francesca polletta, freedom is an endless meeting

preface

(vii): athenian democracy from 461 BC - 322 BC

chapter 1

(2): activists have been drawn to the solidary, innovatory and developmental benefits of participatory democracy

(3): in other words, there are practical/political benefits to participatory democracy

(3): social relationships shape participatory democracy in two ways

1. familiar relationships provide frameworks for group
2. activists' identification of the tactic have shaped it, too [this is part of the silly nonsense that it became 'white', so SNCC abandoned it]

(8-10): three features of participatory democracy

1. people share in decisions -- feel a part of things (solidary)
   
2. more inputs from everywhere (innovatory)
3. trains people as activists (developmental)

(12): another summary--solidary counters inability of groups to offer incentives to participate; innovatory benefits counteract the fact that politics is uncertain; developmental benefits counteract inexperience

(19): table of movements/decision-style, etc. [painful]

(24): battles were not between idealists and pragmatists--rather, they were between different ideologies--and, even, about other things (race, friendship [!], limits of liberalism)

chapter two

(29): AFL's Gompers calls himself 'three-quarters anarchist'

(32): deeply unsatisfying treatment of Labor in the 1930s

(38): mistaking the symptom of Old Left's failure, for its cause--if you were to extend the same kind of careful treatment to what she opposes the New Left to, we might have a book on our hands...

(53): coded insult of communists as 'nondemocratic' and the bureaucracy/liberals as 'democratic' -- what is this hogwash?

chapter three

(56): again, her main point--activists chose participatory democratic practices as much for idealistic reasons as for pragmatic reasons

(57): by April 1960, 50,000 students had sat-in at lunch counters

(60): extraordinary over- and under-representation of whites and blacks, respectively in these Southern counties

(63): Ella Baker emerges out of the SCLC to found the SNCC--democracy is part of what's at stake, in this break

(66): and this' populism' would be at the heart of what inspires SNCC in later years

(73): again, if you hadn't noticed already--there is a developmental rationale to participatory democracy

(74): prefigurative commitment and political change [!?]

(79): meetings as Durkhemian 'collective rituals'

(85): what is this nonsense! 'hurtful', 'friendship', ahhhhhh!

(86): in sum--participatory democracy is eminently practical for social movements, for four reasons

1. participation helps decisionmakers gather information
2. developmental benefits of shaping preferences/skills
3. specifies a range of possibility, heightening sense of belonging in minorities [?]
4. foster conventions of scruitny that endure [?]

chapter four

(89-90): SNCC unraveled because came up against limits of tutelage and friendship as basis [?]

(90): perceived as white by black staffers [!?]

(117): goals became unclear after 1964 Atlantic City Convention -- didn't solve programmatic and racial questions, and this was the reason for the decline

(118): more of this nonsense about black, white, identity--this is not an explanation!

chapter five

(121): SNCC in between top-down and bottom-up, actually.

(124): explanation for SDS failure is, well, "dynamics of friendshp and exclusion"

(127): participatory democracy as a model for social change--not internal organization

(140): more on friendship, and how it constrains groups

(142): newcomers challenging old guard on hypocrisy

(145): 100,000 members

(145-146): reason for decline, also, had to do with fact that there was an upsurge of action, elsewhere [implicit in this, though, has to be a recognition of the limits of this kind of organization -- what could capture the upsurge? labor in the 30s did, to an extent that this doesn't come close to doing]

(147): a missed opportunity, proposing to make it participatory and democratic and national?

(200): badly done p. democracy gives you structurelessness; badly done organizing give you authoritarianism

conclusion

(203): purpose was to recuperate a rationale for doing participatory democracy

(204): again, a caricature of the Old Left that depends on her having ignored it

(205): participatory democracy had explicitly political impulses driving it

(207): again, the limits of friendship -- this is when participatory democracy stopped working!? [oh god save me]

(213): four conflicts that explain the decline of groups (problems of p. democratic groups, then, have been exogenous to the form of organization)

1. conflicting demands of making social change
2. orientation toward goals or process
3. tension between conventionality and innovation
4. behavioral limits on the social relationships on which activists have modeled their interactions [oh god]

(217): obstacles lie in "broader cultural conceptions" (as well as these conflicting demands, etc.). at certain prssure points in the 'associational relationships', these appear. [in other words, we have 'friendship' doing most of the work, with culture as an auxiliary. mighty fine book, this is.]

goodwin and hetland, LGBT and capitalism

(2): "We show, however, that the dynamics of capitalism have in fact mattered significantly, and in a variety of ways, for the LGBT movement. We conclude that movement scholars, including scholars of new social movements, need to pay—or, more accurately, re-pay—greater attention to the dynamics of capitalism. It is time to bring capitalism back into social movement studies."

(3-4): [why and how was capitalism important, in the opinion of the 1970s scholars?] "The authors of these groundbreaking works believed that capitalism was crucial for understanding movements because of a variety of important causal mechanisms: Capitalist institutions (factories, railroads, banks, etc.) or institutions that capitalists may come to control (e.g., legislatures, courts, police, etc.) are often the source or target of popular grievances, especially (but not only) during times of economic crisis; these institutions, moreover, shape collective identities and solidarities—and not just class solidarities—in particular ways; they also distribute power and resources unevenly to different social classes and class fractions; they both facilitate and inhibit specific group alliances based on common or divergent interests; class divisions, furthermore, often penetrate and fracture particular movements; and ideologies and cultural assumptions linked to capitalism powerfully shape movement strategies and demands. The effects of capitalism on collective action, for these authors, are both direct and indirect (i.e., mediated by other processes) and are the result of both short- and long-term processes."

(5): for the civil rights movement, as written about by McAdams, capitalism and its shifting dynamics were a condition of possibility (the move, i.e., of many numbers of african-americans from the South to the North)

(6): "Instead, recent scholarship tends to focus on short-term shifts in “cultural framings,” social networks, and especially “political opportunities,” rarely examining the deeper causes of such shifts; in fact, most movement scholars now treat this last set of factors as independent variables, neglecting the ways in which they may be powerfully shaped by capitalism."

(10): maybe an opportunity, here, to elaborate on the paper's theoretical position?--"Indeed, they seem to justify this with the claim that “collective action does not spring automatically from structural tensions,” and so the bulk of their book is “dedicated to the mechanisms which contribute to an explanation of the shift from structure to action”—mechanisms having to do with “the availability of organizational resources, the ability of movement leaders to produce appropriate ideological representations, and the presence of a favorable political context” (della Porta and Diani 2006: 63). But this seems to assume that such resources, ideologies, and political contexts are substantially if not wholly detached from the dynamic structure and practices of capitalism, a view we would of course challenge"

(12): "What happened? What might account for this strange disappearance of capitalism from social movement studies? Here, we can only speculate, but we would argue that this transformation is the result of several linked factors, including the waning after the 1970s of Marxism in the social sciences, the so-called “cultural turn” in academia, and a growing emphasis on micro- and meso-level analysis—including framing and network analysis—in social movement studies proper. Our aim here is not of course to criticize cultural, framing, or network analysis, but simply to point out that these have effectively—and unnecessarily—“crowded out” a concern with political economy in the field. As a result, a number of promising causal mechanisms linked to the dynamics of capitalism are no longer even considered worthy of attention by movement scholars."

(13): "For us, in any event, the key question is not so much why capitalism has disappeared from movement studies, but whether the analysis of movements has suffered as a result. We believe it has."

(13-14): Our reading of the literature on this and other movements suggests that the dynamics of capitalism and political-economic factors potentially matter for all movements in at least four specific ways:

1. Capitalist dynamics alternately inhibit or facilitate the formation of new collective identities and solidarities, including both class and non-class identities. In this way, capitalism shapes the very conditions of existence of many social movements.
2. The balance of class forces in a society powerfully shapes the way movements evolve over time and what they can win for their constituents.
3. Class divisions generated by capitalism may unevenly penetrate and fracture movements. The balance of class forces within movements—sometimes more and sometimes less organized and self-conscious—may powerfully shape movement goals and strategies.
4. Finally, ideologies and cultural idioms closely linked to capitalist institutions and practices may strongly influence movement strategies and goals.

(17): first specific way, for the LGBT movement--"According to D’Emilio, the initial emergence of a collective and publicly visible gay and lesbian identity in the United States was dependent—just as for the African-American civil rights movement—upon the expansion of wage labor. This process of “proletarianization” diminished the economic importance of the family unit, thereby undermining the material basis for “traditional” heteronormative sexual relations and creating at least the possibility for more fluid sexual practices and identities (see also Therborn 2004). The urbanization that resulted from capitalist industrialization, furthermore, facilitated the formation of communities based on sexualities and lifestyles. The large, anonymous cities created by capitalist industrialization made possible the emergence of hidden, “underground” gay and lesbian subcultures, typically centered around commercial bars, clubs, and other establishments."

(19-20): second specific way, for the LGBT movement--"the strength the organized labor movement—especially what Hunt terms “the extent of [its] historical commitment to ‘social unionism’” (1999b:7)—has been of crucial importance for LGBT movements over time, across a variety of national contexts, and at the sub- and transnational levels... the character of welfare states have had an important influence on LGBT movements... Rayside finds that the rights of LGBT populations have advanced the furthest in northern European nations, such as the Netherlands, Norway and Denmark, which are also, not coincidentally, countries where social-democratic or labor parties have been strongest... Rayside also finds that individual union support for LGBT issues is often greatest when unions (1) I and (2) are confronted with significant membership losses and demographic shifts." [interesting, especially this latter point]

(21): "While there are of course many “non-material” factors to consider here, including the stigma and psychological costs of exclusion from a central cultural rite, analysts of same-sex marriage should not underestimate the importance of the economic benefits that attach to marriage in the United States. One recent study found that the price of being a gay couple in the U.S. can amount during a lifetime to over $467,000..." [question of the status of the 'non-material' in the analysis not being made explicit. there's a strong argument, which would suggest that it can ALL be explained. and then a weaker argument. is that fair?]

(24): third specific way, for LGBT movement: "As Hollibaugh points out, this is but one example of many ways in which class divides the LGBT movement: “Much of the gay movement, in my experience, has been willing to forego substantive discussion about anything of concern to anyone but a privileged and small part of homosexuality in this culture. The politics of these gay movements are determined by the economic position of those who own the movement” (2001:74)."

(25-27): fourth specific way, for LGBT movement: "We turn, finally, to a brief discussion of the pervasive and, for us, insidious role of capitalist ideology in the LGBT “workplace” movement in the U.S. )... [T]he extension of benefits and workplace rights to LGBT employees is most often explained through what Raeburn calls an “ideology of profits” (2004: 250). In this “profit-centered account,” the explanation for why corporations extend benefits to LGBT employees rests on the “bottom line”—that is, the reason corporations adopt LGBT-friendly policies is not because of social movements, but because it is profitable to do so... As Raeburn demonstrates, in contexts like the contemporary United States, where market ideology is pervasive, the efficacy of social movement activists can come to depend upon their ability to successfully frame movement success in market-friendly terms."

(26): interesting question about 'isomorphic' pressure (given summers' argument, that is): "These factors include changes in the external political environment, isomorphic pressure from competing companies, and internal pressure from LGBT activist networks operating within a given firm. Raeburn sees this last factor as the most important of all (although she notes that isomorphic pressure within a given industry may increase in importance over time)."

(28): is this not one of the most gross generalizations? shouldn't it be framed differently? ("Typically, whether one employs a Marxian or Weberian framework, capitalism is treated as a purely economic system (Marx 1992 [1867]; Weber 2003 [1923]). But the concept of “political economy” underscores the need to examine the political role of the state within the economy, a role that has of course grown considerably over the past two centuries.")

(28): the need for a more 'sociological' view of capitalism--fair enough, but isn't this theorized non-rigorously? or, perhaps, this framing should have been incorporated better into the rest of the paper -- there's a sense in which it this 'sociological' view is not explicit or implicit at the outset. "Introducing a more “society-centric” view of capitalism, in which issues of culture and ideology assume an important role, does not necessitate abandoning economic and political analysis. It does, however, suggest the need to reverse the direction of our causal arrow, investigating not only how capitalism shapes the LGBT and other social movements, but also the reverse, how the LGBT and other social movements shape capitalism as well—as Raeburn’s study powerfully demonstrates."

the environmental movement in the global south:
Mahathir has been interpreted in the North as speaking for a South that seeks to catch up whatever the cost and where the environmental movement is weak or non-existent. Today, China is seen as the prime exemplar of this Mahathirian obsession with rapid industrialization with minimal regard for the environment. This view of the South’s perspective on the environment is a caricature. In fact, the environmental costs of rapid industrialization are of major concern to significant sectors of the population of developing countries and, in many of them, the environmental movement has been a significant actor. Moreover, there is currently an active discussion in many countries of alternatives to the destabilizing high-growth model.
(...) In both societies (Korea and Taiwan), farmers, workers, and the environment bore the costs of high-speed industrialization. Both societies, it is not surprising, saw the emergence of an environmental movement that was spontaneous, that drew participants from different classes, that saw environmental demands linked with issues of employment, occupational health, and agricultural crisis, and that was quite militant.
(...) Unlike in Korea and Taiwan, environmental movements already existed in a number of the Southeast Asian countries before the period of rapid industrialization, which in their case occurred in the mid-eighties to the mid-nineties. These movements had emerged in the seventies and eighties in struggles against nuclear power, as in the Philippines; against big hydroelectric dams, as in Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines; and against deforestation and marine pollution, as in Thailand and the Philippines. These were epic battles, like the struggle against the Chico River Dam in the northern Philippines and the fight against the Pak Mun Dam in the northeast of Thailand, which forced the World Bank to withdraw its planned support for giant hydroelectric projects, an outcome that, as we shall see later on, also occurred in struggle against the Narmada Dam in India. The fight against industrial associated partly with foreign firms seeking to escape strict environmental regulations at home was a case of a new front being opened up in an ongoing struggle to save the environment.
(...) The environmental movements in Southeast Asia played a vital role not only in scuttling projects like the Bataan nuclear plant but in ousting the dictatorships that reigned there in the seventies and eighties. Indeed, because the environment was not perceived by authoritarian regimes as “political,” organizing around environmental and public health issues was not initially proscribed. Thus environmental struggles became an issue around which the anti-dictatorship movement could organize and reach new people. Environmental destruction became one more graphic example of a regime’s irresponsibility. In Indonesia, for example, the environmental organization WALHI went so far as to file a lawsuit for pollution and environmental destruction against six government bodies, including the Minister of the Environment and Population5. By the time the dictatorships wised up to what was happening, it was often too late: environmentalism and anti-fascism fed on one another.
(...) The environmental crisis in China is very serious. For example, the ground water table of the North China plain is dropping by 1.5 meters (5 feet) per year. This region produces 40 percent of China's grain. As environmentalist Dale Wen remarks, “One cannot help wonder about how China will be fed once the ground aquifer is depleted” 6. Water pollution and water scarcity; soil pollution, soil degradation and desertification; global warming and the coming energy crisis—these are all byproducts of China’s high-speed industrialization and massively expanded consumption.
(...) Most of the environmental destabilization in China is produced by local enterprises and massive state projects such as the Three Gorges Dams, but the contribution of foreign investors is not insignificant. Taking advantage of very lax implementation of environmental laws in China, many western TNCs have relocated their most polluting factories into the country and have exacerbated or even created many environmental problems. Wen notes that the Pearl River Delta and Yangtze River Delta, the two Special Economic Zones where most TNC subsidiaries are located, are the most seriously affected by heavy metal and POPs (persistent organic pollutants) pollution.
(...) Global warming is not a distant threat. The first comprehensive study of the impact of the sea level rise of global warming by Gordon McGranahan, Deborah Balk, and Bridget Anderson puts China as the country in Asia most threatened by the sea level rise of up to 10 meters over the next century 8. 144 million of China’s population live in low-elevation coastal zones, and this figure is likely to increase owing to the export-oriented industrialization strategies pursued by the government, which has involved the creation of numerous special economic zones. “From an environmental perspective,” the study warns, “there is a double disadvantage to excessive (and potentially rapid) coastal development. First, uncontrolled coastal development is likely to damage sensitive and important ecosystems and other resources. Second, coastal settlement, particularly in the lowlands, is likely to expose residents to seaward hazards such as sea level rise and tropical storms, both of which are likely to become more serious with climate change”9. The recent spate of super-typhoons descending on the Asian mainland from the Western Pacific underlines the gravity of this observation.
(...) In terms of public health, the rural health infrastructure has practically collapsed, according to Dale Wen. The system has been privatized with the introduction of a “fee for service” system that is one component of the neoliberal reform program. One result is the resurgence of diseases that had been brought under control, like tuberculosis and schistosomiasis. Cuba, in contrast, has won plaudits for its rural health care system, which is ironic, says Wen, given that the Cuban system was based on the Maoist era’s “barefoot doctor” system.
(...) The combination of the industrialization of food production and the lengthening of the food chain from production to consumption is strongly suspected to be the cause of bird flu, which has migrated from China to other countries. The government has become an unreliable actor in dealing with new diseases such as bird flu and SARS, prone as it is to engage in minimizing the threat if not promoting a cover-up, as it did in the case of SARS.
(...) As in Taiwan and Korea 15 years earlier, we see unrestrained export-oriented industrialization bringing together low-wage migrant labor, farming communities whose lands are being grabbed or ruined environmentally, environmentalists, and the proponents of a major change in political economy called the “New Left.” Environment-related riots, protests and disputes in China increased by 30% in 2005 to more than 50,000, as pollution-related unrest has become “a contagious source of instability in the country,” as one report put it. Indeed, a great many of recorded protests fused environmental, land-loss, income, and political issues. From 8700 in 1995, what the Ministry of Public Security calls "mass group incidents" have grown to 87,000 in 2005, most of them in the countryside. Moreover, the incidents are growing in average size from 10 or fewer persons in the mid-1990s to 52 people per incident in 2004 11. Notable were the April 2005 riots in Huashui, where an estimated 10,000 police officers clashed with desperate villagers who succeeded in repelling strong vested interests polluting their lands.
(...) As in China, the environment and public health have been sites of struggle in India. Over the last 25 years, the movement for the environment and public health has exploded in that country. Indeed, one can say that this movement has become one of the forces that is deepening Indian democracy.
(...) Here Roy expresses an essential truth: that centralized electrification preempted the development of alternative power-systems that could have been more decentralized, more people-oriented, more environmentally benign, and less capital intensive.
(...) While these interests benefited, others paid the costs. Specifically, it was the rural areas and the environment that absorbed the costs of centralized electrification. Tremendous crimes have been committed in the name of power generation and irrigation, says Roy, but these were hidden because governments never recorded these costs. In India, Roy calculates that large dams have displaced about 33 million people in the last 50 years, about 60 per cent of them being either untouchables or indigenous peoples
(...) Equally important was the broader political impact of the Narmada struggle. It proved to be the cutting edge of the social movements that have deepened India’s democracy and transformed the political scene. The state bureaucracy and political parties must now listen to these movements or risk opposition or, in the case of parties, being thrown out of power. Social movements in the rural areas played a key role in stirring up the mass consciousness that led to the defeat in 2004 of the neoliberal coalition led by the Hindu chauvinist BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) that had campaigned on the pro-globalization slogan “India Shining.” While its successor, the Congress Party-led coalition, has turned its back on the rural protest that led to its election and followed the same anti-agriculture and pro-globalization policies of the BJP, it risks provoking an even greater backlash in the near future.
(...) As in China, the challenge lies in building up a mass movement that might be unpopular not only with the elite but also with sections of the urban-based middle class sectors that have been the main beneficiaries of the high-growth economic strategy that has been pursued since the early 1990’s.
(...) The reason for tracing the evolution of a mass-based environmental movement in East Asia and India is to counter the image that the Asian masses are inert elements that uncritically accept the environmentally damaging high-growth export-oriented industrialization models promoted by their governing elites. It is increasingly clear to ordinary people throughout Asia that the model has wrecked agriculture, widened income inequalities, led to increased poverty after the Asian financial crises, and wreaked environmental damage everywhere.
(...) There is no doubt that the burden of adjustment to global warming will fall on the North, and that this adjustment will have to be made in the next 10 to 15 years, and that the adjustment needed might need to be much greater than the 50 per cent reduction from the 1990’s level by 2050 that is being promoted by the G 8. In the eyes of some experts, what might be required is in the order of 100 or 150 per cent reduction from 1990 levels. However, the South will also have to adjust, proportionately less than the North but also rather stringently.
(...) The South’s adjustment will not take place without the North taking the lead. But it will also not take place unless its leaders junk the export-oriented, high-growth paradigm promoted by the World Bank and most economists to which its elites and many middle strata are addicted.

analyzing bolivia:
I think the fact that topics are being discussed that never have been before is an exceedingly positive “forest”, as if the reality was what is and could not be otherwise. Secondly, the participation of social layers that have never had any decisive say over what happens to them. Thirdly, the fact that an institutional solution has been achieved — which apparently is going to work — in which the topics that are not being defined by two thirds will subsequently be put to a popular vote, so popular sovereignty is maintained with the later decision. Therefore, I think this is a good solution, I think it is a very positive perspective.
(...) Latin America was the laboratory for political experiments by neoliberalism, which were generalized over virtually the entire continent, so now it is experiencing a backlash against what it has suffered. And so the people are voting for changes.
(...)The dividing line today in Latin America is not between a good left or bad left, it is between countries that are signing free-trade treaties with the United States and those which, to the contrary, are prioritizing regional integration processes. These include some that have broken with neoliberalism — this is the case with Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela and Cuba — and others that have a foreign policy that favours regional integration but maintains the model. These include Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, so there are some significant differences among them. But let’s not forget that the fundamental difference is between the countries that have given up being co-opted by the USA and those that have mortgaged their futures on free-trade agreements; Chile is the clearest case.
(...) And the Bolivian social movement — and apparently now the Ecuadorian movement — have realized that they have to build their own alternatives, so it is a new the fact that the social movements have built a party, with all the problems that entails, because it is a big leap forward. Furthermore, they are not building a party to argue in Parliament, but a party that now has a governmental alternative, something they have never had throughout the history of Bolivia, so this is not a mere exercise but it is a very promising road, because the social movements cannot simply carry on in resistance. To remain at the level of so-called civil society is a road to defeat, because it fails to challenge hegemony at the national level. Autonomy makes sense to prevent the interests of other forces being imposed on the social movement, but it is autonomy to contend for hegemony; if it is an autonomy to not recognize the State, to not recognize the government, I think it is a road that leads nowhere, that leads to exhaustion, to demobilization and the cooptation of some sectors. It is not a question of governing with that State.
(...) The democracies have been governments of the elites to reproduce the power of the elites, so we must not limit ourselves to that type of State that is there, which was made by inertia, by the reproduction of the existing power relationships. I think the social movements will have to do what they are doing in Ecuador or Bolivia, which is to reconsider their instrument of power, to become a transformer, not a reproducer of existing relationships, that smashes the private monopoly of the oligopolies over the media, over the ownership of energy resources, over the banks, the financing capacity, etc.
(...) If the enemies are reacting so forcefully it is because their interests are being undermined. It would be sad event if that white bourgeoisie of Santa Cruz were in agreement with the government. It would mean either that it had no class consciousness — but clearly it does have that, as it has demonstrated — or that the government was not affecting its interests.

from envio, july 2005:
[stability with pillage] Violeta Chamorro’s government liquidated almost all of the state-run industrial and agricultural companies, even selling off the railway system’s trains and tracks for scrap metal, paying people to rip up the rails. Arnoldo Alemán’s government sold off the state electricity and telephone companies at derisory prices and pillaged the public coffers. And Enrique Bolaños’ government’s budgetary priority is to pay local bankers usurious interest on the treasury bonds issued to cover the enormous fraud perpetrated by the owners of five bankrupt banks. US, Canadian, European and Taiwanese companies conduct a permanent pillage of our national wealth—timber, minerals, and fishing and water resources—while rewarding their workers with miserable wages. The rich don’t pay taxes. And ministers, magistrates, legislators and top public officials from all state branches earn the kind of salaries more associated with developed countries. Yet while all of this has been going on—and it still is—the three governments have enjoyed relative social stability. The reasons for such passivity are complex, interwoven and particular to this country.
(...) [on being organic] They played a leading role in at least two general strikes and several other specific strikes with great national impact. In the words of former CST leader Miguel Ruiz, “We stood up for the Sandinista Front,” which had not managed to put its party-government phase behind it and transform itself into an opposition party and was in the midst of a heated ideological battle between “renovators” and the “orthodox” over its identity and methods of struggle.
(...) [autonomy?] Up until 1997—marked by a failed national strike and roadblocks in April and May—these organizations were the Sandinista movement’s main political arm when it came to defending grassroots interests and maintaining its power bases. A year later, they were practically demobilized as a result of the first pact between Daniel Ortega and Arnoldo Alemán. Beyond their current numbers, what is most striking about all of these organizations is that most still operate according to basically the same model under which they were created. They still act as FSLN “intermediaries” and have leaders who respond to the political interests of the party leadership.
(...) [NGOization] While they do help palliate state deficiencies in areas such as health, education and housing, they have also acted as retaining walls against grassroots discontent towards the government and the system, as people tend to wait for outside charity rather than fight for their rights. Many of these organizations use attractive salaries in dollars and other benefits to contract officials, supposedly to promote citizens’ participation or stimulate grassroots organization. In this way, they turn activists into either professionals or simply employees who obey their bosses’ orders. ... And when it comes to organizing, NGOs very often tend to presume to represent their beneficiaries—or “target population,” as they like to call them—without even consulting them about the decisions being made in their name or their particular political position on any given matter.
(...) [autonomy again?] Above all, the union organizations have been subject to a phenomenon born of their own experience: their leaders on all levels no longer accept party control and have achieved an appreciable degree of autonomy in their protest actions. The most important examples are ANDEN and FETSALUD, each of which launched its own union struggles, including strikes, against the wishes of an important sector of the Sandinista leadership known as the Businesspeople’s Bloc. And each won its struggle, turning a deaf ear to the siren’s song of “governability” from legislators such as Bayardo Arce and prominent figures like Manuel Coronel Kautz. One FETSALUD leader privately said some months ago that “the sin lies not in the fact that we [FETSALUD leaders] are Sandinista activists, but rather that some of us place the dominant interests of the FSLN over and above those of our members.” This phenomenon of autonomy has also occurred among transport cooperatives, which have now turned into powerful businesses. In this case, autonomy has even led them to face off against other sectors of the FSLN, particularly those linked to grassroots organizations.
(...) [part of systematicity: creation of a political class] As a result, they do not exercise control of the business of politics. The political class, meanwhile, consolidates this false popular belief by concealing information and offering half truths to neutralize the people’s social and political awareness, even putting the brakes on any possibility of autonomous organization. Deep down, the political class knows that an aware and organized people would endanger its own privileges.
(...) [and the sandinistas, in this] This contradiction extends to the party’s whole national leadership, which has succumbed to the ferocious laws of the market in which honesty, the vocation for service and personal integrity are disposable merchandise.
(...) [to a more organic future] All of this has generated a profound crisis in the current model of representative democracy, and makes finding a path to participatory democracy more urgent than ever. Núñez sustains that “the political parties, union organizations and social movements have to redeem politics and participate in a new way of doing it. Depoliticization is suicide... Political participation without social and economic participation is an illusion. Political democracy without economic democracy is not enough. The workers have to take the economy and the market.”
(...) [ftz in context] In a country plagued by maquiladora assembly plants with ruthless and despotic owners and managers protected by the state itself, workers prefer to put up and shut up. Most have accepted the confiscation of their right to organize in a union. In this context, the few cases of total rebellion—particularly in Managua’s Las Mercedes Free Trade Zone—stand out more as exceptions than as examples.
(...) Although there is no reliable census, the number of Nicaraguans resident abroad is between 1.2 million and 1.5 million, or around one in every four Nicaraguans. Of these, from 50% to 60% send home money to maintain their families, while the rest have either completely broken their ties or have brought their families over to join them. Calculating an average of five people in each family nucleus, some 700,000 to 900,000 Nicaraguans are living off family remittances.
(...) [social movements combating systematicity] Among the most significant are the peasant marches against hunger and for land, carried out by thousands of families. In two consecutive years, 2003 and 2004, they marched on Managua from the mountains of Matagalpa and Jinotega, forcing the government to negotiate and agree to many of their demands. ... The thousands of victims of Nemagón and other pesticides used for years on banana plantations in the west of the country have provided another example of impressive mobilization. ... Teachers also achieved an overwhelming success with their national strike at the beginning of the year. ... The Consumer Defense Network has also had significant successes, though based on legal actions rather than mobilization. ... But perhaps the greatest political awareness has been displayed in the mobilization of the women’s movement. Thus far, it is the only movement that has gone beyond the scope of its own particular demands to take on national demands against the system and against the anti-democratic results of the Ortega-Alemán pact. Its main leaders have publicly stated that they will not be able to achieve gender equity or sexual and reproductive rights unless they first recover the democratic rights wrested away from the whole population by the top PLC and FSLN leaderships.
(...)