Discussion with AFL-CIO Solidarity Center in Nairobi

Nairobi Our annual check-in with the AFL-CIO’s Nairobi based Solidarity Center working in various eastern African countries like Uganda and Tanzania in addition to Kenya underscored my belief that the future of organizing has to be among the growing numbers of informal workers. Talking with director, Rick Hall, the real organizing excitement and accomplishment seems to be found in collective agreements won for floral agricultural workers and important new drives with informal fisherman around Lake Victoria among all of the water-sharing countries.

More worrisome was hearing the continued difficulty in implementing the important improvements in standards that had been established for urban and rural minimum wage rates and in other critical areas like the measures protecting domestic workers. The potential impacts of these measures are huge. As we all talked (the ACORN Kenyan organizers, Paladin Partners, and Solidarity Center staff) it was hard not to think about how door-to-door campaigns might work. When Rick mentioned that he wished they could canvass the middle and upper income neighborhoods distributing the standards and getting signed recognitions from householders to actually pay the minimums and provide the benefits, I found myself telling about the 1978 campaign when I moved back to New Orleans with the Household Workers Organizing Committee when we were forcing compliance with for domestic workers who were just gaining coverage under the Fair Labor Standards Act in the USA in that year and trying to make examples out of employers (the Gambino bakery family in city was our big “shame” target) who were paying way below and not paying the required social security payments. Now more than 30 years later Kenya is ahead of much of the world, and certainly Africa, but still has to move a campaign to make the law come alive.

The other story that was disappointing was hearing the ineffective enforcement program by the Labor Department in Kenya of minimum wage violations. Rick and his team were delicate, but it sounded too often like the act of making complaints by workers and unions was seen too frequently as an opportunity by inspectors to cash in from the companies by looking the other way. Seemed like another situation where the “crowdsourcing” tools we were talking about this week in Nairobi might also be effective for our friends and allies in labor unions.

Nonetheless, the story in eastern Africa is still encouraging as a bright light for organizing and organizers fearlessly putting together new and effective strategies and breaking ground for informal worker union. A story from Uganda of a terrible problem in a fish processing center that was the springboard to the fisherman’s organizing where a lockout pushed 400 workers out on the street with 40 active committee members fired when the plant reopened and hundreds of police working for the state and the company against the workers, also reminded all of us why this work is both so hard, and so important.

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!

Nairobi

Read several Mother Jones articles with interest just as we were about to make a decision to cutback somewhere, perhaps there, on the flight to Amsterdam.  One was about the Karen organizers with the Burma Action Center, a group that the Organizers’ Forum had visited with surreptitiously in Mae Sot.  The piece was aged and the author seemed willing to use some names partially because rather than organizing behind the borders in Burma where they were human rights documenters, some of them had migrated over to the United States and elsewhere.  Nonetheless, it was good to see this issue highlighted.  Adam Hothschild in another piece gave a hard look at the Congo and pulled few punches.  Both recommended.

An article in the Times warned me that there is once again a governmental deadlock in Kenya between the President and the Prime Minister.  Cody Valdez from Tufts had discussed a pre-election anti-violence program he and associates were trying to organize.  None of this bodes well and there were reports of blockades in some of the countryside similar to the post-election problems on 2007.  One quote said that it almost took a letter from President Obama to get the two to meet together directly.  Looks like I’m visiting at a good time to begin these conversations and make preparations.

On another note for the Organizers’ Forum, a retired and excessively well traveled Dutch couple told me of a six week trip they had taken to southeast Asia that included Vietnam 2 years ago.  They were amazed, and I was surprised to hear, that they described Hanoi as lovely and still with many signs of its former French colonial masters in the architecture and ambiance.  They – and I – had assumed it had all been bombed to smithereens, but they found no signs of it.  Ho Chi Minh City (nee Saigon) they described as “modern.”

As always a learning adventure on the listening post.