they say Lukashenko stole, Aug. 15, 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/women-dressed-in-white-take-part-in-the-so-called-chain-of-news-photo/1228054270?adppopup=true">Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Facing the worst crisis of his 26 years in power, Lukashenko turned to his powerful neighbor, Russia, for help. Putin has been both ally and foe to Belarus over the years, depending on his political calculations. Russia has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/15/world/europe/belarus-russia-Lukashenko-Putin.html">promised to protect Belarus from external military threats</a>. But Putin appears unlikely to assist Lukashenko against protesters. He <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-protests-build-in-belarus-putin-warns-european-leaders-to-keep-out-11597784672">warned foreign powers</a> not to interfere in Belarus’s affairs, either. </p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>If Russia and other countries stay out of the fray, what happens next in Belarus will depend on whether protesters can sustain their pressure on Lukashenko.</p>
<p>Social movements typically go through <a href="https://www.ebscohost.com/uploads/imported/thisTopic-dbTopic-1248.pdf">four stages of development</a>: emergence, coalescence, bureaucratization and decline. The Belarusian opposition has reached the coalescence stage, meaning individuals participating in mass behavior have become aware of each other. </p>
<p>Lukashenko’s opposition is starting to “bureaucratize.” On Aug. 18, the opposition founded an entity called the Coordination Council of Belarus, to coordinate a peaceful transfer of power. Lukashenko declared it an <a href="https://eng.belta.by/president/view/oppositions-coordinating-council-described-as-attempt-to-seize-power-in-belarus-132657-2020/">attempt to seize power</a>. </p>
<p>Bureaucracy sounds boring. But it may decide whether Lukashenko stays or falls.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/144711/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tatsiana Kulakevich does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Pres. Lukashenka of Belarus has stayed in power for 26 years by being a master tactician. But he has seriously mishandled opposition protests, says a Belarus-born scholar of Eastern European politics.Tatsiana Kulakevich, Lecturer and Research Fellow at USF Institute on Russia, University of South FloridaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1422382020-07-23T17:59:16Z2020-07-23T17:59:16ZSchools after coronavirus: Seize ‘teachable moments’ about racism and inequities<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/347965/original/file-20200716-23-m0i5qn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=49%2C26%2C2421%2C1611&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">2020 presents opportunties to work together to create schooling that betters our lives and communities.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/7142476/ontario-education-streaming-early-years-suspension/">Equity issues in education are in the spotlight</a> as we envision what opening schools might look like in September. </p>
<p>Most recently, Ontario announced <a href="https://news.ontario.ca/opo/en/2020/07/ontario-taking-bold-action-to-address-racism-and-inequity-in-schools-1.html">ending academic streaming in Grade 9 and eliminating suspensions in the early years from Kindergarten to Grade 3</a> — practices that <a href="https://colourofpoverty.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/cop-coc-fact-sheet-3-racialized-poverty-in-education-learning-3.pdf">disproportionately impact Black and Indigenous people and people of colour (BIPOC)</a>.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ending-streaming-is-only-the-first-step-to-dismantling-systemic-racism-in-ontario-schools-142617">Ending ‘streaming’ is only the first step to dismantling systemic racism in Ontario schools</a>
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<p>Coronavirus hasn’t caused the educational inequities that impact students. But it has shed light on how our most vulnerable communities are marginalized, silenced and oppressed systemically due to lack of access to opportunities perpetuated <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27462-7_4">historically, socially, economically and politically via Canadian institutional policies and practices</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/03626784.2018.1552071">including</a> <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/a-timeline-of-residential-schools-the-truth-and-reconciliation-commission-1.724434">by schooling</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-prevent-teacher-burnout-during-the-coronavirus-pandemic-139353">For example, teachers</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-school-closures-could-widen-inequities-for-our-youngest-students-136669">and researchers</a> have voiced concerns about the unequal impact of the virus on school closures. Students with access to supportive home environments or where parents enjoy financial security will find the challenges of the pandemic and at-home learning easier. Those with <a href="https://theconversation.com/not-all-kids-have-computers-and-theyre-being-left-behind-with-schools-closed-by-the-coronavirus-137359">poor access to resources or</a> considered to have special needs may find at-home learning not reflective of their learning needs.</p>
<p>Our research explores <a href="http://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27462-7">issues of equity</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/every-child-matters-what-principals-need-to-effectively-lead-inclusive-schools-114249">inclusion</a> in Canada. We believe now is the time to address systemic inequities that existed long before the pandemic. Our task is to <a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-next-for-schools-after-coronavirus-here-are-5-big-issues-and-opportunities-135004">radically re-envision education</a> as we plan alternate models for schooling. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A girl who is Black is reading a book at a school desk." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/347966/original/file-20200716-21-qtndg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/347966/original/file-20200716-21-qtndg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347966/original/file-20200716-21-qtndg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347966/original/file-20200716-21-qtndg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347966/original/file-20200716-21-qtndg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347966/original/file-20200716-21-qtndg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347966/original/file-20200716-21-qtndg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Let’s envision more inclusive and equitable schooling, not just schooling that works in a pandemic context.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We must reflect on recent critical events and teachable moments as we engage in dialogue and actions to better our lives and communities. We can do this via revised routines, processes, policies and practices to better reflect the needs of BIPOC, those from lower socio-enonomic backgrounds and people <a href="https://www.tcdsb.org/ProgramsServices/SpecialEducation/SpecialEducationPlan/SpecEdPlanDoc/Categories-and%20Definitions%20and%20Exceptionalities-in-Ontario.pdf">with exceptionalities</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-solidarity-during-coronavirus-and-always-its-more-than-were-all-in-this-together-135002">What is solidarity? During coronavirus and always, it's more than 'we're all in this together'</a>
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<hr>
<h2>Critical event No. 1: Social movements</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/06/10/opinion/indigenous-and-black-people-canada-share-social-exclusion-and-collective-outrage">Movements across Canada addressing anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism</a> are gaining more mainstream media coverage. BIPOC and white people in different sectors are speaking up and engaging in advocacy work to <a href="https://theconversation.com/unmasking-the-racial-politics-of-the-coronavirus-pandemic-139011">challenge policies and practices that privilege whiteness as a form of currency and simultaneously oppress non-dominant social groups</a>.</p>
<p>There are persistent patterns of systemic oppressive practices that target BIPOC in their over-representation <a href="https://colourofpoverty.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/cop-coc-fact-sheet-3-racialized-poverty-in-education-learning-3.pdf">in school suspensions, applied streams, drop-out rates</a>, <a href="https://colourofpoverty.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/cop-coc-fact-sheet-9-racialized-poverty-in-housing-homelessness-2.pdf">homelessness</a>, <a href="https://colourofpoverty.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/cop-coc-fact-sheet-7-racialized-poverty-in-justice-policing-2.pdf">incarceration</a>, <a href="https://colourofpoverty.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/cop-coc-fact-sheet-5-racialized-poverty-in-employment-2.pdf">poverty rates and in precarious employment</a>.</p>
<p>It is important to constantly challenge <a href="https://www.learninglandscapes.ca/index.php/learnland/article/view/Uprooting-and-Settling-In-The-Invisible-Strength-of-Deficit-Thinking">deficit thinking</a> in education, which blames students and parents for larger structural disadvantages. We need to recognize <a href="https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/cjeap/article/view/68280">the role of existing inequitable institutional policies and practices in maintaining inequality of opportunity that predominantly disadvantages BIPOC</a>. </p>
<p><strong>Teachable moment:</strong> We must ask ourselves who gets access to certain opportunities, why and in what ways? Radical change goes beyond performative politics and tokenism and towards creating long-term sustainable plans. More leadership positions need to be created for BIPOC and more BIPOC educators hired at all levels. Part of this requires <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-wont-canada-collect-data-on-race-and-student-success-106689">collection and public sharing of race-based data</a> nationally as part of all institutions. </p>
<p>We must also invest in initiatives and school-community partnerships that create a safe and brave spaces where BIPOC cultural practices, lived experiences and ways of being, such as valuing oral culture and land-based education, are recognized as <a href="https://play.library.utoronto.ca/play/94620a5d967da25ba8d3e6c015028707">strengths and important cultural capital</a> instead of treated as a superficial add-on. </p>
<p>We must invest in place-based learning where schools can adapt policies and practices to reflect the <a href="http://doi-org-443.webvpn.fjmu.edu.cn/10.1007/978-3-030-01426-1_4-1">needs of their student demographics and surrounding community</a>, or else we risk reproducing similar power dynamics that historically <a href="https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/longform-single/beyond-94?&cta=1">privilege whiteness at the expense of marginalizing others</a>.</p>
<h2>Critical event No. 2: Schooling disruptions</h2>
<p>Schools were closed as of mid-March due to the coronavirus, resulting in learning disruptions that have included temporarily halting <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/6694232/ontario-government-cancels-eqao-tests-coronavirus-covid-19/">standardized testing</a> for the next school year. </p>
<p>When learning shifted online, access to technology became a hot equity issue since not all students are able to access a computer or a <a href="https://cdn.givingcompass.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/04134822/the-digital-divide.pdf">high-speed internet connection to complete their work in a timely fashion</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A classroom of students who are middle-school aged are writing a test." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/347977/original/file-20200716-29-1jbfbmt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/347977/original/file-20200716-29-1jbfbmt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347977/original/file-20200716-29-1jbfbmt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347977/original/file-20200716-29-1jbfbmt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347977/original/file-20200716-29-1jbfbmt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347977/original/file-20200716-29-1jbfbmt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347977/original/file-20200716-29-1jbfbmt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A pause on standardized testing provides opportunities to reflect on alternative education models.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Students, particularly those from marginalized communities such as families with limited financial means or students with exceptionalities, <a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-distance-learning-poses-challenges-for-some-families-of-children-with-disabilities-136696">are in danger of being further marginalized</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Teachable moment:</strong> Principals and teachers are considering the needs of those most at risk before planning interventions, a <a href="https://www.ldatschool.ca/universal-design-for-learning-udl/">basic tenet of Universal Design for Learning (UDL)</a>. Instead of thinking about technology as an “add on” to support student learning, educators are <a href="http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/literacynumeracy/inspire/research/WW_TechnologyTools.pdf">being challenged to use remote and online learning in a way that supports the learning of all students</a>.</p>
<p>School boards are exploring creative ways to infuse technology into their pedagogy and become more comfortable with innovative technologies. The pandemic has <a href="https://peopleforeducation.ca/report/connecting-to-success-technology-in-ontario-schools/">compelled schools and institutions to invest in technological platforms to teach</a> such as Google Hangouts and Zoom. </p>
<p>The pause on standardized testing and navigating students’ access to technology for remote learning provides opportunities to reflect on alternative education models with more focus on wrap-around student support initiatives and programming. </p>
<p>This is a chance to critically acknowledge how the rise of neoliberal <a href="http://libjournal.uncg.edu/ijcp/article/view/1374">politics and accountability regimes affiliated with outcome-based education</a> have forced schools to focus on standardization and savings via budget cuts instead of creating opportunities and services to support the most vulnerable students. </p>
<h2>Opportunities for new directions</h2>
<p>As we transition to reconstruct education for a post-pandemic era, let’s reflect on the critical events of the 2019-20 school year and use them as teachable moments. Let’s work collectively and in action-oriented solidarity with each other, community partners and organizations to re-envision educational practices to serve the needs of our most vulnerable populations and communities particularly BIPOC, those from lower socio-economic backgrounds, and students with exceptionalities.</p>
<p>This year, 2020, will be one to remember. It has its share of challenges but also presents opportunities for new directions. Let’s all do our part to remove systemic barriers for teaching and learning as a community. </p>
<p>If at any time during reading this article you <a href="https://fernwoodpublishing.ca/book/decolonizing-academia">felt uncomfortable</a>, angered or frustrated by what was stated, we encourage you to take a moment to reflect upon what contributed to such reactions and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/15210960.2013.844603">what perspectives, values and ideologies those feelings are rooted in</a>. This is part of the challenge and emotional labour of unlearning.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/142238/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steve Sider receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ardavan Eizadirad does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>How anti-racism social movements and teaching disruptions due to COVID-19 can lead to more equitable and inclusive schooling.Ardavan Eizadirad, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Education, Wilfrid Laurier UniversitySteve Sider, Associate Professor, Faculty of Education, Wilfrid Laurier UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1380562020-05-14T19:10:56Z2020-05-14T19:10:56ZAfter coronavirus: Global youth reveal that the social value of art has never mattered more<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/334838/original/file-20200513-156651-1q9nfm0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C51%2C1920%2C1261&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Students in an after-school drama club in Athens rehearse their performance about the refugee crisis, March 2017.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Kathleen Gallagher)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Health and government officials <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/uk-52642222">around the globe</a> are slowly and <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/coronavirus-covid19-canada-world-may13-1.5567371">ever-so-tentatively moving to relax lockdowns</a> due to coronavirus.</p>
<p>In Canada, where the <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/covid-19-coronavirus-ontario-intensive-care-doctor-1.5504349">possibility of health-care collapse</a> seems to have been averted (for the time being), some are beginning to ask questions other than “when will the pandemic end?” Instead, they’re turning towards “how will we move forward?” </p>
<p>Young people have some answers that warrant our attention. Over the past five years, through my <a href="https://www.oise.utoronto.ca/dr/">collaborative ethnographic research</a> with 250 young people in drama classrooms in Canada, India, Taiwan, Greece and England, I have gained remarkable <a href="https://www.springer.com/us/book/9789811512810">insight into these young people’s experiences and assessments of the world</a>. </p>
<p>I found crisis after crisis being shouldered by young people. Through their theatre-making, they documented their concerns and hope, and they rallied around common purposes. They did this despite disagreement and difference. </p>
<p>Beyond simply creating art for art’s sake, or for school credits, many of the young people I encountered are building social movements and creative projects around a different vision for our planet. And they are calling us in. This is an unprecedented moment for intergenerational justice and we need to seize it.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/334837/original/file-20200513-156629-1dalgzi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/334837/original/file-20200513-156629-1dalgzi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/334837/original/file-20200513-156629-1dalgzi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=294&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334837/original/file-20200513-156629-1dalgzi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=294&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334837/original/file-20200513-156629-1dalgzi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=294&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334837/original/file-20200513-156629-1dalgzi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334837/original/file-20200513-156629-1dalgzi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334837/original/file-20200513-156629-1dalgzi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Students from Prerna School in Lucknow, India, rally for the rights of girls.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Kathleen Gallagher)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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</figure>
<h2>Crises are connected</h2>
<p>I have had an up-close look at how seemingly disparate crises around the globe are deeply connected through divisive systems that don’t acknowledge or respect youth concerns. I have also learned how young people are disproportionately affected by the misguided politics of a fractured world. </p>
<p>In England, <a href="https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526146816.00018">young people were burdened</a> by the divisive rhetoric of the Brexit campaign and its ensuing aftermath. </p>
<p>In India, young women were using their education to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2019.1609652">build solidarity</a> in the face of dehumanizing gender oppression. </p>
<p>In Greece, young people were <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781315149325">shouldering the weight</a> of a decade-long economic crisis compounded by a horrifying refugee crisis. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/solidarity-with-refugees-cant-survive-on-compassion-in-crisis-stricken-societies-of-greece-and-italy-133278">Solidarity with refugees can’t survive on compassion in crisis-stricken societies of Greece and Italy</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<p>In Taiwan, young people on the cusp of adulthood were trying to <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/2018/08/02/activist-legacy-of-taiwan-s-sunflower-movement-pub-76966">square the social pressures</a> of traditional culture with their own ambitions in a far-from-hopeful economic landscape. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/334845/original/file-20200513-167762-gux8sw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/334845/original/file-20200513-167762-gux8sw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334845/original/file-20200513-167762-gux8sw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334845/original/file-20200513-167762-gux8sw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334845/original/file-20200513-167762-gux8sw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334845/original/file-20200513-167762-gux8sw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334845/original/file-20200513-167762-gux8sw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Second-year theatre students at the National University of Tainan, Taiwan, warm up with drama activities, November 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Kathleen Gallagher)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In Toronto, youth tried to understand why the rhetoric of multiculturalism seemed both true and false, and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/08929092.2017.1370625">why racism persists</a> — and, in so doing, they spoke from perspectives grounded in their intersectional (white, racialized, sexual- and gender-diverse) identities. </p>
<p>They embraced the reality that everything in popular culture may enter a drama classroom. But they responded to current news stories — like the 2016 presidential debates in the United States — by saying that they had different and more pressing concerns, like mental health support and transphobia. </p>
<h2>Hope through creative work</h2>
<p>Today’s young people are a generation that has come of age during a host of global crises. Inequality, environmental destruction, systemic oppression of many kinds weigh heavily. </p>
<p>I found a youth cohort who, despite many not yet having the right to vote, have <a href="https://fridaysforfuture.org/">well-honed political capacities</a>, are birthing countless <a href="https://canadianwomen.org/the-facts/the-metoo-movement-in-canada/">global hashtag movements</a> and inspiring generations of <a href="https://moveme.berkeley.edu/project/marchforourlives/">young and old</a>.</p>
<p>These marginalized youth are aware that their communities have been living with and responding to catastrophic impacts of <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/years-black-lives-matter-inspires-protest-movements/story?id=56702439">crises of injustice and inequalities</a> long before now.</p>
<h2>Practising hope</h2>
<p>How do these youth live with their awareness of global injustices and what these imply for the years ahead? We learned some disturbing things: as young people age and move further away from their primary relationships (parents, teachers, schoolmates), they feel less optimistic about their personal futures. </p>
<p>But in terms of hope, we learned something very recognizable to many of us now: many young people practise hope, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/14/young-person-coronavirus-covid-19-power-of-hope">even when they feel hopeless</a>. They do this both in social movements <a href="https://journals.sfu.ca/cje/index.php/cje-rce/article/view/2499/2476">they participate in and in creative work they undertake with others</a>. </p>
<p>This is something we can all learn from. In Canada, we are maintaining social distancing as a shared effort. Acting together by keeping apart is how we are flattening the curve, as all the <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/6826198/coronavirus-good-news-curve-canada-graph/">experts continue to tell us</a>.</p>
<p>We know that in communities around the world, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/18/politics-public-covid-19-tobacco-johnson">government leadership matters enormously</a>. But citizens, social trust and collective will matter at least as much. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/334518/original/file-20200512-82361-hexhch.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/334518/original/file-20200512-82361-hexhch.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/334518/original/file-20200512-82361-hexhch.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334518/original/file-20200512-82361-hexhch.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334518/original/file-20200512-82361-hexhch.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334518/original/file-20200512-82361-hexhch.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334518/original/file-20200512-82361-hexhch.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334518/original/file-20200512-82361-hexhch.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Young people from the Canley Youth Theatre, based in Coventry, England, rehearse their play ‘Museum of Living Stories,’ based on their personal memories, June 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Kathleen Gallagher)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Polarization</h2>
<p>In this pandemic, institutions, like <a href="https://www.utoronto.ca/news/u-t-researchers-mobilize-resources-produce-equipment-health-care-workers">universities</a>, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/sports/bauer-equipment-visors-masks-1.5509778">businesses</a> and <a href="https://www.toronto.com/news-story/9936009-toronto-residents-and-entrepreneurs-help-those-in-need-due-to-covid-19/">individual citizens</a> have stepped up remarkably in the interests of the common good and our shared fate.</p>
<p>However, Jennifer Welsh, Canada Research Chair in Global Governance and Security at McGill University, argues that the defining feature <a href="https://houseofanansi.com/products/the-return-of-history">of the last decade is polarization</a>, existing across many different liberal democracies and globally. </p>
<p>Along with this, the value of fairness has been deeply corroded because of growing inequality and persistent historic inequalities we have failed to address, like <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/indigenous-memo-to-canada-were-not-your-incompetent-children/article37511319/">Indigenous sovereignty and land rights in Canada</a>. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-road-to-reconciliation-starts-with-the-un-declaration-on-the-rights-of-indigenous-peoples-122305">The road to reconciliation starts with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples</a>
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<p>In the context of the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/membership/2019/jun/22/populism-new-exploring-rise-paul-lewis">rise of populist politicians</a> and <a href="https://migration.unu.edu/publications/reports/the-rise-of-nationalist-politics-and-policy-implications-for-migration.html">xenophobic policies</a> globally, and also the rise of the most important progressive social movements in decades, my research has taught me that in this driven-apart, socio-economic landscape, the social value of art has never been more important. </p>
<p>People are making sense of the inexplicable or the feared through art, using online platforms for <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/1469-5812.00002">public learning</a>. Art has become a point of contact, an urgent communication and a hope. </p>
<p>But some are still without shelter, without food, without community and <a href="https://www.aptnnews.ca/national-news/indigenous-peoples-left-behind-again-by-federal-provincial-governments-as-nation-deals-with-pandemic/">without proper health care</a>. The differences are stark.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/334515/original/file-20200512-82403-1x7dtz3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/334515/original/file-20200512-82403-1x7dtz3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=323&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334515/original/file-20200512-82403-1x7dtz3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=323&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334515/original/file-20200512-82403-1x7dtz3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=323&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334515/original/file-20200512-82403-1x7dtz3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334515/original/file-20200512-82403-1x7dtz3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334515/original/file-20200512-82403-1x7dtz3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Grade 12 drama class in Toronto performs their play about youth mental health and trans solidarity for their school community, December 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Kathleen Gallagher)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Moving forward</h2>
<p>Arundhati Roy has imagined this pandemic as a kind of portal we are walking through: we can “walk through it lightly … ready to <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/10d8f5e8-74eb-11ea-95fe-fcd274e920ca">imagine another world</a>.” We can choose to be “ready to fight for it.”</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-solidarity-during-coronavirus-and-always-its-more-than-were-all-in-this-together-135002">What is solidarity? During coronavirus and always, it's more than 'we're all in this together'</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>It’s time to put global youth at the centre of our responses to crises. Otherwise, young people will inherit a planet devastated by our uncoordinated efforts to act, worsening <a href="https://brill.com/view/title/39490">a crisis of intergenerational equity</a>.</p>
<p>We should of course develop a vaccine and, in Canada, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/liberal-health-care-fact-check-1.5295449">stop underfunding our public health-care system</a>. But we must also <a href="https://idpc.net/alerts/2020/04/flatten-inequality-human-rights-in-the-age-of-covid-19">flatten the steep curves we have tolerated for too long</a>. For a start, we could act on <a href="https://www.chrc-ccdp.gc.ca/eng/content/statement-inequality-amplified-covid-19-crisis">wealth disparity</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/25/covid-19-pandemic-shines-a-light-on-a-new-kind-of-class-divide-and-its-inequalities">social inequality</a>. </p>
<p>But our <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/04/climate-change-coronavirus-linked">response to the pandemic could also illuminate new responses</a> to fundamental problems: <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/18/tip-of-the-iceberg-is-our-destruction-of-nature-responsible-for-covid-19-aoe">disrespect for the diversity of life</a> <a href="https://www.animallaw.info/article/environmental-effects-cruelty-agricultural-animals">in all its forms</a> and lack of consideration for future generations. </p>
<p>Youth expression through theatre and in social movements are valuable ways to learn how youth are experiencing, processing and communicating their understandings of the profound challenges our world faces. How powerfully our post-pandemic planning could shift if we changed who is at decision-making tables and listened to youth.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/138056/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kathleen Gallagher receives funding from The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada </span></em></p>Despite hardships, youth are rallying to build a new vision for the planet. The rest of us should join them.Kathleen Gallagher, Distinguished Professor, Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of TorontoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1326182020-04-02T13:44:41Z2020-04-02T13:44:41ZLeading an online social movement requires offline work<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/324111/original/file-20200330-174736-1jxfbwy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4321%2C2598&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In 2015, Canadians across the country organized in support of Syrian refugees arriving in the country; these rallies were planned online.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/mgifford/23432951530/in/photolist-2fHCVsi-BGG16G-2fNkkQd-BP7pwm-21u1zgQ/">(Mike Gifford/flickr)</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Today, most social movements around the world are digital in some capacity. When <a href="https://www.siliconrepublic.com/enterprise/tanya-lokot-online-protest-dcu">a hashtag seems enough to start a movement</a>, social media promise to replace the role of leaders in setting a movement’s goals, coordinating action and inspiring a following. </p>
<p>Our research set out to test the belief that leadership was no longer necessary in online activism by drawing on the experience of several recent movements in Canada. What we found was more complicated and interesting than a simple vanishing act by protest leaders: <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2018.1434556">social media enable new kinds of leadership to form</a>. </p>
<p>The ease with which messages spread through social media may be the most fascinating aspect of digital activism, but it hides the labour of message creation, curation and coordination required to transform chatter into action. </p>
<p>We studied Canadian movements over the past five years and found that leadership labour is performed by individual participants who aren’t necessarily identified as traditional leaders. These individuals work in the background rather than standing out in front lines and front pages. Day by day, hour by hour, they perform the painstaking tasks of articulating the message of the movement, connecting collaborators and supporters, or initiating action on the issue.</p>
<h2>Crafting messages</h2>
<p>During the <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/1534959/b-c-teachers-strike-the-timeline/">2014 teachers’ strike in British Columbia</a>, some parents started pressuring the government to negotiate with the teachers’ union. One idea caught on: parents with children at home because of the strike would organize playdates at the local offices of politicians. The <a href="https://mlaplaydate.wordpress.com/">#MLAPlaydate</a> initiative was born on Twitter and Facebook. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"506907783879348225"}"></div></p>
<p>The idea itself was the brainchild of three citizens who took notice of each other’s tweets at the early stage of the strike. Backstage conversations through tweets, email and phone calls led to the creation of <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/mlaplaydate">#MLAPlaydate</a>. They broadcast their call through Twitter and a blog that described the format of their playful protest. What made the message powerful, they explained, was that: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s a way that anyone could play. You could play by tweeting, what we and others did. You can play by taking a meme or photo and commenting on it, so by making it, sort of like, open source activism versus traditional command and control … you allow other people to get more involved.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323254/original/file-20200326-133007-4lt8dx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323254/original/file-20200326-133007-4lt8dx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323254/original/file-20200326-133007-4lt8dx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323254/original/file-20200326-133007-4lt8dx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323254/original/file-20200326-133007-4lt8dx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323254/original/file-20200326-133007-4lt8dx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323254/original/file-20200326-133007-4lt8dx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chalk drawing in front of an MLA office in British Columbia during an MLA Playdate.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Author provided)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While the three had crafted the message, they saw themselves as a coordination hub rather than as leaders in control. They created spaces for discussion of parents’ views on the teachers’ strike and helped translate these discussions into action.</p>
<h2>Online influencers</h2>
<p>Crafting the message is not enough. The message must be picked up and circulated.</p>
<p>When causes are embraced by social media accounts with many followers, their involvement amplifies the message and boosts the collective action. In other cases, such accounts grow in popularity due to the dense network of connections their owners have in the local community. </p>
<p>The organizers of <a href="https://www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/">Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW)</a> events in Calgary were already embedded in local Indigenous communities and had ties to other activists through past work with <a href="http://www.idlenomore.ca/">Idle No More</a> or <a href="https://womensmarch.com/">Women’s Marches</a>. They drew on these past connections and experiences to organize their own MMIW protests. They used Facebook to disseminate information and calls for action not only locally, but also to reach into the national network of Indigenous activists. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323246/original/file-20200326-132974-1d058px.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323246/original/file-20200326-132974-1d058px.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323246/original/file-20200326-132974-1d058px.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323246/original/file-20200326-132974-1d058px.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323246/original/file-20200326-132974-1d058px.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323246/original/file-20200326-132974-1d058px.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323246/original/file-20200326-132974-1d058px.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323246/original/file-20200326-132974-1d058px.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chantal Stormsong Chagnon was one of the organizers of the MMIW mobilization in Calgary.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Mylynn Felt)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These organizers were already in the thick of things locally and digitally. This leadership role consisted of spreading and sharing the movement’s goals and objectives, which they achieved through existing networks grown from involvement and commitment to the values behind the issue. Calgary Sisters in Spirit committee member Michelle Robinson captured it this way: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>… our locations and our numbers can change, but Facebook is kind of a constant. So that’s where we encourage and invite people and let people know this is happening.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Doing the work</h2>
<p>The word caretaker brings to mind the image of hands-on labour; with digital activism, this caretaking role describes a leader stepping up to do the work and investing time and effort in countless essential tasks. These leaders distinguish themselves by carrying out tasks such as making signs, sharing petitions or cleaning up after a gathering.</p>
<p>For citizens coordinating the <a href="http://www.yycsyr.ca/">Calgary network that assists arriving Syrian refugees</a> with donated household items, participation in <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/headlines/refugee-crisis-prompts-rallies-across-canada-1.3217636">the Refugees Welcome movement</a> took every free moment of the day as they did the heavy lifting online and offline. One organizer shared: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>we would finish work and, no dinner, just head down to the warehouse from the time the warehouse opened ‘till closing. … we were there pretty much every single day.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These activities stretched them financially and personally, but their commitment kept them going. Nobody appointed or elected them. These individuals emerged as leaders when they stepped up to do the work that needed to be done.</p>
<h2>Online leadership matters</h2>
<p>What matters is crafting powerful messages, spreading this message across physical and digital networks and doing the heavy lifting of organizing work. In some cases, the same citizens performed all three leadership roles. In others, different participants stepped into one of them when needed. While the individuals playing these roles may sometimes appear interchangeable, transient and anonymous, leadership itself remains central to any form of activism.</p>
<p>There were no special qualities required to make an ordinary citizen a leader. What mattered was the degree to which they cared about the issue. For some, taking this kind of leadership role represented a peak in a long trajectory of activism and dedication to a cause. For others, the issue at hand struck a particularly sensitive chord or hit close to home. Then, the density of social ties, digital skills and communicative creativity turned into valuable resources.</p>
<p>This means that for activist organizations and social movements nowadays, it is not so important to focus on electing leaders, but on making available mechanisms and avenues for their self-selection. Build open channels for conversation, connection and work. Leaders will come.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/132618/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dr. Delia Dumitrica received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada to study social media and civic activism in Canada (grant number 435-2014-0200).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dr. Maria Bakardjieva receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Baltic Sea Foundation, Sweden and the University of Calgary, Canada. She has also held appointments as research fellow with the European Research Institutes for Advanced Studies and the Oxford Internet Institute. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mylynn Felt receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada as a research assistant to study social media and civic activism in Canada (grant number 435-2014-0200) as well as funding as a Vanier Scholar. She currently serves as vice president on the board of directors for the Friends of the Weber-Morgan Children's Justice Center, a nonprofit organization.</span></em></p>Online social movements are not leaderless. On the contrary, leadership duties are often assumed by identifiable individuals committed to doing leadership work.Delia Dumitrica, Associate professor, Department of Media and Communication, Erasmus University RotterdamMaria Bakardjieva, Professor, Communication and Media Studies, University of CalgaryMylynn Felt, PhD Candidate, Communication, Media and Film, University of CalgaryLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1311842020-02-23T13:14:53Z2020-02-23T13:14:53ZAs vegan activism grows, politicians aim to protect agri-business, restaurateurs<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313840/original/file-20200205-149757-1ioal4q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1356%2C667&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A vegan activist holds up a protest sign during a demonstration in Montréal. The movement is unflinching in its efforts to change how people look at consuming food.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/">(Shutterstock)</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The vegan movement — as diverse as it is — is increasingly active and vocal, as several events have shown recently. </p>
<p>Last month, <a href="https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/animal-rights-protesters-disrupt-dinner-service-at-montreal-s-joe-beef-restaurant-1.4764265">a dozen activists entered the Joe Beef restaurant</a> in Montréal as customers dined to denounce meat consumption and animal exploitation. A few days later, the <a href="https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/blood-on-his-hands-montreal-restaurant-has-been-threatened-by-animal-rights-activists-owners-say-1.4778236">city’s Restaurant Manitoba</a> had glue put in its locks as did the bar <a href="https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1489426/restaurant-mon-lapin-menaces-activistes">Vin Mon Lapin</a>. A note left behind denounced their association with a <a href="https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1383582/petit-abattoir-granby-fernande-ouellet-oie-canard-monteregie">slaughterhouse project</a> in Granby outside Montréal. No one has taken responsibility for these last actions.</p>
<p>Last December, a group of activists also entered a farm in the Montérégie area in southwestern Québec to raise awareness about the living conditions of pigs raised for human consumption. This <a href="https://nationalpost.com/pmn/news-pmn/canada-news-pmn/animal-activists-arrested-at-quebec-pork-facility-vow-to-continue-fight">action by vegan activists</a> received extensive media coverage. </p>
<p>The provincial government in Québec has responded by <a href="https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/202001/22/01-5257866-antispecisme-un-groupe-de-travail-pour-empecher-dautres-infractions.php?fbclid=IwAR1S_zNbuKwDl11aItBuEm2-PQwoD14FcU-xL5Y6qppB6vIxMC6RDNpM96k">setting up a task force made up of representatives of the departments of Justice, Public Safety and Agriculture.</a> Québec Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, André Lamontagne, said the task force will look at legislation in other jurisdictions, particularly Alberta and Ontario, to ensure protests occur in a “respectful manner … to help our farmers, our restaurateurs.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/312555/original/file-20200129-92987-h63m3q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/312555/original/file-20200129-92987-h63m3q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312555/original/file-20200129-92987-h63m3q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312555/original/file-20200129-92987-h63m3q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312555/original/file-20200129-92987-h63m3q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312555/original/file-20200129-92987-h63m3q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312555/original/file-20200129-92987-h63m3q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A young woman holds a sign during a march in Montréal that supported closing slaughterhouses.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Marie-Ève Fraser)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As a PhD student in political science, my field of expertise is social movements, and more particularly, movements for animal rights in France and Québec, which is the subject of my <a href="https://udemleon.academia.edu/AlexiaRenard">master’s thesis</a>.</p>
<p>In our climate emergency era, the vegan movement is fed partly by ideas to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. But veganism is first and foremost about animal rights. Other and more central issues that feed the movement is the respect of fundamental animal rights and a refusal to normalize the consumption of animal products. Therefore, veganism can embody multiple networks and different types of actions, personal and collective. </p>
<p>But what is the connection between collective action and the personal, such as a personal decision to go vegan? Turning a traditional <a href="https://www.thebuddhistchef.com/recipe/vegan-pot-pie/">meat pie recipe</a> into a vegan dish is not the same thing as going into a farm or a restaurant to protest the living conditions of animals for slaughter.</p>
<h2>A brief history of veganism</h2>
<p>Veganism is much more than a way of eating and dressing. Vegans do not consume products or services derived from what they consider to be animal exploitation. Vegans consider it unjust to harm sentient beings for the pleasure of eating a hamburger or sitting on a leather couch. </p>
<p>Non-human animals possess the “<a href="http://fcmconference.org/img/CambridgeDeclarationOnConsciousness.pdf">neurological substrates of consciousness</a>,” says the manifesto of the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, <a href="https://www.animal-ethics.org/five-years-of-the-cambridge-declaration-on-consciousness/">signed by neuroscientists in June 2012</a>. The declaration concludes that non-human animals have a consciousness similar to that of humans. </p>
<p>The term vegan appeared in 1944 in the United Kingdom. Two members of the English Vegetarian Society noted that the milk and egg industry was closely linked to the meat industry and that, consequently, vegetarianism, which excludes only the consumption of animal flesh, is only a transitional solution towards a diet free of animal cruelty.</p>
<p>They founded the Vegan Society, which in 1949 defined veganism as “<a href="https://www.vegansociety.com/about-us/further-information/key-facts">the principle of emancipation of animals from human exploitation</a>.” The current definition proposed by the Vegan Society, which is still active, is “<a href="https://www.vegansociety.com/go-vegan/definition-veganism">a way of life that seeks to exclude, as far as possible and practicable, all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose</a>.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/312546/original/file-20200129-92969-1w87zke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/312546/original/file-20200129-92969-1w87zke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=289&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312546/original/file-20200129-92969-1w87zke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=289&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312546/original/file-20200129-92969-1w87zke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=289&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312546/original/file-20200129-92969-1w87zke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312546/original/file-20200129-92969-1w87zke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312546/original/file-20200129-92969-1w87zke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A protest by vegan activists in New York City.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A diversity of actions</h2>
<p>The multiplicity of voices and actions from diverse social spheres makes veganism a true citizens’ movement.</p>
<p>Not all vegans define themselves as animal rights activists, however, conscientious objection and the coexistence of collective and individual action is a <a href="https://www.cairn-int.info/article-E_RFSP_624_0559--between-disgust-and-moral-indignation.htm#xd_co_f=ZGYyZGUxZTYtNjVkZi00OThmLTgyNmEtZjRlODg1YzQ2YmMz%7E">fundamental characteristic of the vegan movement</a>. </p>
<p>Another characteristic lies in the profound diversity of its actions, but also in the activist strategies and groups that make it up. While some are oriented toward direct action, others are interested in changing dietary behaviour and <a href="http://ledefivegane21jours.com/">popularizing veganism</a>. </p>
<p>Some groups promote <a href="https://www.anonymousforthevoiceless.org/">street activism</a>, while others choose more institutional avenues such as creating <a href="https://veganoptioncanada.org/petition-quebec/">petitions</a> or working with <a href="https://vegemontreal.org/nouvelle/actualite/politique/revons-montreal-2030-en-ville-vege/16267/">municipalities</a>.</p>
<p>In addition, and particularly in Québec, the academic world is at the cutting edge of work in animal ethics. Some of these philosophers are committed activists, such as <a href="http://christianebailey.com/">Christiane Bailey</a>, <a href="https://coteboudreau.com/">Frédéric Côté-Boudreau</a>, <a href="https://martingibert.com/">Martin Gibert</a> or <a href="https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Val%C3%A9ry_Giroux">Valéry Giroux</a>. In the animal protection community, people like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89lise_Desaulniers">Élise Desaulniers</a>, executive director of the Montréal SPCA, are involved in the cause.</p>
<p>That said, the question of the effectiveness of actions is an important debate among activists. Some then point out the need for political action for animal rights rather than the spread of the vegan lifestyle and prefer to speak of an anti-speciesist movement or an animal liberation movement. There is also debate as to whether a social movement should attract <a href="https://ricochet.media/fr/2878/mouvement-social-joe-beef">public support</a>.</p>
<h2>The public debate</h2>
<p>Indeed, at a time when the supply of vegan products is increasing, activists sometimes fear the reduction of veganism to a depoliticized way of life that has been taken over by the food industry. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/312545/original/file-20200129-93007-1l7vdut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/312545/original/file-20200129-93007-1l7vdut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312545/original/file-20200129-93007-1l7vdut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312545/original/file-20200129-93007-1l7vdut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312545/original/file-20200129-93007-1l7vdut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312545/original/file-20200129-93007-1l7vdut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312545/original/file-20200129-93007-1l7vdut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An animal rights demonstration in Mexico City. The vegan movement is global in scope.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Whatever one thinks of the actions taken, one thing is clear: the issues raised by the vegan and anti-speciesist movements are now part of the public debate. In this sense, these two movements are not limited to the organizations that carry them and the ideologies that run through them. They are, in fact, questioning our entire society. </p>
<p>Their multiple actions — sometimes co-ordinated, sometimes spontaneous — question the ethical and environmental consequences of our treatment of farm animals. </p>
<p>In 2017, the <a href="http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QL">Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations </a> estimated that 70 billion land animals will be slaughtered worldwide for their meat, not counting fish, marine mammals and crustaceans. </p>
<h2>Social movements shape society</h2>
<p>Most of the changes in values that our world has experienced are the result of protest actions. Whether we think of the hard-won right to strike for unions, the civil rights of Blacks in the United States or women’s rights, <a href="http://classiques.uqac.ca/contemporains/vaillancourt_jean_guy/mouvement_ouvrier/mouvement_ouvrier.pdf">social movements</a> shape society, as sociologist Alain Touraine put it.</p>
<p>Indeed, the vegan and anti-speciesist movements seem well placed to produce, in the long run, a more just society for animals. </p>
<p>In the immediate term, we can expect significant changes in the way we consume and milk our animals.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/131184/count.gif" alt="La Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexia Renard receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. </span></em></p>Vegan activists are doing more than promoting healthy diets, they are increasingly vocal about the ethical treatment of animals and pushing for social change.Alexia Renard, Doctorante, Université de MontréalLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1277862019-12-01T13:37:12Z2019-12-01T13:37:12ZWhat Don Cherry, Canada’s Archie Bunker, shows us about cancel culture<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304571/original/file-20191201-156099-d7pzqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=55%2C10%2C1117%2C481&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Don Cherry, left, at the Manitoba Legislature building in Winnipeg, September 2009, as part of the "Honouring Canada's Olympic and Paralympic Athletes Day," and Archie Bunker, right. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Afexa Life Sciences Inc./ YouTube</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Don Cherry’s recent <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/history-working-class-families-american-sitcom-180968555/">Archie Bunker</a>-inspired tirade revealed an alienating view of new and, by implication, racialized Canadians. Cherry inflamed the Canadian culture wars revealing deep ruptures in Canada’s social landscape we can’t seem to bridge.</p>
<p>The work of Harvard University professor <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.ca/books/Bowling-Alone/Robert-D-Putnam/9780743203043">Robert Putnam</a> can help us understand the implications of what the Cherry fiasco unveiled. Putnam argued that Americans are less civic minded and socially connected compared to generations past. </p>
<p>He highlights a myriad of reasons for this such as generational differences, demographic shifts, the rise of individualized media, suburbanization and urban sprawl, which have resulted in longer commutes, growing time constraints, and greater class and racial neighbourhood segregation. He also says economic decline and restructuring have left people with less money for social activities. </p>
<p>These phenomena have led to social divisions and a general decline in socializing, especially with people and communities beyond the boundaries of our usual social milieus. </p>
<p>Putnam used the term social capital to refer to the social ties and bonds of trust that are essential to human existence. He contrasted two types. There is bridging capital when we connect with people outside our social circles. The other is called bonding capital: those connections we make within our communities. </p>
<p>Bonding social capital often encompasses an “us-versus-them” outlook. Ideally that attitude is mitigated by bridging capital. Putnam said that “bonding social capital constitutes a kind of sociological superglue, whereas bridging social capital provides a sociological WD-40.” </p>
<p>Putnam laments the historical erosion of bridging social capital in the U.S., which he argues has, for many Americans, resulted in a lack of connectedness to the wider society and a depletion of overall reservoirs of social trust. Broad-based social capital, asserts Putnam, expands our opportunities, helps to broaden our perspectives, and, in general, “makes us smarter, healthier, safer, richer and better able to govern a just and stable democracy.”</p>
<p>The Don Cherry fallout illustrates that Putnam’s thesis is equally applicable to Canada. </p>
<h2>Canada’s Archie Bunker</h2>
<p>When Cherry, 85, used his venerable “Coach’s Corner” segment on a November <em>Hockey Night in Canada</em> telecast to demand, in the most offensive of ways and with the nuanced subtly of a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNVG_zldQ8s">Dustin Byfuglien body check</a>, that everyone wear poppies, he may have been promoting his version of bridging social capital. By encouraging everyone to wear a poppy and admonishing those, particularly new Canadians, who don’t, Cherry’s aim may have been to bring Canadians of all ethnoracial backgrounds together using collective support for veterans as a rallying point. </p>
<p>This, at least, would be the most generous interpretation of his tirade. But he situated immigrants as a digression from a normative Canadian whiteness (“you people”) who pillage the nation’s treasure chest (they “enjoy our milk and honey”) while offering little or nothing in return — of course, an absurd notion given the vast <a href="https://www.conferenceboard.ca/e-library/abstract.aspx?did=9678">economic benefits immigrants bring to a nation with a declining birthrate and aging population</a>. </p>
<p>While some have debated Cherry’s intent, unbridled racism and xenophobia was what many inferred. His perspective at best was ethnocentric and condescendingly assimilationist. If this was an attempt on Cherry’s part to foster bridging capital, that bridge quickly collapsed. </p>
<p>The swift public reaction vividly brought to light escalating divisions in Canada.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/maxime-bernier-either-doesnt-know-or-doesnt-care-that-immigrants-have-a-positive-impact-on-the-economy-125035">Maxime Bernier either doesn't know or doesn't care that immigrants have a positive impact on the economy</a>
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<p>Fervent and polarized debates on the merits and detriments of free speech and cancel culture took centre stage. Accusations of “snowflake,” “<a href="https://www.narcity.com/news/ca/fire-jess-allen-petitions-have-reached-thousands-of-signatures-as-viewers-make-their-point">toxic masculinity</a>” and “fascist” were flung. In a nation increasingly divided by intersections of <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2018/09/30/toronto-is-segregated-by-race-and-income-and-the-numbers-are-ugly.html">race, class</a> and <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/alberta/article-survey-shows-widening-provincial-divides-in-canada/">regional differences</a>, the turbulent reaction to Cherry’s comments and cancelled TV segment illuminated the widening rupture <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-don-cherry-and-the-rural-urban-divide/">between urban progressivism and “old stock” (read: older, white and conservative) small-town Canadians</a> to whom Cherry has long appealed.</p>
<p>In short, the Cherry debacle revealed that while there is a fair degree of intra-tribal bonding Canadians aren’t doing a lot of bridging. <a href="https://www.getproof.com/thinking/the-proof-cantrust-index/">The 2019 “CanTrustIndex” revealed a sharp and alarming decline in overall levels of trust among Canadians</a>. We’re losing trust in our leaders, dominant institutions, information sources and each other. Research shows that <a href="https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v8y2016i4p322-d67024.html">a lack of trust in those who govern us reflects a shortage of bridging social capital</a>.</p>
<h2>Unbridged differences</h2>
<p>Persisting inequalities and injustices have spurred the proliferation of identity politics over the past few decades. Such activist pursuits may also provide individuals with a sense of belonging when wider social ties have broken down. Progressive identity-based movements like <a href="https://blacklivesmatter.com/">Black Lives Matter</a> have promoted awareness of prevailing inequities and combated social biases of the sort reflected in Cherry’s remarks. Those social biases punctuate daily the lives of Canadians who aren’t white, heterosexual, middle-class, cis-males. </p>
<p>But, as events like Cherry’s downfall remind us, inevitable right-wing political backlash and resultant polarization and divisions will seemingly forever frustrate efforts to nurture bridging social capital. This is unfortunate, as mutually created bridging capital allows for <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226012883/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0226012883&linkCode=as2&tag=thplofyo07-20&linkId=4QCXIF457L26NDJI">inter-communal trust, collaboration and healthy dialogue</a>. </p>
<p>When there’s a dearth of bridging ties and trust, <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/after-service/201901/how-modern-life-made-us-angry">stereotypical assumptions</a> dictate how we interact with people outside of our identity groups. We assume worst intentions on the part of those with whom we disagree. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-trump-effect-in-canada-a-600-per-cent-increase-in-online-hate-speech-86026">The Trump effect in Canada: A 600 per cent increase in online hate speech</a>
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<p>Bridging social chasms would enable us to collectively and rationally decide how to equitably and inclusively welcome newcomers into the Canadian social fabric, and how to treat fairly those who run afoul of present day values intended to promote equity and inclusivity. </p>
<p>Without implying that Cherry is necessarily deserving of a second chance given his cumulative track record, it wouldn’t be a bad thing if bridged differences and enhanced social trust resulted in a more forgiving society that defaults to redemption over cancellation. </p>
<p>That beats yelling at each other across divides and fuelling a perpetual impasse.</p>
<p>In the introduction of his book, Putnam suggests that Americans “need to reconnect with each other.” We Canadians need to do the same. In terms of making that happen, the fallout from Don Cherry’s latest antics shows we have a lot of work to do.</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/ca/newsletters?utm_source=TCCA&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/127786/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kevin Gosine does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Without implying that Don Cherry is deserving of a second chance given his track record, it wouldn’t be a bad thing if bridged differences resulted in redemption instead of cancellation.Kevin Gosine, Associate Professor of Sociology, Brock UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1253582019-10-20T13:25:01Z2019-10-20T13:25:01ZA monster rally for climate change, but divergent goals hinder the fight<p>Nearly <a href="https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/montreal-climate-march-we-are-the-change-greta-thunberg-tells-throng">half a million people demonstrated in Montréal</a> to demand climate action on Sept. 27. It was one of the largest rallies in the city’s history and believed to be the largest of its kind in Canada.</p>
<p>Throngs of people filled the streets around the world, the country and the province. People in Montréal have continued to demonstrate on Tuesdays in support of the climate, <a href="https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/montreal-climate-protesters-create-cookware-cacophony-1.4639422">banging on pots and pans</a>.</p>
<p>How can we explain the magnitude of these “gestures of political opinion,” as <a href="https://www.cairn.info/strategies-de-la-rue--9782724607074.htm">French sociologist Olivier Fillieule calls them</a>, to describe the demonstrations?</p>
<p>There are several possible explanations and some will mention the “<a href="https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/rs/2009-v50-n2-rs3406/038048ar/">Montréal effect</a>.” Only a few years ago, students protesting tuition fee hikes took part in massive demonstrations. Others have taken to the street in the past 50 years over language, sovereignty and the outbreak of the war in Iraq.</p>
<p>But the nature of the climate problem made it easier to mobilize people around this cause than others: climate change is something that concerns everyone. The warm weather that day also encouraged people to walk and helped make global warming a part of the march.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296048/original/file-20191008-128681-2rpar7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296048/original/file-20191008-128681-2rpar7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296048/original/file-20191008-128681-2rpar7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296048/original/file-20191008-128681-2rpar7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296048/original/file-20191008-128681-2rpar7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296048/original/file-20191008-128681-2rpar7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296048/original/file-20191008-128681-2rpar7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Swedish activist Greta Thunberg participates in the climate march in Montréal on Sept. 27, which brought together some 500,000 people.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Canadian Press/Paul Chiasson</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is, however, necessary to add some context: a thriving civil society exists in Montréal, within the student movement and among secondary school students, environmental and community groups and unions. The mass mobilization of Sept. 27 was clearly the result of long-term work by activists and was in no way “spontaneous.” </p>
<p>However, I would like to propose another explanation here, based on my research on social movements and collective action.</p>
<p>The preferred explanation presupposes links between street mobilizations and the partisan arena; in other words, what happens in Parliament or the Québec national assembly has an effect on what happens in the street, and vice versa. </p>
<p>My suggestion does not invalidate the previous explanations in any way, but rather proposes to take a different look at the Sept. 27 march. It also seeks to understand why the protest was so large, not just why it occurred.</p>
<h2>Social movements are here to stay</h2>
<p>In political science, <a href="https://www.puq.ca/catalogue/livres/printemps-quebecois-2574.html">political conflicts are expected to occur in the institutional arena</a>, such as Parliament and the legislature. If social movements have a role, it is of <a href="https://cadmus.eui.eu/handle/1814/41564">whistleblowers proposing “new” issues for public debate</a>, which are then taken up by political parties and elected officials.</p>
<p>It is generally assumed that social movements are “incorporated” into the political system and that they will use the institutional channel to advance their demands. From this perspective, <a href="https://www.cairn.info/revue-politique-europeenne-2001-3-page-73.htm">social movements are not considered to be long-term political actors</a> and are not central to the functioning of representative democracy.</p>
<p>That is not my position. I believe that social movements are an integral part of our democracies. They are here to stay. They have a central role to play in “citizen vigilance” and in the political expression of identities and interests. They are, therefore, not an anomaly of our political system, but rather political actors in their own right, playing on the borders of formal institutions.</p>
<p>It is therefore interesting to look at climate mobilizations in relation to the partisan arena. </p>
<h2>A fuzzy issue carried by indistinct groups</h2>
<p>In the partisan arena (federal or Québec), there does not seem to be a political place for a real politicization of the environmental issue. </p>
<p>The only existing partisan divide separates climate change skeptics and the rest, placing these “others” in an indistinct political mass where their political differences go unheard.</p>
<p>If they were, the debates would also be about the relationship to the capitalist liberal economy and social justice. We would then see fundamental differences emerge between the group of “others,” who would oppose each other on their conception of what our economy should be in order to meet climate challenges, on the intervention expected (or not) from the state, or on the consideration of inequalities in the face of climate change. </p>
<p>In other words, there is no partisan debate on the climate issue at the moment, nor is there any possible debate within the institutional arenas. The political game is therefore played outside, in the street.</p>
<p>In sociology, a political divide is considered to exist if it is carried by political and social forces for a fairly long period of time. This is not the case for environmental issues. They are carried by a myriad of people, networks and organizations — think about it, even the banks closed their doors on the afternoon of Sept. 27. The demands are diverse, often imprecise and refer to a very disparate set of actions that affect the environment. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/295049/original/file-20191001-173393-k17y9i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/295049/original/file-20191001-173393-k17y9i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/295049/original/file-20191001-173393-k17y9i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/295049/original/file-20191001-173393-k17y9i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/295049/original/file-20191001-173393-k17y9i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/295049/original/file-20191001-173393-k17y9i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/295049/original/file-20191001-173393-k17y9i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Justin Trudeau meets with Swedish activist Greta Thunberg in Montréal on Sept. 27. Trudeau, who has the power to make a difference, was one of many demonstrators.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Canadian Press/Ryan Remiorz</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Is fighting global warming and making compost really the same battle?</p>
<h2>What can we expect in such a situation?</h2>
<p>The first possible scenario is the emergence of political mediation, that is a political actor or a party that relays demands from the street to the ballot box. To date, the Green Party of Canada, while growing in popularity, has not played this role on the issue of climate change.</p>
<p>This would not end street protests, but at least not everyone would be seen as on the same side of the fence — or almost on the same side. How can a social movement fully embrace its role as a protester when environment ministers are seen as being at their side? In this context, the question of who or what is the target of mobilization becomes an issue, as well as that of claims or demands. </p>
<p>Another possible scenario: because our system of political representation is not at its best, we can expect to see some radicalization of the protests. As we have yet to see progressive measures or new social rights adopted without people taking to the street, it’s likely that this will be repeated for environmental issues. </p>
<p>We’ve already seen an example of this radicalization. Recently, environmental activists from the global group Extinction Rebellion <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/climate-protest-jacques-cartier-bridge-1.5312971">were arrested after climbing onto the Jacques-Cartier Bridge in Montréal</a> to denounce the “lack of significant action” in the fight against climate change.</p>
<p>Not all will agree that the historic march of Sept. 27 will be, in retrospect, of little political use. However, the question facing those who want to take further action will be how they can best burst onto the public scene by some other means than the parade we attended. We can be encouraged by that or worried about it. That is not really the question here, but there is a high probability that more subversive forms of protest will take place.</p>
<p>Amid all this, we are near the end of an election campaign. Let us remember that the political parties have a very important role to play in how these massive climate protests are translated into action. They don’t seem to grasp that. </p>
<p>[ <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/ca/newsletters?utm_source=TCCA&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=thanksforreading">Thanks for reading! We can send you The Conversation’s stories every day in an informative email. Sign up today.</a></em> ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/125358/count.gif" alt="La Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Pascale Dufour receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Fonds québécois Culture et Société.</span></em></p>Thousands of people turned out for the march for climate on Sept. 27 but new questions have arisen about the form these protests will take in the future.Pascale Dufour, Professeure titulaire - spécialiste des mouvements sociaux et de l'action collective, Université de MontréalLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1243852019-10-09T16:50:28Z2019-10-09T16:50:28ZThe Latin American left isn’t dead yet<p>Argentina, Bolivia and <a href="https://www.elpais.com.uy/informacion/politica/elecciones-dicen-encuestas-cara-octubre.html">Uruguay</a> will all hold presidential elections in October. And, for now, leftists are <a href="https://www.as-coa.org/content/guide-2019-latin-american-elections/argentina">strong contenders</a> in all three countries. </p>
<p>This is a somewhat unexpected development. Beginning in 2015, <a href="https://nacla.org/news/2016/12/09/right-turn">conservatives toppled</a> major leftist strongholds, including in Brazil, Argentina and Chile. The socially progressive Latin American left was <a href="https://aulablog.net/2019/01/09/a-right-turn-in-latin-america/">declared dead</a> <a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/07/pink-tide-latin-america-chavez-morales-capitalism-socialism/">many times over</a>. </p>
<p>But the left-leaning populist Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/andres-manuel-lopez-obrador-was-elected-to-transform-mexico-can-he-do-it-99176">victory in Mexico</a> in July 2018 showed that Latin American political winds don’t all blow in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/mexicos-left-turn-and-the-road-to-uncertainty-106847">same direction</a>.</p>
<p>So what can be learned from the failures and successes of Latin America’s leftist parties and governments in the very recent past?</p>
<h2>Latin America’s ‘left turn’</h2>
<p>About two-thirds of all Latin Americans lived under some form of leftist government <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/book/1866">by 2010</a> – a “pink tide” that washed over the region following the election of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela in 1998. </p>
<p>Only a few countries – notably Colombia and Mexico – remained under conservative political leadership during this period.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296464/original/file-20191010-188792-1ysbkxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296464/original/file-20191010-188792-1ysbkxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296464/original/file-20191010-188792-1ysbkxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296464/original/file-20191010-188792-1ysbkxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296464/original/file-20191010-188792-1ysbkxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296464/original/file-20191010-188792-1ysbkxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296464/original/file-20191010-188792-1ysbkxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296464/original/file-20191010-188792-1ysbkxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Argentina, Bolivia and Uruguay have elections in October.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock.com/The Conversation</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Academics conventionally grouped this <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/welfare-and-party-politics-in-latin-america/BFE6B43ED35B5CB02919279F5620AB73">Latin American left</a> into <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=eKOwSqYH5rcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=uruguay+social+democratic+left&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiBl7LNpY_lAhXQl-AKHaIlB7QQ6AEwAHoECAEQAg#v=onepage&q=uruguay%20social%20democratic%20left&f=false">two camps</a>. </p>
<p>There was the moderate “social democratic” left of Brazil, Chile and Uruguay, which embraced an agenda of egalitarianism while accepting the basic precepts of market economics. </p>
<p>This group was generally contrasted with the <a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=3IVjDgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PT5&ots=8jhwLduGbl&sig=eLyxmkw3j55zS5nuIfqGGkj6WI8#v=onepage&q&f=false">more radical “populist” left</a> that ran Venezuela, <a href="https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/cuny/cp/2016/00000048/00000004/art00003">Bolivia</a>, Nicaragua and Ecuador. These governments shared the moderate left’s commitment to progressive social change but had bolder aims: an alternative to market economics and profound changes to political institutions. </p>
<p>Such groupings did little to predict these countries’ divergent fates.</p>
<p>In a few places, leftist governments have remained popular, vibrant and electorally competitive after over a decade in power – namely <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/bolivia/2018-02-14/key-evo-morales-political-longevity">Bolivia and Uruguay</a>. </p>
<p>But by 2015, <a href="https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/bolsonaro-and-brazils-illiberal-backlash/">Brazil</a>, <a href="https://www.wola.org/sites/default/files/Venezuela/Smilde%20Current%20History--final.pdf">Venezuela</a> and <a href="https://nacla.org/news/2018/07/25/nicaragua-view-left">Nicaragua</a> had all become political and economic catastrophes. <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/party-vibrancy-and-democracy-in-latin-america-9780190870041?cc=us&lang=en&">Chile’s leftist government</a> sharply declined in popularity. </p>
<h2>The conformist temptation</h2>
<p>Our <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ob2gBJoAAAAJ&hl=en">political science research</a> identifies some shared weaknesses of the <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=d7yzgzQAAAAJ&hl=en">Latin American left</a>.</p>
<p>The first lesson comes from the Workers Party, which governed Brazil between 2003 and 2016. </p>
<p>Like many progressive parties, the Workers Party’s founding leaders were idealistic – committed to <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300050745/workers-party-and-democratization-brazil">upending Brazilian politics as usual</a>. </p>
<p>Under the Workers Party, Brazil experienced a massive <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11186-019-09351-7">expansion of social citizenship rights</a>. By 2008, Brazilian President Lula da Silva was arguably the <a href="https://theconversation.com/as-brazil-tilts-rightward-lulas-leftist-legacy-of-lifting-the-poor-is-at-risk-65939">world’s most popular president</a>.</p>
<p>But the Workers Party became <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/comparative-politics/transformation-workers-party-brazil-19892009?format=PB&isbn=9780521733007">detached from the social movements</a> it once championed. Deeply immersed in the normal – even <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-brazil-is-winning-its-fight-against-corruption-71968">corrupt</a> – give-and-take of Brazilian politics, the party came to be molded by the flawed system it sought to change.</p>
<p>We call this pitfall the “conformist temptation.” </p>
<p>The Workers Party rule ended with the <a href="https://theconversation.com/impeachment-culture-wars-and-the-politics-of-identity-in-brazil-59436">2016 impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff</a>, Lula’s hand-picked successor. Although Rousseff herself <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-brazilian-president-dilma-rousseffs-real-crime-59363">faced no corruption charges</a>, the Workers Party left power associated with corruption scandals, campaign finance violations and economic mismanagement – the exact problems it had promised to fix.</p>
<p>Chile’s Socialist Party met a similar fate. </p>
<p>Under Presidents Ricardo Lagos and Michelle Bachelet, moderate leftists who governed Chile almost uninterrupted from 2001 to 2018, the party <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/12/18/chile-just-elected-a-billionaire-president-these-are-the-4-things-you-need-to-know/">distanced itself from its supporters in social movements</a>.</p>
<p>In 2011, students and teachers began <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2011/08/student-protests-in-chile/100125/">protesting</a> Chile’s low levels of public education funding and <a href="https://www.borgenmagazine.com/economic-inequality-in-chile/">high inequality</a>. The <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1866802X1600800305">youth protest movement</a> grew, exposing Chileans’ disappointment at the Socialists’ limited progress on social reforms. </p>
<p>These divisions on the left <a href="https://theconversation.com/chile-heads-into-presidential-runoff-with-a-transformed-political-landscape-86453">allowed Chile’s strong right wing to win</a> Chile’s 2018 presidential election.</p>
<h2>The autocratic temptation</h2>
<p>Crises in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Ecuador result from a different fatal flaw. </p>
<p>In these three countries, leftist leaders succumbed to what we call the “autocratic temptation” – the idea that a charismatic leader or popular political movement not only can speak for an <a href="https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/latin-americas-authoritarian-drift-the-threat-from-the-populist-left/">entire nation</a> but that they can <a href="https://theconversation.com/bolivia-is-not-venezuela-even-if-its-president-does-want-to-stay-in-power-forever-93253">do so forever</a>.</p>
<p>Like many authoritarian leaders, Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega have lost touch with their constituents. When leaders become too insulated, <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-dictators-dilemma-9780190228552?cc=us&lang=en&">research shows</a>, safeguards against corruption and irresponsible public policies weaken. </p>
<p>Authoritarian leaders are less likely to change course when things go wrong. </p>
<p>The consequences may be devastating – like Maduro’s egregious failure to adjust Venezuela’s exchange rate policies during its descent into economic crisis and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/venezuelas-crisis-in-5-charts/2019/01/26/97af60a6-20c4-11e9-a759-2b8541bbbe20_story.html">hyperinflation</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Weyland-24-3.pdf">Authoritarian leadership</a> has degraded democracy in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Ecuador in other ways, too. <a href="https://theconversation.com/ecuadors-populist-electoral-victory-for-moreno-shows-erosion-of-democracy-75157">Checks and balances on presidential authority</a> have been weakened and press freedoms restricted. In Venezuela and Nicaragua, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/nicaragua-protests-threaten-an-authoritarian-regime-that-looked-like-it-might-never-fall-95776">electoral process was manipulated</a>.</p>
<p>The autocratic temptation to lionize a charismatic founding leader weakens the governing political party, too, by making it extremely difficult for new leaders to emerge and carry forward the party’s long-term transformative agenda.</p>
<p>In Nicaragua and Venezuela, that has meant that <a href="https://theconversation.com/nicaraguans-try-to-topple-a-dictator-again-98123">autocrats have clung to power</a> despite popular demand that they leave.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://aulablog.net/2018/02/02/ecuador-referendum-marks-critical-juncture-for-moreno-and-correa/">Ecuador</a>, the current and former presidents – Lenín Moreno and Rafael Correa – are engaged in a bitter dispute. Protests have rocked Ecuador over Moreno’s <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-49955695">economic policy shifts</a> away from Correa’s agenda.</p>
<h2>Leftist exceptions</h2>
<p>So what explains the resilience of the left in <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/when-movements-become-parties/F06BEE9DEA9BA4E7DCFBD9A87266FAB8#fndtn-information">Bolivia</a> and <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/how-party-activism-survives/93C5584DB63DF0A80B51F3EEB68BC8E9">Uruguay</a>, where leftist parties have reduced <a href="http://www.santiagoanria.com/data.html">inequality</a> and made tremendous progress toward <a href="https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/delegative-democracy-revisited-more-inclusion-less-liberalism-in-bolivia/">social and political inclusion</a>? Left-wing candidates are polling well in both countries’ <a href="http://www.startribune.com/evo-morales-not-trending-among-bolivia-s-youth-ahead-of-vote/562382812">presidential races</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296075/original/file-20191008-128681-1cs7t1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296075/original/file-20191008-128681-1cs7t1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296075/original/file-20191008-128681-1cs7t1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296075/original/file-20191008-128681-1cs7t1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296075/original/file-20191008-128681-1cs7t1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296075/original/file-20191008-128681-1cs7t1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296075/original/file-20191008-128681-1cs7t1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Argentine presidential candidate Alberto Fernandez and running mate, former President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, at a campaign rally, Aug. 7, 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://pictures.reuters.com/CS.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&VBID=2C0BXZSUWZX3IE&SMLS=1&RW=1920&RH=996#/SearchResult&VBID=2C0BXZSUWZX3IE&SMLS=1&RW=1920&RH=996&POPUPPN=8&POPUPIID=2C0BF1MYIRFG1">Reuters/Agustin Marcarian</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In our assessment, what sets Bolivia and Uruguay apart is the strength of the ties between the leftist parties and <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/when-movements-become-parties/F06BEE9DEA9BA4E7DCFBD9A87266FAB8#fndtn-information">allied social movements</a> there. That has encouraged the accountability and responsiveness lacking in Venezuela, Brazil and Chile. </p>
<p>Civil society in Bolivia and Uruguay also retained its capacity for independent mobilization, constraining any possible slide into autocracy or unbridled ambition. </p>
<p>That may explain why Bolivia has so far <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/bolivia/2018-02-14/key-evo-morales-political-longevity">avoided the worst social and economic consequences of the autocratic temptation</a> – despite its charismatic indigenous president, Evo Morales, <a href="https://theconversation.com/bolivia-is-not-venezuela-even-if-its-president-does-want-to-stay-in-power-forever-93253">eliminating term limits and consolidating power</a> over the past 14 years. </p>
<p>In Argentina the left’s possible comeback has more to do with conservative president Mauricio Macri’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/sep/10/argentina-economic-crisis-imf-debt-default">economic mismanagement</a>. But the center-left ticket leading Argentina’s presidential race has also succeeded because the candidates formed a broad national coalition – one that includes an array of social movements, from labor unions to feminist groups.</p>
<p>The Latin American left has some life in it yet.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Progressives are leading in the presidential elections of Argentina, Uruguay and Bolivia, bucking the region’s recent rightward trend. But there are lessons in the failures of leftists past.Santiago Anria, Assistant Professor of Political Science and Latin American Studies, Dickinson CollegeKenneth M. Roberts, Richard J. Schwartz Professor of Government and Director, Latin American Studies Program, Cornell UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1187532019-06-17T17:04:41Z2019-06-17T17:04:41ZMass protests protect Hong Kong’s legal autonomy from China – for now<p>Protesters in Hong Kong have achieved a major victory in their fight to protect their legal system from Chinese interference. </p>
<p>On June 15, in response to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/16/world/asia/hong-kong-protests-pictures.html?module=inline">massive popular resistance</a>, Chief Executive Carrie Lam announced she would suspend a vote on a proposed new law that would allow China to extradite suspects accused of certain crimes and prosecute them in Chinese courts. </p>
<p>For over a week, some <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/12/world/asia/hong-kong-protests.html">1.3 million people had gathered daily outside Hong Kong’s legislature</a> to protest the legislation, which protesters say China will abuse to extradite political dissidents. They managed to postpone a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/hong-kong-legislature-postpones-debate-on-extradition-bill-again-after-clashes-between-police-and-protesters/2019/06/13/b3488268-8d2d-11e9-b6f4-033356502dce_story.html">June 12 vote</a> by blocking entry to the legislative building. Days later, consideration of the law was indefinitely postponed.</p>
<p>That temporarily protects Hong Kong’s <a href="https://theglobepost.com/2018/11/21/hong-kong-democracy/">judicial system</a>, one of the island territory’s few remaining areas of government autonomy from China. </p>
<p>Protesters are now demanding that the bill be <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/16/world/asia/carrie-lam-hong-kong-protests.html">withdrawn</a>, not just <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/15/world/asia/hong-kong-protests-extradition-law.html">suspended</a>. If the law comes up for vote at a later date, it will likely pass in Hong Kong’s legislative council, where pro-China forces dominate.</p>
<h2>‘One country, two systems’</h2>
<p>Chinese rule over Hong Kong, an island territory off the coast of Shenzhen, has long been disputed. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780742534223/A-Concise-History-of-Hong-Kong">British colonized</a> Hong Kong in the 1800s following the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-commonwealth-and-britain-the-trouble-with-empire-2-0-73707">Opium Wars</a>. But China never accepted this territorial claim, and insisted throughout the 20th century that Hong Kong belonged to China. </p>
<p>In 1997, after a decade of negotiations between the United Kingdom and China, Hong Kong returned to China – with some <a href="http://www.gov.cn/english/2007-06/14/content_649468.htm">strings</a> attached. Knowing that Hong Kong had developed under a Western system of government, then Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping made Hong Kong a “Special Autonomous Region” and agreed to give the island a 50-year transition period to come fully under Chinese rule. </p>
<p>Under this system, Hong Kong would retain its judicial system and legislative council, affording the island relative independence in its day-to-day operations. But Hong Kong would belong to China. The arrangement became known as “<a href="https://www.basiclaw.gov.hk/en/publications/book/15anniversary_reunification_ch1_1.pdf">one country, two systems</a>.” </p>
<p>Controversially, full suffrage and free elections <a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/2180764/declassified-files-reveal-disagreement-heart-british">were not part of the 1997 deal</a>. </p>
<p>For two decades, though, the “one country, two systems” arrangement seemed to give Hong Kong relative autonomy from Chinese interference.</p>
<p>Then, in 2014, China announced that people would be allowed to vote in Hong Kong’s 2017 <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/30/-sp-hong-kong-umbrella-revolution-pro-democracy-protests">chief executive election</a> only from a short list of preapproved candidates. </p>
<p>Thousands took to the streets to demand universal suffrage. To protect themselves from police spraying tear gas at the front lines, they used umbrellas, giving rise to the name the “<a href="https://thinkprogress.org/everything-you-need-to-know-about-hong-kongs-umbrella-revolution-4caf300296c8/">Umbrella Movement</a>.”</p>
<p>In the years since the uprising, I have interviewed numerous democracy activists in Hong Kong as part of my <a href="https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.so.15.080189.001003">academic research</a> into the evolution of social movements. </p>
<p>Many participants told me that they believed the 2014 Umbrella Movement had ended peacefully because China didn’t want another Tiananmen Square on its hands. In 1989, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3RzKKfNkTk">Chinese soldiers opened fire on student protesters</a> in Beijing, killing hundreds and raising global uproar.</p>
<p>Emboldened by international support for the Umbrella Movement, Hong Kong’s <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-34897403">young activists</a> have continued their efforts to protect their independence from China. <a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/1882470/fight-reclaim-hong-kong-has-just-begun-umbrella-soldiers">Nine Umbrella Movement leaders</a> ran for local office in Hong Kong in the territory’s 2015 elections.</p>
<p>In 2016 elections, two pro-independence politicians even won seats in the legislative council. However, they were quickly <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/16/world/asia/china-hong-kong-sixtus-leung-yau-wai-ching-oath.html">expelled</a> for “failing” to properly recite their loyalty oaths at a swearing-in ceremony. </p>
<p>In 2017 <a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/2082192/live-decision-day-arrives-hong-kong-race-its-next-leader">Carrie Lam</a>, a candidate loyal to Beijing and the driving force behind the extradition law, was elected Chief Executive – Hong Kong’s highest public official.</p>
<h2>Creeping Chinese influence</h2>
<p>Under Lam’s leadership, traditionally pro-democracy politicians were <a href="https://theconversation.com/hong-kongs-democratic-struggle-and-the-rise-of-chinese-authoritarianism-81369">removed</a> from office. Some were even <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/17/world/asia/hong-kong-joshua-wong-jailed-umbrella-movement.html">arrested and jailed as dissidents</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279795/original/file-20190617-118535-ea6d70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279795/original/file-20190617-118535-ea6d70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279795/original/file-20190617-118535-ea6d70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279795/original/file-20190617-118535-ea6d70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279795/original/file-20190617-118535-ea6d70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279795/original/file-20190617-118535-ea6d70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279795/original/file-20190617-118535-ea6d70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279795/original/file-20190617-118535-ea6d70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fa/Carrie_Lam_2017_1.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Today, only 24 pro-democracy politicians remain in Hong Kong’s 70-seat legislative council. </p>
<p>Increasing Chinese influence on the island territory also threatens Hong Kong’s clout as a <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Neoliberalism-and-Culture-in-China-and-Hong-Kong-The-Countdown-of-Time/Ren/p/book/9780415582629">major economic hub</a>. </p>
<p>For decades, Hong Kong’s relative autonomy has made the island territory an <a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/economy/article/2117984/world-bank-ranks-hong-kong-no-5-list-easiest-places-world-do">appealing place to do business in Asia</a>. But under stronger Chinese rule, financial markets and regulatory systems in Hong Kong may become less reliable as they begin to reflect <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/58ecfa82e3df284d3a13dd41/t/5cc9dcd753450a0e1da5bcab/1556733145217/Broken+Firewall+-+The+Extradition+Law+and+the+rule+of+law+in+Hong+Kong.pdf">the national interests</a> of China – not those of the free market.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/738d29e8-5773-11e9-a3db-1fe89bedc16e">American Chamber of Commerce</a> and several prominent Hong Kong business leaders have publicly spoken out against the extradition law. </p>
<p>“Spiriting people away over the border would undermine business confidence,” one hedge fund manager told the nonprofit human rights organization <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/58ecfa82e3df284d3a13dd41/t/5cc9dcd753450a0e1da5bcab/1556733145217/Broken+Firewall+-+The+Extradition+Law+and+the+rule+of+law+in+Hong+Kong.pdf">Hong Kong Watch</a>.</p>
<h2>Human rights at stake</h2>
<p>Hong Kong’s legal system is now the only surviving pillar of “one country, two systems,” which was created to give Hong Kong autonomy over its legal, economic and financial affairs. </p>
<p>If the postponed extradition law passes, there will be no meaningful remaining barriers between democratic-leaning Hong Kong and authoritarian China. </p>
<p>For many in Hong Kong, that’s an intolerable future. </p>
<p>An assessment by the <a href="https://worldjusticeproject.org/our-work/research-and-data/wjp-rule-law-index-2017%E2%80%932018">World Justice Project</a>, a nonprofit organization that works to advance the rule of law worldwide, ranks Hong Kong 16th and China 82nd worldwide <a href="https://worldjusticeproject.org/">based on</a> their constraints on government powers, absence of corruption, open government, fundamental rights, order and security, regulatory enforcement, civil justice and criminal justice.</p>
<p>China is a known <a href="https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2018/country-chapters/china-and-tibet#eaa21f">violator of human rights</a>. It systematically <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/inside-chinas-massive-surveillance-operation/">surveils and represses</a> ethnic minorities like the Uyghurs, a Muslim population in China’s northwest region, and restricts <a href="https://www.hongkongfp.com/2019/06/13/telegram-hit-cyber-attack-hong-kong-extradition-unrest-ceo-points-china/">internet access</a>. The government has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/28/wang-quanzhang-china-sentences-human-rights-lawyer-to-four-years-in-prison">jailed hundreds of human rights lawyers</a> since 2015.</p>
<p>Political dissidence is not tolerated in China. The late <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2010/xiaobo/facts/">Nobel Peace Prize winner</a> Liu Xiaobo, was sentenced in 2009 to 11 years in Chinese prison for “<a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-dissident/chinas-top-dissident-arrested-for-subversion-idUSTRE55N0F020090624">inciting subversion of state power</a>.” He <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/07/liu-xiaobo-spirit-will-never-die/">died in prison in 2017</a> after being denied travel abroad for cancer treatment. </p>
<p>Hong Kong, on the other hand, has a <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9780429459030">rich history</a> of mass demonstrations. </p>
<p>In Hong Kong’s <a href="https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/2083386/hunger-striker-who-sparked-april-1966-star-ferry">1966 Star Ferry riots</a>, people protested the British colonial government’s decision to increase transit fares. And every <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/01/world/asia/hong-kong-march-handover.html">July 1</a> since 2003 – the anniversary of the 1997 transition from British to Chinese rule – people have taken to the streets pleading for universal suffrage. </p>
<p>“One country, two systems” has allowed Hong Kong residents to openly disagree with policymakers in a way mainland Chinese cannot. As required by Hong Kong’s legal system, democracy protesters arrested for their political activism are given legal representation, trials and serve time in Hong Kong’s <a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/2077873/hong-kongs-prison-system-explained">well-regulated prisons</a>. </p>
<p>The extradition law’s threat of trial and punishment in China would have a chilling effect on <a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3013797/thanks-coming-im-not-changing-my-mind-defiant-carrie-lam">future democracy demonstrations</a> there.</p>
<p>If “One country, two systems” falls, what remains of Hong Kong’s democracy will go down with it.</p>
<p>(<em>Like what you’ve read? Want more?</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=likethis">Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter</a>. )</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/118753/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kelly Chernin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A controversial extradition law has been suspended in Hong Kong after more than a week of mass public resistance. Hong Kong’s legal system is one of its few remaining areas of autonomy from China.Kelly Chernin, Research Assistant Professor, Appalachian State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1093302019-01-08T23:33:45Z2019-01-08T23:33:45ZThe Oscars: what you may have missed in ‘Roma’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/252757/original/file-20190107-32154-whbv3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Critics and audiences of the Oscar-nominated film Roma may be missing important Mexican historical and cultural facts.</span> </figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.romamovie.com/">Roma</a> — Alfonso Cuarón’s powerful film about daily life in Mexico in the 1970s — has been nominated for 10 Oscars, including the top prize as best picture of the year. Cuarón has been praised for both his technical and storytelling skills and members of <a href="https://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/2019">the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences</a> have rewarded him with nominations for direction, cinematography and original screenplay.</p>
<p>Despite its popularity — Roma had limited theatrical release but is available for streaming on <a href="https://www.netflix.com/ca/title/80240715">Netflix</a> — the film contains some subtle but important elements that have been largely ignored by critics so far.</p>
<p>Two of these elements are Mexico’s political context in the early 1970s and the ongoing conditions that have characterized domestic workers’ lives since. </p>
<p>The main character of <em>Roma</em> is Cleo (played by Yalitza Aparicio, who was nominated for best actress), a domestic worker based on a woman named Liboria Rodríguez (known as Libo) who worked for Cuarón’s family when he was a child.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6BS27ngZtxg?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<h2>Who were <em>Los Halcones</em>?</h2>
<p>Cuarón situates <em>Roma’s</em> characters amid significant historical events: the fight of some Mexicans for social progress and their opposition to a political, authoritarian regime that worked to maintain its privileges through various means.</p>
<p>One of these means is exemplified in the film by the character Fermín — Cleo’s boyfriend (played by Jorge Antonio Guerrero) who belongs to the paramilitary group <em>Los Halcones</em> (The Hawks).</p>
<p>We know now by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wO_1E1cwzmM">various direct sources</a> and United States government declassified documents that high-ranking Mexican government officials <a href="https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB91/mexstu-18.pdf">secretly organized</a>, financed, <a href="https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB91/mexstu-35.pdf">trained and armed</a> various groups, including <em>Los Halcones</em>, to help quash social movements in the late 1960s and early 1970s.</p>
<p><em>Los Halcones</em> were composed of around 2,000 young men, aged 18 to 29, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wO_1E1cwzmM">distributed in squads</a> of 200 members each.</p>
<p><a href="https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB91/mexstu-20.pdf">The squads’ leaders were middle-class university students</a> who, for their participation, received free education, weekly stipends and the promise of a bright future in the ruling Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI).</p>
<p>The assailants and hit-men were <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wO_1E1cwzmM">gang members</a> and <a href="https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB91/mexstu-38.pdf">working class</a> and unemployed young men. They were paid half of what the leaders received.</p>
<p><em>Los Halcones</em> <a href="https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB91/mexstu-35.pdf">were also trained by Mexican military and police personnel</a> who, <a href="https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB91/mexstu-17.pdf">subsidized by USAID</a>, <a href="https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB91/mexstu-01.pdf">had previously received training</a> at the International Police Academy in Washington.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/252756/original/file-20190107-32145-4g9xh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/252756/original/file-20190107-32145-4g9xh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252756/original/file-20190107-32145-4g9xh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252756/original/file-20190107-32145-4g9xh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252756/original/file-20190107-32145-4g9xh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252756/original/file-20190107-32145-4g9xh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252756/original/file-20190107-32145-4g9xh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A scene from the award-winning ‘Roma.’</span>
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</figure>
<h2>An attack on Mexican democracy</h2>
<p>On June 10, 1971, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wO_1E1cwzmM">around 10,000 demonstrators</a>, <a href="https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB91/">mainly students</a>, marched to demand improvements to Mexico’s democratic, economic and social conditions.</p>
<p>In <em>Roma</em>, Cleo and others pass these demonstrators on their way to a furniture store. They also pass, in a depiction of real life, a long row of riot police trucks and idle police officers, while <em>Halcones</em> patiently wait at the corner.</p>
<p>Armed with canes and M1 and M2 rifles, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wO_1E1cwzmM"><em>Halcones</em> attacked demonstrators</a>, producing the second bloodiest event in modern Mexican history (<a href="https://slate.com/culture/2018/11/roma-corpus-christi-student-massacre-el-halconazo.html"><em>El Halconazo</em></a>), only after the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7646473.stm">Tlatelolco massacre of October 1968</a>.</p>
<p>It is estimated that around 120 people were killed and hundreds more injured, including <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wO_1E1cwzmM">children, women and seniors</a>. Although the military and uniformed police <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wO_1E1cwzmM">knew beforehand about the attack</a>, they <a href="https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB91/mexstu-40.pdf">stood by and did nothing</a>.</p>
<h2>Masculinity and violence</h2>
<p>Fermín belongs to the second-tier group of <em>Los Halcones</em>. In the hotel, he confesses to Cleo: “I owe my life to martial arts [to <em>Halcones</em>]. I grew up with nothing, you know?”</p>
<p>Portraying the real <em>Halcones</em> youth, Fermín’s participation offered him certain social mobility but only in exchange for committing atrocities.</p>
<p>Some young men’s allegiance to <em>Los Halcones</em> and their corrupt decisions were thus mediated by class aspirations, ideology and violence.</p>
<p><em>Los Halcones’</em> violence also <a href="https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB91/mexstu-38.pdf">manifested in gender violence.</a> This is depicted in <em>Roma</em> when Fermín dismisses his paternity and threatens to beat Cleo and their unborn daughter if she insists on looking for him.</p>
<p>Moreover, despite his low-class background, Fermín ends the scene yelling “<em>gata</em>” at Cleo, an upper class-based insult aimed only at domestic servants, reflecting the latter’s low ascribed social status.</p>
<h2>Domestic workers in Mexico</h2>
<p>A second element that has not been widely discussed, which <em>Roma</em> touches on, is the historical conditions of domestic workers.</p>
<p>As of June 2018, there were <a href="http://www.beta.inegi.org.mx/contenidos/saladeprensa/boletines/2018/enoe_ie/enoe_ie2018_08.pdf">2.2 million domestic workers in Mexico</a>. Around 95 per cent are women, mostly young and middle-aged (<a href="https://www.conapred.org.mx/index.php?contenido=noticias&id=5427&id_opcion=446">some are even children</a>).</p>
<p>In 2010, <a href="https://www.inegi.org.mx/programas/ccpv/2010/">58 per cent of Indigenous women in the Monterrey Metropolitan Area were domestic workers</a>. Many migrated from the countryside to the city. This means that, as Indigenous migration researcher <a href="http://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0185-39292013000200004">Séverine Durin asserts</a>, domestic work is strongly shaped by ethnicity.</p>
<p>It is not a coincidence then that Cuarón’s former nanny Libo or the characters Cleo and Adela in <em>Roma</em> are (young) Indigenous women.</p>
<h2>Disadvantageous labour conditions</h2>
<p>Mexican laws <a href="https://legalzone.com.mx/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Descargar-pdf-Ley-Federal-del-Trabajo-legalzone-m%C3%A9xico.pdf">do not offer domestic workers the same rights and benefits</a> that other workers enjoy, such as paid sick days and holidays. They can also be dismissed without warning at any time.</p>
<p>Only as recently as December 2018, <a href="http://www.internet2.scjn.gob.mx/red2/comunicados/noticia.asp?id=5806">the Mexican Supreme Court determined</a> that it is unconstitutional for employers to deny domestic workers access to social security, meaning mainly access to public health services.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0185-39292013000200004">It is commonplace for domestic workers</a> to face low wages, long working hours and no holidays. Some also experience humiliation, mistreatment and discrimination for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/nov/10/empleadas-domesticas-ciudad-de-mexico-luchan-trato-digno">speaking their Indigenous language</a>, wearing traditional clothes, <a href="http://www.revistaterritorio.mx/el-parque-de-las-gatas.html">practising cultural customs</a> and for their physical traits.</p>
<p>Others experience forced confinement or <a href="https://www.animalpolitico.com/2017/03/trabajadoras-domesticas-impunidad-delitos/">sexual abuse</a> by the men of the family or teenage sons. Yet, domestic workers are expected to thank their employers for the “opportunity” to have a job.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.conapred.org.mx/index.php?contenido=noticias&id=5427&id_opcion=446">Only one in 10 women file a complaint</a> when they encounter a problem with their employers. </p>
<p>Domestic workers with children also need to make extraordinary arrangements for their own children to be taken care of, meaning prolonged separation many times while they take care of other families’ children. Their caring and affection not only become commodified, but also dislocated.</p>
<h2>Not really part of the family</h2>
<p>Some employers consider domestic workers as “part of the family.” However, uneven power relations, class differentials, discrimination and racism make them not really part of the family.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAa9dueHtVI">Cuarón mentioned</a> that he was forced to recognize several decades later, and only after he started working on <em>Roma</em>, that Libo was, first, a woman, and second, an Indigenous woman. He then realized that Libo belongs to a “world of affective needs, a world of sexual desires,” and also to “a more dispossessed group, a world of injustice.”</p>
<p>In <em>Roma</em>, the family members are unaware of the domestic workers’ social and personal lives.</p>
<p>When Cleo is taken to the delivery room, the grandmother, Teresa, is asked by a nurse about Cleo’s second last name, her date of birth and if she has insurance. But Teresa cannot answer those questions.</p>
<p>Cleo picks up after the family dog’s, feeds the family, prepares the kids for school, puts them to bed, washes and irons the family’s clothes and cleans the house. Still, the grandmother ignores everything about Cleo despite living in the “same” house (usually, domestic workers sleep and even eat apart from the family).</p>
<p>Cleo is “part of the family” but she is not really part of the family.</p>
<h2>Daily violence</h2>
<p>Overall, <em>Roma</em> contains various stories that subtly unveil different forms of violence: poverty, social exclusion and gender-based violence promoted by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/oct/17/difference-between-sexism-and-misogyny">sexist and misogynistic</a> forms of masculinity.</p>
<p>Moreover, domestic workers’ quiet but endless work, which in <em>Roma</em> takes over half of the film, hinders uneven power relations mediated by class, gender, age, affection, ethnicity, race and the urban/rural divide.</p>
<p>These factors intersect to maintain domestic workers, mainly (Indigenous) women, in subordinate positions. They are conveniently imagined as “part of the family,” but they are never really part of the family, neither in Mexico, nor <a href="https://utorontopress.com/ca/not-one-of-the-family-2">in Canada</a>, nor anywhere else in the world.</p>
<p><em>This is a corrected version of a story originally published Jan. 8, 2019. The original story said: “in 2010, 58 per cent of Indigenous women were domestic workers.” It should have said: “In 2010, 58 per cent of Indigenous women in the Monterrey Metropolitan Area were domestic workers.”</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/109330/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alejandro Hernandez currently volunteers as Board of Directors member at the Canadian Association of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and is a member of the Canadian Sociological Association and the Latin American Studies Association. All opinions, however, are personal. Alejandro was also awarded a Vanier scholarship (SSHRC) and a Conacyt scholarship.</span></em></p>Director Alfonso Cuarón’s ‘Roma’ has received 10 Oscar nominations. Here, a sociologist explains the hidden historical and cultural context of the film.Alejandro Hernandez, Instructor and PhD candidate in Sociology and Political Economy, Carleton UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1031512018-11-16T11:44:49Z2018-11-16T11:44:49ZBefore the tragedy at Jonestown, the people of Peoples Temple had a dream<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245616/original/file-20181114-194488-1bhkd2a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In the 1960s, the Temple established nine residential care facilities for the elderly and six homes for foster children in the Redwood Valley.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/peoplestemple/4728957231/in/album-72157624223026625/">Peoples Temple / Jonestown Gallery/flickr</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When people hear the word “Jonestown,” they usually think of horror and death. </p>
<p>Located in the South American country of Guyana, the <a href="https://wrldrels.org/2016/10/08/peoples-temple/">Peoples Temple Agricultural Project</a> was supposed to be the religious group’s “promised land.” In 1977 almost 1,000 Americans had moved to Jonestown, as it was called, hoping to create a new life. </p>
<p>Instead, tragedy struck. When U.S. Rep. Leo J. Ryan of California and three journalists attempted to leave after a visit to the community, a group of Jonestown residents assassinated them, fearing that negative reports would destroy their communal project.</p>
<p>A collective <a href="https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=31981">murder-suicide</a> followed, a ritual that had been rehearsed on several occasions. </p>
<p>This time it was no rehearsal. On Nov. 18, 1978, more than 900 men, women and children died, including my two sisters, Carolyn Layton and Annie Moore, and my nephew, Kimo Prokes.</p>
<p>Photojournalist David Hume Kennerly’s aerial <a href="https://kennerly.com/wp-content/gallery/classic2/042_693_Jonestown-120.jpg">photograph</a> of a landscape of brightly clothed lifeless bodies captures the magnitude of the disaster of that day. </p>
<p>In the more than 40 years since the tragedy, most stories, books, films and scholarship have tended to focus on the leader of Peoples Temple, Jim Jones, and the community that his followers attempted to carve out of the dense jungles of northwest Guyana. They might highlight the <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-lists/american-cult-5-spiritual-groups-that-went-too-far-202224/the-peoples-temple-1955-1978-202246/">dangers of cults</a> or the hazards of <a href="http://www.apa.org/monitor/nov03/jonestown.aspx">blind obedience</a>.</p>
<p>But by fixating on the tragedy – and on the Jones of Jonestown – we miss the larger story of the Temple. We lose sight of a significant social movement that mobilized thousands of activists to change the world in ways small and large, from offering legal services to people too poor to afford a lawyer, to campaigning against apartheid. </p>
<p>It is a disservice to the lives, labors and aspirations of those who died to simply focus on their deaths. </p>
<p>I know that what happened on Nov. 18, 1978 doesn’t tell the complete story of my own family’s involvement – neither what happened in the years leading up to that dreadful day, nor the four decades that followed.</p>
<p>The impulse to learn the whole story prompted my husband, Fielding McGehee, and me to create the website <a href="https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/">Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple</a> in 1998 – a large digital archive documenting the movement primarily in its own words through documents, reports and audiotapes. This, in turn, led the Special Collections Department at San Diego State University to develop the <a href="https://scua2.sdsu.edu/archon/index.php?p=collections/controlcard&id=106">Peoples Temple Collection</a>.</p>
<p>The problems with Jonestown are self-evident. </p>
<p>But that single event shouldn’t define the movement.</p>
<hr>
<p>The Temple began as a church in the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Holiness-movement#tab=active%7Echecked%2Citems%7Echecked&title=Holiness%20movement%20--%20Britannica%20Online%20Encyclopedia">Pentecostal-Holiness tradition</a> in Indianapolis in the 1950s. </p>
<p>In a deeply segregated city, it was one of the few places where black and white working-class congregants sat together in church on a Sunday morning. Its members provided various kinds of assistance to the poor – food, clothing, housing, legal advice – and the church and its pastor, Jim Jones, gained a reputation for fostering racial integration.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245600/original/file-20181114-194503-oap41i.JPEG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245600/original/file-20181114-194503-oap41i.JPEG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245600/original/file-20181114-194503-oap41i.JPEG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=807&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245600/original/file-20181114-194503-oap41i.JPEG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=807&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245600/original/file-20181114-194503-oap41i.JPEG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=807&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245600/original/file-20181114-194503-oap41i.JPEG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1014&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245600/original/file-20181114-194503-oap41i.JPEG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1014&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245600/original/file-20181114-194503-oap41i.JPEG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1014&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Marceline Jones, the wife of Jim Jones, administered licensed care homes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://scua2.sdsu.edu/archon/?p=collections/controlcard&id=106">Peoples Temple Collection, 1942–2015, (I.D. MS-0183), Special Collections and University Archives, San Diego State University</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Investigative journalist Jeff Guinn <a href="http://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Road-to-Jonestown/Jeff-Guinn/9781476763835">has described</a> the ways early incarnations of the Temple served the people of Indianapolis. The income generated through licensed care homes, operated by Jim Jones’ wife, Marceline Jones, subsidized The Free Restaurant, a cafeteria where anyone could eat at no cost. </p>
<p>Church members also mobilized to promote desegregation efforts at local restaurants and businesses, and the Temple formed an employment service that placed African-Americans in a number of entry-level positions. </p>
<p>While it’s the kind of action some churches engage in today, it was innovative – even radical – for the 1950s. </p>
<hr>
<p>In 1962, Jones had a prophetic vision of a nuclear catastrophe, so he urged his Indiana congregation to relocate to Northern California. </p>
<p>Scholars suspect that an <a href="https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=69269">Esquire magazine article</a> – which listed nine parts of the world that would be safe in the event of nuclear war, and included a region of Northern California – gave Jones the idea for the move. </p>
<p>In the mid-1960s, more than 80 members of the group packed up and headed west together. </p>
<p>Under the guidance of Marceline, the Temple acquired a number of properties in the Redwood Valley and established nine residential care facilities for the elderly, six homes for foster children, and Happy Acres, a state-licensed ranch for mentally disabled adults. In addition, Temple families took in others needing assistance through informal networks. </p>
<p>Sociologist of religion John R. Hall <a href="https://academic.oup.com/socrel/article-abstract/49/Special_Issue/64S/1625702">has studied</a> the various ways the Temple raised money at that time. The care homes were profitable, as were other moneymaking ventures; there was a small food truck the Temple operated, and members were also able to sell grapes from the Temple’s vineyards to Parducci Wine Cellars. </p>
<p>These fundraising schemes, along with more traditional donations and tithes, helped underwrite free services.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245605/original/file-20181114-194519-emln7r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245605/original/file-20181114-194519-emln7r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245605/original/file-20181114-194519-emln7r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245605/original/file-20181114-194519-emln7r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245605/original/file-20181114-194519-emln7r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245605/original/file-20181114-194519-emln7r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245605/original/file-20181114-194519-emln7r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245605/original/file-20181114-194519-emln7r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A food truck was one of several moneymaking operations the Temple ran in Northern California.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://scua2.sdsu.edu/archon/?p=collections/controlcard&id=106">Peoples Temple Collection, 1942–2015, (I.D. MS-0183), Special Collections and University Archives, San Diego State University</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It was at this time that young, college-educated white adults began to trickle in. They used their skills as teachers and social workers to attract more members to a movement they saw as preaching the social gospel of redistribution of wealth.</p>
<p>My younger sister, Annie, seemed to be drawn to the Temple’s ethos of diversity and equality. </p>
<p>“There is the largest group of people I have ever seen who are concerned about the world and are fighting for truth and justice for the world,” she wrote <a href="http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/nas/streaming/dept/scuastaf/collections/AEMoore/MS0526-3-9-015.pdf">in a 1972 letter to me</a>. “And all the people have come from such different backgrounds, every color, every age, every income group.”</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AVFzqof3Afs?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Rebecca Moore reads from a letter her sister Annie Moore wrote to her, in which Annie explains why she joined Peoples Temple.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But the core constituency comprised thousands of urban African-Americans, as the Temple expanded south to San Francisco, and eventually to Los Angeles. </p>
<p>Frequently depicted as poor and dispossessed, these new African-American recruits actually came from the working and professional classes: They were teachers, postal clerks, civil service employees, domestics, military veterans, laborers and more.</p>
<p>The promise of racial equality and social activism operating within a Christian context enticed them. The Temple’s revolutionary politics and substantial programs sold them. </p>
<p>Regardless of the motives of their leader, the followers wholeheartedly believed in the possibility of change. </p>
<hr>
<p>During an era that witnessed the collapse of the civil rights movement, the decimation of the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Black-Panther-Party">Black Panther Party</a> and the assassinations of black activists, the group was especially committed to a program of racial reconciliation.</p>
<p>But even the Temple couldn’t escape structural racism, as “<a href="https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=14075">eight revolutionaries</a>” pointed out in a letter to Jim Jones in 1973. These eight young adults left the organization, in part, because they watched new white members advance into leadership ahead of experienced, older black members. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, throughout the movement’s history, African-Americans and whites lived and worked side by side. It was one of the few long-term experiments in American interracial communalism, along with Father Divine’s <a href="https://wrldrels.org/2016/10/08/father-divine/">Peace Mission Movement</a>, which Jim Jones emulated.</p>
<p>Members saw themselves as battling on the front lines against colonialism, as they listened to guests from Pan-African organizations and from the recently deposed Marxist Chilean government speak in their San Francisco gatherings. They joined coalition groups that were agitating against the <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/438/265/">Bakke case</a>, which ruled that race-based admissions quotas were unconstitutional, and demonstrating in support of the <a href="https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2013/jan/15/north-carolina-governor-pardons-wilmington-10/">Wilmington Ten</a>, 10 African Americans who were wrongfully convicted of arson in North Carolina. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245613/original/file-20181114-194516-1udw9rq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245613/original/file-20181114-194516-1udw9rq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245613/original/file-20181114-194516-1udw9rq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245613/original/file-20181114-194516-1udw9rq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245613/original/file-20181114-194516-1udw9rq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245613/original/file-20181114-194516-1udw9rq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245613/original/file-20181114-194516-1udw9rq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245613/original/file-20181114-194516-1udw9rq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Members of Peoples Temple join the picket line in an anti-eviction protest at San Francisco’s International Hotel in January 1977.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/peoplestemple/26807142549/in/album-72157624173162827/">Peoples Temple/Jonestown Gallery/Courtesy Nancy Wong</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Members and nonmembers received a variety of free social services: rental assistance, funds for shopping trips, health exams, legal assistance and student scholarships. By pooling their resources, in addition to filling the collection plates, members received more in goods and services than they might have earned on their own. They called it “<a href="https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=84234">apostolic socialism</a>.”</p>
<p>Living communally not only saved money, but also built solidarity. Although communal housing existed in Redwood Valley, it was greatly expanded in San Francisco. Entire apartment buildings in the city were dedicated to accommodating unrelated Temple members – many of them senior citizens – who lived with and cared for one another.</p>
<hr>
<p>As early as 1974, a few hardy volunteers began clearing land for an agricultural settlement in the <a href="https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=35337">Northwest District of Guyana</a>, near the disputed border with Venezuela. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245807/original/file-20181115-172710-7gmg7w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245807/original/file-20181115-172710-7gmg7w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245807/original/file-20181115-172710-7gmg7w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=651&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245807/original/file-20181115-172710-7gmg7w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=651&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245807/original/file-20181115-172710-7gmg7w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=651&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245807/original/file-20181115-172710-7gmg7w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=818&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245807/original/file-20181115-172710-7gmg7w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=818&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245807/original/file-20181115-172710-7gmg7w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=818&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A page from the October 1973 resolution establishing an agricultural mission in Guyana.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/AgriculturalMission.pdf">Peoples Temple Collection, 1942–2015, (I.D. MS-0183), Special Collections and University Archives, San Diego State University</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While the ostensible reason was to “provide food for the hungry,” the real reason was to create a community where they could escape the racism and injustice they experienced in the United States. </p>
<p>Even as they toiled to clear hundreds of acres of jungle, build roads and construct housing, <a href="https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=40182">the first settlers</a> were filled with hope, freedom and a sense of possibility.</p>
<p>“My memories from 1974 till the beginning of ‘78 are many and full of love, and to this day they still bring tears to my eyes,” <a href="https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=40182">recalled Peoples Temple member Mike Touchette</a>, who was working on a boat in the Caribbean as the deaths were occurring. “Not only the memories of building of Jonestown, but the friendships and camaraderie we had before 1978 is beyond words.”</p>
<p>But Jim Jones arrived 1977, and an influx of 1,000 immigrants – including more than 300 children and 200 senior citizens – followed. The situation changed. Conditions were primitive, and though the residents of Jonestown were no worse off than their Guyanese neighbors, it was a far cry from the lives they were used to.</p>
<p>The community of Jonestown is best understood as a small town in need of infrastructure, or, <a href="https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=81530">as one visitor described it</a>, an “unfinished construction site.” </p>
<p>Everything – sidewalks, sanitation, housing, water, electricity, food production, livestock care, schools, libraries, meal preparation, laundry, security – had to be developed from scratch. Everyone but the youngest of children needed to pitch in to develop and maintain the community. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245611/original/file-20181114-194519-19huydu.JPEG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245611/original/file-20181114-194519-19huydu.JPEG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245611/original/file-20181114-194519-19huydu.JPEG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245611/original/file-20181114-194519-19huydu.JPEG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245611/original/file-20181114-194519-19huydu.JPEG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245611/original/file-20181114-194519-19huydu.JPEG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245611/original/file-20181114-194519-19huydu.JPEG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245611/original/file-20181114-194519-19huydu.JPEG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jonestown residents work at the community sawmill.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://scua2.sdsu.edu/archon/?p=collections/controlcard&id=106">Peoples Temple Collection, 1942–2015, (I.D. MS-0183), Special Collections and University Archives, San Diego State University</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some have described the project as a <a href="https://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/bookdetail.aspx?bookid=SKU-000069108">prison camp</a>. </p>
<p>In several respects that is true: People weren’t free to leave. Dissidents were cruelly punished. </p>
<p>Others have described it as <a href="https://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/bookdetail.aspx?bookid=SKU-000138302">heaven on earth</a>. </p>
<p>Undoubtedly it was both; it depends on who – and when – you ask. </p>
<p>But then there is the final day, which seems to erase all the promise of the Temple’s utopian experiment. It’s easy to identify the elements that contributed to the final tragedy: the anti-democratic hierarchy, the violence used against members, the culture of secrecy, the racism, and the inability to question the leader.</p>
<p>The failures are apparent. But the successes?</p>
<p>For years, Peoples Temple provided decent housing for hundreds of church members; it ran care homes for hundreds of mentally ill or disabled individuals; and it created a social and political space for African-Americans and whites to live and work together in California and in Guyana. </p>
<p>Most importantly, it mobilized thousands of people yearning for a just society.</p>
<p>To focus on the leader is to overlook the basic decency and genuine idealism of the members. Jim Jones would have accomplished nothing without the people of Peoples Temple. They were the activists, the foot soldiers, the letter writers, the demonstrators, the organizers. </p>
<p><a href="https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=32367">Don Beck</a>, a former Temple member, has written that the legacy of the movement is “to cherish the people and remember the goodness that brought us together.”</p>
<p>In the face of all those bodies, that’s a difficult thing to do. </p>
<p>But it’s worth a try.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245602/original/file-20181114-194509-1nvo7y8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245602/original/file-20181114-194509-1nvo7y8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245602/original/file-20181114-194509-1nvo7y8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245602/original/file-20181114-194509-1nvo7y8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245602/original/file-20181114-194509-1nvo7y8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245602/original/file-20181114-194509-1nvo7y8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=624&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245602/original/file-20181114-194509-1nvo7y8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=624&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245602/original/file-20181114-194509-1nvo7y8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=624&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ronnie Beikman, Tommy Kice and David George, three boys who lived – and died – at Jonestown.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/peoplestemple/4728881296/in/album-72157624528192418/">Claire Janaro/flickr</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/103151/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rebecca Moore does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Throughout the movement’s history, African Americans and whites lived, worked and protested side-by-side. It was one of the few long-term experiments in American interracial communalism.Rebecca Moore, Emerita Professor of Religious Studies, San Diego State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1038202018-10-23T10:43:48Z2018-10-23T10:43:48ZThe Village Voice’s photographers captured change, turmoil unfolding on New York City’s streets<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240893/original/file-20181016-165888-2vkowr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">When The Village Voice shut down in August, the city's protest movements lost one of their biggest champions.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nick Lehr/The Conversation</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When The Village Voice, the nation’s first alternative weekly, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/31/business/media/the-village-voice-closes.html">closed in late August</a>, social justice movements lost one of their biggest cheerleaders.</p>
<p>Founded in 1955, the Voice aggressively covered civil rights, race relations, police brutality, gentrification, homelessness and reproductive rights. While a gay rights march may have received a short mention in The New York Times, that same demonstration would get front page treatment in the Voice. </p>
<p>The Voice played a particularly important role in promoting and publishing social documentary photography. </p>
<p>Just as the photographs of <a href="http://iphf.org/inductees/lewis-hine/">Lewis Hine</a> and <a href="https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/constituents/jacob-riis?all/all/all/all/0">Jacob Riis</a> communicated the horrors of child labor and tenement overcrowding in the early 20th century, Voice photojournalists such as Donna Binder, Ricky Flores, Lisa Kahane, T.L. Litt, Thomas McGovern, Brian Palmer, Joseph Rodriguez, and Linda Rosier conveyed the fears, rage and struggles of the city’s marginalized communities.</p>
<p>In issue after issue, these photographers captured the despair and anger of the HIV/AIDS epidemic; the anguish of black and Latino New Yorkers whose friends and family members had died at the hands of white mobs or the police; and battles over access to affordable housing.</p>
<p>Their work is included in “Whose Streets? Our Streets!,” <a href="http://whosestreets.photo/exhibition.html">a traveling exhibition</a> that we co-curated with Meg Handler and Michael Kamber and that features photojournalists who covered struggles for social justice on the streets of New York City from 1980 to 2000.</p>
<p>We spoke with Handler, a former photo editor for the Voice, and three photographers whose work regularly appeared in the publication to discuss the significance of the Voice’s approach to photography.</p>
<h2>An unabashedly activist approach</h2>
<p>Founded in 1955, The Village Voice quickly became a popular outlet for progressive photojournalists. </p>
<p>To Handler, a former photo editor of the Voice in the early 1990s, there were three key points of attraction: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“One, there was never any ambiguity about the politics of the paper. It was, from its infancy, what longtime Voice photo editor and photographer Fred W. McDarrah famously called a ‘commie, hippie, pinko rag.’ Two, the paper hired a fair amount of freelancers and so there was the opportunity to work with a diverse group of people to cover subjects that they were personally committed to. And three, it was a ‘photographer’s paper,’ meaning images would retain their integrity, they wouldn’t be cropped, their subjects wouldn’t be misrepresented.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Photographer Tom McGovern worked at the Voice from 1988 to 1995, and credited the publication with giving him the freedom to make the photographs he wanted to make in order to educate others about the AIDS epidemic. </p>
<p>McGovern, whose photographs of the AIDS crisis would eventually be published in his 1999 book, “<a href="http://visualaids.org/projects/detail/thomas-mcgovern">Bearing Witness (To AIDS)</a>,” told us that he was motivated by a simple impulse: to “challenge the negative stereotypes about who has AIDS and what is this disease.”</p>
<p>“It was not traditional journalism,” he said. “I never saw myself as being completely objective. I was certainly a supporter of the cause.”</p>
<p>In his photographs, McGovern highlighted the work of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, or ACT UP New York, which used direct action and spectacular street theater to call attention to the ineffective government response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic.</p>
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<p>“[ACT UP] knew how to stage events,” McGovern said. He explained that the organization’s members would plan demonstrations for late afternoon, when the lighting is best for snapping photographs. They also created these “beautiful posters that were made to be photographed great.” </p>
<p>In this way, AIDS activists collaborated with photojournalists to promote support for AIDS research and to challenge the stigma of the disease.</p>
<h2>The eyes of the neighborhood</h2>
<p>Social documentary photographers are committed to showcasing perspectives of marginalized groups. <a href="http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/dustbowl/bios/dorothea-lange/">Dorothea Lange</a> famously told the story of the Great Depression through the faces of destitute farming families, not wealthy bankers. </p>
<p>Sometimes, those best suited to tell the stories of marginalized groups came from those groups themselves. </p>
<p>The Village Voice, more than mainstream news outlets, valued publishing work by photographers from diverse backgrounds.</p>
<p>Ricky Flores, whose photographs document race relations and police brutality, was raised in the South Bronx. According to Flores, his own background and community ties were essential to the pictures he made for the Voice and other progressive outlets.</p>
<p>Other photographers aren’t “going to see it the way I see it,” Flores said. “They’re not a South Bronx Puerto Rican who actually is living under the very weight of the oppression that was being focused on our community.”</p>
<p>In addition to photographing the South Bronx and Puerto Rican activism, Flores is known for his coverage of race relations and police brutality. </p>
<p>He photographed the civil rights marches led by Rev. Al Sharpton in the late 1980s and early 1990s after white youth <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/23/obituaries/jon-lester-convicted-in-howard-beach-race-attack-dies-at-48.html">killed a young African-American man in Howard Beach</a>. He also covered the unrest in Washington Heights in July 1992 <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1992/07/07/nyregion/angered-by-police-killing-a-neighborhood-erupts.html">following the police killing</a> of Jose “Kiko” Garcia in a drug sweep.</p>
<p><audio preload="metadata" controls="controls" data-duration="79" data-image="" data-title="Ricky Flores, on stopping the subway." data-size="185712" data-source="" data-source-url="" data-license="CC BY-SA" data-license-url="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">
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<p>In an interview, Flores said that through his work, he hoped to show “why people are demonstrating,” by documenting “the injustices that were taking place.” </p>
<p>To this day, “there’s a lot of mistrust” of the police in minority communities, Flores continued. “They feel that cops can get away with murdering citizens with impunity.”</p>
<h2>A ‘mandate’ to capture and make sense of it all</h2>
<p>With its focus on local issues and its tradition of muckraking journalism, the Voice gave social justice movements more coverage – and more sympathetic coverage – than mainstream papers like The New York Times. </p>
<p>As a student activist at New York University in the 1980s, Victoria Wolcott recalled how, after a protest, “you would go and get the Village Voice the next day. We wanted to know what the Village Voice was reporting, because they were progressive and they had really great photographs.” </p>
<p>The Voice’s coverage of the <a href="http://video.no-art.info/patterson/1988_tompkins-trailer-en.html">1988 Tompkins Square Park riots</a> – in which police charged a crowd of homeless people, activists and journalists protesting the city’s implementation of a curfew in the park – helped participants make sense of what they were seeing unfolding on the streets. </p>
<p>Wolcott, now a professor of history at the University of Buffalo, explained how “there would be a photograph of somebody getting beat up [by the police] with blood [gushing] from their head, so that was another way that photographs help to legitimize … your experience.”</p>
<p>Voice photographer Linda Rosier told us that in those years, before the rise of smart phones, social media and so-called citizen journalism, she had a “mandate” to photograph, “since we were the ones out there seeing it and being the eyes of the city really.”</p>
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<p>Today, McGovern adds, “Newspapers and magazines don’t have the power they used to have. It’s not like you’re waiting for The Village Voice to come out on Wednesday or The New York Times the next morning to be able to see these pictures; now it’s on social media.” </p>
<p>The problem now is not a dearth of images, but rather a lack of context.</p>
<p>Part of a photograph’s power can come from the way experienced journalists and editors position it in the text, or use it to complement a reported article. Social documentary photographers also spent years immersing themselves in the community they were covering and cultivating ties to activists. They possessed a deep knowledge of their subject.</p>
<p>The tactics and spirit of the Voice might live on in the amateur photographers covering modern social movements like Black Lives Matter and the Keystone XL Pipeline.</p>
<p>But something will be lost with the folding of a periodical that featured images by the neighborhood, about the neighborhood and for the neighborhood.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/103820/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>For decades, the alternative weekly’s photographers served as the eyes of the streets, working with activists to document and publicize the anguish and rage of everyday New Yorkers.Tamar Carroll, Associate Professor of History, Rochester Institute of TechnologyJoshua Meltzer, Assistant Professor of Photojournalism and Visual Storytelling, Rochester Institute of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1051592018-10-17T14:50:19Z2018-10-17T14:50:19ZHitching a ride on social or political movements can help firms profit, and change for the better<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241061/original/file-20181017-41132-4y23h1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uheSd5u-bIM">Puma</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When African-American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos famously raised their fists from the medal-winners podium at the Olympic Games in Mexico City, October 1968, many saw this as a “black power” salute. Smith always said it was a “human rights salute”, but regardless, he and Carlos were expelled from Mexico City for failure to represent the Olympic ideal. Smith, who won the gold medal and set a new world record in that race, never competed again.</p>
<p>Now 50 years later, sportswear manufacturer Puma has launched a <a href="https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/news-analysis/puma-commemorates-black-power-salute-in-us-market-push">commemorative line of footwear</a> to celebrate Smith’s bravery and the impact of his actions. The centerpiece of the line is a casual suede shoe virtually identical to the one Smith held in his unraised left hand in 1968, with profits from shoe sales going to charities supporting equality.</p>
<p>Puma’s anniversary campaign comes just over a month after rival footwear company <a href="https://theconversation.com/nike-colin-kaepernick-and-the-pitfalls-of-woke-corporate-branding-102922">Nike featured NFL player Colin Kaepernick in its own campaign</a> celebrating the 30th anniversary of Nike’s “Just Do It” slogan. Kaepernick spent much of 2017 using his status as a professional football player to raise awareness of human rights issues – specifically, racial injustice and police brutality in the US. While Smith raised a fist during the national anthem, Kaepernick took a knee. Like Smith, Kaepernick’s high-profile protest may have ended his career: he has been unemployed since the end of the 2017 season. Appropriately, Kaepernick’s tagline in the Nike campaign is: “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.”</p>
<p>While both Kaepernick and Smith demonstrated that they are willing to sacrifice everything fighting for what they believe, could the same be said of Nike and Puma? Are these companies also willing to put principles ahead of profits and risk everything to take a stand on highly divisive social issues? No, of course they aren’t.</p>
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<p>Nike and Puma, and other companies that take a stand on controversial social issues, leverage the interest in these social movements to generate profits. Few companies understand how to create customer and brand value better than Nike and Puma. They have gauged their customers sentiment and are using this to forge new corporate social opportunities. From entry into new markets, engaging new customers or increasing brand awareness, the business case behind <a href="https://hbr.org/2016/10/the-comprehensive-business-case-for-sustainability">social opportunities increasing profits can be very strong</a>.</p>
<p>What makes campaigns like this controversial is the human element. Nike is taking a stand on racism and social division because the company has decided that’s what its consumers and employees care about. Many may not remember that <a href="https://news.nike.com/news/nike-evolves-just-do-it-with-new-campaign">Nike celebrated the 25th anniversary of its “Just Do It” slogan</a> only five years ago. Under the title “Possibilities”, this anniversary campaign challenged people to set goals and to do things they’d never done before, with a video that featured famous and everyday athletes doing extraordinary things narrated by Bradley Cooper. Racism and social injustice were problems in 2013, too, of course: George Zimmerman was <a href="https://theconversation.com/trayvon-martin-and-the-battle-of-racial-narratives-16453">acquitted of killing black teenager Trayvon Martin</a> just a month before Nike’s campaign launched. </p>
<p>While Nike’s 30th anniversary of the campaign includes a similar montage of famous and everyday athletes, the tone is very different. Kaepernick is the narrator, and the theme is that they all “<a href="https://news.nike.com/featured_video/just-do-it-dream-crazy-film">leverage the power of sport to move the world forward</a>”. Times change. Opportunities change.</p>
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<p>This doesn’t make these companies evil or hypocritical. It’s about opportunity. Starbucks has benefited from its <a href="https://www.conservation.org/partners/Pages/starbucks.aspx">partnership with Conservation International</a> through which it works with rural farmers in developing countries that grow and sell fair trade coffee. Tesla has become a US$50 billion company thanks to changing consumer sentiment around electric cars and generous government subsidies. Walmart has also benefited from changing sentiment and government subsidies, investing more into on-site solar facilities than any other US company in the past few years. And <a href="https://cdn.corporate.walmart.com/eb/80/4c32210b44ccbae634ddedd18a27/walmarts-approach-to-renewable-energy.pdf">it’s very clear about why</a>: “At Walmart, renewable energy is about our customers and helping them save money so they can live better.”</p>
<p>Few companies in recent history have been more socially-driven than Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. When Unilever acquired the brand in 2000, questions hung over whether Ben & Jerry’s would become more like Unilever or whether Unilever would become more like Ben & Jerry’s. Today, <a href="https://www.unilever.com/sustainable-living/our-strategy/">few large companies are more socially progressive than Unilever</a>: the Unilever behemoth has indeed become more like the tiny company it acquired. It should be noted that in the 18 years since it acquired Ben & Jerry’s, Unilever’s stock price has outperformed the S&P 500 by more than 2.5% per year. Social and environmental principles sell products well.</p>
<p>Why would we negatively judge companies that capitalise from human-centered social issues? Companies survive and thrive by capitalising on business opportunities. Certainly, there are risks for the companies: they may have misread the business case and these investments may end up hurting in the long-run. All companies occasionally make bad investments. But that’s not their expectation. Nike, Puma, Unilever and others who tie their fortunes, short or long-term, to social movements believe they are acting in the best interests of their stakeholders while seizing an opportunity to make their companies better. If a consequence is that society becomes a better place as a result, then that’s OK too.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105159/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brian Bolton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Companies tie their flag to a social movement or political moment because they think there’s money in it. But if it helps change the world a little, that’s fine too.Brian Bolton, Associate Director, Global Board Centre, International Institute for Management Development (IMD)Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1039352018-09-26T14:09:50Z2018-09-26T14:09:50ZThe World Transformed: is Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour ready to deliver?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238153/original/file-20180926-48647-c5m2mb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The World Transformed conference was held in parallel to the official Labour meeting. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Steven Fielding</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>“Socialism is the democratisation of every level of society, or it is nothing” declared the arch-Corbyn commentator and activist <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/19/labour-democracy-grassroots-selection-mps">Owen Jones</a> on the eve of Labour’s 2018 annual conference. “Simply trooping to a polling station every few years”, he continued, “is an insufficient counterweight to the behemoths of global capital”.</p>
<p>The Labour left certainly sees politics in those terms. In the 1970s and 1980s, Tony Benn advocated a massive increase of the role of the state but saw this as necessarily running in parallel with much greater popular engagement in decision-making. Benn believed democratisation would mostly occur through the trade union movement which, in 1979, had 13 million members.</p>
<p>Labour’s current leadership is building on this Bennite tradition but operates in an era when the unions represent just 6 million employees. And most of them are hardly models of mass participation: when Len McCluskey was re-elected general secretary of Unite, Britain’s biggest trade union, only <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/apr/21/len-mccluskey-re-elected-leader-of-unite-union-jeremy-corbyn">12% of members</a> bothered to vote. Corbynites therefore look to various social movements to supply this missing counterweight to capital: indeed, Corbyn claims that under his leadership <a href="https://theconversation.com/labour-why-jeremy-corbyn-still-struggles-to-turn-his-dream-of-a-social-movement-into-reality-103315">Labour has itself become a social movement</a>. If the evidence for that assertion is patchy, the imperative is nonetheless clear: a Corbyn government that seeks to transform society needs more than a majority in the House of Commons.</p>
<p>The Labour leader’s combative ex-Communist advisor Andrew Murray sees extra-parliamentary support coming from <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-45631788">“the mobilisation of the mass of people”</a> on the streets. Others however believe it will develop less dramatically, through changing how millions think about their place in society by imbuing them with a sense of agency – a confidence in their ability to contribute to their own governance. It is arguably a belief that owes more to anarchism than the kind of social democracy with which Labour has been historically associated. It would also require a cultural revolution to match the economic revolution recently outlined by <a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/john-mcdonnell-unveils-labour-policies-13296997">John McDonnell</a>.</p>
<h2>Building from the ground up</h2>
<p>Few imagine this will be achieved quickly, most that it will require a generation of educative work. But if this process is to begin it has to start somewhere. And many relevant ideas sympathetic to Corbynism were mapped out at <a href="https://theworldtransformed.org/">The World Transformed</a>, which, since 2016 has existed side-by-side with Labour’s annual conference. According to social movement activist <a href="https://novaramedia.com/2018/09/11/to-transform-the-world-the-left-must-look-beyond-elections/">Luke Dukinfield</a>, The World Transformed represents “a profound break with the dispiriting orthodoxies of establishment politics”. This year it took the form of a four-day event that embraced sessions from how to decolonise yoga to destroying the power of the City. It threw together radical policy wonks with young artists and veterans of 1970s workers’ cooperatives.</p>
<p>Different strands attracted different audiences so it cannot be said The World Transformed drew up a coherent agenda but across the four days participants expressed a deep desire for a new way of doing politics, one given hope by Corbyn’s leadership and its promise of a bottom-up radical democracy. </p>
<p>Shadow chancellor John McDonnell addressed a number of sessions at which he enjoyed a hero’s welcome. But it is uncertain how far the ideas expressed at the event will see life in any government of which he is part. Even so, McDonnell appeared genuinely enthused. His ambitious <a href="https://theconversation.com/labour-and-john-mcdonnell-are-right-to-give-workers-a-stake-says-company-law-professor-103802">inclusive ownership fund</a> scheme, along with the proposal for employees to comprise one-third of company boards, suggest Labour is taking forward old Bennite ideas and merging them with more contemporary strands of radical thought so as to involve workers in their own management – an idea often reiterated at The World Transformed.</p>
<p>This is an agenda that breaks with all previous Labour governments’ ways of looking at democracy. Most of the party’s post-war parliamentary leaders have been uncomfortable with people doing anything more than voting. If New Labour devolved power to Scotland and Wales it was, in other respects, supremely managerialist. It did things for people rather than with them. Attitudes were however beginning to change under Ed Miliband’s leadership. And indeed, the former leader chaired a session at The World Transformed. One of his panellists, Lisa Nandy – who resigned from Corbyn’s Shadow Cabinet in 2016 having lost confidence in his leadership – described restoring agency to ordinary people as part of the Labour tradition that needed to be revived. You no longer have to be on the left of the party to think democracy should be more than about voting.</p>
<p>The question however remains: is this what most people want? Many ordinary voters seek the renationalisation of a range of industries promised by Labour. But is that because they just want services that are cheap and reliable? Do they also want to help manage them, as workers or consumers, as McDonnell proposes? How many millions of Britons wish to be the kind of active citizens required to sustain a radical Labour government in office beyond simply voting for one?</p>
<p>The answer might seem obvious to those few thousands who attended The World Transformed. But even a few of those sympathetic to the Corbyn project wonder. One of Owen Jones’ Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/UnlearningEcon/status/1043802993064333312">followers</a> recently asked him how a Labour government could “get past apathy”, given that many people “are tired enough after all the elections and referendums”? “I wonder”, continued Jones’ interlocuter, “how they’d react to being expected to go to regular votes and meetings at their workplace and in their local area?” Jones’ response suggests much hard thinking remains to be done on the left. His reply was as brief as it was glib: <a href="https://twitter.com/OwenJones84/status/1043805654069260289">“phone apps!”</a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/103935/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Fielding is a member of the Labour Party. </span></em></p>The event, which runs parallel to the official Labour conference, is the engine of Corbyn’s social movement.Steven Fielding, Professor of Political History, University of NottinghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/986432018-07-12T11:00:55Z2018-07-12T11:00:55ZWhat the new global pro-choice movements can teach politics<p>The world is experiencing a vital moment in pro-choice politics. There has been huge progress in countries like <a href="https://theconversation.com/argentina-votes-to-legalise-abortion-in-latest-victory-for-global-feminism-98299">Argentina</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/ireland-votes-to-repeal-the-8th-amendment-in-historic-abortion-referendum-and-marks-a-huge-cultural-shift-97297">the Republic of Ireland</a> contributing to historic commitments by their governments to ensuring abortion access. But this is not just an important moment in abortion rights. It is a critical juncture in feminism and politics.</p>
<p>Until now the public image of pro-choice politics has been heavily influenced by 1970s “women’s liberation” movements in the US and the UK (also known as <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?hl=en&lr=&id=HOyGAwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=second+wave+feminism+open+access&ots=aRp-45SUq8&sig=Vfe3phmcGi8KUOKQXquV3rzzHEw&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false">Second Wave feminism</a>). </p>
<p>The Second Wave model of feminist politics spoke of women’s “right to choose” (restricting this definition to people born female) to have an abortion. At its core was personal sexual freedom and individualism. This movement very much focused on the problems faced by <em>women</em> at an individual level. </p>
<p>The current global pro-choice movement’s message is much broader than earlier strands of feminism. Take <a href="https://www.abortionrightscampaign.ie/">Repeal</a>, the Irish pro-choice movement which campaigned for the repeal of the 8th Amendment to Ireland’s constitution (the provision which equated the right to life of the “unborn” to the pregnant woman). This group did not just look at abortion or sexual liberation. It used abortion as a starting point for a discussion about a range of other social issues, such as migration and economic inequality.</p>
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<p>Argentinian campaigners do not just argue for personal sexual freedom. Their campaign focuses on collectively felt, gendered, social injustices. For example, male-to-female violence (and violence against transgender people) and femicide (the killing of women). The latter concern is reflected in the Argentinian movement’s name <a href="https://newint.org/features/web-exclusive/2018/06/08/argentina-legal-abortion">Ni Una Menos</a> (“not one more”).</p>
<h2>‘Intersectional’ feminism</h2>
<p>Ireland’s Repeal movement and Argentina’s Ní Una Menos are not just feminist campaigns, they are <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=5&ved=0ahUKEwib09SjoOLbAhXHKMAKHZyJAQYQFgg4MAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.headstuff.org%2Ftopical%2Ffeminism-inclusivity-repealing-the-8th%2F&usg=AOvVaw0Xi0iCKALwk9tXid_zJlOv">intersectional feminist</a> campaigns. <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1229039">Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw</a>, professor of law at Columbia Law School, first used the term “intersectionality” in 1991. It is a theory of feminism that recognises and opposes the many different forms of oppression which individuals and communities can experience daily and simultaneously. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/harriet-burgess/repeal-eighth-putting-intersectionality-into-practice">Intersectional feminist movements</a> like Repeal argued that activism needed to reflect intersectionality in its objectives and its practices. Social justice activism must include all voices and injustices or it is not socially just. This ideology was expressed in the Irish context through a very straightforward message – the restrictions affected everyone and people needed to resist them together. </p>
<p>The distinction between a Second Wave and an intersectional approach is summarised by the academic <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/10.1086/588436?casa_token=eWvIp1sA4k8AAAAA:ZyuUOwdDQ4jrgvVZOfoNnGEdwRByXqha7lnrWaBNYKx2RqSvkN99BlutPGBn_aQuE6ldrsAC1IMEz1J65jUbXUZu_TJTn0OsugSrdluJWWQWrOVFkt2K">Claire Snyder</a> who notes that whereas the Second Wave prioritised the needs and voices of cis-gendered (or “biological”) women, current movements promote inclusivity of all voices and experiences. </p>
<p>By adopting an intersectional approach, the current global pro-choice discussion uses individual rights to start a conversation on collective experiences which are linked to, but not solely about, abortion rights. But this is not the only transformation these movements drive forwards. A key contribution of current pro-choice movements globally is that they clearly illustrate the effectiveness of actions previously cast as not really politics.</p>
<h2>Transforming politics</h2>
<p>The most obvious example of how pro-choice feminist movements are transforming what it means to “do politics” is found in their use of social media. To date, political movements online have been criticised as ineffective <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/how-woke-twitter-can-be-problematic_us_5910c559e4b0f71180724740">“slacktivism”</a> or part of a <a href="https://www.wired.com/2016/11/filter-bubble-destroying-democracy/">liberal echo chamber</a>. However, the use of social media and art have been central to pro-choice movements globally. </p>
<p>The Repeal movement used social media platforms to <a href="https://www.abortionrightscampaign.ie/tag/free-safe-legal/">spread its message</a>, gather support, <a href="https://goosed.ie/repeal-shield/">protect activists from abuse online</a>, and undermine the spreading of factual inaccuracies <a href="http://tref.ie/">by anti-choice campaigns</a>. </p>
<p>But pro-choice politics does not solely operate online. A further important characteristic of contemporary feminist movements is their occupation of public spaces and spectacles. Public demonstrations of politics are a longstanding means of demanding change. In recent years, protesters have been recast as disruptive and <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/06/25/americas-uncivil-protests-are-straight-out-of-latin-america/">uncivil</a>. Public demonstrations and protests have been marked by <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/6/28/17515160/womens-march-protests-family-separation-600-arrested">mass arrests</a> and protests positioned as less effective than engagement in politics through other means. </p>
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<p>But pro-choice movements in Ireland have been intentionally public and disruptive in order to force the government and the public to discuss systemic oppression. A fantastic example of this is the pro-choice group Speaking of IMELDA’s <a href="https://www.speakingofimelda.org/knickers-for-choice">“Knickers for Choice”</a> protest where giant pairs of knickers saying “Repeal the 8th” were hung outside the Irish parliament and delivered to the Taoiseach Enda Kenny.</p>
<p>Another example is the mass demonstrations in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/23/abortion-poland-mass-protests-against-tightening-of-law">Poland</a> where thousands carried coat hangers through the streets of Warsaw, highlighting the fact that a lack of abortion access would result in women taking drastic steps. Not only this, but through having regular, coordinated protests in different locations, these groups were better able to engage a broad range of people. </p>
<p>Global pro-choice movements are now showing that broad-based, social justice oriented movements that mobilise online and engage in spectacles and protests are effective. They prove that disruption (whether through mass coordinated protests or small spectacular actions) is an important political tactic. They show that a specific site of injustice can be a vehicle for highlighting wider social inequalities and that intersectionality does not undermine a movement’s political efficacy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/98643/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Deirdre Duffy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The broader nature of today’s pro-choice movements show that a specific injustice can be a vehicle for highlighting wider social inequalities.Deirdre Duffy, Senior Lecturer in Interdisciplinary Studies, Manchester Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/969342018-05-24T08:43:34Z2018-05-24T08:43:34ZHow populism can be turned into an opportunity, not a threat<p>Around the world, populism is on the march. The election of Donald Trump and the UK’s vote for Brexit triggered a <a href="https://theconversation.com/trump-and-brexit-have-triggered-two-deep-constitutional-crises-90707">crisis of faith in democratic institutions</a>. And populists have been victorious in other countries including Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, Andrej Babiš in the Czech Republic, and Recep Tayyib Erdoğan in Turkey. Italy has now joined the ranks after a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/21/italy-populist-coalition-set-to-name-political-novice-as-pm-nominee">coalition deal</a> was struck between the far-right Northern League and the populist Five Star Movement. </p>
<p>The elections that elevated these leaders and movements have been met with shock and horror by large sections of global society, and particularly the world’s democratic establishments. They are commonly depicted as not just part of a global phenomenon, but an existential threat to representative democracy itself. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/5557f806-5a75-11e7-9bc8-8055f264aa8b">a recent opinion piece</a> for the Financial Times, commentator Martin Wolff described populism as the “enemy” of democracy, explaining that it could “destroy independent institutions, undermine civil peace, promote xenophobia and lead to dictatorship”. Similarly, the scholar Yascha Mounk <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/04/shock-system-liberal-democracy-populism">warned</a> that the current populist moment might become a populist age, “and cast the very survival of liberal democracy in doubt”.</p>
<p>Yet these authors are missing something crucial. Populism isn’t necessarily <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/11/17/no-the-populist-surge-does-not-mean-european-democracy-is-collapsing/?utm_term=.1e65f0e946ff">a threat to democracy</a> – it can also be an opportunity. To explain why, we need to recognise that there are many different varieties of populism in different places. And some of them are potentially much less problematic than others. </p>
<h2>Seizing the day</h2>
<p>Philippe C. Schmitter, one of the world’s foremost experts on comparative democratisation, has argued that populism is a product not just of dysfunctional political institutions, but of <a href="https://representresearch.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/schmitter_presentation-birmingham.pdf">the broader environment in which those institutions are embedded</a>. This implies that in different environments, populism will be driven by different forces and will manifest in distinct ways. In short, it won’t look the same everywhere.</p>
<p>There are plenty of examples to back up Schmitter’s argument. In Europe, voters are disgusted at deep economic crisis combined with the cartel-like nature of traditional political parties. But whereas most recent European populism has typically been right-wing and linked to anti-immigration parties and movements, in Africa and the Middle East, it has typically had a more left-wing (or perhaps more accurately “pro-poor”) flavour, railing against government corruption and incompetence. </p>
<p>This focus reflects the fact that populist leadership in Africa has been facilitated by a <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/comparative-politics/urban-poverty-and-party-populism-african-democracies?format=HB#vCDWyIRUM3X5gPLK.97">very different set of developments</a>. Citizens have experienced rapid urbanisation, and are disillusioned with democracy as they’ve experienced it to date. And instead of economic crisis or recession, they have seen rapid economic growth that has done nothing to alleviate dire inequality.</p>
<p>These regional variations shape the nature and impact of populism in other important ways. European populism is typically viewed as problematic partly because it promotes divisive messages and emphasises racial divisions. By contrast, African populists often build strong <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13510347.2013.809065">mulity-ethnic support bases</a>. While it’s not guaranteed, in societies that are deeply divided along ethnic lines, populism could in fact reduce conflict by turning political debate away from issues of identity.</p>
<p>Instead, populism can shine a light on the weaknesses of existing political systems. It can make clear which communities feel excluded from the mainstream, and it can expose the genuine failings of the status quo. </p>
<p>In many African and Middle Eastern countries, inequality has risen in part because governments have refused to make policies that would redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor. In these countries, populism can be a corrective force, challenging democratic governments’ complacency and countering multiparty politics’s tendency to marginalise minorities.</p>
<h2>Another way is possible</h2>
<p>Populist movements and parties can also help bring younger people into politics – something many democratic countries find conspicuously difficult. Research tells us that <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ajps.12210">voting is habit-forming</a>: people who vote today are much more likely to vote in the future, improving political representation in the long run. The challenge for democrats, of course, is to persuade these new voters to work to reform the system, not to overthrow it in favour of something less democratic.</p>
<p>Populist movements have the potential to bring people disenchanted with mainstream politics back into a national conversation, in the process overcoming their sense of alienation – and by the same token, damping their attraction to extremist groups. However, this depends on the extent to which populist movements can be brought into the political system. Where populists set up parties and run for public office, this is relatively straightforward. But that’s not always what happens.</p>
<p>In some post-Soviet states, distrust of established parties has seen many citizens <a href="https://representresearch.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/bmr-birmingham-presentation_updated.pdf">express their political preferences</a> not by backing political parties, but by turning to civil society organisations such as the rise of legal reform and anti-corruption bodies in countries such as Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, and Ukraine. Many of these organisations do not resemble political parties, or indeed want to turn into them. Not all of them can truly claim to represent citizens; some are genuine but have only tenuous roots in wider society, while others are merely vehicles for obtaining foreign aid. </p>
<p>But while still short of political parties running for office, populist organisations that are genuinely embedded in society have a big part to play. They can help renew democracy by offering citizens are more diverse set of channels through which to engage with the political world – at least, if a mechanism can be found to reconnect them with the formal political process.</p>
<p>Those who paint populism as a threat aren’t entirely wrong: it can be a genuine threat to democratic, liberal norms and values, especially in its European and North American manifestations. And while populism creates opportunities for political renewal, those opportunities will be missed unless their leaders and supporters mobilise fully to enter the political mainstream. </p>
<p>But this isn’t the whole story. Given its regional variations and so far unrealised possibilities, there’s every reason to hope that populists who get it right can help improve democracy in places where it badly needs a shot in the arm.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/96934/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lise Storm has received research funding from the ESRC, the British Academy and the Leverhulme Trust during her academic career. She is a member of the Labour Party. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Fernando Casal Bértoa, Nic Cheeseman, and Susan Dodsworth do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Populism gets a bad rap for fuelling the rise of authoritarianism. But it can also be a shot in the arm for liberal democracy.Nic Cheeseman, Professor of Democracy, University of BirminghamFernando Casal Bértoa, Nottingham Research Fellow (Politics), University of NottinghamLise Storm, Senior Lecturer in Middle East Politics; Director of Education IAIS, University of ExeterSusan Dodsworth, Research Fellow at the International Development Department, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/947202018-05-22T10:45:20Z2018-05-22T10:45:20ZWhy Michigan needs to draw more revenue from its booming bottled water industry<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/219469/original/file-20180517-26300-pv0bad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">All bottled water comes from somewhere</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/stevendepolo/5233546650">Steven Depolo</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Michigan recently approved Nestle’s request for permission to pump 400 gallons of water per minute from a <a href="https://www.michigan.gov/deq/0,4561,7-135--465232--,00.html">well in the rural town of Evart</a>, about 80 miles northeast of Grand Rapids. State environmental authorities approved this 60 percent increase despite poor timing and unprecedented opposition.</p>
<p>Public outrage is still simmering, partly because the private company pays relatively little in exchange for its ability to profit off what many Michiganders see as a public resource.</p>
<p>Based on a decade of <a href="https://law.wayne.edu/profile/am0978">water law and policy research</a>, I believe that Michigan should either collect taxes on companies like Nestle that harvest water or significantly raise <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/29/nestle-pays-200-a-year-to-bottle-water-near-flint-where-water-is-undrinkable">the fees</a> water bottlers must pay.</p>
<h2>Water wealth</h2>
<p>Michigan, the “Great Lakes state,” sits in the middle of <a href="https://www.epa.gov/greatlakes/great-lakes-facts-and-figures">one-fifth of the Earth’s surface freshwater</a>. It has a higher percentage of <a href="https://water.usgs.gov/edu/wetstates.html">surface water</a> than any other American state.</p>
<p>But even in <a href="https://www.michiganfoundations.org/resources/water-michigan-and-growing-blue-economy">water-rich places</a>, long-term groundwater pumping can harm wetlands while dangerously decreasing the amount of water in rivers, lakes and streams – <a href="http://issues.org/19-1/glennon/">diminishing water supplies</a>.</p>
<p>Nestle pays Michigan a pittance in exchange for the <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/challlenges-to-nestles-bottled-water-strategy_us_59c2dec0e4b0c87def88350a">4.8 million bottles of water a day</a> the multinational company bottles at its Ice Mountain factory there: a US$200 annual permitting fee for each of their groundwater wells. Nestle does purchase water from the town of Evart municipal water system at other locations, which generates <a href="https://www.bridgemi.com/michigan-environment-watch/small-town-battling-nestle-michigans-permit-doesnt-end-water-saga">$313,000 in local revenue</a>.</p>
<p>But <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-09-21/nestl-makes-billions-bottling-water-it-pays-nearly-nothing-for">Michigan does not tax bottled water production</a>. State Rep. <a href="http://legislature.mi.gov/doc.aspx?2017-HB-5133">Peter Lucido</a>, a Republican, has introduced a bill that would charge Nestle and its competitors like <a href="http://blog.mlive.com/muskegon_chronicle_extra/2007/01/nestle_raises_stakes_in_bottle.html">Absopure</a>, <a href="http://michiganradio.org/post/reporters-notebook-how-much-detroit-water-do-coke-and-pepsi-use">Coca-Cola and Pepsi</a> a 5-cents-per-gallon tax on the water they harvest. Lucido estimates that Nestle would have to <a href="http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2017/10/michigan_bottled_water_tax.html">pay $20 million in taxes</a> if his legislation were to become law.</p>
<p>The lawmaker is calling for the state to spend this new revenue on water infrastructure, a <a href="http://michiganradio.org/post/bottled-water-bill-would-cost-nestle-20-million-year">long-neglected spending priority</a>, as the <a href="https://theconversation.com/michigan-says-flint-water-is-safe-to-drink-but-residents-trust-in-government-has-corroded-95358">Flint water crisis</a> illustrates.</p>
<p>The American Society of Civil Engineers recently <a href="https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/state-item/michigan/">gave Michigan’s infrastructure a D+ grade</a>, estimating that the state underfunds drinking water systems by as much as $563 million per year. Gov. Rick Snyder says Michigan should invest <a href="https://www.bridgemi.com/special-report/michigan-needs-4b-more-year-infrastructure-how-pay-it">$4 billion more</a> each year to fix decaying infrastructure of all kinds, including roads, bridges and waterworks.</p>
<p>Yet the state’s <a href="http://www.mlpp.org/enough-is-enough-business-tax-cuts-fail-to-grow-michigans-economy-hurt-budget">leaders have not adjusted tax rates</a> accordingly.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/219470/original/file-20180517-26295-cd483y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/219470/original/file-20180517-26295-cd483y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/219470/original/file-20180517-26295-cd483y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=336&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/219470/original/file-20180517-26295-cd483y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=336&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/219470/original/file-20180517-26295-cd483y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=336&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/219470/original/file-20180517-26295-cd483y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/219470/original/file-20180517-26295-cd483y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/219470/original/file-20180517-26295-cd483y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Protesters objecting to Nestle’s water bottling in Michigan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/sumofus/32467010524/sizes/o/">SumOfUs</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<h2>Public resource, private use</h2>
<p>When state authorities sought public feedback, more than <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/04/03/599207550/michigan-oks-nestl-water-extraction-despite-over-80k-public-comments-against-it">80,000 Michiganders called on the state to deny Nestle’s permit</a> and only 75 people said they supported it. </p>
<p>This unusually high number of comments surely owed something to do with the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/04/us/flint-water-crisis-fast-facts/index.html">Flint water crisis</a> and <a href="https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2018/03/26/more-than-17-000-detroit-households-risk-water-shutoffs/452801002/">Detroit municipal water shutoffs</a>, which have raised awareness regarding the importance of abundant clean water. The state acknowledged that public sentiment was strongly against the permit application, and then granted the permit anyway, citing <a href="http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2016/12/why_nestle_pays_next_to_nothin.html">its laws and regulations</a> – that provide limited grounds for denying this type of permit.</p>
<p>At least one nonprofit group intends to <a href="http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2018/04/nestle_foe_will_mount_challeng.html">mount a legal challenge</a>.</p>
<p>This contentious permit probably sparked more public outrage than it might have had the state not granted it the same week it announced that it would <a href="http://michiganradio.org/post/bottled-water-distribution-ending-flint">stop providing free bottled water to Flint</a> residents impacted by a water crisis. The government there harmed tens of thousands of people by <a href="http://greatlakesecho.org/2016/01/22/failures-to-follow-law-caused-flint-water-crisis/">distributing lead-tainted water</a>, a problem compounded by insufficient oversight and an inept response to the disaster. </p>
<p>Seeking to help, and perhaps sensing a public relations opportunity, Nestle belatedly announced plans to supply Flint residents with <a href="https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/michigan/flint-water-crisis/2018/05/11/nestle-sending-bottled-water-flint/34791133/">100,000 free bottles of water every week</a>. </p>
<h2>Taxing water bottles</h2>
<p>Should Michigan’s leaders become ready to take action, they would have several options to consider in addition to Lucido’s proposal.</p>
<p>Other states like Connecticut and Maine collect fees for <a href="http://legislature.vermont.gov/assets/Documents/2016/WorkGroups/House%20Ways%20and%20Means/Bills/H.222/H.222%7ERep%20Teo%20Zagar%7EState%20water%20extraction%20fees%7E4-7-2015.pdf">bottled water</a> production. The revenue collected from these states and others are minimal, however. </p>
<p>Another approach would be to tax bottled water sales. Chicago has done that since 2008, collecting <a href="https://www.cityofchicago.org/city/en/depts/fin/supp_info/revenue/tax_list/bottled_water_tax.html">5 cents for each bottled of water retailers sell</a>. Chicago’s tax, designed to reduce plastic pollution by discouraging bottled water sales, generates <a href="https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20151106/lakeview/walgreens-wrongly-charged-chicagos-water-bottle-tax-on-lacroix-perrier/">about $10.5 million in annual revenue</a> for the city and offers a model other communities may want to replicate.</p>
<p>Michigan already collects a <a href="http://www.michigan.gov/taxes/0,4676,7-238-43519_43545---,00.html">severance tax from oil and gas</a> production and runs a <a href="http://www.michigan.gov/dnr/0,4570,7-350-79134_81684_79209_81657---,00.html">Natural Resources Trust Fund</a> derived from those royalties. This fund helps cover the cost of public outdoor recreation opportunities across the state. I contend that it’s a great model for what the state might do with revenue from a similar arrangement with water bottlers. </p>
<p>Michigan water law attorney <a href="https://www.envlaw.com/attorney-profiles/james-m-olson/">Jim Olson</a> has also suggested creating a <a href="http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2016/12/why_nestle_pays_next_to_nothin.html">water ombudsman’s office</a>. This new ombudsman would carefully study the <a href="http://chicagopolicyreview.org/2018/03/20/the-conservation-effects-of-a-variable-tax-on-groundwater-withdrawal/">potential water conservation</a> and revenue generation benefits from taxing bottled water.</p>
<p>As long as private companies are selling Michigan’s water, I believe, the state should at least tap portion of their profits to fund public water infrastructure improvements and wetland restoration. Taking this step might also discourage bottlers from endangering the public, wildlife and Michigan’s farmers by harvesting too much water.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94720/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicholas Schroeck receives or has received funding from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the Fred A. and Barbara M. Erb Family Foundation, and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. </span></em></p>Nestle pays the state a pittance in exchange for its water at a time when public awareness of water issues is rising.Nicholas Schroeck, Director of the Transnational Environmental Law Clinic; Assistant Professor of Law, Wayne State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/945872018-04-09T13:16:01Z2018-04-09T13:16:01ZHungary elections: it’s the most popular party on Facebook, so why haven’t you heard of the Two-Tailed Dog?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213830/original/file-20180409-114084-uo115m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Tibor Illyes</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>With more than 278,000 followers on Facebook, Hungary’s Two-Tailed Dog Party was the the most popular party on social media to stand in the country’s 2018 election. However, its online popularity did not help win seats in the vote which delivered Viktor Orbán a <a href="https://theconversation.com/hungary-election-viktor-orban-tightens-his-grip-with-a-super-majority-94680">third term as prime minister by a landslide</a>. In an anti-establishment approach, the Dogs’ campaign was carried out entirely by volunteers and official campaign funds were used to support community projects.</p>
<p>Despite only coming away with 1.71% of the votes, however, the party has pushed an important boundary in Hungarian politics. </p>
<h2>Puppy training</h2>
<p>The Two-Tailed Dog Party was founded in 2006, although formal recognition didn’t come until 2014. It defined itself as a joke party from the start, becoming famous for making fun of other political groups – mainly the mainstream Fidesz, led by Orbán. </p>
<p>Its activities range from street art to graffiti to urban gardening. It even smuggles soap and toilet paper into hospitals in order to highlight the dire state of some healthcare facilities. In 2016, the party crowdfunded €100,000 to cover the country in satirical posters mocking the government’s call to vote against EU refugee quotas in an <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-cynical-thinking-behind-hungarys-bizarre-referendum-64403">impending referendum</a>.</p>
<p>Then in 2018, just a couple of weeks before the deadline, the party managed to get enough signatures to be able to participate in the national parliamentary elections. The jokers were getting serious. </p>
<p>In an election campaign dominated by the supposed “threat” posed by immigration and the perceived influx of migrants to Hungary, the Two-Tailed Dog party used social media to draw attention to a statistic published on the national police website showing that one migrant had been “caught” in the last 30 days. Its satirical response to this shocking figure read: “There is an enormous interest in our country. But we cannot rest assured: The migrant entered our country.”</p>
<h2>Domestication</h2>
<p>All political parties use emotions to persuade people to vote for them. The Two-Tailed Dog party and its kind are trying to undermine establishment organisations by turning humour into political action.</p>
<p>In a process social scientists call “kynicism”, the Two-Tailed Dog party borrowed and remixed government messages for its own aims. The idea is to mock the government’s rhetoric in order to disperse fear and anxiety.</p>
<p>In Hungary, it’s unclear what the future holds for the Two-Tailed Dog party, or these joke parties more broadly. There is a fundamental mismatch between the way everyday politics works and the vision of the party. </p>
<p>Party leader Gergő Kovács told us:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I can’t really tell how many of our Facebook fans would vote for us … To be honest, for me the parliamentary elections are not important. For me, it’s much more important to see what we can do … I have to confess: my aim is to create something creative and funny, and yet meaningful … I think it is useless to have one more opposition party that has a serious programme. I have no interest to do politics in the traditional way.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If the case of Iceland’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/icelands-pirate-party-what-is-it-and-how-did-it-become-so-popular-67879">Pirate party</a> shows us anything, it is that parties like the Two-Tailed Dog have a tendency to lose their edge once they gain political influence. In 2016 the pirates topped opinion polls, and seemed to become a real political force by winning ten seats in the parliament. However, in the latest elections, they won only six seats. </p>
<p>Alternative parties, like the Two-Tailed Dog exist to mock from outside the mainstream. But what’s the point of a political party if it doesn’t really want to get elected and to introduce its policies?</p>
<p>For now, that’s not a question the Two-Tailed dogs need to answer, since they failed to make it into parliament.</p>
<p>But the group has nonetheless radically re-energised young people. It has tested the limits of convention in Hungary’s political process. Kovács told us that when it comes to larger campaigns, “two thirds, or three quarters, of our ideas come from the people … For instance, we write an economic programme, post it to Facebook and in a couple of minutes, there are three to four better ideas in the comments, so we take it down and add these ideas. So, in fact it really comes from the people”. The next step is for the group to translate those likes on social media into actual votes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94587/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The satirical opposition group has failed to enter the Hungarian parliament, but it has scored a victory of sorts.Annamaria Neag, Marie Curie Research Fellow, Bournemouth UniversityRichard Berger, Associate Professor, Head of Research and Professional Practice, Department of Media Production, Bournemouth UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.