DEEQA HAMID
HuMaNiZiNG PoLiCY & GoVeRNaNCe Policy & Governance: Participating in political processes, policymaking, and public governance.
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olicy and governance as a social impact approach has the powerful potential to disrupt systems of oppression and benefit the lives of full communities of people through legal and policy change. Unfortunately, too often governmental and political structures advance power and benefit for some humans at the great expense and suffering of others. Such harmful human tradeoffs are modern forms of colonization and rely on the dehumanization of communities of whom governments take advantage in order to garner support and acceptance.
and putting local farmers out of business or greatly diminishing their ability to make profit. While the US and Canada monetarily benefited from an increase in access to international markets, already poor Mexican farmers became even more impoverished. This chain reaction also led to the mass migration of Mexicans to the United States, due to no longer being able to subsist through agriculture, where they would face further dehumanization in the face of racist immigration policy stances and social ostracization.
The humanization of policy and governance practice demands that all humans be viewed as An example of such policy fallout on a large equally deserving of benefit and access, rather than scale is the devastating effect the implementation white Westerners constantly being favored in politof The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) had on Mexican corn farmers. This policy ical strategies that generate wealth and power. It abolished most trade barriers between the United includes removing rural bias, and seeing the equally valuable humanity in farmers, lower socio-economStates, Canada, and Mexico, resulting in Ameriic communities, and people of color. can corn subsidies flooding the Mexican market