The politics of a community group

Show notesThe story in this episode is composite, drawn from real events. The identifying details have been changed to protect privacy, but the situations and the political contexts are real. The real-world events the story draws on, full citations, and further reading are below.REAL-WORLD EVENTS REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODECivic participation: theory and traditions- Sherry Arnstein’s 1969 article A Ladder of Citizen Participation, which set out eight rungs of participation grouped into three bands: nonparticipation (manipulation and therapy), degrees of tokenism (informing, consultation, and placation), and degrees of citizen power (partnership, delegated power, and citizen control). It became one of the most cited works in planning theory.- Ella Baker (1903 to 1986), the African-American organiser who worked across the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and whose model of group-centred leadership shaped the participatory-democracy strand of the civil rights movement.- Paulo Freire (1921 to 1997), the Brazilian educator whose 1968 book Pedagogy of the Oppressed introduced conscientization, the development of critical consciousness, into popular education and community organising worldwide.Australia- The green bans, beginning in June 1971 when the New South Wales Builders Labourers Federation, asked by a group of women in the Sydney suburb of Hunters Hill, refused to supply labour for a housing development on Kelly’s Bush, the last bushland remnant in the area.- The conduct of the green bans between 1971 and 1974, with the union placing more than forty bans, each imposed only at the request of a resident group and only after a public meeting demonstrating community support.- The proliferation of resident action groups across Sydney from 1971, numbering around one hundred by 1974, and the formation of the Coalition of Resident Action Groups in 1972 to coordinate their efforts.- The exclusion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people from the franchise. The Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902 effectively barred most Aboriginal people from the federal vote. The Commonwealth Electoral Act 1962, which received assent on 21 May 1962, extended the federal vote to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Queensland in 1965 was the last state to grant the state franchise, and compulsory enrolment followed in 1984.- Research on community consultation in Australian local government documenting the consistent under-representation of renters, younger residents, shift workers, and recent arrivals in council engagement processes.Switzerland- The Swiss system of direct democracy, in which citizens vote several times a year at communal, cantonal, and federal level on concrete questions through referendums and popular initiatives.- The Landsgemeinde, an open-air cantonal assembly with medieval origins in which citizens vote by a show of hands, still practised in the cantons of Glarus and Appenzell Innerrhoden.- The late extension of the franchise to Swiss women. A referendum on 7 February 1971 granted women the federal vote. Appenzell Innerrhoden was the last canton to admit women to cantonal voting, doing so only after the Swiss Federal Court ruled in November 1990 that the exclusion breached the federal constitution.Kenya- Harambee, a Swahili word meaning all pull together, a tradition of community self-help in which residents pool funds and labour to build shared facilities such as schools, clinics, and roads.- The adoption of harambee as a development strategy and as the national motto by Jomo Kenyatta after independence in 1963, and its part in building a large share of the country’s post-independence schools.- The later entanglement of harambee with political patronage, as wealthy figures seeking political office used large donations to harambee fundraising drives to build legitimacy and support.REFERENCES[1] Sherry R. Arnstein, “A Ladder of Citizen Participation,” Journal of the American Institute of Planners 35, no. 4 (1969): 216 to 224, https://doi.org/10.1080/01944366908977225.[2] Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003).[3] Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, translated by Myra Bergman Ramos (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970), first published as Pedagogia do Oprimido (1968).[4] Meredith Burgmann and Verity Burgmann, Green Bans, Red Union: Environmental Activism and the New South Wales Builders Labourers Federation (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 1998); National Museum of Australia, “First Green Bans,” https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/first-green-bans.[5] Meredith Burgmann and Verity Burgmann, Green Bans, Red Union: Environmental Activism and the New South Wales Builders Labourers Federation (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 1998); James Colman, The House That Jack Built: Jack Mundey, Green Bans Hero (Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2016).[6] “Green Bans Movement,” Dictionary of Sydney, https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/green_bans_movement.[7] “The Way to Modern Direct Democracy in Switzerland,” About Switzerland, Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, https://www.aboutswitzerland.eda.admin.ch/en/the-way-to-modern-direct-democracy-in-switzerland.[8] “50 Years of Women’s Suffrage in Switzerland,” In Custodia Legis, Law Library of Congress, 28 April 2021, https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2021/04/50-years-of-womens-suffrage-in-switzerland/.[9] “Harambee, n.,” Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press), https://www.oed.com/dictionary/harambee_n; Philip M. Mbithi and Rasmus Rasmusson, Self Reliance in Kenya: The Case of Harambee (Uppsala: Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, 1977).[10] Joel D. Barkan and Frank Holmquist, “Peasant-State Relations and the Social Base of Self-Help in Kenya,” World Politics 41 (1989); Philip M. Mbithi and Rasmus Rasmusson, Self Reliance in Kenya: The Case of Harambee (Uppsala: Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, 1977).[11] Nicole Brackertz and Denise Meredyth, Community Consultation and the “Hard to Reach”: Concepts and Practice in Victorian Local Government (Hawthorn, Victoria: Institute for Social Research, Swinburne University of Technology, 2005).[12] National Museum of Australia, “Indigenous Australians’ Right to Vote,” https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/indigenous-australians-right-to-vote; Australian Electoral Commission, “Electoral Milestones for Indigenous Australians” (2019).FURTHER READINGCarole Pateman, Participation and Democratic Theory (1970). The foundational modern argument that democratic citizenship is learned by taking part in the institutions of everyday life, not only at the ballot box.Archon Fung, Empowered Participation: Reinventing Urban Democracy (2004). A close study of how devolved decision-making over schooling and policing can work when ordinary residents are given a share of the power.Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision (2003). The definitive biography of Baker and the clearest account of the group-centred organising tradition she built.Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968). The founding text of critical pedagogy and a continuing reference point for popular education and community organising.Meredith Burgmann and Verity Burgmann, Green Bans, Red Union (1998). The standard history of the New South Wales green bans and the resident action movement that worked alongside them.James Colman, The House That Jack Built: Jack Mundey, Green Bans Hero (2016). A biography of the union leader most closely associated with the green bans.Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals (1971). A practical and much-argued-over handbook of community organising from the American tradition.Iris Marion Young, Inclusion and Democracy (2000). A political-philosophical case for why democratic processes have to actively include the perspectives of marginalised groups to count as legitimate.All works, organisations, scholars, legislation, and historical events listed above are real and citable. For any source intended for formal academic or professional writing, direct verification against the original publication or institutional record is recommended.About the hostLiv Roe is a civic and political adviser based in Melbourne. She works with businesses, organisations, and individuals on the political and civic context of their work. Book a consultation at livroe.org. This is a public episode. 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