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2.2
Organizing for Change and Revisiting Organizing Strategies |
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The
orchestration of change will be only as good as our understanding
of the connections and linkages between seemingly different but
uniformly coercive and anti-poor people/country policies enacted
in the name of controlling immigration, conserving the environment,
stressing the negative role of population growth, and propelling
a lop-sided development. Each one of these policies [coming at different
junctures across space and time] deflects attention from the real
forces destroying the environment, our livelihoods and therefore
our lives. The complex nature of the issues involved, the different
levels at which they need to be dealt with [for example, from the
scene of action on the ground to the body involved in policy making;
the latter could be within the country or outside], the range of
people that need to be brought together [not just segments of the
population but also personnel such as doctors, lawyers, environmentalists,
etc.,] - all these imply the need for continued alertness, preparedness,
information sharing and strategizing, which in turn renders networking
imperative. Lessons learnt from extant and/or existing forms of
resistance to coercive and exploitative policies need to be center-staged
so that their potential for up-scaling across other groups and regions
can be explored.
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Strategizing,
building and re-building movements for transformation while imperative
is increasingly complex. To enumerate some of the contradictions:
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- Reproductive
rights language of the women's movements has become official language
in the 1990s. How have we dealt with issues of 'co-option', 'collaboration'
and 'autonomy'?
- The notion
of 'choice' has always evoked mixed reactions from feminists of
the North and South. However, it was held benignly along with
rights. Now we are confounded with the choice language for sex-selection,
pre-selection and motherhood for postmenopausal women. How do
we conceptualize 'choices' now?
- Identity
politics has given the scope for the articulation of concerns
of 'invisibility', 'marginalization', 'representation', etc. At
this point, how do we explore the possibilities of common agenda
for advocacy, struggles and campaigns.
- Women from
many parts of the world questioned language that homogenized experiences
and universalized 'sisterhood'. Can we now explore the possibility
of evolving global feminist concerns that accommodate and respect
difference and diversity?
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A
dialogue on a number of these questions can facilitate our conceptualization
of strategies for change. Lessons learnt from existing forms of
resistance to coercive and exploitative policies need to be center-staged
so that their potential for up-scaling across other groups and regions
can be explored.
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