SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
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- SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
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European Foundation
for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions
Loughllnslown House. Shanklll, Co. Dublin, Ireland. Tel: (01) 826888 Telex: 30726 EURF El Fax: 826456
280
European Foundation
■ for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions
I
■■■i
Loughlinstown House, Shsnklll, Co. Dublin, Ireland. Tel: (01) 826888 Telex: 30726 EURF El Fax: 826456
JUST OfiDDMT PEOPLE:
SOCIAL CHAMGE AMD LOCAL ACTIOM
As we near the end of the twentieth century we can feel justly proud of
many achievements. Political and social action and advances in
technology and scientific knowledge. All these have meant great benefits
for many of us. More babies survive the trauma of birth, more children
grow up hale and hearty, men and women are living longer and can look
forward to an active old age.
Many of us enjoy a much higher standard of living than previous
generations. This often means more leisure time and a wide range of
activities with which to fill that time.
But this is only part of the story. In every developed country there are
too many people, young and old, who are not sharing in the general
affluence. There are areas in most towns and cities where people are
suffering from a concentration of different problems. Many of these
people are unemployed or subsisting on low wages. There is a growing
number of single parent families and most of them are struggling to make
ends meet. Low incomes and poor living conditions swan that many of them
suffer poor health.
Too many people still live in substandard housing, increasingly
segregated within the inner city or on the peripheral estates which lie
like grim encampments on the edge of towns and cities. In fact, some of
these estates are now being demolished, like this one.
In every country the numbers of elderly people are growing. Some do
enjoy a fruitful retirement, but many exist on small incomes, leading
lonely and isolated lives. There are tensions between different ethnic
groups, between existing coreuni ties and those seen as outsiders. Tears
after their arrival immigrants may still feel unwelcome and discriminated
against.
"I walk, I walk, do job. Whenever time you go to a place
you hear, "I'm sorry, there’s no vacancies”. Some times
when I go home I had to shed tears, tears come out my eyes
to see what I leave my country and core over here. If I
could walk the sea, I’d walk it bore, yes ■an."
W'esf
Indian
Uan
£
Low paid work in the service industry is perhaps all that's left for
unskilled workers. Too often such work is insecure, on a casual basis
and working conditions are poor.
Unemployment
explains.
Dublin
General
Practitioner
is often a major problem,
as
this
doctor
from Dublin
"Mainly the poverty is brought on by unemployment and
people just trying to survive on very small amounts
of money. Examples would be, say, families with maybe
four or five children, husband and wife, and trying to
survive on £90 or £100 a week.”
Unemployed
Man
■I‘« not working at the moannt. I've had a long spell of
unemployment. I vaa working for myaelf, but It didn't pan
out ao I won't harp on about that. But I love working,
I'a a cabinet aaker originally
by trade, but I've
moldy done carpentry and things like that."
Cities, or parts of cities, are left behind as old industries die and
there la a vacuum before new Industries arrive to take their place. Many
people, but perhaps especially the young, feel alienated and cast aside;
some turn to crime and drugs, a growing problem in our cities.
The benefits of community action are not just the obvious ones.
The lack of work and of decent housing are among the various reasons that
traditional cosssunltles are breaking up, extended families living miles
apart.
Thia psychiatrist working with people from a large estate outside Dublin,
sees the effects of all this.
Psychiatrist
‘The problem I see most commonly is that of Isolation.
The hallmark, the characteristic, of Tallaght Is youth.
Everyone in It Is young, they're married and they've small
children. The young women, the young mothers, are very
Isolated from their original family, there's no cosmunlty
wisdom in Tallaght, there's no grannies and grandads,
there's no aunts and uncles, there's nobody to look to for
advice."
Public
Health
Professional
Housing can make or break community lite. In the past in many
neighbourhoods, people have been dispersed to peripheral estates, friends
and families have been split. The threat of such a move led to strong
local action In a small area of Liverpool's Toxteth, known as the Heller
Streets.
And everyone, rich and poor, suffers Che many environmental problems of
modern life - congested traffic, noise, the weariness of commuting and
pollution.
So who or what can solve such problems. Many people try to cope on their
own, using families and friends to provide chlldcaiu or help with
housing; and over the past twenty years or more many other people are
joining together to work for change. For some it may seem to only way.
They get more or less support from locsl authorities, the church and
other outside agenclds.
Dublin
Frtut/
Teacher
'In my experience, there are very few decision makers hare
In the inner city, you know people who decide what this
coassunlty should have. Kott of those decisions are
made In offices, civil service, corporation, our Dall our nstlonal parliament. and the people of the inner city
sort of get what's left over. The only way around that
is for the people of the 1.nner city to organise themselves
as
they are doing, I:o get a greater awareness of
what's happening to them.
The value of community action 1s increasingly recognised by government at
all levels - local, national, regional, the European Community.
Governments are therefore encouraging communities to respond to and act
on Issues like childcare, poverty, unemployment and crime. For every
group of people taking action is different. Scow groups spring up to
fight a single campaign, some last for years, taking on different Issues
as they arise.
‘Host important things seem to be that people have a
decent standard
of living, but perhaps even more
Important, that they should actually be in control of
their own lives, they should be participating, they
should feel empowered, they should be controlling their
own communities, managing their own housing, managing
their own work If possible. These kind of things are
things which load to people being in control of their
lifestyle and being able to avoid the risks to health."
Welter
Street
Resident!
"The
community, the people, the people was the good
Ching. Everyone was so neighbourly and ao helpful to one
another and If you needed something you could always go
and ask somebody, you know, could they help you out and
they would. It was the people that made the Heller
Streets. They wanted to rehouse us, all spread out,
Kirby, Netherly, Cantwell Farm and we didn't want to go
out, we wanted to stay In Liverpool."
QQ
"I couldn't just go to Kirby and make a new life for
myself, at my age, which loads of other people couldn't
do. They're going to take ill and maybe die - broken
hearts. So we decided ‘No, we'll stay with the young
ones and we'll go with the young ones. He'll all be
together, where our roots are."
So, after numerous meetings, the people from the Holler Streets decided
to set up a housing co-operative, the tirat In Liverpool and one of the
first In Britain to design and build its own housing.
Welter
Street
Residents
•You know, we didn't really know what to do. so we asked
different people for advice and that, you know and no-one
could give us It because there was no co-ops In Liverpool,
so we sort of had to go from scratch and learn as we went
along, you know."
■The councillors,
Labour, Tory, Liberal,
all the
councillors, "You'll never ever do If. they said "you'll
never be able to do It, you won't be able to beat the
bureaucracy." He said "OK, well fair enough". Next week
we had another meeting and we decided to go and have a go
and we did and we beat the bureaucracy."
Six years later the first houses belonging to the co-operative were
completed and the Kellys were one of the first families to move in.
a
"Well, when we designed It that’s what we said we wanted,
a village In Liverpool 8."
"a village In the town".
rflsr
■mi
tldtnti
"'Cos we hadn’t had gardens or anything like that, none ot
us knew a thing about gardens or plants or anything ‘cos
we never really were used to them you know.”
Nomliuoi
for Ntagra
Residents'
Association
"This wasn't just a new house tor me In particular, thia
was an achievement tor the committee. He got a new house
in the end like but It was more Important getting the
achievement, you know.”
"We were that made up with It we all thought we were on
our holidays, we were expecting someone to knock on the
door and say ”Your time's up, out”.
The housing co-op Is still expanding. The next group of houses Is about
to be built, so this single mother and her small daughter are meeting
with the architect to choose the design.
'rs. Kelly
mm
'slier
IrMt
”1 think co-op's are for everybody, as long ss they want
to, you know, anyone can do It. I mean we work, I was a
cleaner, we had the milkman, Billy, we had, everybody was
just in an ordinary job, you know and people were saying
"You don't know nothing about It, you'll never do it”, but
we learnt to do it as we went along.”
The Weller Streets housing co-operative may decide to expand into other
areas, such as job creation, like other housing eo-ops elsewhere. It has
just proudly celebrated It's tenth anniversary and it's achievement ot
keeping a community together.
Hlagra neighbourhood in downtown Toronto faced a different threat twenty
years ago. It's one green space was taken away from the local residents
and privatised by developers. Art Gray led the fight against thia, after
setting up a residents' association. Like many groups, the Hlagra
Residents' Association Is dependant on charismatic, hardworking leaders
such as Art Gray.
An Gray.
Community
Ltodtr
"And then all of a sudden out ot the clear blue sky,
before anybody knew It, we had a six foot fence going
around the whole park, bleachers going up, and then
we found out It was a private enterprise, soccer outfit,
so we went to city council and we fought and fought
and fought and finally they give In, they changed It back
to a park and this Is the way we're going to keep It.”
He and others have stayed with the Association, battling on many fronts
and they attract new members all the time. At a recent meeting, people
put themselves up for the comnlttee, giving their different reasons for
wanting to join.
"Hi, ladies and gentlemen, members of the board, my name
is Fred Dominali, and I’ve run the service station on
Queen and Belawoods for the past twenty-one years and
tonight I get involved into this thing because I think
it's something which is part of my life now because I have
to spend most of my time over here, I like to get involved
into this community to see if we can do some change here,
if we can do something for the better."
"I moved to Toronto from Victoria B.C. in April this year
and I live with my family in the Summit. I have two small
children, one who's here, and I became involved in the
Association because of my concern about the lead pollution
and I've been very active in the lead committee."
One of the most vital battles still to be won has been against the lead
smelter in Niagra. Lead levels were found to be as high as 400 times the
norm and 600 properties will have their top soil removed. This is
vitally important because high levels of lead damage the health of small
children.
Mother
of two
Children
"I was very concerned because in inner city areas there's
a lot of background pollution and if you live in an area
where there's something extra as well you really think
that you're pushing your luck, so I took the children to
the hospital and I was told that the lead levels in their
blood were average for inner city urban children. It was
a real personal concern because you wonder all the time,
every time you touch something in the neighbourhood, are
you taking lead onto your hands and you're always trying
to remember to wash your hands and to watch the newspapers
to see what reports there are on further monitoring in the
area. Just in yesterday's newspaper there was a report
that in South Riverdale they're still finding lead above
permissible levels in the air in the area and I wonder,
well, what's it like in this area?"
Men like Art Gray are often the moving force in formal community
organisations, but it is often women who initiate local action. They
work in the home, caring for small children, many are single parents
joining together for comfort and support. They have strong networks of
friends.
Dublin
Woman
"The only people that
women themselves."
will give
women their rights is
These women in Liverpool were friends already when they started attending
a weekly women's health class. They're here meeting their tutor again.
All four are single parents, one widowed, the others divorced, managing
on small incomes. During the classes, they began to realise what
appalling health facilities they were having to endure in Speke, an area
on the outskirts of Liverpool.
This campaign la a perfect example of how local action gives so much more
to the people Involved than just success in a particular tight. Every
one of the four is now pursuing further education, voluntary work or
full-time work) sometimes a combination of the three.
Diane is working at the Citizen's Advice Bureau in Speke as an advice
worker.
"Thi* is our doctor'*, and you know when you go for a
prescription and the doctor's is closed, this is where you
have to talk through to order your prescription* and
thing*.■
Spoko
H'e/nsn's
Health
Action
Group
"We formed Speke Hoeen'i Health Action Group at a public
rearing which we thought va* good, we got about (0 odd
people to that. X* voted on coassittee neober*, we thought
that wa* quite nerve racking, we'd never actually had to
stand up at a public rearing and Introduce ourselves, but
. we did, with the support of each other we eanaged it."
"We wrote hundreds and hundred* of letter* and all
Fudgin'* finger* were worn to the bona typing these
letter* and we sent rhea out to everyone. Ha didn't get a
lot of replies to start off with, the doctor's never ever
replied to us. He kept them informed a* much as we could,
we sent them everything that was thl* meeting, so wa had a
meeting one night in the probation office, we'd have
another meeting at the school, we'd have another meeting wherever we thought it was convenient for people to meet,
we'd try to have a meeting there to see if it would bring
more people in."
They visited other health centres in the area, so that they could plan
just what they wanted.
■when we saw Prince’s Psrk Health Centre and wbst was on
offer, the treatment rooms and everything, and we thought
about what we were putting up with, there was no way we
could continue, I mean, what is wrong with the people of
Speke, why can't they have these things? I mean, in the
end we did get angry and I think that anger carried us
over a lo.t."
Speke
Women'e
HsoIiA
XcKon
Group
"We contacted the paper* and thinga like that and sort of
brought pressure to bear, laying "Look, we're trying to
get thi* Health Centre". It aound* aort of a* if we did
it very eaaily, we didn't, it didn't come naturally to u*,
talking to people, at thi* >tage we were *tlll very, very
*hy. He eventually wrote a letter to the area Health
Authority, **ying that Speke needed a Health Centre and
they wrote back laying that they didn't think Speke needed
a Health Centre and that they thought Speke wa*, in their
word*, adequately covered. And we asked them, eventually,
•Have you seen the doctor*' lurgerle* in Speke?" and it
turned out that they hadn't. So eventually they agreed to
come out the same week to see the facilities on offer, in
Speke. They visited the local clinic, and I still don't
know whether or not they went to see the doctors'
surgeries, but with'in a week we got a letter laying that
ye*, we could have the money and we were going to have a
Health Centre."
Diane
from tho
Women's
Group
"I've found I've got more confidence in myself, I’m able
to talk to people in authority which I would never have
dreamt of doing before. I'm actually questioning our
doctors, what kind of drugs they're giving you, if you
need them, whereas you just wouldn't dream of doing that
prior to becoming Involved in both the Health Centre and
the Self-Help Group."
It is hard enough for well established communities to organise for
change, the problems facing newcomers, especially inmigrants from
thousands of miles away, can make them feel very Isolated and helpless.
Emlgrle
from
Czechoslovakia
"I came nineteen years ago from Czechoslovakia with my
husband and three children. We had no money and all we
had was two suitcases with new clothing so that we can
survive the Canadian winter, as we were told. It felt
very lonely to come here, especially when also you don't
know the language. I know that I was writing pages of
letters and I think those letters really saved my sanity.
I also remember that once when I was walking on the
street* one of the neighbours just passed me and she
stopped and smiled at me and said, you know, something
like "How are you?" and I felt so touched that anyone
cared how I am that I just started to cry and cry."
Recognising the lack of community facilities, especially for young
families* Marie set up the Delta childcare network. It Is staffed by
young mothers, working together to help meet the needs of women like
themselves.
There are many different types of local action, but each share some
common ground, the need to protect the people In the community, or to
strengthen the neighbourhood, or to build a new one. The goals may be
providing better health facilities, jobs or Improving the environment.
Member of
childcare
network
"...before, because I could call Roselyn up. We all give
our phone numbers to each other and if it's an emergency
or you just want to go to the store, and it's raining or
whatever, then I’ll take in her little girl for her and
she can do what she needs to do."
V"*
Q©
It takes hard work, skills and resources. It often feels like the small
■us" against the huge' them", and of course, local action Is not the
panacea for all problems, nor Is It everybody's cup of tea. The
challenge Is to raise the standard and quality Ute tor all. This
confronts policy makers everywhere, whether In the city or town hall,
workplace or the voluntary sector. They have to find ways of supporting
local action, but they must also Improve the conditions which led to the
problems in the first place.
Woman
from
Wtllor
Stmt
"Healthy and happy, well happiness, as Kate said, Is your
family and your friends and helpful people, and healthy Is
good housing, good schools for your children and a few
bob."
Woman
from
Spokt
"I mean, to say we're just housewives Is a derogatory
term, but that's what we are, we're just ordinary people,
who decided that we wanted something bad enough to kick up
a fuss about It."
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