Nairobi

Normally, foreigners are pushed into hiring a car for the day, which sometimes makes sense if you are going a million places and are off the matatu routes, but even at $20 to $25 per day is ridiculous compared to a 100 Kenya Shillings (ks) charge from Kenyattta Market to Korogocho for example, which is about $1.25 USD.  So as a grassroots operation of poor people from around the world, if we could figure out the matatus, we were going for it, so that’s the way we rolled this trip in Nairobi, and I have to say, I loved them.

As transportation, they are just that.  A seat by the window allows you to breathe even more of the fumes of the road, but gives you a breeze.  A bench seat is a bench seat, so let’s not get hung up on comfort

I got a kick out of the cultural footnotes the matatus would provide.  Some would have bible sayings on the back, one had a picture of Osama bin Ladin.  Many were dedicated to elaborate paintings of rap stars from around the world complete with an inside sound system at full blast playing the tunes of the stars.  Beyonce, Ice Cube, 50 cent, all had their matatus in vivid colors.  British soccer clubs and American football teams were well represented.  Some would simply have a collection of disconnected slogans painted all over.  There is a deep rebellious and radical streak in the matatu culture which I found, frankly, very hopeful for the future for organizing.

My other favor world bus transportation has been the collectivos of Buenos Aires which all began as private outfits and now have been municipalized to run  various and sundry neighborhood routes.  They were identified by their colors as well and their numbers of course, but are strictly staid affairs when compared to the matatus.

Sometimes on our way to Korogocho, the matatu would simply stop a mile or so from the end of the route, preferring to head back.  There was no protest.  It was the way of things.  One day, the matatu decided to veer off in another direction closer to the Mathare slum, so we had to take a third matatu to make it the few more kilometers to our Korogocho destination.  No harm, no foul.  The new matatu driver didn’t charge us.  The only collections are on the full ride customers.  There may be whim involved, but the wheel of justice is still rolling.

I wouldn’t try this at home so to speak or without being able to go with our organizers or get them to point the way her and there to get me where needed, but it was a wonderful experience.

If there’s one thing that organizers like me believe like life, it is that conflict is necessary to clarify positions and allow a full grafting and binding in strength from previous wounds. The leaders had been calling the organizers throughout the evening, saying they were good now, they were satisfied, they were ready to do something different. In organizing the meeting yesterday was “testing,” and it’s always “pass/fail.” In this case we had passed by standing firm that we were a poor peoples’ organization run by dues that wouldn’t buy or be bought. It was going to be a new day.

There were many highlights to the meeting, but besides what is now the Kenya ACORN chant of Mabadiliko Sasa, there was one beautiful sight for all of ACORN International. I was asked to say something at the end of the program, and I gave greetings from the other countries of ACORN International. Before I began listing the countries one by one, when I finished the word “greetings!” the entire crowd raised their hands and waved back. They were waving to their brother and sister ACORN members around the world. I wished I had that scene on a movie camera!

The meeting left the leaders and organizers delighted. The crowd had been good and spirited. There was no outbreak about our not serving food and drink. Furthermore it was a break forward in terms of respect: 9 other nonprofits showed up and wished ACORN Kenya well, the Chief and two assistant chiefs came, spoke, and offered support, and in so many ways we “arrived” finally in Korogocho.

One of the traditions for a new organization’s founding is to plant a tree to measure the progress and growth of both the tree and the organization. On the Chief’s compound in the center of Korogocho we planted 5 trees. I got to plant the first to honor ACORN International, which was a special treat. Someone representing youth planted the second. A young radio broadcaster for the Korogocho FM station planted the third. The assistant chief the fourth, and the Chief the final tree within sight of her front door.

This is hard, dry ground. Trees are few and far between. The hole was three or four times the dept of the roots on the seedling to plant more dirt and to fill the hole with gallons of water. The members are right. Building an organization, just like growing a tree, is going to be hard here, but we are well off in the right direction after the launch.

Mabadiliko Sasa!

Although I had been in Korogocho before, this was an opportunity to get better grounded in the two villages where we were organizing, so I trudged along happily across the environmental catastrope our members call home, which included open sewer flowing through the alleys, mud-packed houses dark and falling apart, open garbage pits that served as hog wallows, no potable water, selling coals for burning, and so on. Several visits were with adults and children painfully, and often inexplicably, ill and desperate for attention in an area promised a hospital never built.

Hours later the more interesting discussion came amid pointed questions from some of the committee members on the issue of resources. In the beginning the question was not put to me so clearly, but as the questioning continued, the charm of the request was impossible to mask. The going NGO rate for people to go to meetings has moved as high as 200 Ks (more than $2.50 USD). As a membership dues based organization, we were adamant that we did not, could not, and would never pay people to come to meetings. The venality and patronizing nature of NGO practice in the slums and elsewhere in Eastern Africa makes this heresy, so it was no surprise to hear someone of the more than 25 officers raise it again. But, it was hard to cut the head off of this snake, because it was so deeply ingrained. It gave the meeting a bad taste. The more this part forced the “pay-to-play” issue and the more I along with the organizers said no, the more some people were testy and unhappy. We were walking new ground in Korogocho.

The polarization came to the point of debating whether to cancel the meeting. It turned out that six weeks ago the leadership had budgeted 70,000 Ks (uncomfortably close to $1000 USD) for the meeting unknown to me. They were disappointed on the eve of the event that they had not been able to raise money anywhere near such a level so all of this was tinged with frustrations as well.

One of our local group chair, Mr. Daniel, finally got up to close the meeting, said it was a good exchange, and that the meeting in his view was going forward as planned. He asked the assembled officers to say yes, if they agreed. Almost to my surprise, the yesses resounded in the room. Perhaps we had finally really scaled an important wall in Nairobi.

I left unsure though. After the meeting we debriefed for a minute with some of the leaders with Sammy defining it as a successful day. The language was more Swahili than English, but it became clear when Sammy and David drew both chairs together, that the question of pay had come up again. To build a real organization with power in Nairobi slums, we are going to have to put a stake in this devil over and over it seems!

Nairobi

In the whole of Korogocho of 350,000+ people there are no public health or hospital facilities.   There are a couple of private, small clinics, but that’s it.  In our conversation though a public hospital had been approved by the national government and funded over the last 5 years with regular renewals.  The land supposedly has even been built.  Where then is the hospital?  Somehow this was a campaign that was starting after what normally would have seemed the hardest fights:  winning authorization and winning resources.   Here we were stuck in endless conversations, when what the campaign clearly lacked was a little final research and some huge actions holding politicians and others accountable.  Why was this so hard?

We talked about “slum upgrading” being financed by Italy and Kenya for Korogocho.  David commented that there was a lot of tension which was causing delay.  Turned out the landlords had issues because though they DID NOT OWN THE LAND since it was government property, they were used to charging rent for rough shacks and didn’t want to lose out when the governments built decent housing which also allowed folks to own their units after 10 years of payments.  We spent a long time discussing how a membership organization only finds tension when there is a split within its membership.  How could the organization not stand fully with the tenants?

The organizers had found an interesting handle in so called “bursary scholarships” that only worked for poor children coming from public schools, yet it was well known that many were getting scarce scholarship shillings because of political involvement and a lack of transparency.  Benefit campaign, anyone?  Need a scholarship flyers!  Here we come.

All the right work, just too much talk and not enough action!

San Pedro Sula

Suyapa Amador, ACORN International’s head organizer in Mexico, had put together a lot of different meetings so that we could assess whether to it was practical to partner with other organizations, hire organizers, and open and office in Honduras.  Sitting around the table before opening of a restaurant owned by the mayor of Villanueva, a town of 100,000 some 20 kilometers from San Pedro Sula and enjoying a delicious parrillada with her, it was surprising to hear her concern that there was simply no public health facilities that were accessible anywhere in her district.  Passionate conversation around the table revealed that the only public hospital in fact in the whole region serving a huge part of the country was an overburden and inaccessible facility in San Pedro Sula.  If you were rich there were three or four “doctor’s” hospitals, but many died just trying to get to the one public operation.

In the evening as television sets all blared a state ceremony for the newly elected politicians following the controversial election and undemocratic coup of the elected President, we were meeting with more than a dozen men and women who were union organizers and leaders in San Pedro Sula and the neighboring districts in the evening at the Gran Hotel Sula in the center of the city which joined the Cathedral and other landmarks abutting the central square and park.  I listened to one expansive story after another about the difficulties faced in organizing workers, which is common whenever union folks get together, but there was a different twist to these discussions.  None of them were really talking about problems that their own unions faced, as much as they were talking about the terrible working conditions, low wages, and constant abuse for workers in the maquilas, the ubiquitous fabrication plants that filled the city and countryside.   Suyapa had them speak one after another.  Many told of strikes.  Others of the young women forced to take birth control to work there.  Others of injuries and health risks.  All of the fact that none of the workers had any human rights on the job.

It took me a while to finally understand that in Honduras where these brothers and sisters worked with unions, unions had been outlawed in the maquilas in order to attract the foreign capital and work.  Workers could – and did – organize, but the unions they built could not be legally recognized thanks to the Honduran Congress and obviously the stated desire of the maquila operators many of which are from Korea and other countries chasing the work to the bottom.  Here they pay about $250 per month for workers.

To great laughter all of the unionists told long and vivid stories of being redbaited and called communists for simply being union organizers trying to respond to workers who wanted unions.  We all laughed because in that sense there was no difference at least between being in Honduras and being in the United States.

New Orleans

Obviously ACORN International has a lot of experience working and organizing in squatting communities especially in Kenya, India, and Peru especially.  I had even read the book, which I enjoyed and found informative even about areas where we work, although I also thought Neuwirth sometimes drifted a little heavily into a sort of “oh, gee” kind of advocacy about a situation where is primarily driven by necessity and poverty obviously rather than a life style choice.  This piece in the Times walks precariously close to that line as well, but Neuwirth has a solid point and as a rebuilding strategy I think it deserves full attention and support.

In essence why should the Haitian recovery pretend, as we continue to do in New Orleans, that these are simply “temporary” measures while we rebuild to specifications in the bye and bye which directly ensure the opposite of what we intend thereby exiling tens of thousands of New Orleanians who are unable to return.  In Haiti there’s nowhere else to go, though ACORN International members in Santiago, Dominican Republic report that they are already seeing families pushing to unite with relatives working – as undocumented immigrants in low wage jobs – all over the Dominican Republic.

People are going to have to live where they stand and settle there for years.  That means long term refugee-style encampments like the Organizers’ Forum witnessed along the Burmese border and are common in many other situations.  This may not be exactly what Neuwirth is advocating, but why not actually make part of the recovery strategy and rebuilding plan one that supports long term squatter communities with real infrastructure and resources that ameliorates the normal hand-to-mouth reality of the squatting homeless?  For a chance why can’t we embrace reality rather than forcing people to live in total misery and adapt to it for years, if not decades, while we pretend we are hard to work on a real solution?

Squatting is a hard way to live and requires hard work to survive, but removing the extralegal restraints and immediately supporting with raw building materials, potable water, and electricity in the Haitian climate could be a workable solution with a real partnership between people and the rebuilding resources.

New Orleans

A website called “Blogging Innovation,” is worth sharing in that regard to give folks a better context of what is being said and accomplished (I’ve highlighted the nice props Vyoma Kapur, the author of this piece gives to ACORN International.):

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Mumbai’s Innovation Hub

by Vyoma Kapur

Innovation in the developing world, as many people may tend to think, comes from either large conglomerates or small entrepreneurial communities which have had the good fortune of venture backing. Especially in a free market economy, such as India’s, innovation is often thought of as the mandate of thriving businesses equipped with the know-how.

In Mumbai, India’s economic powerhouse, the real social innovation is coming from the grassroots. These are people, who despite having little, are the answer to Mumbai’s mounting waste management problem.

The dwellers of the Dharavi slum, the largest in Asia, have created a massive recycling industry. Invaluable for the social impact it has created, the slum’s existence is supported by high-strung officials and ordinary civilians alike. Using simple machines in their home factories, these dwellers are recycling anything from plastic bottles and metal cans to paper and cotton, saving the city from the wrath of its own garbage. Over 80% of the plastic waste of Mumbai is recycled in the Dharavi slum.

As the consumerism of Mumbai’s upper and middle classes disposes of thousands of tons of waste material everyday, energetic young men of Dharavi sift through piles of trash to gather anything with the potential of being recycled. Different types of junk is given a new life and then sold for a bargain. With support from non-profit organizations such as ACORN International, rag-pickers are taught how to manage solid dry waste.

With an increasing number of micro-entrepreneurs entering the recycling business, this industry has seen an astonishing level of organic growth. The slum produces a jaw-dropping $1.3 billion worth of recycled output every year. There are approximately 400 recycling units, and the number is increasing every month.

Spreading across approximately 174 hectares, this slum is like any other. It lacks food and proper sanitation and is rife with squalor. For a few hours everyday, some areas of the slum are supplied water and electricity. Despite making only a fraction of the salaries earned by their counterparts in more developed areas of Mumbai, many of these dwellers are finally finding their way out of poverty through the huge demand for their services. Needless to say, environmentalists are in full praise of this green industry, a rarity in the hustling cites of India.

Having spent a few years in India, I find this commendable. I have not seen the Dharavi slum, however; I’ve seen many other slums, just like those depicted in Slumdog Millionaire. That slum dwellers could become social entrepreneurs within their own capacity to fight for survival never crossed my mind.

The Dharavi example made me wonder; do we always need a team of experts and comprehensive research data to innovate? Is it not about solving the problems in front of us and seeking ways to improve what is defined and traditional? To the Dharavi dwellers, the waste piled up around their homes was not a problem, it was an opportunity. They became rag-pickers and set up mini factories with whatever little they had. In time, they turned Dharavi from being Mumbai’s biggest headache to one of its greatest assets, setting an example for similar communities around the world.

New Orleans

In Vancouver a young activists, Ajay Puri at the Citizen Wealth event the other night briefed me on their activities throughout the area with great enthusiasm.  Luckily, I was not caught totally off guard because ACORN India’s union of ragpickers had also agreed to join participate in the 350 actions from Dharavi in Mumbai.

And, did so in fine form!   ‘Dharavi ragpickers seek recognition‘

Once you click on the link you will see 350 spelled out on the banner in plastic pieces that our members recently recycled and can read Vinod Shetty’s (ACORN India’s director in Mumbai) comments on all of this as well.

The same action and banner was also caught on video in Dharavi itself on this piece:   Dharavi’s Day of Action against Global Warming

Just a small example of Community Organizations International / ACORN International doing our part in this important effort, and this doesn’t even count all of the “Live Green” work we are doing through ACORN Canada in Toronto!

Mumbai

ACORN India has support for  the development of three community organizations in different sections of Dharavi, largely along the drainage pipes running from the slum into the old mangrove swamps that remind any visitor that all of Mumbai is a series of islands linked by bridges in this huge city.  Most of these areas where locations where the ragpickers we have been organizing are living and working.  Regardless, for the purpose of this conversation, these people are the metaphor for the poor of the world:  they are invisible to the surveys and census counters.

Many of our people are new migrants from inside India largely and in some cases from Bangladesh, drawn to the city in search of livelihoods.  Slumlords have created shacks and shelter of sorts where they pay rents, but all of this is informal, so records which would force our folks to be seen and not just stumbled over, don’t help prove the case.  We have to win the right to be seen and heard in Mumbai.

Inside Dharavi some families have lived for decades and actually have some records of their property.  The problem is for the tenants.  There may be records on the ground floor, but the surveyors ignore and do not count the tenants living on the upper floors in one room after another.

Mumbai sees itself as a world class city of the future.  The aspirations are palpable.

The poor are going to have to force them to walk that talk or prove that this is what it seems:  another land grab based on people removal.  This fight is an old one, but it’s not over, until it’s won.

Delhi

On our informal worker projects the consensus was that we needed to upgrade our efforts to create a union of hawkers especially in some of the newer developing market areas where there are opportunities and organizational vacuums.  The relative stability of hawkers, their accessibility, and their ability to support the dues structure make increasing the organization there a good counterweight to the more marginal unions of waste pickers that we have concentrated on in 2009.  This is such a classic problem in low wage union organizing where relatively better waged members are needed to support more marginal and contingent members, even in the United States, where within a Local 100 it takes our public school workers in Houston and state workers in Arkansas to balance our garbage workers in Dallas and New Orleans and our nursing home workers in Shreveport.

Finally, the Delhi organizers are committed to building the community organizing side of ACORN India.  Most of our work has concentrated in East Delhi.  A large 10 lahk (1M) population labor colony in the northeast nearby called Burari seems the most promising area for us to build the base.  This is going to get exciting!

Budget is always hard, and these are hard times, but within the new COI/ACORN International framework of 50-50 shares between internal and external funds development, a new plan was embraced after long soul searching and discussion that left us all with significant goals to meet, but with the confidence that we could do it as well.  The organizers believed that by signing up two to three members per organizer per day and then using the dues and special appeals, they could raise their half of the budget.

It felt good to get there, and once plan starts hitting the streets, 2010 could be the breakthrough year in Delhi!