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Watering the Grassroots: a Strategy for Social //WATERING THE PIECE GRASSROOTS: A STRATEGY FOR SOCIAL THINK MOVEMENT SUPPORT Mary Joyce ([email protected]) for the engine room • Supporting the grassroots of social movements is a pragmatic means of strengthening social accountability. • Removing risks to the safety and legitimacy of grassroots actors, as well as distortion of participation incentives, activities, and aims, is the first step. • Grassroots organizations can be identified by a range of indicators, which demonstrate that those directly affected by an injustice are empowered to change it. • The grassroots are diffuse, decentralized, and informal. Supporting them requires a mix of financial and service support provided directly and through intermediaries, aimed at both organizations and individuals. Introduction employee of a transparency INGO: This is the final piece in a three-part “People will say, okay, South Africa has a series initiated by the Transparency and very low level of budget transparency. We’re Accountability Initiative’s TALEARN working going to lobby for the government to improve group on social movements and state that. The limitation of all of that is… those accountability. The first two pieces in this improvements aren’t immediately put to use in series can be found here and here. Both the service of accountability…. This type of ‘build this Think Piece and the preceding one are it and they will come’ approach, we’re learning based on a literature review and 18 qualitative very often, if you build it they won’t come. So interviews with a range of funders, INGO staff, we’ve oriented our work to come in behind and activists from around the world. social movements.” The first Think Piece in this series critiqued His organization found that a “real-life current methods for funding transparency demand of government,” transmitted by and accountability. The second described an a social movement, was necessary for change. under-recognized social accountability actor: No one will fight harder for the social movement. This final Think Piece transparency and accountability suggests supporting social movements by than those that suffer most from its The grassroots are the core of any resourcing the grassroots and describes a absence. means of doing so. social movement. They are its engine. Why Support the Grassroots? Challenges in Supporting the Grassroots 1 Transparency and accountability begin not Yet supporting the grassroots is often easier with academics, funders, or policy experts, said than done. People who are directly but with people directly affected by systemic affected by systemic injustice are likely injustice. These people are the grassroots. affected by multiple injustices and multiple marginalizations. They may lack access to the Supporting the grassroots is not . Noted one educational resources necessary to attain an sentimental, but pragmatic A movement is a network of organizations. In 1 movement there are many organizations.* movement think tank formal advocacy membership based loosely affiliated NGO organization group Within those organizations, individuals directly affected by injustice are the grassroots. An organization is grasstoots to extent that it includes and empowers those directly affected. *The diagram does not includes all the organizational types that can exist within a movement. It provides examples of common organizations. advanced degree in management or policy. is to curtail activities which endanger They may lack access to the legal services grassroots actors. These are risks to necessary to incorporate an NGO. They may safety and legitimacy and distortions of lack the foreign language skills necessary participation, activities, and aims. to confidently present their work to funders • Though Identify Grassroots Actors: from abroad, especially in writing. Because of the grassroots will look different across their marginalization, the grassroots are often different causes and contexts, this inaccessible to funders. Think Piece proposes seven grassroots indicators, all of which signify that those Funders most often support organizations directly affected are empowered. structurally similar to themselves;technocratic, • Once the highly specialized, Anglophone. It is hardest Find a Support Path: for them to support the grassroots: dispersed, grassroots has been identified, the fluid, educated by experience, deeply familiar Think Piece discusses direct and indirect with local context, but not with bureaucratic methods of providing service and practice. Yet these are the people who will financial support. fight the hardest for change. Remove Risks and Distortions The grassroots is a continuum, not a binary. The most thoroughly grassroots organizations are composed uniquely of individuals directly Risks to Safety affected by an injustice. Yet some more elite organization also take care to empower those The first step in effectively supporting the directly affected through consultation and grassroots is to remove practices that are facilitation of self-advocacy. The funder’s harmful to them. Of these harmful practices, challenge is to the first priority should be avoiding risk get resources as close to . This Think to the physical safety of activists. Ben the grassroots as possible Piece will describe how. Gharbia describes multiple examples of Middle Eastern activists interrogated after The Steps to Grassroots Support participating in foreign-funded technology trainings in supposedly safer settings abroad. This Think Piece proposes a three-step “[T]echniques of data encryption on which process for supporting the grassroots. activists and bloggers are trained won’t be of 2 any help in front of torture, detention, and • : Following the principle ” he warns. Remove Risk the fabrication of charges, of “first, do no harm,” the first suggestion To prevent these threats, funders must have challenge questions of legitimacy by an excellent understanding of the political "articulat[ing] a principled, positive environment in which transparency and affirmation of the role of foreign funding." accountability activists operate. This expertise Yet these public relations efforts should can come from local partner organizations. , and only be taken on with extreme care It can also come from local consultants after consulting with local partners. For savvy brought on as risk advisers. Without this governments seeking to weaken civil society, due , it is safer for the grassroots if these defences could be repackaged as diligence funders do not become involved. confirmation of foreign meddling. Risks to Legitimacy Distortions of Participation Funder support can also damage the Even when foreign funding is not being used legitimacy of individuals and organizations in rhetorical and legal attacks on civil society, they fund. Civic space is closing in many it can negatively affect activist behaviors parts of the world and funders have become and bring bad actors into the movement. enmeshed in the conflict. Foreign funding Ben Gharbia details the harmful effects of has become a pretext for numerous forms American funding to Middle Eastern activists. of persecution by national governments. His frustration is palpable. In countries like India and Russia, foreign funding has been used as an excuse to “The informal, decentralized and generic nature of shut down NGOs or attack them in the native… activism is being altered by the mechanism press. Noted one foundation employee with of funding and its bureaucratic procedures with expertise in South Asia, “In the current Indian a final result of…recruiting a horde of charlatans context… a movement can be who are claiming to be ‘activists’ but are out there accused of by the government, to with zero being a foreign agent make a career for themselves and then the legitimacy of that particular interest in activism or in the struggle for human movement can be compromised.” These rights.” types of attacks have also been used to prosecute individual activists in the courts, A Nigerian study by de Sardan found that, such as the case of Russian opposition after foreign funding, “[a]t local levels, activist Alexei Navalny. the reserves of volunteerism and dutiful community service” gave way to “an almost Foreign funding can reduce legitimacy even universal hunger for ways to access different when the movement actor is not slandered forms of ‘development rent.’” “If you must pay by the government. According to a 2012 activists, don’t overdo it,” implore Stephan, study by Bano, community-based groups Lakhani, and Naviwala. Rather, “[a]ssistance in Pakistan that received donor funding must be structured so that it does not create… because of a belief that above-market salaries or overgenerous lost public trust staff were motivated by profit rather than budgets” that might attract Ben Gharbia’s the cause. This lack of legitimacy can make charlatans. it harder for a grassroots organization to tap into local resources, such as volunteers Distortions of Aims and Activities and donations. Ironically, foreign funding can crowd out local funds, making the Funding can also alter the aims and activities organizations more vulnerable. of grassroots actors, functionally co-opting them. Notes McAdam, “destructive forces The solution to these threats is again due of… co-optation, and the dissolution of diligence and informed consent. After indigenous support tame the movement funders have done their own contextual by encouraging insurgents to pursue research, they should explain these risks to only those goals acceptable
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