Society & Culture – Pike & Hurricane

Christiana – A Wonderland come true?

Runa Ziegler — Wed, 27 Oct 2021 15:46:09 +0000

What for some appears to be the ultimate dream-come-true wonderland might for others be the worst nightmare. Christiania, a community in Copenhagen, most certainly is one of the places on which opinions differ.

Christiania lies in the heart of Copenhagen – only about 35 kilometers from Malmö University – and used to be a military site. In the 1970s, the area started to be used by a social fringe group and slowly turned into what it is today: an alternative society or so-called “Freetown”. The community is based on anarchism and commits to self-governance; in practice, that means that housing is publicly owned and financed through crowdfunding. The property on which all of Christiania is built is owned by a non-profit organization that is financially supported by people all over Denmark. Because of this, the area is not affected by the speculations of the real estate market and does not partake in the ups and downs of the market economy. The living situation of Christiania’s inhabitants is therefore much more secure in regards to reliable and affordable rent prices.

Even though the property is shared and owned by a non-profit organization, residents are allowed to make any changes they want. They are not only encouraged to develop their own living space but also to partake in upholding the community: In several workgroups – like infrastructure child-care, press office, and economy – the population of Christiana can contribute to current projects and help in advancing the overall project.

Moreover, the Freetown has its own institutions and mechanisms for road works, garbage collection, and providing care-taking for young children. Nevertheless, the inhabitants of Christiania still are a part of Copenhagen’s society as large parts of the community work in Denmark’s capital, go to schools there and use infrastructure that Christiania doesn’t provide – like hospitals. Many of the people who don’t work in Copenhagen work independently in the arts sector.

But the wonderland that Christiania portrays for some people is being more and more disturbed by police raids. A part of its self-governing structure is that Christiania has a liberal attitude towards soft drugs. Despite this fact, the Freetown was left in peace for a long time. This has changed during the past few years and there are rising tensions between the inhabitants and the police.

Apart from this recent development that makes Christiania appear less like an attractive place to live in, another question that remains is how much Christiania is scalable and if it can be a model for other communities. On the one hand, it seems like self-governance is a form of community that is supported by many young people as it gives them the freedom to participate in their community and customize their own space. Besides, the fact that Christiania’s renting prices are independent of the fluctuations of the market prevents gentrification and makes housing affordable – even in Copenhagen.

On the other hand, critics of the project make the point that it might not be economically sustainable for cities to have communities like Christiania.

If you want to dive deeper into the topic and listen to inhabitants of Christiania addressing those issues, ckeck out this YoutTube video.

By Runa Ziegler

Photo credits:

(CC BY 2.0) taken by brooke | Scott Raymond | Flickr

(CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) Christiania, Copenhagen | One of the many creative spaces wi… | Flickr

(CC BY-NC 2.0) Christiania | Christiania, Copenhague, Dinamarca. Más inform… | Flickr

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“I’ve been looking for freedom”, or have I?

Tim Klaenfoth — Wed, 27 Oct 2021 09:29:46 +0000

The German Democratic Republic (GDR) was an ambitious project. Good intentions intertwined with bad ideas and the harsh reality of a global capitalist economy, and what resulted was an economically weak espionage state that ensured “safety” and public peace through all means necessary. Stuck in constant competition with its economically more successful neighbor state, East-Germany had to forcefully fend off migration out West and used heavy propaganda to combat the issue. Nonetheless, rumors of a better future out West reached the masses, and some risked their lives to flee the regime. After the reunion, which was really the Federal Republic of Germany (FGR) overtaking East-Germany, all the crimes committed by the regime came to the light of day, and the West felt reaffirmed, further strengthening a too straightforward, tainted view of the dynamic between the supposed capitalist utopia and backward socialist country.

In later years, however, the real difficulties of the East-West relationship started permeating the one-sided narrative of the Great West and came to show a strong ambivalence towards a newly united Germany, especially among East Germans.

What is nowadays too often excluded from the conversation, is the fact that many people remember their time in socialism fondly. The idea of a “wonderland” out West simply doesn’t hold up for many people, especially considering that after the reunion, the East has been steadily dealing with a weak job market and slowed economic growth.

The following interview presents this complicated emotional state about having left a heavily controlled environment very well. I asked to talk to my former kindergarten teacher, someone who, for obvious reasons, influenced me a great deal. She is a woman that wears her heart on her sleeve, is grounded in the most likable way, and is representative of a generation victim to an emotional turmoil in the years past 1989, which were previously unseen. Feelings of insecurity surfaced for her once the wall came down, and the safety that was once self-evident seemed to fade, whilst at the same time seemingly opening up many new doors, and further complicating the lives of many Germans, who, as a nation, were still smitten by the impact of World War II.

Pike & Hurricane: Just briefly for our readers, who are you?

Schmitt: My name is Regine Schmitt, I am 55 years old, and a kindergarten teacher here in Berlin. I was raised in what used to be East Berlin and was about 21 when the wall came down.

P&H: How would you describe your childhood?

S.: Whew, my childhood was really, how I should say, happy? Yeah. I grew up very sheltered, let me say it that way. I have two sisters, one older, one younger. My parents were both working.

First day of school in East Berlin for Schmitt.

P&H: What did they do for work?

S.: My mother was a kindergarten teacher, too, and my father worked for the “Deutsche Reichsbahn” (East German Railway). I went to school for ten years, as you used to, and then did vocational training to become a kindergarten teacher, which is what I really wanted to do. So yeah, I had a good childhood. We traveled a lot, as my family is originally from the Baltic Sea, and so we always went there over the holidays. I can’t really say anything negative. Especially as a kid, I didn’t really see any of that, all the things that were happening in the world.

P&H: What was your financial situation like?

S.: Nowadays, I would say average, middle class. We weren’t rich, but also not poor. But we had what we wanted, and even had a car, which was really something at that time. Being mobile and all that.

P&H: How did you and your family view the West back then?

S.: We learned a lot in school about how the West is full of Capitalists, people are exploited, and everything is just not as nice as it’s always presented on TV. That’s what I learned in school, you know? I was really scared, well, not scared, but I felt bad for those people. They don’t have it as nice as me, I thought. They don’t grow up in as secure of an environment. They always suggested to us, that we’re being protected from Capitalism and all these bad people.

P&H: Did you experience anything positive about the West?

S.: Yes, they had many things that I didn’t have. Like candy, or when you saw advertisements on TV, you’d see all these toys. All these colorful, bright things, I didn’t have all those. But I also can’t say I missed any of that. I had toys, too, like dolls and stuff. But sometimes you’d see the commercials and think: “Oh wow, that’s pretty”. I also knew that I’d never have those things, so I just took it at face value. That’s fine too, I thought.

P&H: Did you ever think the wall would come down, and you’d be here in West Berlin?

S.: No, no, never. Not even in my dreams. I wasn’t really politically active or anything, like some other people, were. Even when I was around 14, 15, 16, I didn’t really think about these things. Many others were much more engaged with it than I was, but that really wasn’t me. I was happy to graduate, to learn a profession, and that made me content somehow. But I would have never thought of the wall coming down.

Schmitt in front of the Fernsehturm. Once a symbol of communist power; now one of Berlin’s most popular tourist attractions.

P&H: But then it did come down, how did you feel?

S.: Good question. I have thought about this a lot if I’m able to somehow summon those feelings again. I can still remember being at home and I really couldn’t believe it. I wasn’t scared, but I really didn’t know what’s coming next. I grew up sheltered from everything, everything was “good” so far. We didn’t have a lot of things, but we got used to that, so I had no idea what all this meant now. Insecure, is the best way to put it. The next day, when I went to work, I realized that a lot of colleagues didn’t show up anymore. They just left. They left their families behind. There were even cases, where you would only see the father of a child anymore because the mother had left to head out West. And I just thought: “How could they? Just because some wall came down, how could you leave your family like that?” I couldn’t understand it, it was surreal.

P&H: What is your stance on the common stereotype that all East Germans wish the wall was still standing?

S.: No, I really don’t think that way. Sometimes one might say that nonchalantly, but I really can’t say that. Everyone is responsible for their own life, and if I want to live well, I have to act on that. That’s my view on it. Complaining about how everything used to be better, I really wouldn’t do that.

P&H: We just wrapped up German Unity Day in early October, does that day make you feel any kind of way?

S.: No, not at all. Back in East Germany, we had all these “mandatory holidays”, where you’d have to go somewhere, dress nicely in your blue FDJ (Free German Youth) shirt and march, wave, and all that, and I never liked that. I’m really happy those things don’t exist anymore, and now I’m just happy to have a day off. I’m not sad, or anything. I just take it as it is.

By Tim Klaenfoth

Related articles:

Back to the Roots

The Case of the Mistaken Identity

Photo credits:

Featured image: Raphaël Thiémard from Belgium., CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Picture 1 and 2: The pictures stem from the private collection of Regine Schmitt.

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International Women’s Day 2021 & Sweden’s “Shadow Pandemic” – Amnesty International Malmö Student Group

Elena Wasserzier and Maike Hansen — Sun, 25 Apr 2021 09:44:26 +0000

“The virus we don’t talk about – Sweden’s Shadow Pandemic”

Throughout the last fourteen months you have heard about, read, and seen news and content addressing the global Covid-19 pandemic. In reference to March 2021, the month of celebrating Women’s history and International Women’s Day – we will take the opportunity to talk about another public health issue that deserves our attention.

According to the United Nations, we have witnessed a sharp increase of violence against women and girls on a global scale, since the pandemic has started. Due to drastic lockdown measures and restrictions, people were forced to stay at home, some locked in with violent abusers and unable to access support structures. Levels of domestic violence have a tendency to spike when households experience pressure related to insecurities in financial, security and health domains in addition to living conditions that do not allow for enough personal space. This pandemic, currently taking place behind closed doors, was termed ‘shadow pandemic’ by the UN in 2020.

Although most Covid-19 measures were voluntary in Sweden, the pandemic has left its mark. The Google Mobility report shows that people increasingly stayed at and worked from home, while visiting recreational areas less. The unemployment rate also augmented significantly.

So how has the shadow pandemic manifested itself in Sweden? To get more information about this we have talked to Karin Sandell, the head of information at the National Centre for Knowledge on Men’s Violence Against Women (NCK). NCK is a government-commissioned research institution in charge of Kvinnofridslinjen, the Swedish national helpline for women affected by physical, psychological, and sexual violence.

The NCK was able to give us an overview of their recent monitoring and observations in regard to the shadow pandemic in Sweden. Surprisingly, the national helpline did not experience a significant increase of calls since March 2020: “We were prepared that the calls could rise, because of an increase of violence, but we were also prepared that the number of calls might go down because it is more difficult to call when you are at home with a [violent] man. So we were prepared that it could go both ways – and it did neither. It stayed the same throughout the year.” While some women shelters experienced an increase other shelters did not, leading to the concern that women might be prohibited from seeking support in the shelters. However, no supporting data is available yet.

Although there is no concrete evidence at this point that violence against women has elevated, NCK assumes that there is in fact an increase: “We do not have the facts and figures to say exactly how it has affected the women. But what we know from the calls is that there is a big need for help.” NCK is currently waiting for accurate statistics from the criminal statistics bureau. What the statistics will not show however, are the dark figures: “most women do not seek help, they do not tell anyone. They don’t go to the police and they don’t call Kvinnofridslinjen or any other helpline either, so it is so difficult to know for sure how it has been.”

Due to isolation, many women are likely inhibited to reach out, when living at home with a violent partner. NCK assumes that more women will call the helpline to seek support once the pandemic has passed, as similar tendencies were monitored after regular holidays: “Many women wait until the isolation is over. For example, we see after holidays; after Christmas, after Easter breaks, we often have more calls. Because often you can stand it for some time but then when you are back at work and everyday life it is easier to seek help again. So that is what we expect – when life goes back to more normal, we expect to see a rise in the need for help, that more women will seek help.“

Sandell further emphasized that violence against women is an urgent issue in Sweden, with or without the pandemic. Sweden is notoriously perceived and advertised as a role model of gender equality globally, but much work remains to be done. According to Sweden’s public health agency, almost every second woman (42 percent) in Sweden has experienced sexual harassment and more than every third woman (39 percent) has been subjected to sexual assault. In both cases/in the later case, LGBTQ+ persons tend to be more victimized than the general population.

“We have seen a change in attitude, especially since 2017, and the #Metoo movement was very important in Sweden, to open eyes that even though we have achieved a lot of gender equality, we still have a big problem with the violence that is widespread. It has changed the attitude, it is much more common now, and I think that is an important reason why we have more calls to Kvinnofridslinjen “ says Sandell.

NCK has witnessed a steady increase in calls since 2017, reaching a total of 46,000 calls in 2020. Although the awareness within the population is growing, the Council of Europe formulated a report in 2019, sharply criticising aspects of Sweden’s work against gender-based and domestic violence. These include the “insufficient resources for the investigation and prosecution of such crimes”, as well as the circumstance that “particularly women from national minorities, such as Sami and Roma, migrant women, and women with disabilities face difficulties in finding support and protection from such violence”.

Especially in a county like Sweden, regarded as a paragon of gender equality, it is important to remember that the reality of gender inequality affects, harms, and kills millions of women and gender minorities around the world on a daily basis. We need to pay attention to the manifestations of inequality that are still taking place – by treating every crisis with the required urgency- and strengthen the protection of women’s and LGBTQ+ persons’ rights.

So what can be done in order to help women in violent relationships and to offer support? In that regard, Sandell had several things to say. She urged that it is important to break and avoid isolation by keeping close contact with friends and colleagues. Moreover, to always ask questions about violence in healthcare and social services. But not only in the worksphere, also within friendships, questions about violence should not be stigmatized but rather be posed to remove shame around the topic.

Sandell mentioned that NCK´s webcourse developed with the National Board of Health, has received an enhancement in the last year and many more professionals (e.g. police) were engaging in the content and the education. The media has also played a huge role in spreading awareness about the shadow pandemic in news and magazines. Sandell encourages individuals to educate themselves and spread the knowledge: “Knowledge is the key to battle violence”.

In case you, a friend, colleague, relative, or acquaintance are experiencing violence at home, please call Kvinnofridslinjen, the national helpline of NCK and talk to someone: 020-50 50 50 (only available in Sweden, (however, the language of conduct can be English as well) free of charge and available 24h per day)

Related articles:

White feminists: the dark side of Western feminism

Women’s march: feminism from below smashing the patriarchy

The Swedish COVID-19 pandemic strategy or: The Comeback of the “Ättestupa”

Picture credits:

From the 2021 International Women’s Day march in Melbourne. Matt Hrkac from Geelong Melbourne, Australia (CC BY 2.0)

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The Olympic Games Tokyo 2020(1): Can it change the way the Olympics Games are held in the future?

Rozarina Bakher — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 17:11:09 +0000

The coronavirus pandemic has seen many events either postponed or cancelled. The most globally known event by far would be the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo which was originally scheduled from 22 July to 9 August.

The global sporting event is now rescheduled to be held from 23 July to 8 August 2021 instead, but will still retain the name as the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020. Despite general worry from the Japanese population on the pandemic and its aftereffects, The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has announced that there is no “Plan B” and that the games will go ahead as planned. Around 206 National Olympic Committees are scheduled to participate and approximately 11,091 athletes in various sporting games are expected to compete. The choice for the organizer to carry out this event is being met with declining support from the general population over renewed concern of a new strain of the coronavirus. Japan will only begin its vaccination program late February (as of the date of this article, Japan has begun local clinical trials with the Moderna vaccine in January). Many believe vaccination of its 127 million citizens is crucial for the game to take place. A massive $14 billion has been set aside by the government to roll out the vaccine before the games begin, despite growing uncertainty amongst a population which has a history of being deeply wary of vaccines.

A question remains, why is the Japanese government planning to go ahead with its plan to host these Olympic games amidst the threat of the pandemic?

Surely, a potential Plan B would be to cancel it all together? In the Olympics history, the games have been cancelled three times before, in 1916, 1940 and 1944. In fact in 1940, both the summer and winter Olympics were scheduled to take place in Japan but were cancelled due to WW2.

Too far gone

Hosting an Olympic is a big deal for any country, but it also carries huge financial implications. Going ahead with it is a way to recoup the investment that Japanese government and its public sponsors have spent on the games. Japan reportedly spent $75 million for the campaign to host the games and provided a $7.3 billion budget during its bidding in 2013. The coronavirus delay reportedly cost around $2.4 billion, and since then the Tokyo organizing committee has upped the outlays to $15.4 billion. It is now set to be the most expensive summer Olympics. So, the show must go on as the IOC depends on selling broadcasting rights and sponsorships which accounts for 90 percent of its revenue. Note, that this game could go ahead without the anticipated spectators that would bring additional income through ticket sales. It was reported that around 70 percent of tickets are reserved for buyers in Japan and sales are expected to be worth $800 million to local organizers. The remainder is reserved for overseas visitors, who may not be able to travel if the pandemic’s infection numbers continue to rise.

Postponing the game further would also jeopardize plans for the 2024 Olympic games to be held in Paris. A few reasons put forward by IOC President, Tomas Bach was that they simply cannot have overlapping games one after another, the next Olympic game scheduled, the Beijing Winter Olympics in February 2022, is only 6 months away, neither can the committee keep employing the 3,000 – 5,000 people for an indefinite time. If Tokyo Olympics 2020 does not go ahead this year, it could lead to the games taking place further along in 2024, Paris will be 2028 and LA in 2032.

The proud nation

Tokyo Governor, Yuriko Koike has a vision for Tokyo and is betting on Hong Kong’s losing appeal after Chinese crackdowns and Singapore becoming more expensive for investment, that Tokyo will win back some of its former glory as a regional hub for foreign companies in Asia. The Tokyo metropolitan government has launched marketing campaigns, particularly aimed at high-tech and fintech firms, and the Olympics are an excellent chance to highlight the city.

There is also a sense of pride in reliving the 1964 Tokyo Olympics in which Japan gained fame for showcasing to the world how the country recovered from the devastation of the WW2 less than two decades later and how it reformed from an aggressive empire-seeker to a model of peace and democracy. It still craves to showcase the glory of the ’64 successful event, and what better way to reclaim the fame than by hosting the very event that demonstrates the best of Japan and help the world celebrate as it turns the corner on the Covid-19 pandemic.

Forfeiting the games is not an option, as the world’s next global sporting event will be the Beijing Winter Olympics 2022. In the realm of Asian rivalry, this is one that Japan would not want to see itself losing. Japan was the 2nd largest economy after the US from 1968 to 2010, before losing the spot to China, and a few billion dollars to make the games happen may be a small price to pay for a chance at glory.

At this point, pulling off the Olympics is not just a matter of economic damage-control. It is a national project, a matter of honour and saving face from being seen as a nation of give-ins.

The Playbook

The IOC announced on February 3 that the game would take place and have issued the Tokyo Olympic playbooks meant to outline measures against Covid-19. Some of the actions-in-plan from the playbook which aims to keep participants and citizens of Japan safe are:

A vaccination will not be compulsory for those attending the games, although a negative test for Covid-19 is required four weeks leading up to the event and athletes will be tested every four days.
Those coming to the games will be asked to cheer by clapping instead of chanting or shouting.
Athletes, and those attending the games will not be permitted to visit tourist sites or travel on public transport.
A 14-day activity plan is to be submitted ahead by those attending.

In addition to the above, plans are in place to keep strict attendance numbers in the opening ceremony on July 23. Athletes cannot check into the Olympic Village more than five days before the opening and must leave two days after finishing their competition.

Despite all the measures in place, will it be enough to not turn the Olympic Games Tokyo into the “mother of all super-spreader events”?

Certainly, the Tokyo Olympics will be very different from what we are all used to in the past, with a stadium full of spectators cheering and waving their nations’ flag and will be without the grandeur of the opening and closing ceremonies. The IOC have stressed the focus is to host a sporting event without the extravagant hoopla that has become a part of the Olympics. For a while now, the Olympics have been known to cause economic strain to the country that hosts them. Some past examples: Athens spent $15 billion to host the 2004 Olympics, taxpayers in Athens will continue to be assessed annually until the debt is paid and most of the facilities built during the games remain empty. In a nearly similar example of another endemic, the 2016 Olympic in Brazil was affected due to the Zika virus. Extra accommodation was built for the expectation of tourists; however, the virus scares saw the decline in tourists expected during the Games.

While Tokyoites and the rest of the world are Covid-weary, and despite the budget to host the Games having risen, the IOC is still head-on strong to proceed with the Olympics 2020, even if it could mean less spectators and a potential loss in income. The Olympics history has showcased a few past examples as to how the games have caused economic strain to its host country and perhaps the Tokyo Olympic 2020 Games can serve as an inspiration for future Olympics Games and other countries to look for alternative, more cost effective and sustainable ways of hosting.

Note: All currency is in US$

Related articles:

A Volunteer’s View of the Rio Olympics

Photo credits:

Tokyo Tower Special Lightup by t-mizo (CC BY 2.0)

Tokyo Olympics 2020 by Danny Choo on Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

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The #strajkkobiet phenomenon

Ioana Pavel — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 17:11:08 +0000

The #strajkkobiet phenomenon in Poland is made up of two sides. The first can be grossly defined as the hundreds of thousands of women protesting and demanding unencumbered access to legal abortion, and the Government vehemently trying – and ultimately succeeding – to restrict this particular right. How is the phenomenon unfolding?

On October 22, 2020, Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal imposed a near-total ban on abortions. The ruling allows for abortions in cases of sexual assault, incest or when the mother’s life in danger, but bans it in cases of fetal abnormalities, whereas around 96% of abortions in Poland have taken place in cases of fetal abnormalities. The ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS) has been pursuing an agenda of restricting abortions since the beginning of its mandate, and has promoted it as a campaign promise. Since February, the decision has taken effect.

Both sides use human rights rhetoric to justify their positions. Government rhetoric argues that a human life must be protected from the moment of conception until death, citing the right to life as well as the freedom of conscience and religion, as protected by the Polish Constitution. Meanwhile, the protesters speak of women’s sexual and reproductive rights, arguing that the ban will not prevent abortions, but merely force women to seek them illegally. Beyond the approximate 1,000 abortions carried out legally, women’s rights groups estimated that 200,000 polish women still seek abortions either illegally. Those who can afford it will seek an abortion abroad. Those who carry out illegal abortions and those who aid women in seeking out illegal abortions risk a sentence of imprisonment for up to three years. About a dozen convictions of this kind take place annually.

A key player on the Government’s team is the Catholic Church, which supports the ban wholeheartedly. In 2015, 92% of the population identified as Catholic and 61% said that religion has a very high or a high importance in their life. Whereas the state and the church are by law supposed to be independent from each other, a Reuters analysis shows that priests have been known to display election posters on parish property and talk about the elections during mass.

Meanwhile, a key player on the protesters’ side is the European Union, which nonetheless has no competence to impose law on reproductive rights. It does, however, take a stand on the issue. In a 2020 submission by the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, the Commissioner found that “since 2014 almost 4,000 Polish doctors have signed a “Declaration of Faith of Catholic doctors and medical students regarding human sexuality and fertility”, through which they expressed their commitment to following “divine law” in their professional work and to reject abortion, contraception and in vitro fertilisation.” Whereas a doctor who signs such a declaration must refer the patient to another practitioner, in practice, timely access to an abortion is severely and systematically hindered. According to the same submission, in some areas and in some hospitals, virtually all doctors have signed such a declaration and women are forced to seek an abortion illegally.

The same report found that sexual and reproductive health is further dampened by a 2017 decision that the emergency contraceptive pill would be made available only on prescription, as opposed to over-the-counter. However, prescriptions are delayed by doctors who refuse to sign them based on the same freedom of conscience and religion clause, the long wait or the cost for an appointment, and the fact that minors need a legal guardian to accompany them when making such an appointment.

In a press release on November 26, 2020, the European Parliament has spoken out against the ban, citing that women’s rights were being violated and their lives were put at risk. The EP had found that access to prenatal screening, which could find fetal abnormalities and result in a request for an abotion, was being restricted by doctors using the conscience clause. Meanwhile, Poland has announced that it plans to withdraw from the Istanbul Convention, wherein member States of the Council of Europe vow to “protect women against all forms of violence, and prevent, prosecute and eliminate violence against women and domestic violence”, on that grounds that the Convention imposes “a leftist ideology”. It is up to the same Constitutional Tribunal to review the Istanbul Convention and make a final decision.

Meanwhile, the #strajkkobiet phenomenon is not about a protest against one particular ruling by the Constitutional Tribunal. The phenomenon is about a system of oppression that pushed women to break the law in order to have access to the same rights that other European Union countries choose to protect. Women who do not have the means to go abroad for an abortion will end up getting an illegal one. The lucky ones will be under some kind of medical supervision. Those without that option will go for an at-home improvisation that will, in some cases, be fatal. The #strajkkobiet phenomenon is about a system of oppression that left women with no choice but to protest.

Related articles:

The legality of abortion

Photo credits:

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The Politics of Video Games

Filip Zahariev — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 17:11:01 +0000

Many in the gaming industry have gone to great lengths to declare their products “apolitical”. A strangely reactive defense of a genre that has long sought to be accepted as an art form—few would deny that novels, movies, photography, all other art forms are inherently political. It’s not impossible to make art that is apolitical, of course; the result is most often bad art.

Doublethink

The great irony is, political statements are evident by the content of the games that most ardently push for an apolitical label. Look no further than Ubisoft’s The Division 2, a game about the socio-political fracture of the USA to the point of a second civil war (sound familiar?) that somehow “is not a game about politics,” according to creative director Terry Spier. Earlier in 2018, the same publisher had released Far Cry 5, another game about US society breaking down, this time in the state of Montana, and under the strain of religious fundamentalism. In the link above, PC Gamer had aptly described it as “ultimately toothless”; one imagines this a direct consequence of an unwillingness to examine any one political ideology for fear that it might alienate parts of its player base.

But then, Ubisoft’s development teams and the company’s management seem two very different beasts trapped in the same body. The company’s track in the politics of sexual harassment is even murkier, as became apparent over the summer of 2020, when some of the highest-positioned management staff were embroiled in a string of sexual misconduct reports; later, a survey at the company revealed that as much as 25% of employees at the French publisher had experienced some form of workplace misconduct. Industry critic Jim Sterling covered at length the extent of protection the company extended to these executives—for years prior to the breaking of the story.

Profit Trumps All

No one aware of it could forget Activision Blizzard’s kowtowing before the interests of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) when the company severely censured and punished Blitzchung, a champion player of their digital card game, Hearthstone. When the latter showed support for the 2019 Hong Kong protests going on at the time, he was banned from taking part in any Hearthstone championships for a year, and his championship prize of $10,000 rescinded. Blizzard’s explanation? Blitzchung’s statement had violated a tournament rule, which prohibits the player from engaging in any activity that “brings [them] into public disrepute, offends a portion or group of the public, or otherwise damages Blizzard image [sic].” If they only knew the amount of damage that move would cost them in that most valuable of intangible resources, reputation. The reaction was so fervent, it caused a rare bipartisan rebuke from members of US Congress in addition of turning large swathes of the Blizzard community against the company.

Yet, one cannot help but consider the dotted line—like any Triple-A company in the gaming industry, Activision Blizzard is eager to tap into the enormous gaming market that China has to offer; a market strictly regulated by the CCP, whose propaganda offices are all too happy to deny access to any studio that gives offence to the party. Though the revenue stream Activision Blizzard currently receives from the entire Asia Pacific region is dwarfed by both the Americas and the EMEA(Europe/Middle Eastern Area), it’s no petty cash by any means.

Ubisoft’s reason for claiming that apolitical label for games whose content is blatantly political in nature is similar—committing to one side of any political debate risks offending half the player base at a time of great political polarization.

What developers seem to struggle with is the notion that pointing a finger at a piece of art and proclaiming it apolitical does not automatically minimise the political thought inherent in that piece of art.

The latest offenders

Two topics have commanded the news cycle more than all others during these early months of 2021: COVID-19 and the insurgency at Washington DC in January. Certain game developers have managed to show remarkable aloofness in dealing with both topics. SCS Software, the developer behind Euro Truck Simulator 2 released a press announcement, which originally read “We Do Not Take A Stand Neither For Or Against Vaccines”. Later chalked up to a mistake in translation (the corrected statement read “No matter if you stand for vaccines or against them, these truckers still have to work really hard and we wanted to give them their well-deserved 15 minutes of fame”), this message was met with consternation by many—why would a medium-sized European studio feel the need to make so blatant a non-statement of political conformity? The answer can only be guessed at.

On the other side of the coin rests Six Days in Fallujah, a video game that portrays the Second Battle of Fallujah. It is also not political, if you believe Peter Tamte, head of the game’s publisher, Victura. Despite the game aiming to be a faithful representation of the fiercest battle of the Iraqi War, Tamte claims:

For us as a team, it is really about helping players understand the complexity of urban combat. It’s about the experiences of that individual that is now there because of political decisions. And we do want to show how choices that are made by policymakers affect the choices that [a Marine] needs to make on the battlefield. Just as that [Marine] cannot second-guess the choices by the policymakers, we’re not trying to make a political commentary about whether or not the war itself was a good or a bad idea.

The complexity of urban combat, one might suppose, itself has a great deal of political weight behind it. “Helping players understand” it in 2021 brings particular connotations to the fore, especially after what the world witnessed happening in the United States’ Capitol on January 6. Tamte exhibits the same wilful ignorance towards the wider context of politics as other executives do, a context which rests well outside of what is enacted by “policymakers”.

Politics reach further than well-kempt parliamentary buildings and senate floors. In an age where more and more issues are politicized, to be apolitical might seem a tempting prospect, a siren call to those too tired of the polarized climate across the public sphere. But attempting to faithfully render blatantly political situations in the format of a video game, only to stand apart from the messages that come with these is nothing if not dishonest and cowardly—and worth condemning.

Related articles:

A game of chess at the Greek-Turkish border

Photo credits:

Wiki-background by Prachatai on Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Hearthstone at Gamescom 2013 by Sergey Galyonkin on Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

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Rights Won’t Cure a Pandemic

Maya Diekmann — Wed, 10 Feb 2021 20:55:56 +0000

In recent months, human rights have experienced a rapid proliferation in public discourse. People are unusually concerned with the status of their fundamental rights—for a good reason. Few liberal democracies have witnessed such heavy-handed state intervention and liberty rights restrictions as in 2020.

Lockdowns infringe on the right to freedom of movement, strict distancing measures and gathering regulations on the freedom of assembly. Religious service is limited, hymns of praise are a big no-no in virus containment—restricting free religious practice. Not even the right to choose one’s employment is guaranteed where restaurants, theaters, and other non-essential businesses are forced to shut down.

As much as these restrictions might feel like a dictatorial rule to those privileged enough to have grown up in a liberal democratic society—who have not the slightest of ideas of what such implications even mean—it couldn’t be further removed from rights and freedoms as they work in practice. As much as some might want to equivocate their rights with a kind of untouchable, inviolable decree—human rights were never meant to play that role in the first place.

“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness”

“…born free and equal in dignity and rights.” Or so the fairy tale is told, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Granting humans rights merely on the basis of their existence as a human being is a fundamental underpinning of the Declaration. It is an ideal worth striving for but in practice, it could not be more problematic. It is no surprise that critical opposition to the notion of universality of human rights did not take long to arise after the Declaration first entered into force. With her essay The Rights of Man: What Are They?, Hannah Arendt launched what would become one of the most prominent critiques against the supposedly inalienable status of human rights. At the core of her critique is the critical question of how human rights are supposed to be universal, if their enforcement is conditional on the existence, willingness, and capability of the institutions of sovereign states to do so.

In short, and without granting Arendt the attention that she deserves, the answer to said question is: They are not universal. Not simply by virtue of existing. The respect and protection of human rights directly depend on citizenship and institutions, because rights—just like people—do not exist in a socio-political vacuum. They exist in a world divided into a map of sovereign states, holding societies to which people are assigned by birth. If one is lucky enough to be born into a state where democracy, rule of law, and respect for human rights governs, one, along with everyone else born in that state, has fundamental rights.

Being a citizen of a liberal democracy is principally like being a member of an exclusive club. You pay your membership, vote for your board, and avoid violating club rules. In return you reap the benefits of being a member. As do others. This is essential to keep the club running. The problem with membership, and its connected perks and duties, is that there is a risk to forget about the conditions on which this whole association is founded in the first place: To gather together with a common purpose. In the case of liberal democratic societies this is to live together, peacefully under the law, and to equally profit from the fruits of human cooperation—including the guarantee of certain fundamental rights.

It doesn’t take much calculating to figure out that in a society where all the members lay claims to their rights, there is bound to be some conflict sooner or later. You cannot have every single member of society demanding their freedom without any external interference. The current pandemic is paradigmatic of this: Were the COVID-19 “freedom fighters” to have their way, and states were to lift all kinds of restrictions, they would infringe on the rights to life and good health—enshrined in Article 6 of the ICCPR and Article 12 of the ICESCR respectively—of other members of society. This is why the freedoms set forward in international human rights documents are usually understood as liberties. And although the terms are often used interchangeably, there exists a conceptual difference: While freedom denotes the ability to do whatever one wishes without interference, the latter refers to the ability to do something without arbitrary interference. Liberties are what is granted, guaranteed, and protected by national laws.

COVID-19 Anti-Lockdown Protest in Vancouver, May 3rd 2020

Of Lives and Livelihoods

Few human rights are absolute. Among them are the prohibition of slavery and torture. This means that these rights can never be “put on hold”. Not in war, where allegedly anything goes, not ever. Most articles in the International Bill of Human Rights, however, come with limitations. This means that in cases of national emergency, where public order or public health are threatened, these rights can be derogated from. As long as measures are based in law, are necessary and proportional to the threat, it is perfectly legitimate for a state to limit rights, such as freedom of assembly or freedom of movement.

For many in the “corona-resistance” movement, these measures are neither necessary nor proportionate. Falsely claiming SARS-CoV-2 to be little more than a flu virus, which poses no serious threat to a vast majority of the population, they demand an end of the tyranny that restricts their personal freedoms and threatens their livelihoods. And while it is correct that in most cases, a COVID-19 infection takes a mild course, it is equally correct that there is a certain part of the population which is much more likely to be seriously affected by the disease. But even to those that acknowledge this fact, the equation still seems straightforward: The lives of the few do not justify risking the livelihoods of the many.

One of the great features of human rights is that they protect minorities from the will of the majority. Just because those facing a serious risk from SARS-CoV-2 are outnumbered does not mean that they do not deserve a healthy and safe life. This is part of what characterizes the liberal democratic society that so strongly protects exactly those fundamental rights that some understand as their personal trump card in the current crisis. Those same rights are designed to work as a protective shield for all the others whose lives and health endangered are endangered.

It is easy to demand something that unlikely affects oneself negatively. The vast majority of lockdown protesters in the US are white, whereas those disproportionately affected by the virus are people of color. Conversely, in Germany, 93% of those aged 60 and older, people facing higher risks from the virus, have no sympathy for anti-lockdown demonstrations. Undoubtedly, many of those demanding the end of corona-measures are negatively impacted by them, some disproportionately heavily. Their entire existence is at risk because of government restrictions. This should by no means be downplayed. Neither should human rights in times of the pandemic. The point is that there is a difference between making oneself heard by participating in a productive socio-political debate, and obstinately chanting for some sort of personal freedom which was never there in the first place.

There is no easy solution to a crisis as multifaceted as the current one. In fact, one of the greatest challenges in handling the COVID-19 pandemic is that alleviating one crisis seemingly aggravates another. Where individuals find themselves in the crossfire of government crisis-response mechanisms, it is easy to clutch onto the one tower of strength that promises protection from the great sovereign: Human rights. But once the underlying dynamic of this symbolic narrative is taken into consideration, one thing becomes painfully obvious: Insisting on your personal rights won’t heal a sick collective.

Related articles:

The Swedish COVID-19 pandemic strategy or: The Comeback of the “Ättestupa”

Back from the borderlands: taming and framing COVID-19

Socially Progressive, Economically Conservative: What Does It Mean to Be Liberal?

Human Rights Crisis

Photo credits:

“COVID-19 Anti-Lockdown Protest in Vancouver, May 3rd 2020” by GoToVan is licensed under CC BY 2.0

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The Precariat – The Loss of Job Security and What To Do About It

Oliver Ösmark — Wed, 10 Feb 2021 20:00:07 +0000

Khalil Gibran’s book “The Prophet” begins with the protagonist Almustafa spotting on the horizon the ship that will take him back to the isle of his birth, and he prepares himself to leave the city of Orphalese which he has called home for 12 years. But he is struck by melancholy as his thoughts turn to the hurt he will cause the people of the city with his passing. Being a popular fellow, he is beseeched by men, women, elders, and clergy to speak to them of the truths he has learned in his time: “Now therefore, disclose us to ourselves, and tell us all that has been shown you of that which is between birth and death.” Almustafa obliges and shares his wisdom in 26 dainty morsels on the topics of love, good and evil, crime and punishment, joy and sorrow, friendship, laws, time, talking, trade, work, and so on. The word “meaning” is not used a single time in the whole book.

At this stage one might feel as though the omission of “meaning” in this context is of no significance as the narrative itself is heavily flecked with the mysticisms, superstitions, dogmas, and all the loose scales shed from the scalp of theism. After all, the ultimate meaning of religion is faith, and faith is servitude to the idea of God and all that entails; or “the gods, sprits and idols,” if you are the kind of person to diversify your spiritual portfolio. One would be forgiven for thinking so. Gibran was a Maronite flirting with Islam, Sufi mysticism, and the Bahá’í Faith. But his eclecticism also spanned into the artistic enclaves of Romanticism, and modern (at the time) symbolism and surrealism. The point here being that it is not far-fetched to claim that any artist engaging in honest dissemination of the human condition does not regard close-mindedness a virtue. “Meaning” is not God’s decree. It is a consortium of disciplines. Disciplines represented with poetic precision by Gibran in his book.

The Prophet Almustafa says of work:

“You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth […]

You have been told also that life is darkness, and in your weariness you echo what was said by the weary.

And I say that life is indeed darkness save when there is urge,

And all urge is blind save when there is knowledge.

And all knowledge is vain save when there is work,

And all work is empty save when there is love;

And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God.”

Love for one’s trade is the flower borne from the seed of urge. Yet, the realities of the day—underemployment, redundancies, glass ceilings, manufactured impediments to accessing education, etc.—leave many scrambling in for options. Any options. And even though a small—plausibly non-existent—minority of people would make the claim that their gig as a human billboard brings them closer to God, work satisfaction falls by the wayside with little or no long-term job security. Darkness abounds, and this is the precarious circumstance a growing portion of the labor force find themselves in. But before we explore this phenomenon any further, first we must address some common suppositions.

The usual suspects

Economic inequality is a prompt for social mobilization on the regular. “The 1%” have been the punching bags of the discontent and disempowered since the invention of value itself. These days that practice is perfectly understandable. In 2018, the 26 richest people in the world held as much wealth as half of the global population (3.8 billion at the time), a change from 43 people the preceding year. Yet, it is a mistake to think that inequality is rising everywhere. It is not all-pervasive, nor an inescapable symptom of globalization. Neither has the average level of inequality changed much. In countries like China, India, Indonesia, and the U.S., which together account for 45% of the world population, the Gini index—the go-to barometer of wealth inequality—saw an increase of about 4 points. Hence, while the average country saw little variation of the Gini index, the average person lived in a country that saw rising income inequality.

Unemployment numbers do not tell the whole story either. These have more or less followed a stable flat trend within the 3-7% range, alongside with a steady increase in GDP per capita, since the ILO began recording unemployment data per state. Extreme outliers like Spain and Greece in 2013—which peaked at 27% and 25% respectively—led to much civil unrest as austerity measures inflamed an already volatile situation. Youth unemployment in these countries was more than twice as high as the country average, as is often the case in most countries on average. High rates of underemployment compound this issue. Underemployed workers may be able to find work, but their income may not be sufficient for meeting basic needs. Youths are overrepresented in this category. Hence, unemployment rates alone are inadequate measures of labor market slack.

Indeed, labor underutilization affects 473 million workers worldwide, which is more than double the number of unemployed people considered separately, and 61% of workers worldwide are in informal employment. Significant inequalities in access to decent work opportunities has become an increasing trend and feature of current labor markets.

The precariat

Guy Standing is an economist and professor at the University of London who has worked extensively on economic inequality and written two book on a new social class dubbed the “precariat”; the word itself is a portmanteau of “precarious” and “proletariat”. Unlike the latter characterized as exchanging labor for livelihood yet deprived of the “means of production”—raw material, facilities, machines, capital—the precariat are only partially involved in labor and must take on extensive amounts of uncompensated “work”—e.g. updating CV’s and sending out job applications, attending job interviews, being “on call” for “gig” work—to have access to decent earnings. Emblematic of this class is a lack of job security, benefits, or union protection. The precariat also spans the income and education spectrums: from illegal migrant work to highly educated but freelance-dependent industries.

Workers of a Mexican textile plant or “maquila”. Most workers work 11 hours a day, 6 to 7 days a week, for less than the legal minimum wage. Industries in the US and elsewhere make heavy use of Mexico’s and other Central American countries’ low-cost labor.

Standing says that this phenomenon really took off after 2008 in the aftermath of the 2007–2008 financial crisis. In his book “A Precariat Charter: From Denizens to Citizens” he outlines 29 “demands” aimed at providing the precariat both economic stability and empowerment to live in comfort and participate in society—these range from rehauling unions, reforming migration policies, ending means testing. A central demand is the establishment of a universal basic income, an idea that has been courted by the international labor and economic mammoths ILO, OECD, the World Bank—especially in the wake of the Great Recession—but never consummated.

But won’t basic income dissuade people from working and bleed government of tax revenue? Cool your boots, prolepsis. Let us entertain the side of the argument where one aspires for universal access to opportunity and decent standards of living. Take the Swedish unemployment fund (arbetslöshetskassa or “a-kassa”) which, ideally, pays up to 80% of your salary—though there are many fine print provisos to resign the newly dispossessed to feeling more fleeced than golden. To retain unemployment benefits, one must be active in looking for jobs; you must be able to prove that you are active in looking for jobs (the specifics of this are ad hoc and negotiated with the Swedish Public Employment Service); and you cannot decline any job offers—even ones that offer unstable hours and temporary employment. Receiving a limited yet regular amount in benefits from the government makes far more sense than sporadic and unreliable employment. As Standing says: “In effect, the system for the precariat has a huge disincentive for people taking low-wage jobs and punishes them for doing so. That is thoroughly unfair.”

So foul a sky clears not without a storm

Universal basic income is not a new idea. The social philosopher/lawyer/humanist Thomas More wrote about it in 1516, followed by corsetmaker/journalist/revolutionary Thomas Paine in 1719. Still, what the two Thomases were suggesting has never sifted into the mainstream of real-world policy. The 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang proposed that every American adult receive a monthly check of $1,000 as a solution to structural unemployment caused by automation. This “Freedom Dividend” only got him 2.8% of the votes in the primaries and he subsequently dropped out of the race. Then came the pandemic, which revealed the degree to which unemployment insurance had come up short in keeping up with the labor market. The welfare systems were overwhelmed, and people were desperate. Suddenly government started experimenting with forms of basic income.

Libertarians, austerity buffs, and Ayn Rand fans have long touted that welfare programs are much too expensive to fund and complicated to manage, but this was not the case. For example, Canada’s response program covered not only those who lost their jobs, or suffered reduced hours, but also those unable to work due to quarantine and childcare. The gig-workers and self-employed qualified. It was easy to apply for and payments were received within days. But the programs employed around the world were not true systems for basic income. They were expedient and temporary. Real universal basic income is a permanent program with consistent payments.

A guaranteed minimum income does not stop people from working and makes for a healthier and less unequal society. In Finland and the Netherlands, evidence found that basic income helped people who had been chronically unemployed for years. In both scenarios, recipients were more likely to find full-time jobs than control groups stuck with the traditional approach of mandated job searches, job-readiness programs, and regular contact case workers. Rather than having to settle for temporary gigs, people had more time to look for better jobs without bureaucratic trials and tribulations in the way. Studies in Canada and Malawi showed similar positive effects.

Taken at face value, the costs for universal basic income are colossal. The price tag for Yang’s “Freedom Dividend” was estimated at $2.8 trillion. Yet, this initiative would significantly reduce poverty and inequality and according to a study by the Roosevelt institute the economy would “grow by approximately $2.5 trillion and create 4.6 million new jobs” generating around $800–900 billion in new revenue from economic growth and activity. Such a strategy coupled with more progressive tax systems more than make up for the expenses. Costs are minimized by returns in taxes, targeted to low-income recipients, and is likely lower than what governments spend on pensions.

However, thinking about universal basic income only in monetary terms is an error of judgement. Universal basic income is an investment in society, not a cost. It is not an expenditure, but the means of which communities that value health, education, and security are made manifest. The returns come in terms of higher standards of living as well as from taking the pressure of other social programs treating symptoms of poverty, like poor health.

For long, implementing universal basic income has been considered unconventional, even outright inconceivable. But, as the pandemic has revealed the glaring holes in the safety net, it is a humane alternative to the classical model. It allows for purpose to be rediscovered. To “keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth” and a decent life disposed of darkness. And yes, even encourage love for one’s work. Let the solid surfaces deal with the billboards.

Related articles:

Nowhere to Stay Home

An Insecure Future

Who brings the food to your table?

Photo credits:

Job Satisfaction, by It’s No Game on flickr, CC BY 2.0

Maquiladora, Free for commercial use, DMCA

Home is Where the Fun Is. The Irony, by Andreea Popa on Unsplash

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Nowhere to Stay Home

Maya Diekmann — Fri, 22 Jan 2021 19:03:56 +0000

It is a challenge to find positive side-effects that a deadly global pandemic may bring to the world. With so much uncertainty, pain, fear, exhaustion, and death immediately surrounding us every day, the silver linings are hard to spot. Often, these silver linings turn out to be temporary: Healthcare workers that reaped applause from the balconies of this world several short months ago, are now expected to treat the organizers of anti-lockdown demonstrations with the same means as someone who has, for the last ten months, tuned down their personal whims in favour of a safer and more effective pandemic response. Those states that once delivered personal protection items and financial aid to less well-equipped parts of the world, are now hoarding vaccine doses that don’t even exist yet. How can you see the opportunities that an economic crisis might bring for the implementation of a promising European Green New Deal, if you have just lost your job and don’t know how long you can provide dinner for your family? How can you see some of the most effective responses to homelessness in years, while simultaneously so many people around the globe are pushed to their existential minimum, to the brink of losing their own homes?

The ones who cannot stay home

Upon giving out their first lockdown orders, many European governments quickly realized that to stay home, one must have a home to begin with. In one of their most rapid homelessness policy executions in years, the UK’s government ordered for almost 15,000 persons without permanent shelter to be relocated to empty hotel rooms, student dorms, and vacant housing. Similar governmental projects have been undertaken in France, Australia, and the U.S. In Germany, where coherent nation-wide policies on homelessness solutions not just during the corona pandemic are sparse and slow, non-governmental organizations have taken the lead when it comes to organizing hotel rooms for persons in need.

The message conveyed by a response such as the U.K.’s makes apparent how far policies to combat homelessness, provided they are backed up with sufficient funding, can come. Yet, it is also obvious—and so it has been for years for those engaged with this issue—that one emergency response upon another is not enough to overcome the issue once and for all. The urgency with which the matter has been addressed during times of crisis needs to become a new normal, if homelessness is to be confronted successfully.

Addressing homelessness is as complex as the diversity of the problem’s root causes. Among the main factors that push people on the street are stagnant wages and unemployment, matched with a lack of affordable housing and healthcare, discrimination, domestic violence and family problems.

4 Million people in the EU are homeless, 700,000 people sleeping rough every night—a figure that has increased by 70% in the last ten years alone. The disproportionate development of housing prices and inflation rates on the one hand and minimum income on the other put more and more individuals inside the EU in precarious situations. Over the past 10 years, the EU consumer price index (CPI) has increased by about 15%—inflation that remains unmatched by the increase in minimum wages, averaging 4.4% in the same time span. On top of this, housing costs in major European cities are skyrocketing: Rent has increased by 35% in Barcelona between 2010 and 2018, by over 50% in Paris between 2004 and 2019, and by over 70% in Berlin between 2004 and 2016.

Housing is becoming an especially disproportionate burden for low-income earners: In 2018, over one third of those households at the risk of poverty in the EU spent 40% of their income on housing. This makes livelihoods extremely prone to economic hardships—such as unemployment, furlough, or short-time allowance. U.K. authorities are gloomily predicting that “as many as half a million households could be at risk of homelessness once the full economic impact of the coronavirus is realized.” In other words: Mix unaffordable housing with a weakened economy, as we see it in times of the corona pandemic, give it a good stir and you have the perfect potion for a very real crisis.

The case of Vancouver provides a tragic example of the damage such an explosive cocktail of unaffordable housing and stagnant income can cause. The cut of governmental support for housing in the 1980s kicked loose a wave of homelessness that even caused the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (UNCESCR) to urge the Canadian government to declare the situation a national emergency. Within three years, between 2002 and 2005 the number of those without shelter in the Vancouver area nearly doubled, from 1,121 to 2,174. While the growth has been significantly slowed down since 2005, the trend has not yet been reversed and the most recent count in 2019 marked a peak of 2,223 people living on the streets of Vancouver.

In Canada, emergency responses, such as overnight shelters, have long been at the centre of homelessness management. While indispensable to addressing the issue, they are no sustainable solution to combat it in the long run. Unconditional access to permanent housing, known as the Housing First approach, has been identified as a key contributor to improve the situation of homeless people and communities in Vancouver. The Vancouver at Home (VAH) study, investigating a Housing First trial among homeless adults suffering from mental illnesses, has found that Housing First as compared to standard responses “produce significant benefits for participants, improve public safety and reduce the use of crisis and emergency resources.”

The City that Never Sleeps Rough

Similarly positive attitudes toward a readily accessible housing market are reflected by organizations around the world who stress that those provided with permanent shelter are more likely to seek help in other areas of their lives, too. One of the flag store implementations of the Housing First approach can be found in Finland: by investing over 250 million euros into affordable housing and support workers, the Finnish state, together with regional and non-governmental actors, has one of the most successful homelessness response mechanisms and prevention systems in the world. As a result, Finland is the only EU member state in which numbers of homeless are decreasing, with its capital Helsinki having virtually eradicated rough-sleeping.

While there are multiple success stories of individual cities’ and regions’ approach to homelessness—such as that of Trieste in Italy tackling homelessness by improving its mental health care system—the only lastingly effective approach is a systematic one. Only with common standards within a given state, or even beyond, can homelessness be eradicated once and for all. And what better way to create common standards than through common institutions? In a resolution from November 2020, the European Parliament urges the EU and its member states to end homelessness by 2030. While a detailed agenda is yet to be published, the Parliament recommends better access of homeless individuals to the labour market and healthcare, and a shift of focus from emergency responses to Housing First and prevention mechanisms. Concerning the latter, they recognize the pressing problem of unaffordable housing in European cities and announce a proposal to guarantee more inclusive housing markets. It might be just another policy proposal. But at least it is the long-overdue first step towards solving a problem that has been invisible, yet ever present on the horizon, for so many years.

In the summer of 2020, Barcelona cracked down on companies owning vacant apartments in the city by implementing a law that would allow the city to buy empty apartments at 50% of market values. In an unprecedented effort to create affordable housing, local authorities presented companies with an ultimatum of either renting out available apartments within a month or be subjected to compulsory sales at the described conditions. Paris, where as of 2017 over 26% of apartments are vacant, is imposing harsh fines on apartment owners breaking rules for Airbnb rentals, which “encourage property speculation and reduce the housing available to residents.” Berlin has implemented a temporary rent freeze for the year of 2021 and a permanent rent cap that regulates the allowed increase in rent in the following period.

The author Jonathan Safran Foer once wrote: “It’s always possible to wake someone from sleep, but no amount of noise will wake someone who is pretending to be asleep.” The pandemic has unleashed a crisis on so many different levels, producing so much noise that it becomes difficult to decide which problem to focus on first: healthcare professionals—to mention just those essential workers most immediately linked to the question of life and death—are ridiculously underpaid and undervalued, yet they remain equally taken for granted. Shutting down an entire economy, or at least having it run on low power mode to unburden healthcare workers, threatens the livelihoods of small businesses and their owners while feeding into the hands of enterprises. Limiting children’s right to education—while absolutely necessary when classrooms become a turnstile for a deadly virus—bears and exacerbates immense inequalities in opportunity. Living in a city and losing one’s job in the middle of all this very easily becomes an eviction notice. But all this noise, as overbearing as it might be, has also opened many eyes. We have to keep treating the invisible crises that the COVID-19 pandemic has brought to light with the urgency they deserve. We have to make sure that people can stay home. We must not go back to sleep.

Related articles:

Such a big world and still not enough space to live?

Photo credits:

By The Humantra on Unsplash

“On the scrapheap”, by Jon Berkeley on behance, CC BY-NC 4.0

“Balconies”, by unitednations on Unsplash

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A Society of Control: The actuality of Gilles Deleuze’s thoughts in the 21st century

Franziska Fink — Sun, 06 Dec 2020 18:19:33 +0000

Eighty-eight years ago, in 1932, Aldous Huxley wrote his infamous dystopian novel, Brave New World. Huxley tells the story of a futuristic World State in which all citizens are constantly happy, as well as content with the social order. They have been conditioned from birth by an overarching powerful state apparatus to accept the role they have been assigned to. Injustices such as owning less than others or having to do dull work are thus not perceived as discriminatory, but rather joyfully accepted. Moreover, the citizens’ entire perception of reality and truth is generated and controlled by the state. Of course, the mechanisms of control are hidden away from the general public and are only known by a small elite of so-called World Controllers. They govern, respectively dictate, with the best intent, namely for the purpose of creating social stability by brainwashing everyone into happiness: “Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.”

Huxley’s World State shares many features with what Michel Foucault has termed a “disciplinary society”. Initiated by the systemic organization of vast spaces of enclosure, members of disciplinary societies can be constantly controlled as they move in between easily observable locations: from their home to school, to factories, possibly to hospitals and prison—all institutions that are placed under the state’s surveillance and, thus, subjects within those become easy targets to control. Foucault placed this kind of society in the 18th and 19th century, during a simpler time, when an ordinary person’s life probably did not entail more than going to school and later in life to work in a factory.

“I imagine Foucault terrified if he saw what kind of society we are living in nowadays.”

To people that have been brought up in a liberal democracy which cherishes plurality of opinions and ideas, this form of societal and political organization seems, unsurprisingly, repellent in its entirety. Not being able to express, not even being given the chance to develop, one’s own understanding and opinion of how our society should look, appears a drastic deprivation of fundamental rights.

I imagine Foucault terrified if he saw what kind of society we are living in nowadays. A society so complex and so intertwined with technology, yet nonetheless so young in regard to the proliferation of that technological hegemony, that there are simply no mechanisms in place that has the capacity to control these novelties. Yet, quite the opposite seems to be the case: We live in a society of technological control, so far-reaching that not even the godfather of this theory, Gilles Deleuze, could have imagined it.

“In contrast to Huxley’s World State members, people in our post-modern society of control are not controlled through psychologically conditioned beliefs, but rather trough the mechanisms of the “bubble” in which they move.”

While the individual in a disciplinary society was placed in different institutions of control, the contemporary individual living in a control society is in constant modulation, Deleuze states. With our phones, laptops, and tablets always within a short distance, we are constantly coerced in various forms of communication. On the one hand, this has triggered a new form of global interconnectedness and awareness. The revolution in information and communication technology spread power to the masses by creating a unique global space for human development. Local events can now instantly trigger global consequences, grassroots movements like Fridays for Future are only one telling example. Nevertheless, this new space can also be used for destruction.

In contrast to Huxley’s World State members, people in our post-modern society of control are not controlled through psychologically conditioned beliefs but rather through the mechanisms of the “bubble” in which they move. These are characterized and nourished by determinants such as our social environment, socioeconomic status and educational background, but also by our virtual interactions.

Our own personal truth and material reality is subsequently generated by algorithms which constantly provide us with the type of news we would like to see; disinformation and fake news determine election outcomes and people become more prone to conspiracy theories and dangerous movements.

“What is already clear, is that we will not end up with the benefits which the members of Huxley’s World State enjoy.”

What is unique about our contemporary society of technological control is that it appears as if there is no all-encompassing political agenda behind all of this. Of course, the technology is used by different political groups to realize their interests, whether this is done through the spreading of fake news about their opponents or through the hacking of foreign elections. But the ones who essentially developed—and are in charge of managing powerful and influential platforms like Facebook or Twitter—the actual puppet-players, seemingly have commercial benefits as their basis of interest, in contrast to sound political goals. The World Controllers imagined by Huxley or the ruling elites of disciplinary societies, exercised control predominantly for control’s sake. Yet, nowadays, thanks to the egalitarian mechanisms of the internet, everyone has the potential to become a powerful player and to use this control in their own interests. This automatically creates a kind of virtual anarchy, in which the means for control does not resonate with its ends.

Since this development is still so young, it is too early to predict how it will unfold. What is already clear, is that we will not end up with the benefits which the members of Huxley’s World State enjoy. Facilitated by a totalitarian state, they gain social stability, a great sense of community and a strong group identity. But they nonetheless pay for it with their rights of individual development and active political participation. In contrast, the post-modern version of Deleuze’s society of (technological) control in which we find ourselves, accelerated exactly these facets; it also makes us pay for it, in turn, with data, privacy and the complete dependency on our phones and laptops.

Neither of these alternatives sound too attractive to live with. What to do? After having discovered the perversion of the system in which he lives, one of the protagonists of Brave New World dealt with his newly gained knowledge by leaving civilization behind and fleeing into the woods. Sounds intriguing? Yes, but let’s all promise not to do a live-Instagram story of the beautiful sunsets we will find.

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Photo credits

Artificial Intelligence – Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Artificial Intelligence 2 – Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

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