Fascinating article in the New York Times about the norther area of Somalia where people have built peace in an incredibly turbulent region by mixing indigenous governance with democratic participation, using elders and tribal leaders to harness attachment to clans AND to transcendent principles such as independence and peace. Some quotes:
“You can’t be donated power,” said Dahir Rayale Kahin, the president of the Republic of Somaliland, which has long declared itself independent from the rest of Somalia. “We built this state because we saw the problems here as our problems. Our brothers in the south are still waiting – till now – for others.”
…
Its leaders, with no Western experts at their elbow, have devised a political system that minimizes clan rivalries while carving out a special role for clan elders, the traditional pillars of Somali society. They have demobilized thousands of the young gunmen who still plague Somalia and melded them into a national army. They have even held three rounds of multiparty elections, no small feat in a region, the Horn of Africa, where multiparty democracy is mostly a rumor. Somalia, for one, has not had free elections since the 1960s.
…
Somaliland, like Somalia, was awash with weapons and split by warring clans. Their first step was persuading the militiamen to give up their guns – a goal that still seems remote in the south. They moved slowly, first taking the armed pickups, then the heavy guns and ultimately leaving light weapons in the hands of the people. Again, this stood in contrast to the south, where in the early 1990s thousands of American marines and United Nations peacekeepers failed to put a dent in the clan violence.
“We had a higher purpose,” said Abdillahi M. Duale, Somaliland’s foreign minister. “Independence. And nobody in the outside world was going to help us get there.”
…
But the one issue that unites most Somalilanders is recognition. Somaliland has its own money, its own flag, its own national anthem and even its own passport.
“And we have peace, a peace owned by the community,” said Zamzam Adan, a women’s rights activist. “You’d think in this part of the world, that would count for something.”
[tags]somalia, somalialand[/tags]
Ethan Zukerman is blogging from the TED conference. THe opening keynote was from Carolyn Porco who showed this amazing picture of Saturn eclipsing the Sun. Ethan write about the moon Enceladus:
More amazing is Enceladus, a much smaller moon, about the tenth of the size of Titan. She shows Enceladus as if it were hovering over Britain (it’s not a threat, she promises” – the moon is roughly the size of England and Wales. It’s got a white, fractured surface lined by geological and tectonic activity.
The amazing part of Enceladus is the South Pole, where these white canals are lined with green – they’re much warmer than the rest of the planet and are rich in organic material. There are jets of fine icy particles flowing out in space, feeding a plume that goes thousands of miles into space above the surface of the planet. These jets suggest that there’s liquid water under the ground on Enceladus, which leads to a planetary trifecta – excess heat, liquid water and organic material, which could be an environment suitable for living organisms.
Porco ends with an extraordinary image – a total eclipse of the sun from the other side of Saturn. What’s most extraordinary, in my mind, is that the haze around the rings comes from those icy particles coming from Enceladus, particles that might represent liquid water, the potential for life, and the strong chance that there could be lots of worlds in the galaxy capable of supporting life.
You can follow along with TED at the TED blog and elsewhere.
I was in Victoria Tuesday and Wednesday and, in addition to working, found out a few other things about my regular routine there:
- Tuesday’s there is an Irish session (with some other tunes) at the Bent Mast Pub in James Bay. It’s a very friendly session, and a nice social scene. My new friend Jonathan took a few pictures of our tijme together on Tuesday including the one above of me. we even had a dancer join us.
- The best place for lunch on the whole planet bar none is daidoco. It is a little Jaanese place tucked into Nootka Court on Courtney Street. Yesterday I had a beautiful tuna don bowl. The tuna is PERFECT. Seared for a second and then thinly sliced and served over rice dressed with teriyaki sauce. I also had the most amazing little salad with grilled slamon chunks, onion and apple served on a small patty of mashed potato. That description deosn’t do it justice.
- Mirage Cafe on Goverment Street has a great espresso, as good as Cafe Macchiato around the corner. The Blue Crab restaurant at the Coast Hotel where I stay, although much vaunted for it’s seafood menu, does not know how to make an espresso. More on Victoria and Vancouver Island cafes.
- The cherry blossoms are out, and the streets of James Bay are pungent with their scent.
[tags]victoria, daidoco[/tags]
-
ParticipatoryBudgeting.org is a companion site to the book, Militants and Citizens, and a general resource site on participatory budgeting.
-
This page contains papers, links, and other information about research and other projects related to participatory budgeting that are being developed throughout the world.
-
Articles and books in English, Spanish and Portugese
-
Including some great fortnightly 2 hour mixes. From the host of Ultima Thule
-
Ton on patterns
-
Some thoughts on Open Space, unconferenceing and action planning
-
Jon husband on why Open Space is more than unconferencing
Openly musing today on wondering what it might look like for participatory budgeting to be deployed for an Aboriginal governance authority responsible for child and family services.
The work we are doing on Vancouver Island is about building the capacity of the community to be the owners of the child and family services in their communities. We are about to do an Art of Hosting training here with 40 or so community members to build the leadership capacity of the local communities, but I was thinking today, after having dinner last night with my friend Donna Morton, who knows much about these things, that participatory budgeting might be a cool thing to try.
Participatory budgeting is a deeply democratic process of having citizens use deliberative dialogue to set budgets for the ervices that affect them. It has it’s deepes community of practice in Brazil, where the cities of Porto Alegre and Sao Paolo have pioneered the use of the process. It has since spread to many places around the world.
I know there is a small movement of people here in British Columbia interested in the process, and one councillor on my island, Lisa Barrett, tried to introduce t as a practice on Bowen Island. She was met with too much reticence to pursue it at the time, although it sems like at some level and over some longer period of time democratizing public budgeting may be an inevitable move especially in municipal governments.
So I’m looking for some expertise among people near and far who have used this process especially in the non-profit world, or even better, in the quasi-governmental world of school board, health authorities and the like.
My main inquiry at this point is around how you have the conversation with the people that control the purse strings in a way that invites them to share power. I was talking to my friend Tuesday Ryan-Hart this morning as well, who works in the social services sector in Columbus Ohio and she gifted me with a great question to use to invite a conversation about this process. She was talking about how easy it is to talk a good line about sharing power – and in still-semocratic North America, there are many places where people are able to participate. Many of these forums however are shallow if they don’t tie the exercise of that shared power to shared responsibility and benefit. Tuesday’s insight was that it makes sense to talk to people who are already open and who already believe that sharing is the right thing to do and then ask “Where can we share power that results also in shared benefits?” That is a way to talk about how to include the voices of clients for example in the structuring of the budgets that affect their lives and it helps us get at what Tuesday called “what we don’t know we don’t know.” It’s a brilliant little question.
So, friends, where can you point me for people that have had experiences using participatory budgeting in the social services sectors anywhere in the world?
PS. Here are some links I uncovered about participatory budgeting in a quick scan around the web:
Porto Alegre Participatory budgeting virtual library
Articles and books in English, Spanish and Portugese
Participatory Budgeting Project — Resources
This page contains papers, links, and other information about research and other projects related to participatory budgeting that are being developed throughout the world.
participatorybudgeting.org
ParticipatoryBudgeting.org is a companion site to the book, Militants and Citizens, and a general resource site on participatory budgeting.
Participatory budgeting tag at del.icio.us
[tags]participatory+budgeting, democracy[/tags]