Mumbai This was a different visit to ACORN’s organizing in Dharavi. In the year since I had been here the Mumbai water & sewer system had implemented their plan to clear away 10 meters on either side of their huge drainage pipes thereby eliminating hundreds of residents and our original offices overlooking the pipes. We now were perched precariously four levels up over the ground level in a slender space running us 9000 rupees per month ($185 USD) with the landlord who shrugged at the fact that we were nonprofit, not caring if we ran a factory for plastics or a recycling and sorting center for our wastepickers. Another 5000 rupees was going to put tar on our corrugated roofing today in order to keep the coming monsoons due this weekend from ruining the castaway books we had in great supply from the recent spring cleaning at the American School where we do recycling. We had also picked up some old desktop computers, but weren’t sure if they would be e-waste or working instruments because our space had already been broken into five times since we relocated. Offers of donated laptops had been deferred until we could solve the problem.
Ironically, only a few blocks away in the last year our partnership with St. Xavier’s, the Jesuit school abutting Dharavi had flourished mightily. We used to have to rent the classrooms for meetings of our members to issue ration cards or do our normal business, but now St. Xavier had opened their arms to our activity. On the weekends their long dirt-and-grass patch field now was the site of our football (soccer) team where volunteer coaches were sorting out 70 or more boys every Sunday for the games. Another group of donors to the ACORN Foundation (India) had come up with four different colors of jerseys for the teams, which were quite a treat as well.
I visited at length with Vinod Shetty, director of ACORN’s work in Mumbai, and the principle of St. Xavier’s. He had gone to school at Marquette University in Milwaukee and had another of his team who had been to Santa Clara in California, so we were able to talk about Jesuits in New Orleans, recent problems in Wisconsin, and how Dwyane Wade was representing Marquette in the NBA Finals. More importantly he walked with us from the field to see how our new Dharavi Project class in English was going with our volunteers. We listened to some of the lesson in the completely packed class teeming with over 50 participants. Only weeks ago the first class had only a bit more than a dozen, but popularity was soaring for the 630 PM session.
Next we waited for the weekly music class and practice of ACORN’s Dharavi Rocks group of a dozen of our kids. The group plays on recycled items that have been part of their livelihoods in Dharavi and because of our partnership with the Blue Frog jazz club we have been asked to open for some of their acts, hosted some great European bands doing concerts in Dharavi, and have been featured in People magazine, MTV, and even a story in the Times of India when Dharavi Rocks played in nearby Pune last weekend. What had been a roar of talking and laughing was transformed into totally focused music once they started the rhythms of this plastic drum circle. Stay tuned to the ACORN International Youtube channel when I get back and we upload the video and music from these sessions, which I guarantee will rock your world. This is hard work but it is what I would call “360 degree community organizing” from livelihood to art and education all done on a shoestring using volunteers, member activity, and money and partnerships where we can get them.
It would be precious without a campaign component, and similarly to the bursary campaign ACORN Kenya is running the lack of implementation of the Right to Education (RTE) Act may allow us to campaign up to scale. The DNA- Daily News and Analysis for 6/13/12 indicated that the State of Maharashtra is threatening to “derecognize” 32000 schools, both public and private, for not having set aside 25% of their admissions for poor children. The response from many of the schools quoted was simply pathetic, claiming that they had received no applications, even while admitting that they had not created an applicant procedure. Vinod also could put the lie to that when he listed the schools where our members had applied and were told that they were “already full.”
Organizing like the work that ACORN is doing in Dharavi and other slums around India is going to be knocking at the door of many of these schools and the groundwork is being laid now right in our own office and recycling center and at night in the halls of St. Xavier, and our members will not be denied.
