Broken Politics

Broken Politics - Civil society’s role in creating real change A deliberation held on 18th June 2016 Report

Celebration We opened the deliberation with a presentation and celebration of new ideas and new developments across civil society with testaments from Eileen Daly on an emerging disability movement, Declan McGonagle on new thinking for the cultural sector in repurposing culture, Theresa O’Donohoe on the emergence of the People’s Energy Charter network, and David Gibney on the development of the Right2Change movement.

Reflection We started the debates with reflections on civil society action to develop shared agendas for transformative change, to devise strategies with a capacity to achieve such change, and to make the connections and build the cooperation to realise this change.

1. Shared Agendas Agenda: Content Agendas need to reflect, define and capture the real life problems and issues of people.

There is a great variety of different agendas for change. There are agendas that are against changes that are happening and agendas that are for change that needs to happen. There are single issue campaigns and broad campaigns.

It would be useful to focus on points of collaboration. Shared agendas might include national issues such as water, basic income and privatisation and global issues such as climate change and TTIP. Agendas are needed that start from a long term vision of the change required.

Agenda: Developing There needs to be a concern to ensure inclusivity in developing agendas. The participation of people affected by the issues is fundamental. Action can be required to create the conditions for this in building skills and knowledge as necessary.

It would be valuable to establish spaces for people to analyse and reflect together on their situation and experience and the action required to achieve change. Such spaces should enable people to come forward and new ideas to be developed.

There are evident tensions in building agendas between paid workers and unpaid activists and between working class communities and middle class NGOs and issues of invisibility for some groups in the process such as people with disability.

Creativity and cultural action have a contribution to make in agenda development.

Agenda: Empowering Mobilising people and creating the conditions for people to get involved is key to empowering civil society agendas.

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There is a challenge to change the common understanding of and support for what civil society is trying to achieve. Communication needs planning, clear messaging, and media work. Civil society needs to set up its own media.

Individuals and organisations need to take off their own hat and build relationships and partnership approaches. The relationship between politics and civil society is key.

2. Devising Strategies Strategy: People It is important to engage people and to enable people to get involved in different ways and at different levels in seeking change. Work needs to grow from the ground up and people need to feel empowered. The local relevance of international issues need to be demonstrated and communication needs to be accessible.

Spaces for public discourse on civil society issues need to be developed. The media need to be engaged and challenged.

Strategy: Culture Arts offer a connective tissue. They can be a means to engage and draw people in. They can serve to educate, build awareness and promote values.

Values provide a framework for collaboration. We need to cultivate empathy and solidarity to this end. Values offer a framework to define and pursue the transformative change sought. We need to articulate these values and promote them.

Civil society needs to inspire hope. We need to communicate and celebrate success. We need to believe change is possible and to communicate this belief.

Strategy: Solidarity There is a challenge to provide a leadership for collaboration. We need to overcome our small differences, identify what we want in common and find frameworks to come together and develop shared aims.

There are gaps to be bridged: between activists and academics; between local action and national action; between those working for change within the system and those working outside the system; and between tactics of activism and tactics of dialogue.

Strategy: Alternatives The balance between proactive and reactive strategies and between single issue and structural change campaigns needs reviewing. Proactive strategies can be more powerful but reactive strategies are also required. Single issue campaigns draw in and politicise people but we need systemic change.

The solutions sought should not be based on capitalism. There is a challenge to move outside the official system parameters. Consumerist models need challenging.

There is a need to demonstrate alternatives. The system might be broken but things can change and alternatives developed at the same time.

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An effective use of digital platforms could assist campaigning, informing people of issues, and linking campaigns and organisations within civil society.

3. Connection and Collaboration Connection and collaboration: Fragmentation Fragmentation has increased as a result of austerity. There is a lack of networking between sectors of civil society and between local, regional and national levels. It can be difficult to move beyond our own agendas.

There is a need to nurture local activism. There is a lack of local participative bottom up structures and these have not been delivered by current campaigns We need to find the triggers for local transformative practices.

Connection and collaboration: Making links Support structures for collaboration and cooperation are needed at local, national and transnational levels.

Cross pollination between civil society sectors and groups need new types of organising.

Links need to be established between the local and national and global level actions.

Connection and collaboration: Means Clarity of purpose helps make connections but explicit shared core values, such as equality and human rights might provide a more effective framework.

There is a need to create more opportunities to come together, develop new types of communication to build shared consciousness, and mobilise people at local level if we are to achieve connection and collaboration.

Proposition We completed the deliberation with a debate on how to work together to enhance the role and impact of civil society in seeking change. Seven strands of action were proposed.

We could build concrete solidarity by contributing to each other’s campaigns. This could be pursued on an immediate individual or peer to peer basis. A task force of ‘alliance builders’ could identify those narrow and broad campaigns we could connect around and join together on to secure a greater impact.

Connections within civil society could be nurtured and extended. We need a space around which we could remain connected. We need a means of connecting whether through developing our own media or establishing a digital networking.

Local activism could be stimulated and supported. Connections need to be established at local and at national levels and between local and national levels.

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Links with politics and with academia could be reviewed and further developed and expanded where there are shared values. New forms of connection with the general public could be developed to build understanding of and support for civil society agendas.

New structures, in particular at local level, could serve as a means of connecting and cooperating. The Public Participation Networks draw in the different parts of civil society. These could be a platform around which to build and give effect to solidarity.

Public space could be reclaimed to create possibilities for connecting and collaborating. This include physical spaces in urban and rural areas. The media is another such public space that needs to be challenged. We could further develop our own media. There is a need to make visible what works in campaigning and working for change and in demonstrating alternatives in action.

A shared long-term vision could be developed as a source of connecting and collaborating. This could build on the Claiming Our Future Declaration.

Copies of the Claiming Our Future Declaration can be ordered from www.wedeclare.ie and nina@claimingourfuture.ie or by telephone at 0873340698.

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